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The Lockhorns, 6/4/21

Having done this blog for many years, I can tell you that there is definitely a weekly rhythm to many of the comics. Hopefully if you’re a reader of this blog, you are aware of enough comics “inside baseball” knowledge that you know that individual comics aren’t each written the day before they’re published or anything like that. They’re submitted weeks in advance, in Monday-through-Saturday chunks (Sunday strips are submitted separately and have to be sent in even earlier). And while I’m sure most cartoonists don’t sit down and power through six comics in one sitting, as you get towards the end of the week you definitely start to get some “I’m almost done with this, fuck it” vibes. I feel strongly that today’s Lockhorns, where Leroy assures Loretta that alcoholism is fine, actually, and he’s not sure why it gets such a bad rap, fits that bill, and yet (because I contain multitudes) I also think it’s pretty great, because sometimes you want that energy on a Friday, you know?

Rex Morgan, M.D., 6/4/21

You know what absolutely has not been phoned in, though? Today’s Rex Morgan, M.D. Just a symphony of incredible facial expressions from two guys who know they’re not supposed to find their kids incredibly irritating and so they won’t say that they’re incredibly irritating but they absolutely find all their little antics insufferable and can’t wait until they’re off at college or whatever. “He can’t see the face I’m making, so he probably assumes I actually love my kid, even though every moment I spend with them is a chore,” both men are thinking.

Mary Worth, 6/4/21

You know what would really help out Rex and Buck? If there were like a pane of thick, soundproof glass between them and their kids, and there was a phone that ostensibly let you talk to the person on the other side, but the phone wasn’t attached to anything, so it didn’t work. Ideally it would be the kid on the jail side of the glass, of course.

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Six Chix, 6/2/21

Sorry, folks, I can’t even deal with the ostensible joke here because of the bird’s use of “peeps” to refer to fellow birds, which is both not really related to the punchline of the strip and frankly too cute by half. There’s an old bit of comedy jargon that calls this sort of thing, where two unrelated jokes distract from each other, “putting a hat on a hat.” You should generally remove whichever one of the jokes is less funny, which I realize is hard to do in scenarios where neither is funny, but I think this strip is good evidence the leaving both in isn’t helping.

Gil Thorp, 6/2/21

Wait a minute, the library board isn’t an elective body or even appointed by elected officials, but is just a self-selecting oligarchy where current members choose new members based on their own self-serving and inscrutable criteria? That’s it, my mind’s totally changed on this whole library situation, Abel Brito needs to force his way onto this board by whatever means necessary and end this medieval institution by burning it to the ground.

Mary Worth, 6/2/21

Oh, sorry, it looks like before Ashlee sashays out of Drew’s life, expensive Rolex in hand, she’s going to get together with him for one last lunch for old time’s sake and absolutely roast him for his many personal failings.

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Mary Worth, 6/1/21

Wow, huh, if you had asked me how this was going to go, I would’ve guessed, at various points over the course of this storyline, first “Ashlee becomes emotionally/sexually obsessed with Drew, who quickly tires of her”, then “Ashley becomes enraged at Drew when he fails to make her Instagram famous,” then finally “Ashlee hooks Drew for the long con.” But nope, it turns out that what Ashlee meant when she told Drew that “I recognize that face!” was that she had seen his Instagram feed and caught sight of his fancy Rolex in one of his selfies, so she used his pics and geotags to figure out where he might regularly stop to eat, got a job there to arrange the meeting, seduced him and set up a photoshoot, and casually nabbed the watch while he was distracted. Mission accomplished! The whole elaborate scheme was about the acquisition of a single expensive watch! Gotta say, I always appreciate it when Mary Worth zigs when I expect it to zag.

Judge Parker, 6/1/21

So there was a long stretch in this strip where Sophie’s whole deal was that she had PTSD due to her kidnapping and she couldn’t decide if she wanted to go to college, much to Abbey’s consternation, so she just hung around Cavelton and ran some failing mayoral campaigns instead. But now it’s Randy’s turn to be kidnapped, Sam’s hung up on it, and apparently Sophie’s been away at college for … months? And seems to be doing fine. “Wow,” she’s clearly thinking in panel two, “Maybe I should look into getting a job on campus during semester breaks from here on out.”