Archive: Lockhorns

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The Lockhorns, 8/21/18

Look, I get that Loretta wants an excuse to cut off all physical contact with Leroy. She should’ve probably done it years ago, honestly. I just don’t see why she has to use some imperceptible change in the dimensions of his as always vaguely blobbish body as a supposed inciting incident.

Mary Worth, 8/21/18

Ahhh, another Mary Worth storyline wraps up, and all’s well that end’s well, just in time for the end of the we[checks calendar]oh dear God do we have four more days of middlingly chaste beach cuddling to look forward to????

Mark Trail, 8/21/18

WELP, THIS MARK TRAIL HAS GOTTEN TO A PLACE WHERE SOMEONE IS YELLING AT RUSTY FOR BEING TOO HORNY, TIME TO DIE I GUESS

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/2/18

Hey, remember when June’s childhood friend, whom she hadn’t seen since actual childhood, just straight-up gave the Morgans her baby because she was dying and had no living relatives, but then it turned out the baby actually had paternal grandparents and June was afraid they’d try to steal their grandchild away from her but it then they ended up apologizing for even implying they might do that and said just wanted to do normal grandparent stuff? Well, good news: the Morgans are using them for free babysitting services while they party in Vegas! All’s well that end’s well for everybody, except for Johnny’s grandfather, who’s going to die of a heart attack within the week.

Shoe, 8/2/18

There are basically two settings for the extremely common Shoe joke format “bird-man engages other bird-man, apparently a stranger or at best a very casual acquaintance, in banter that’s actually a strained setup for today’s punchline”: Roz restaurant counter, which we see here today, and the weird gross fern bar which, unlike most locations in this strip, appears to be inside a building rather than just furniture sitting in the open air on a tree branch. Anyway, I don’t pretend to understand how the location gets chosen for each gag, but I would suggest that today’s strip, in which Shoe initiates conversation with someone he doesn’t know with tales of his extremely dysfunctional romantic relationship, is more a bar strip than a restaurant strip.

The Lockhorns, 8/2/18

There’s a lot here that you could react extremely negatively to — is it really a “film festival” if you’re binge-watching stuff on some streaming service? would it have killed them to look up and use the name of an actual anime series? what the fuck is going on with Leroy’s skull shape, and shouldn’t we at least get a glimpse of his other giant anime eye from this angle? — but instead I’m going to spend the rest of the week thinking about where Leroy would come down on the perennial dubs vs. subs controversy.

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Judge Parker, 7/19/18

Prediction time: my guess is that this whole Godiva murder storyline is actually Neddy’s screenplay that she’s been working on since moving to LA! I’ve been suspecting it for a while (there have been narration boxes that are scene headings), but today has really pushed me over the edge into believing it. Think about it: they say “write what you know,” but like most screenwriters, she’s writing what she wants to know, e.g., martial arts and how to make friends with her cooler, savvier boss. It’s nice at least to see a shoutout to the backstory on the Spencer-Driver foundlings, who were homeless and living rough with their grandfather when they accidentally set up camp on Sam and Abbey’s vast estate, and then their grandfather died and Sam and Abbey adopted them, presumably without too much legal fuss. (Abbey promised their grandfather would be buried in a beautiful clearing and definitely not ground up into a special treat for Abbey’s most handsome stallions.) Through the magic of fiction, Neddy is imagining a world where her tough childhood left her with near-superhuman abilities of self-protection, rather than just a host of emotional problems.

Gil Thorp, 7/19/18

I was sort of pretending to myself, just to force the world to make some kind of sense, that Barry’s big intervention was happening over the summer, that Gil Thorp was experiencing the same summer that we all were here in the United States, but nope, it looks like high school baseball is still happening! Is Gil going to risk defeat by starting Jay Bhatia on the mound today? Who cares, we’re more than halfway through July, how can any of this possibly matter.

The Lockhorns, 7/19/18

WHEN ZIP-A-TONE ATTACKS