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Archive: Lockhorns

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Is it … a golf thing? Are they in the clubhouse? I’m out of my element

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Blondie, 8/15/20

Honestly, what exactly is the social context for the first two panels of this strip? Herb and Dagwood are eating out together, decked out in their pastel polos, at someplace fancy enough to have white tablecloths and high prices. What’s really eerie to me, honestly, is how completely spotless that tablecloth is. Maybe I’m a slob but that seems kind of unusual, post-meal, yes? Maybe Dagwood, driven by his omnipresent, insatiable hunger, sucked every last molecule of food out of the fibers of the tablecloth once he had licked his plate clean, literally. You can see why Herb might be reluctant to pay in that situation.

The Lockhorns, 8/15/20

It’s of course common to see Leroy and Loretta using their occasional guests as props in their sick psychodrama, which explains why said guests never visit more than once. Today seems to be breaking a new frontier, however, in that Leroy and Loretta are actually opening up emotionally to their friends about how troubled their marriage is, maybe in hopes of getting some guidance on how to turn things around. (These people will also not visit more than once.)

Shoe, 8/15/20

“Get it? Sheltering? Sweltering? Anyway, you don’t seem to be sweating so it’s possible I’m just running a high fever, but I got bored of staying at home so whatever. You don’t mind if I breathe all over you, do you?”

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One-panel Thursday

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Family Circus, 8/6/20

I get what’s going on here — the water is icy cold, which Dolly is blissfully oblivious about — but I have some notes on the visuals being used to convey this information. I guess those are supposed to be “shiver” lines around Big Daddy Keane’s legs, but they look more like steam (giving the exactly opposite impression of what the panel’s going for) or maybe stink lines, which one also doesn’t usually associate with cold. Although that is a creepy combo, isn’t it? A cold stink. Very Lovecraftian. Also Daddy’s skin seems to be turning black below the knee, representing some kind of horrific rapid-onset gangrene. I take it back, this panel is amazing, actually.

The Lockhorns, 8/6/20

This panel manages to pack two incredibly sad facts into a single efficient gag: that once, long ago, when Loretta met and fell in love with him, Leroy was actually a thoughtful, careful person, but now he leans into his own incompetence as if performing for some invisible audience, all the time.

Pluggers, 8/6/20

Pluggers are familiar with the technology that was prevalent when they were younger, in ways that others, who didn’t grow up with that technology, are not. That sure is a Pluggers joke, all right!

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Til death (which can’t come soon enough) do we part

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Beetle Bailey, 8/4/20

It’s bad new for the General that the “Halftracks hate each other” bits seems to have fully detached from their usual scheduled weekend slot and are now just popping up on any old day. It’s great news for me, though, because I’m a black-hearted sadist who can’t get enough of these gags! Anyway, today’s joke is that even sleep cannot free General Halftrack from the all-consuming psychic pain that his marriage causes him; only alcohol’s consciousness-obliterating powers can do that, and only briefly.

The Lockhorns, 8/4/20

Speaking of marital misanthropy, the rather abstract Lockhorns art style makes it difficult to really convey the sort of grunge you actually want a cleaning person to take care of — does anyone actually pay someone to pick a couch cushion off the floor? — but honestly I’m reasonably sure the Lockhorns don’t have a cleaning lady, and that the “cleaning lady” is like George and Martha’s fake son in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with Loretta bringing her up every time the papers start piling up.

Funk Winkerbean, 8/4/20

[clapping excitedly] EVERYBODY’S GONNA DIE