Present and past
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The Lockhorns, 8/14/26
What with Leroy being a Millennial, you’d think he’d be on board with a work-from-home environment. But obviously “home” is where Loretta is, and their emotionally chaotic and combustible marriage would simply end in violence if he didn’t leave the house for eight hours a day, so he’ll do it even if that means putting on a suit and tie. The rest of his co-workers quite obviously are less than thrilled about his constant presence around the office, and in fact he might be one of the very reasons why work-from-home is becoming increasingly popular there.
Hagar the Horrible, 8/14/26
Ah, old Myrddin Wyllt, the Brythonic sorcerer who helped Emrys Wledig stave off the Saxon invasion of Britain — for a little while, anyway. Thanks to immortality, he’s lived long enough to see the Saxons, who long ago forced the Britons into the harsh Western mountains, hammered by yet another Germanic-speaking group from across the sea. He probably sees the irony in it all, though he doesn’t have to like the new guys, either.
47 replies to “Present and past”
“I have pockets??”
“You do now.”
“You are a mighty wizard!”
MW: Out of every shade of brown in existence, why did the colorist choose the one that makes Brandy look undead?
HTH: “Merlin, I know it’s not polite to ask, but how is your nose the only part of your face not covered in hair? It goes all the way up to your eyelashes! Are you shaving your nose every morning?”
HtH:
“My wife Helga has businesswear that looks just like your beard, Merlin.”
“No. Don’t say it, Hagar.”
“Yep. Her suit is hirsute!”
Pluggers: I’d like to know what Henrietta’s been smoking to get that kind of a laugh from any newspaper comic.
HtH: I also swiped that lutefisk sandwich you’ve been saving for lunch.
Lhns “So instead we have ‘retro dress-up Fridays, because who wears a black suit to work these days except funeral directors?”
HtH Wizarding must have easier back in the day when you could convince folks that pickpocketing was ‘magic’. “Now marvel as I make your house keys dissappear!”
@Voshkod: :chefs kiss: love it.
Hagar the Horrible : respects the legendary aspect of Merlin by making sure that he is NEVER depicted the exact same way whenever he appears.
HTH: Merlin’s grown complacent, tricking the followers of that newly arrived Christian faith, with soft-touch beliefs like “Turn the other cheek” and “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. He’ll regret letting his guard down to the same extent around a Viking who still believes in Valhalla. At least wait to tell him you’ve robbed him until you’re out of stabbing distance.
Hagar the Horrible-“Jokes on you my pockets are empty.”
Lockhorns-There was also that meeting with HR over what Leroy considered casual.
MW-And why didn’t Brandy write or call Tommy at all while in Florida.
RMMD-A question that the readers have been asking themselves that.
Hagar the Horrible:
“Of course, we Vikings used bullion currency — shards of precious metal to make purchases, rather than coins or paper notes — so I’m not quite sure why I’m even looking in my pockets for money to begin with. Oh, well — another day, another anachronism here!”
Lockhorns: “We were going to have casual Fridays, but turns out the management really hates us wearing these white t shirts with pictures of ties on them.”
HtH: Hadrian’s Wall is less impressive than I was expecting.
Lockhorns:
Is Leroy sporting a purse in today’s panel? — that would add an entirely new dimension to him.
Shlockhorns – But enough about us…how are things at the Easter Island branch….
HtH – More than a civil servant…less than a politician….
Adios Amigos,DJ.
MW: “I’m back now”? Oh for — Has this extra week just been to reset the status quo? OK, Tommy has a new hairstyle and Brandy has a skin infection, but otherwise nothing’s changed. Well, other than Wilbur having had a moment of introspection, but we all know that’s not going to stick.
DtM: “Relax, it’s a tour bus [that I am putting you on, by yourself, in a strange city, before I disappear into the crowd, forever, never to be seen by family or friend again], Dennis. Not a school bus.”
FC: If there’s one member of Family Circus dumb enough to cannibalize himself, it’s Jeffy.
@pugfuggly: Ditto.
MW: I think Dawn’s going to be fine with this. Wilbur, on the other hand, is not going to handle it well. What’s that rustling in the shrubbery?
RMMD: This quickly went from some (sort of) edgy heist story to Abbot and Costello Meet The Godfather.
GT: A huge LOTR fan, Gerads is telling the butterfly to send the big eagles to break him out.
The Lockhorns: “What’s that you say? I just have to sign and the company can legally push Lockhorn down an elevator shaft? Of course I’ll sign, I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, not sure why you had to stand on a stool to tell me that.”
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: “Where do I initial to get my office walls back?”
@pugfuggly: Most funeral directors I encounter these days go for a tasteful gray. Except for the weirdos who come to collect the bodies. They often dress up in black, for some reason.
Hägar the Horrible: “Merlin, I know it’s not polite to ask, but why do you look like an upside-down melted ice cream cone?” “I use a broad variety of exotic ingredients in my potions: newts’ eyelashes, frogs’ tails, vanilla…”
L’horns: A fun challenge with legacy strips is trying to figure out exactly when the art originated. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that today’s offering is from the 80s: the Black man in an implied position of authority, the power-suit blazer on the woman, and the assumption of suits as standard office wear which would be shattered by the dressed-down tech moguls of the following decade. Yet the suits themselves speak to an even earlier Mad Men aesthetic, indicating that a) the artist hadn’t completely caught up with modern fashions or b) the foreground is itself recycled art with the token minorities sketched in as an update.
MW: Brandy isn’t reassuring him she’s back because of her trip to Florida, he just blinked for a really long time and started spiraling again until he opened eyes.
The large man with macrocephaly doesn’t know what to make of Leroy complaining about something that isn’t Loretta and is considering “accidentally” tripping and crushing the office killjoy under the weight of his mighty noggin.
HtH: The joke’s on Hagar. That’s not Merlin, but a golem made of a pile of gray hair that Merlin uses to safely engage the Vikings.
Mary Worth:
“I found my answers in Florida. But now I have another question: why did I come back here? I’m going to go to Florida to think about that and try to come up with an answer. Bye!”
Lockhorns: “With so many employee working remotely, it’s strange that our company decided not to use computers. We’ll never see those jerks again! It almost makes the three-hour daily commute from the suburbs seem worth it. That, and the fact that I get to carry this neat messenger bag. My wife gave it to me, and she swore it doesn’t look like a purse that she bought to emasculate me, but I’m not sure. I’m never sure!”
Hagar: “Because I live backwards in time, I get all the money I need from investments. I bought herring futures at six pennings!”
@MKay:
MW: Don’t be alarmed now. It’s just a spring clean for the May Queen. Oh, wait a minute — it’s July, not May; and it’s summertime, not spring.
Hagar the Horrible:
In Arthurian legend, Merlin was a cambion—the offspring of a demon and a human. He was planned to be the Antichrist, but his human mother had him baptized, freeing him from the demonic influence of his parentage while retaining his supernatural powers. Today’s Hagar the Horrible posits that nevertheless, enough evil remains in his soul for him to get his jollies by magically rummaging through his friends’ pockets and stealing their loose change.
JP: Oh honey, if you keep waiting for Neddy to stop having drama before you deal with your own, you’re never going to fix things with Kat.
MT: This week’s scenario–in which a woman of color is forced into a dangerous situation against her will by smug technocrats and financial necessity–is darkly relevant to modern times in a way I’m not entirely sure Jules Rivera intended.
MW: Tommy’s happiness is going to be short lived, if Brandy’s ashy “terminal cancer patient” complexion is any indication.
RMMD – “I appreciate what you’re doing, but it’s best you let me get revenge on the Morgans once I get out of here.”
“But you’re serving a life sentence as a habitual criminal!”
“Yeah, but once I croak I’m going to haunt the shit out of those motherfuckers.”
Lockhorns: The co-worker has mentally checked out of Leroy’s banal conversation, instead reminiscing his carefree days staring at the Pacific Ocean from the beach of his beloved home, Rapa Nui.
FC: Considering the horrible peanut allergies most little kids have these days, I look forward to seeing Jeffy swell up and burst at the earliest possible opportunity.
Lockedhorns:
What’s background lady pointing at? Boss’ zipper being undone?
Mary Worth: “He really missed you, Brandy! He talked about you all the time! Morning, noon and night — especially at night, you know, in my condo? We spent so much time together having deep, intimate conversations about our fears and dreams, and he definitely mentioned you once or twice. Do you get what I’m saying?” “Yeah, I get it — and you should know that I’ve had a tough week, and I’m not above cutting a b!tch.”
@TheDiva:
On Mark Trail, and Jules Riviera’s intention : I dunno, yesterday’s “WE HAVE TO CANCEL THIS EXPEDITION, IT’S TOO RISKY!” “Hah! Enough with your ‘cancel culture’, woman!” joke seems to indicate this is 100 % the intended reading of this storyline.
We tend to think about Leroy as a hateful goblin, but you can tell he simply made a mildly sarcastic joke about WFH. If Dustin’s dad spoke about the same issue, you’d hear the visceral hatred for lazy young people
‘horns: I’m too distracted by what’s happening in the background.
“You know that contract you were supposed to sign? Well, there it is, right in front of you.”
“Sheila, I was well aware of that. There’s no need for you to narrate my day. And for god’s sake, get down from that stepstool.”
HTH: You might figure that Hagar and Merlin would have a lot to talk about. “Hey, are you one of those guys whose beard covers his entire face except for his eyes and nose?”
DT: Good Dick – focus on the simple crime of ripping off Nyle for hundreds and thousands of dollars of merchandise and avoid the multimillion dollar ransomware scheme. Please please let this be a total fake out. Widescreen is just a low level e-store ripoff artist and someone else (see so called white hat hacker) is the real culprit.
JP: Hey, is Ann on parole or was she truly free? Can she leave the state without letting her parole officer know? Or is she violating parole?
MW: Chekov’s Frying Pan demands to be seen! We got that awkward statement about going to the store to return one pan for another size pan. That was the set up. Now for the payoff. Dawnie and Brandy duke it out! Dawnie brings out the frying pan and bops Brandy on the noggin for a KO.
RMMD: Again, it isn’t that sort of strip … but the twins easy and casual mention of taking the pet as a way of tormenting the Morgans shows that they are junior members of the psychopath society of america. “We’ll take their dog, and send them sad pictures, and demand payment. When they pay up, we’ll bump the mutt.” This casual statement chills Rene and reminds him to be very careful around the twins.
Beetle Bailey: Give old Halftrack a break. When he was young he wanted to be part of something bigger and greater and so joined the army. He got to wear the uniform and was proud of it. Now that he is much older he wants to stand out and be noticed. He knows his career has plateaued. He’ll never move any higher and now is just one more cog in olive drab. His golf clothes are one way he can stand out and show he was an individual and did exist once.
@I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV: Big top hats? Prosthetic back humps?
Is Leroy privy to high-level decisions at his workplace? Does he help… make them? This company is screwed.
Beetle Bailey; At least she isn’t telling him to remove his underwear. Thankfully this comic has absolutely no continuity and General Halftrack will never have to think about yesterday’s homoerotic incident ever again.
@The Rambling Otter yesterthread, 110: Thanks! Looks like the game in question is one I would not remotely play and… WHAT is the last paragraph of its wikipedia entry?
@UncleJeff: Horsedrawn carriages with vultures riding shotgun, mostly.
@Comically Challenged: It all makes sense now! The blank stares, the ‘Supplemental Nutrition Source’ garden, the watchful eye of Mary. Charterstone is part of the Clonus Project!
At first I was thinking ‘but who would want a clone that looks like Wilbur?’ Then it hit me: Belle’s ‘Brother’! He must be writing to Professor Darrin and Doctor Super Mario Brother about their quality control after getting a load of him!
Crankshaft: After that Apple tracker goes in the car, this Christmas’s Apple tracker goes around Ed’s neck so Jeff and Pam can find him when he wanders off. Or ignore it.
Beetle Bailey: Martha wants Amos to not be laughed at on the golf course, because if he feels humiliated there he might spend more afternoons at home.
Dustin: Not “I spent my last night on Earth sitting under a blanket of stars with you, and not a charming and willing woman!”?
BG&SS: If Snuffy were to roll out the tarp, Sheriff Tait would be at the door in a minute, Snuffy doesn’t do that just for his family.
H&L: If Trixie is crabby now, wait til she finds out that her parents have discovered Cry It Out child-rearing.
RMMD: The crossover you didn’t know was coming?
Uncle Jimmy: “I should have hired those two oddballs in the bee costumes. And they got such a great reference from The Monarch”.
DtM:
“Surprise, Dennis!! You’re going to summer camp!”
“Why are all the counselors old people wearing suits?”