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The Lockhorns, 8/23/25

Look, I don’t know how they can make it any more obvious that the Lockhorns are millennials. Today’s panel deploys one of the most joyless ways to hammer the point home, just having Loretta doing a marginally cool catchphrase from 2010 or whatever. Is she going to talk about heckin’ doggos next? Will Leroy extol the epicness of bacon? They’re not even antagonizing each other today. Remember when this strip was about how much they disliked each other? We need to recapture that spirit, and if that means shifting the Lockhorns further down the timestream to the unmoored nihilism of Gen Z, I say do it.

Hi and Lois, 8/23/25

Thirsty, no! Liquor before beer, never fear … beer before liquor, never sicker! I guess he’s already sick, though. (His sickness is the serious disease of alcoholism.)

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Slightly shorter list of comments of the week for a somewhat shorter week on my part, but this week’s top comment still delivers the laffs!

“Really liking that accusing look on Dennis’s face. ‘I was promised some kind of circus freak who lived like a dog, and instead I get this boring suburban schmoe? Boo! Zero stars!’” –pugfuggly

As do the very funny runners up!

“Or, you know, just throw out that tacky cheap pink vase, Lois. There is no way Hi is going to use the Japanese art of kintsugi to bring new life to it. At best he’ll slather on some Gorilla glue and you’ll constantly have to remember to turn that side to the wall.” –Tabby Lavalamp

“Big props to yesterday’s Judge Parker for resolving a plot hole with ‘There was probably an entry code for the vacation home in the stuff Glen sent me, which I didn’t read.’ This rings true to life! On the other hand ‘The CIA agent has a pierced septum’ is probably also true to life and I hate it.” –matt w

“Good resume. But she said she wanted to learn from me, and I wouldn’t like to have any employee with low enough self esteem to actually respect me. Have you seen our record?” –Philip

“Since there are no canals in Hartlepool (research consisting solely of scanning the Wikipedia page of that fair city and not seeing any photos of them), I’d like to think that Andy has fallen into an open sewage ditch. Don’t worry, nothing can kill him!” –But What Do I Know?

“Ever since our AI overlords banished women to an infinite plane that just contains kitchen appliances, I don’t get to talk to my friends much anyway. Who knew that this was how Gamergate was going to end?” –Voshkod

“Yeah, right. You didn’t, Naomi. Olive saved her life. You have nice hair, though.” –I’m Not Cthulhu, But I Play Him On TV

“I might be wrong but I think this whole story line is the plot to Madame Web.” –LTJpezcore1

“Heathcliff’s sign is a command, people! You are BLOWING this!” –A Grave Mind

“It’s late, we should be going. Not that sitting here on your sectional and staring at each other all night wasn’t fun, but we were kind of hoping you would offer us some drinks or snacks or entertainment or conversation. Still, your cat’s writing demonstration was a real surprise, so the evening wasn’t a total loss.” –BigTed

“Heathcliff is holding the sign facing away from the group. The other side says ‘Fuck you people.’” –The Rambling Otter

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Luann, 8/22/25

In the current Luann plot, Tiffany has dragged Les to a spa to get a mani-pedi and other treatments, and has been annoyed that he still wants to talk about video games, only to discover that [record scratch] the spa attendant is a gamer as well????? I was wondering if Leviathan was a real game, but the only game by that name I could find links to online is “a multiplayer extraction shooter set in a sci-fi universe where humanity has been abducted by a gargantuan, interstellar beast and changed over the course of several millennia. The abducted were ultimately discarded onto foreign planets. To survive, they have been forced to evolve into three factions of biologically and ideologically distinct lifeforms. Recently, a second wave of abductions have occurred. Fate has brought them together to the surface of the bountiful world of Domusalus; where only ONE FACTION can establish dominance for their survival.” So I guess Luann’s long-term goal is to woo gentle and impressionable young people attracted by the idea of a sea life simulator into a nightmarish world of violent mutants. Fun! Just the sort of thing that would send a hard-core gamer like Les into a state of orgasmic joy, which he appears to have achieved in panel three here.

Mark Trail, 8/22/25

Last week Uncle Lumpy declared gator-travel-assistance to be “not quite Fists of Justice™ territory, but at least macho-heroics-adjacent,” which Mark apparently took as a personal challenge! Today’s punch is less about putting a stop to imminent danger and more about putting a stop to a fight that some golf course developer jerk started, but I do enjoy the POV angle we get on the punching in panel three. Usually Mark is a “chin music” guy rather than a “nose bopping” guy, but this dude doesn’t have much of a chin, so you gotta do what you gotta do!

Heathcliff, 8/22/25

As the theme song to the mid-80s Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats cartoon so wisely put it: “Heathcliff, Heathcliff, no one should terrify their neighborhood. But Heathcliff just won’t be undone, playing pranks on everyone.” So why does the Nutmeg family tolerate his presence? Well, as today’s panel demonstrates, a pet who refuses to acknowledge the bounds of polite conventions can be a real asset. Look how happy they are to be relieved of their social obligations! Heathcliff says (via signs, flags, and so on) the truths that others won’t!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 8/22/25

Boy, Ma Goose sure takes a lot of pills! That’s … the joke, I guess? That’s a joke, I guess? They wouldn’t print it in the paper if it weren’t a joke, right?