Folks, your comments of the week coming shortly, but first: has anyone heard from faithful reader Baka Gaijin? He’s a usual fixture here but has been awful quiet in the comments lately. Let us know if you know how he’s doing!
“I do have to give the Lockhorns credit. They get out and do things far more than my wife and I do, and we actually like each other.” –Larry McAwful
“If Sarge were any good at his job, he’d write up a glowing personnel report on Beetle, praising his ability to manipulate any group into liking him. Six months later, Bailey would be a corporal in the 4th Psychological Operations Group at Fort Bragg, and Sarge would have some new private to repeatedly abuse, maybe one that actually felt the pain and didn’t just get up in the next panel and walk away, one that internalized the pain until it ate them up. That’s all Sarge wants: for his blows to matter.” –Voshkod
“The real meaning of the blues is playing for the Lockhorns when they’ve run out of opera jokes.” –Artist formerly known as Ben
“The best part of this is that Pam could easily have solved this by helping Crankshaft out of his shirt and chose not to! (It really is the best part, I do not want to see Crankshaft with no shirt.)” –matt w
“I want to know more about Weirdly’s hench, er, animals. Did they join Weirdly at the time of The Great Change? Was there a purge that rejected reptiles and certain birds, similar to the Noah’s division of animals into ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ but this time performed by the animals themselves? This leads down a real rabbit hole, and at the bottom of that hole is Weirdly’s snake with a rabbit-shaped lump in his middle.” –Spunky The Wonder Squid
“Dustin’s grandpa firmly grasps his sandwich through all four panels, never setting it down, lest someone try to steal it. Meanwhile, Dustin’s dad is enjoying a steaming hot bowl of Cocoa Puffs.” –Mr. A
“If Caesar said anything, his last words were in Greek — Kaì sú, téknon — but Shakespeare is not wrong. Since his entire play is in English, the sudden interjection of a Latin sentence (the language of the cultural elite) would have had the same effect as speaking Greek (the language of the cultural elite) to a Latin audience. However, Latin is unfortunately not as popular as in the sixteenth century, so Dithers should use another non-standard language, which sounds pretentious and it is used by an overeducated minority with little contact with normal people. What I’m saying is, Dithers should tweet a hashtag.” –Ettorre
“How exactly did Roz get paired up with a death row inmate last time? I love the idea that this cut-rate dating service went to the local prison to harvest a bunch of fresh matches, knowing full well that their clients would get burned but would still come back anyhow for another shot at love. It’s horribly and hilariously depressing.” –pugfuggly
“I believe that a real teenager, upon seeing his father enjoying something unironically, might think, ‘How can I destroy this?’ So, yeah, I’ll take this as being realistic.” –Joe Blevins
“Since when do I have to pay taxes? I’m rich!” –TheDiva
“Meanwhile, the dogs are thinking, ‘Man, this old-people drama is getting us more walks than ever. Let’s hope they’re never happy!’” –BigTed
“I’m not convinced that Sarah is old enough to have such a firm grasp of genre conventions, or even what genres are. But I totally buy that she knows Rex would grow bored and want to ditch once Belluso refused his command to come out. ‘Welp, we tried! Let’s be spacemen or something now.’” –Doctor Moreau
“We’re really gonna get off the western story before seeing Buck get bit in the ass by his own horse? God damn it Sarah, do it right or don’t bother.” –Dan
“There is precisely one day, and one day only, when Thirsty abstains from alcohol, and that’s the day he gets to demonstrate that unlike those papist half-apes, his people — the orange-wearing Calvinist Protestants — are decent, orderly God-fearers. Sláinte his ass, he’ll thank God for a Queen to rule over them and get back to his scotch tomorrow.” –pastordan
“If you use a coffee cup, no one knows you’re drinking straight Scotch for dinner.” –Peanut Gallery
“That is literally the stupidest way to relax that I have seen in any comic strip in the last fifteen years, so I’m actually kind of impressed.” –Poteet
“I’m assuming, to maintain my prior belief system on the nature of Hootin’ Holler’s legal system, that Henry is carrying a set of dueling pistols in that black case to ‘settle’ the latest mediation. Gladys is tagging along to meet a soon-to-be-newly-available potential customer.” –Michael Blum, on Twitter
“Nothing says funny like going into a diabetic coma during a shoot-out.” –Maltmash3r
“Many people will cast aside this Rex Morgan, M.D., daydream as nothing more than the writer attempting to stave off the boredom involved with producing a daily strip. But isn’t it more likely that the creative team is trialing different settings — like Jeopardy’s current guest host approach for instance — while monitoring social media reaction to each, before making a permanent change to grow a shrinking readership? Maybe more contemporary settings will be trialed next week. Before you answer, let me remind you of what we’ve recently been treated to: an unlikeable doctor diagnosing an unlikeable patient’s diabetes over Zoom for four goddamn months. Rex Morgan, Amazon Warehouse Employee doesn’t sound so boring now, does it?” –Carsick Yankee
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