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Archive: Lockhorns

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One-panel weekend

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The Lockhorns, 9/29/18

Congrats to the syndicate colorists who successfully researched and reproduced the New York Jets’ team colors in this panel! Also, since the Lockhorns feel like a very Long Island family to me, Leroy’s fandom makes sense, geographically and (I can say this as a similarly long-suffering Bills fan) spiritually. Anyway, my main point here is despite the best stabs at accuracy from everyone involved, Leroy still looks like Mario’s brother Luigi, which is fairly comical and probably not helping the Jets in their quixotic quest for a winning 2018 season.

Pluggers, 9/29/18

Despite appearances, this isn’t an old man looking forward to some wholesome quality time with his grandson. That’s the smile of a skillful Monopoly shark who’s finally gotten to the stage of the grift when he says, “Say, why don’t we try betting some big money on this one, champ?”

Family Circus, 9/29/18

“Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets — I just wish it weren’t on a weekend, O Lord.” I wouldn’t have called it in advance, but seeing a St. Augustine/Taxi Driver mashup in the Family Circus just feels right.

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Tuesday fast takes

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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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Strictly speaking they should be paying the Morgans for the privilege of babysitting, but I’ll let it slide this time

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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.