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Lockhorns, 1/7/14

For too long, the Lockhorns has offered us a fairly static view of the title characters’ squat, oblong bodies. Today represents a new artistic direction for this feature, akin to the first-person shooter genre that dominates the video game market. Why just stare at Leroy and Loretta making passive-aggressive remarks to each other or to their hapless acquaintances, when you can ride along on their shoulders and experience those whinges as if you were making them! Thrill as Loretta digs years back into the very earliest days of her marital disappointments and unloads her still shockingly raw pain on … some lady! Watch that lady’s face freeze into a carefully composed mask, to keep from bursting out laughing or bursting into tears! Can you live one panel a day as a Lockhorn and emerge with your sanity intact?

Mary Worth, 1/7/14

Ha ha, whoops, it seems that Mary has been so busy besotting Broadwayman Ken Kensington without any intention of reciprocating his feelings that she’s forgotten that she already has a handsome suitor whose feelings she has no intention of reciprocating! And now he’s back from Vietnam and wants to talk dirty. “What do you have on, Mary? Is every inch of you covered in loose-fitting dusty grape? Tell me everything.”

Crankshaft, 1/7/14

“It will cover our town with a toxic chemical layer that will induce convulsions in most any living thing it touches — pets, children, the elderly and infirm. Even the young and strong who escape its immediate effects will carry the terrible poison in their bodies, shaving years off their miserable lives. The question is, ladies, how serious are you about getting rid of weeds? Do you have the guts to follow this through to its logical conclusion? We must die so our perfect lawns might live!”

Apartment 3-G, 1/7/14

“Because if a woman’s sad, you know what she needs? A man! A man named Roy. Three cheers for men named Roy!”

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Hagar the Horrible, 12/5/13

Like many Vikings, Hagar typically returns from his missions of plunder in the more civilized parts of Europe to his simple thatch-roofed house in Scandinavia. But now it appears that, just as Rurik led his followers to settle permanently in Russia and Rollo led his to Normandy, Hagar is turning his back on his desolate homeland and is setting up shop further south. It’s not clear whether he purchased this castle from some impoverished and presumably terrified minor aristocrat with loot he plundered elsewhere or if he just killed everyone inside and is going to move his family in without even bothering to wash the blood off the walls, but one thing’s certain: as far as Helga’s concerned, these are just temporary digs, a defensible base for their clan to occupy while Hagar steals more treasure and gathers more followers until he’s ready to conquer a truly grand palace where she can live in style. Haha, barbarian women, amiright fellas?

The Lockhorns, 12/5/13

One way that Loretta keeps herself entertained is by coming up with increasingly convoluted ways to say that her husband is a desperate alcoholic.

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Rex Morgan, M.D., 11/25/13

Rex and June, who are married to each other, and have been for some time, and they were co-workers for a while before that, are meeting up with one of Rex’s high school buddies, which gives them an opportunity to … talk about Rex’s high school dating life? Which apparently they never had before? This strikes me as kind of weird, but maybe lots of people don’t want to know about their partner’s early romantic experience. Or maybe Rex has a good reason in particular to never talk about it. “I was cheerleading captain my senior year, and I dated a couple of cheerleaders, simultaneously. Well, ‘dated’ might be the wrong word, more like ‘brainwashed them and indoctrinated them into my sex-death cheerleading cult.’ And, yes, the reporters may have compared me to Charles Manson, but the big differences between me and Manson is that I wasn’t dumb enough to make the swastika on my forehead permanent, and also all the records were sealed, because I was a juvenile. Wait, maybe there was a reason I never told you about all this before.”

Momma, 11/25/13

I somehow misread Momma’s statement in panel one as “Francis, you look more like Thomas Dewey everyday!” This would be completely in line chronologically with the strip’s usual cultural references. Francis doesn’t look anything like Thomas Dewey, of course, but he doesn’t look anything like his brother Thomas either, so whatever.

Spider-Man, 11/25/13

Has anyone considered that what Spider-Man has been overselling as his “spider-sense” is actually just what the rest of us call “irritation?”

The Lockhorns, 11/25/13

YES LEROY WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO DIE WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO DIE FOR MEEEEE