Working (kind of) for the weekend
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Wizard of Id, 2/6/26
Happy Friday, everyone! What are your weekend plans? Are you thinking about getting extremely high and catapulting some toilets at somebody? Because that appears to be what Sir Rodney is up to in the Wizard of Id.
Gil Thorp, 2/6/26
Or were you thinking about going out and “tagging” a rival high school? If so, you should definitely choose Milford High as your target, as the coach to whom the principal has ominously delegated the task of doing what they must do can’t muster up any epithets stronger than “rats,” with a period, not even an exclamation point.
The Lockhorns, 2/6/26
Leroy! I think most people already know what their payment package will be when they accept an offer of employment. Not everyone is so bad at money as you. This young up-and-comer is right to look at you so warily. Honestly I assume that he’s probably already been warned about you by his other new coworkers. In conclusion, I like the Lockhorns strips about Leroy’s work life because they confirm that, much like his home life, his work life is pretty miserable.
85 replies to “Working (kind of) for the weekend”
Wizard of Id:
“Super Bowl Shmooper Bowl! — I’m having fun this weekend with the Toilet Bowl!”
MW: Hungover narration box is having a tough start to the weekend:
“If Toby if …what…she would’ve…uh, Ian…can’t we just run a quote or something?”
Gil Thorp:
“You know what to do, Coach Thorp. Lift the image and donate it to MoMa in New York City, where it can hang in the same room as all the Jackson Pollock paintings!”
Mao Zedong, according to a few pieces I’ve read, apparently “mistrusted” toilets, and would poop in a Forbidden City garden outside his office. On trips, a lackey accompanied him with a shovel. My point? Rodney better watch his back, or launch that thing FAST.
Things I like: The Cool S.
Things I don’t like: The way Rodney’s nose meets his upper lip, causing the negative space to look like the world’s largest booger.
GT: Real sloppy work from whoever did the spray job. They need to take a note from whoever did that sharp little Cool-S. Craft matters and bigger does not always equal better.
LOL, that is one messed-up catapult! Where’s the rope that restrains the arm as you wind it up? What the heck with that giant SPRING, that’s not how anything works! I mean, maybe this art was done before the internet, so you couldn’t summon a picture of a catapult without even getting up. But surely, even in the Dark Ages, cartoonists had access to encyclopedias?
Leroy doesn’t work on that floor, is the thing. That guy has no idea who this odd, squat man talking to him is. Leroy LIVES for the chaos!
Gil Thorp:
“Well, they’re certainly very perceptive, aren’t they….”
Gil only goes so far as “rats,” but his opponents only go so far as “losers.” So only the finest First Grader insults will do. Who will be the first to go nuclear with “buttface?” Tune in…sometime in the next ten days?
“Mudlark losers”. “This means war!” No, I don’t think it does, at least according to Merriam Webster
Lockhorns:
I don’t think that this strip has ever definitively revealed exactly where it is that Leroy works, but wherever it is, it’s the one workplace in the universe that hasn’t yet gone business casual.
JP: Master con woman here, ladies and gentlemen…
Luann: There’s been some lively discussion this week about to what degree Luann is responsible for her miserable, go-nowhere life. Today shows an example of how being ‘friends’ with (and now living with) a passive-aggressive b%&$# like Bernice has impacted her. They weren’t talking to you, Luann, so shut up and go back to slouching in your seat as Mrs. Fogarty tells more about your embarassing past. Maybe she’ll tell everyone how you electrocuted your privates that one time, that always gets a laugh!
Lockhorns: Leroy and new guy are both coming in for a job interview. He’s trying to sabotage the competition.
“This job sucks. Why is a winner like you applying here?”
Mongols catapulted corpses infected with the plague to force the besieged to surrender. Catapulting shit might play a similar role, but it is less effective
Wizard’s Id: I was surprised by the modern toilet. I always assumed the Kingdom of Id was more at a chamber pot level of crapper technology. And that the Wiz just pointed his wand and vaporized the Royal Doots.
Andy Capp:
Time for Andy to cadge money to go to Silicon Valley and wait in bars until the tech bro comes in.
?
?By which time the tech bro will have gone bankrupt from the bursting of the crypto and AI bubbles and it’ll be Andy standing him a drink.
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Wary Morth:
All right! English is my third language, but never in my life have I ever even considered saying something like “leaving his comfort zone to accommodate new circumstances.” I refuse to believe that anyone in the history of post-Chaucerian English ever uttered anything resembling that.
______________________________________
Wrecks Moregone:
Rexy? I thought Wrecks was a male human, not a female Tyrannosaurus from the Jurassic Park films, but appearances can be deceiving.
“Mudlark R. Losers. We must punish those who wrote this!”
“Yes, graffiti is a serious crime”
“No, the crime is revealing confidential information”
The “Lockhorn” artist should lean how to draw well defined chins from Louie Chin! Nominative determinism at its best!
“I hate my boss, I hate my wife, everyone at the office wears a suit”
“My God! I fell into a time portal to the 1950s!”
LH: Ah, so Leroy must work at a law firm that specializes in employer-side labour law. That’s the only business that can get away with payroll deductions for “Employer’s Retirement Fund”, “Oxygen Rental”, and “15% Gratuity”.
WoI: Sir Rodney is just following the orders of the King’s Privy Council.
@The Quiet Man: Luann is the inevitable outcome of boomer parenting. She’s been browbeaten into submission by everyone around her, but without acquiring any study skills, discipline, work ethic, morals, creativity, toughness, close bonds with others, or anything else positive that a strict environment might teach you. Her parents told her to shut up so they could focus on making money, showed her no other concern, and wonder why she’s useless as an adult. (SEE ALSO: Dustin.)
Lockhorns: I think Leroy is talking to Adam Scott’s character from Severance here, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah, they run a tight ship, wiping all their employees’ memories when they leave, but it’s all worth it for Leroy – his innie is single.
MW: I fixed it.
CS: “What’s the deal with airline food? I don’t know either!”
Pluggers: No, the phase “binge watching” implies that you remain conscious during the watching. Though it would explain why they know so little about the TV shows they claim to love.
MW: “the pet I chose withour your knowledge or consent will grow on you if you let it” sounds like a threat. Ian should take it as one.
The Wizard of Id: Judging by the mechanics of that catapult, Sir Rodney is less “high” than “concussed from having his payload repeatedly dropped on his head.” Maybe the Wiz cursed him with a bonkus of the conkus?
WoI: Rodney, who are you talking to? Was it the person who was seated on the toilet? Because I think they are out of earshot and probably dead.
GT: And Russ is…the janitor? Seems like the place to start.
LHns: “…because it will arrive on time and with all work-related reimbursements submitted the previous week. He runs a tight ship, all right, that’s why I love this job.”
Also The Wizard of Id: We can at least learn from today’s panel that Id does not employ Dill’s brothers in its engineering shop.
GT: “They got us rats.”
“Awww — and we didn’t get them anything.”
MW I’m not sure if it’s the writer or Toby who has forgotten that Ian not only had good objections to the destructive bird, but he also didn’t just get out of his comfort zone and “come around”, he accepted that they were safer with a feathered fire patrol than their malfunctioning smoke alarms which didn’t chirp at them when the batteries died.
Phantom Sure Patrolwoman, leave the three people who have actually managed to take down a belligerent to – um – keep watch on the unconscious dude, while you take the smaller gun to run off alone against the experienced enemy. Great plan.
Gil Thorp: “Rats.” Gil said it again later, just before he shot the Valley Tech Athletic Department Mafia execution-style and buried them in a shallow grave marked only with a placard reading VT SUX. “This is what rats get, see?”
The Wizard of Id: Check out Sir Rodney’s nostril. Some Neil-Young-cocaine-booger-style action there.
@Banana Jr. 6000: True enough, but people who are raised like that sometimes (maybe even often?) come across *some* countervailing influence, whether that’s a person, a book, or even a friggin’ TV show, that shows them that perhaps there’s a better world out there if they can only find the inner strength (not *Beauty*) to really fight for it.
For little Miss Inner Beauty, who literally spends time in her room staring off into space and once collapsed from dizziness after imitating her dog, it’s always in one ear, out the other.
CS: Between this and Crankshaft’s endless ‘Bean’s End’ sprees, how are these two idiots not bankrupt and living in the alley next to Montoni’s in a hut made of pizza boxes? A ‘pizza hut’, if you will… I’ll see myself out…
And also Gil Thorp (no joke): the local Catholic high school in my hometown had a large boulder at the entrance to their parking lot, and the tradition was to spray-paint it with various messages. Thing must have had three inches of paint layers on it by the time I showed up. Occasionally our school, or another football rival, would show up to add a layer of derogation. Once, some jocks picked the boulder up, loaded it in a truck, and took it God knows where. The Catholics eventually got it back, whether as a result of saying many many novenas or police intervention, I cannot say.
WoI — Well, the specifications must read “have the projectile fly two feet straight up and land pretty much where it started from” because that’s what that contraption is going to do.
GT — OK, I’ll bite. Who on God’s green earth is Russ?
@Ukranazi Stepan: I refuse to believe that anyone in the history of post-Chaucerian English ever uttered anything resembling that.
A. No such thing was ever said in pre-Chaucerian English, because self-help psychobabble wasn’t a thing yet.
B. You haven’t worked a job in corporate America. This kind of verbal emesis escapes executive mouths All. The. Time.
The Lockhorns-“If the boss is a woman then I like ’em tight.”
MW-Toby, how would you feel if you didn’t eat breakfast this morning?
MW-Notice how Toby doesn’t answer Mary’s question.
RMMD-“Johnny? You have a child named Johnny? Good Lord man how many kids do you have?”
FC-“But if I eat my sandwich first then I can’t trade it for cigarettes.”
Wizard of Id-You can start by returning the enemies’ dead to them.
MW: Toby’s opinions on accommodating NEW CIRCUMSTANCES will be put to the test when she returns home to discover that Ian, getting into the spirit, has installed a fluffy female sheep in the spare bedroom.
H&L: That hammer looks like nothing I’ve ever used, but I’m not a ’50s comic strip dad.
RMMD: I was looking forward to more hijinx from Aunt Tildy’s driving. Where’s a bridge Out sign when you really want one?
The Lockhorns: “「タイトシップ」って何だ?私はブラック企業大国、日本出身なんだぜ、ビッチ。”
@Charterstone: Dune: I was wondering what that was – a rune, sigil, some hobo sign? What is that?
Weren’t they supposed to do this with a backwards R?
@But What Do I Know?: Well it isn’t Clambake … maybe it is rustoleum brand paint remover.
@ValdVin: [Extremely Cliff Clavin voice] That’s a Garland split head hammer, used to set paving stones, blacksmithing, or smashing testicles to keep your teen son’s horniness under control.
MW: One thing I like about this art style (which I still think of a Nü-Worth despite Brigman being at the pen for 10, uh, years now) is that Toby looks like an anime sexbot, which transforms this meandering and incoherent tale about a barely sentient trophy wife who looks like she lives on benzos and botox considering leaving leaving her husband for a bird into a whimsically weird tale of an an emotionally astute anime sexbot teaching her emotionally stunted, rage-addicted husband to open himself up to love.
MW – Next week, Mary draws Ian in for muffins and a talk. “Did you realize your wife was prepared to leave you over a bird? I’m sure you realize how unsettling that is. All I’m saying is life favors the prepared, so you may want to start getting certain affairs in order.
WoI: Things take a bad turn when Sir Rodney realizes he has to ‘use the facilities’:
(SPROING) “Hoist by my own pe-t-a-a-a-r-r-r-r-d!”
@treetown: It’s known as a Cool-S, a symbol of unknown origins that was a legitimate piece of childlore from pre-Internet days. Supposedly, the oldest version to date has be found on a 10th century Viking runestone.
I’m gonna admit it. Until panel two, I thought they had an actual rat problem. You got me Gil.
@The Quiet Man: Yes, some of this is Luann’s own fault. She seems to have zero interest in anything except boys. And if she ever gets a boy, she immediately starts looking for the first excuse to do anything else. Archery and video games are at least hobbies you could turn pro at, or simply enjoy as something that helps define who are you are. Luann doesn’t need to find a career; she needs to find at least one personality trait that isn’t spineless acquiesence.
Have the Evanses been emulating Barbie all this time? Barbie‘s original purpose was to be a blank slate, so children could make her whoever they want her to be. Like most classic toys, Barbie was a tool to help children constuct their own narratives. (I don’t know how true that is anymore, considering the range of branded, highly specialized Barbies you can buy.)
Anyway, if the Evanses are trying to make Luann relatable by not giving her any discernible qualities, it really doesn’t work. Protagonists in fiction need to be likeable, and need to give us reasons to root for them.
“Mudlarks R Losers” is more of an observation than an insult, really.
Wizard of Id: A distant ancestor of Marvin is providing the toilet’s, ahem, ammunition.
Wizard of I don’t know what: Is that really an onager? Is the real joke that it will just smash the toilet down on the head of Sir Doofus?
DT: Now this is what makes for good memories for Dick – gun in his hand, gunplay, and blood shed – ah yes, good times.
GT: No cars, but still good art. Louie Chin seems to like a higher pulled back layout. Too bad this wasn’t during the football or baseball season. We might have gotten some all-22 views of Milford teams at play.
Where is Slylock Fox? From the angle, size of the letters, the prep is a taller than average person standing farther back – so perhaps a standard spray can wouldn’t work – they are using a professional pressure sprayer. That should narrow down the suspects.
JP: Again, we see another example of why Ann is where she is today. Despite devoting most of her life to grifting, misdemeanors, minor and major felonies, she is NO DAMN good as being a villain. She can’t read the room. She can’t make a play. She’s no sultry femme fatale. Charlotte would run rings around her!
Phantom: I guess the little scuffle in the jail cell has gotten Patrolman Han’s blood up. She’s going in for the old pistol in the face for General Chum or will this a be dark turn, and she’ll just shoot him. Where is the Colonel and the rest of the cosplayers from Jungle Patrol? Shouldn’t they have landed by now? Or are they lost? Did they fly into a time warp and now are over World War 2 era Africa. The local British high commissioner is very confused but the Phantom of that era is there to help things out.
Mary Worth: Mary really doesn’t know the full degree of the mayhem wreaked by Sunny on Ian’s prized possessions or doesn’t care. Nor does she care about the deep psychological damage done to him. He had a terrible pompous personality but it was his. Now he is a lobotomized smiley faced shuffling zombie. Maybe Toby is actually the monster! Big twilight zone twist there.
Slylock Fox: Various strips have run guest artists – and perhaps one day, someone who submitted to Slylock will be doing a guest shot of GT or DT. Sort of like when a kid who played little league ends up in the World Series.
And this is why we had to wait centuries for the flush toilet to be invented a second time. Thanks a lot, Rodney, I hope your dysentery is worth it.
***
Almost as tight as your pants, Leroy?
@Rosstifer: Yeah, who’s even offended by this? “Yeah, I get it, you’re our high school sports rival, we’re losers, ha ha ha.” We’ll go paint something dumb on your sign with water-soluble paint, and we can move on.
GT: Joke’s on Goshen High when their funding’s cut for low literacy scores and Coach Earwhisper is forced to seek part-time employment from Gil as an assistant coach, per custom and conference rules.
@matt w: That would make a great profile name: “The World’s Largest Booger.”
@Charterstone: Dune: Thank you! I can learn something new. I’m caught back in the RIGHT ON! and Kilroy was here era…:)
WoI – I’m trying to figure out the implications of this culture delivery system. I think it deserves a postage stamp memorial – the French bring plumbing to the Bedouins….
GT – I thought this hooligan rivalry was supposed to be engaged in between the rougher classes of the student bodies. I’ll bet Gil and his mob are gonna TP something over this insult….
Shlockhorns – Isn’t tight an old-timey euphemism for stumbling drunk. That would be a better wordplay gag riffing on Leroy’s pathetic life…and maybe put a lampshade on his head and have him dancing with a curvaceous secretary while Loretta stews on a sofa somewhere bin the background….
Adios Amigos, DJ.
They’re saying ‘I’ll get Russ’ like people in Pulp Fiction say ‘Go get the Wolff.’ It’s an admirable attempt to build tension that will quickly deflate when we learn that Russ isn’t a skilled fixer but is the janitor.
Lockhorns – “He also has a pretty strict dress code. By the way, nice tie.”
GA: Oh, it wasn’t a punchline in yesterday’s last panel. It was a continuation.
@25 Lauralot: YES!
[narrator: Baja liked your mashup.]
RMMD: Whew! Tildy has successfully driven Rex home. That’s a relief.
GT: A lot of taggers go legitimate by doing tattoos. Gil wakes up in an alley with his pants around his ankles and Muldarks R Loosers tattooed on his rear. Coincidentally, many tattooists are poor spellers.
When I was in college, (cough) years ago, my dorm organized a “piano drop” which was a five or six story free-flight of an upright piano. It was fun. It made all sorts of wonderfully discordant noises on impact with the pavement. So, horribly, yes I can relate.
WoI: If this were really the Middle Ages Sir Rodney would get his his kicks by hurling condemned prisoners to their deaths, but not before covering them with pitch and setting them on fire.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV:
To which Leroy Lockhorn replies : “… Well, spank my ass and call me Commodore Perry!”
***********
Luann :
1. I like how the art included extra silhouettes in the background on wednesday to try to act like Luann, Tara and Les are not the only people
who were stupid enoughto take this class, but the storytelling makes it clear they’re the only students there.2. Tara’s “I wanna own an X games center” makes me of two minds;
a) this is yet another instance I put in my pile of “Tara is a pathological liar” evidence, where I believe Tara just makes wild claims she knows no one will ever question her about;
b) This is another instance of the Evansii not realising how much work owning a venue (like an event center or restaurant) actually is.
*************
Wizard of Id : Rodney is ecstatic about the idea of dousing his enemies in human excrement (possibly hoping they’ll die of sickness after the battle).
@Lord Flatulence: Booger McFarland is 300 pounds. He’d be tough to beat.
GT – Toys “Я” Us is just barely clinging to life, and yet that graffito still doesn’t look right to me because the R isn’t backwards.
Id’s experimental use of a primitive onager just shows how backwards their technology is. This is what overreliance on magic gets you. Let’s see how your wizard fares against the Ottoman bombard cannons that felled the walls of Constantinople. On the plus side, it does look like Id has something to teach Mehmed the Conqueror about indoor sanitation that may extent the lifespan of the Ottoman Empire by hundreds of years.
@34 The Quiet Man: on Crankshaft: GROAN!
GT: “But if it’s war….and we’re losers….won’t we lose the war?”
Don Abundio, translated:
“I promise to keep quiet about your driving, Veronica. At least until I absolutely have to say something!”
“No, no! That’s all wrong!”
“Forget it, Abundio”
“I’ll go back to the curb and let you out”
@Dmsilev: Throwing a piano out of a NYC hotel window (to see what chord would come out of it) was one of jazz violinist Joe Venuti’s famous practical jokes. It wasn’t a very good piano.
(scroll down the link to “Practical Jokes”)
GT – “Of course you know, this means war”? Well, it’s not a bad likeness, and I appreciate the timeliness of the Super Bowl reference, but you’re I believe you’re thinking of Bugs Bunny.
@But What Do I Know?: Based on context, I’m guessing Russ is the custodian. Certainly Gil is too busy being The Best Coach in the World to bother cleaning up a little graffiti.
Gil Thorp-“Romanes Eunt Domus”? “People called Romanes, they go the house”?
GT: Coach Luke seems to be shrinking with each successive panel. At this rate he’ll be ready to star in the Milford Community Theater production of The Hobbit in about a week.
FG: so many arcs, I’ve lost track. Is the Ice Queen a good guy or a bad guy?
MW: Either the artist is saving that vat of green ink Sid bought for her, or she refused a bribe. Sid?
CURTIS: Bet Chutney takes them down.
MANDRAKE: Bookworm is both an exceptional shot and a great planner.
RMMD: Glad to hear Tildy and the Count still have adventurous lives. Moral: if a wacko needs a hand-give it. The wacko may be essential to you later.
Gil Thorp-Nothing quite like some revenge arson in retaliation.
C’shaft: Really, Jeff, if you’re so stupid that you can’t make a simple purchase online, you deserve to be gouged by Ticketmaster. (Also, please, it’s Marshal Crenshaw, not the Eras Tour. There’s no way tickets were that much in demand.)
Dustin: Add “helping random old lady across the street as a good deed” to the long list of “tropes that were probably based in reality once but fell out of fashion decades ago and now exist only as tired cliches in comic strips.”
JP: Ann, really, how did you think “If I’m not wanted here, I’ll just go” would be received?
Lio: Even Eva Rose is over the 3I/Atlas stuff.
Luann: It’s called “introspection,” Luann, you might want to try it sometime. Although to be fair, I wouldn’t want to look too closely at what’s going on inside your dull, lifeless soul either.
MW: Way to dodge the question, Toby, just like you’ve been dodging everything else about your culpability in all this.
Pluggers will die in their sleep before they finish the latest season of Only Murders in the Building.
@Activist: #80: re-FG: Hard to tell as of now. She was part of the original rebel anti-Ming alliance. Could be she’s working the other side and playing Ming for a sap. Maybe she’s jockeying to be Ming’s next wife (I assume he’s a widower) and knows her kid by him will be the next heir to rule Mongo, which of course she’ll rule through him.
MW: At first glance, did anyone else think Mary had her right elbow on the table and was resting her head on her hand? It was only when I checked back to yesterday’s panel that I realized one of the window eels was metamorphosing into human flesh!
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: I appreciate the TIL, but Hi doesn’t give off either Victorian road crew or “The smith, a mighty man is he…” vibes.