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The Lockhorns, 7/23/04

Here’s part of what King Features has to say about The Lockhorns: “The award-winning Lockhorns panel gently spoofs the state of marital bliss … Their snappy repartee and witty banter has made them a perennial favorite.” This is for the most part accurate, if you were to change “gently spoofs” to “questions the very possibility of,” “snappy repartee and witty banter” to “passive-aggressive attempts to emotionally destroy one another,” and “perennial favorite” to “horrifying cautionary example.”

Today’s panel has Leroy and Loretta in their familiar places at the dinner table. I especially like suppertime at the Lockhorns, since that’s when they seem most filled with heavy-lidded despair. Usually (though not today) one of them has a puffed out cheek that makes it look as if they are eating crushed glass. Also, with Leroy in profile, we can see that his hair is actually just a series of horizontal lines, which I find quite charming. (Unfortunately, in the online version I’ve linked to here, this effect is somewhat ruined by the coloring job.)

I actually really enjoy The Lockhorns, though perhaps not in the spirit that its creators intend. It’s settled on a few themes (Leroy is lazy, doesn’t earn enough, and makes an ass of himself in social situations; Loretta can’t cook, can’t drive, and spends too much money — that’s about 90 percent of the comic’s content right there) and uses them to relentlessly hammer home the failure of the Lockhorns’ marriage. If, as King Features claims, “comics fans can’t help but see a little bit of themselves or someone they know in Leroy and Loretta Lockhorn,” then God help us all.

I’ve often wondered why, unlike most dysfunctional couples I know, the Lockhorns don’t have any children. Maybe at some level they realize that any child exposed to the venom that flows freely in their household will grow up to be terribly scarred emotionally. But it’s more likely that they just can’t bring themselves to have sex.

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Apartment 3-G, 7/22/04

When I tell people that I obsessively read the comics pages, they often ask me, “What’s the deal with Apartment 3-G?” I reply, “It’s about three young women — a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette — who live together in New York.” I’m beginning to think that I might need to add “in the 1950s” to the end of that sentence, because despite occasional references to such modern concepts as “Thai food” and “dyslexia,” the strip is pretty much stuck in an Eisenhower-era sensibility. To be blunt: where’s the sex, dammit? Surely any group of hip, attractive, twentysomething single ladies in the big city would be doing a bit more bed-hopping than this crew, especially since they don’t seem to be tied down by harrowing jobs or anything. (You can get your name featured in a future installment of “I Read the Comics So You Don’t Have To,” hereafter to be shortened to the convenient and easy-to-remember abbreviation IRTCSYDHT, if you can tell me what any of the ladies actually do for a living.)

Anyway, the current storyline revolves around Margo (the pretty but scheming brunette) and Lu Ann (the pretty but somewhat dim blonde) going head to head over the only romantic interest who’s appeared in the last two years, the earth-shatteringly dull Pete. I like that for the most part they are all smiles despite the seething rivalry that has grown up between them. Margo’s happy face in the last panel is particularly funny if you imagine her saying her line in the style of Beavis’ Cornholio persona.

What I want to see more of in this strip (other than sex, obviously) are more storylines that feature Tommie (the pretty but sensible redhead), who only seems to appear as background color to other plots and never attracts a boring, clean-cut boy of her own. Sure, the struggle of blonde and brunette is an archetypical one rooted deep in our collective subconscious, but as a redhead, I demand to see the stories and struggles of my people portrayed on the comics page.

Bonus observations:

• Lu Ann, no doubt struggling to pay her ludicrously overpriced Manhattan rent, has apparently resorted to eating a box of generic “OATS” for breakfast.
• Margo is emerging from a door that appears to be a good foot shorter than she is.

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Curtis, 7/21/04

I swear I’m not obsessed with this issue, really. But, well, how many eight-year-old black children — hell, how many eight-year-old children of any race — use the word chutzpah in the course of casual conversation (or, as in this case, in the course of casual media criticism)? I’m just saying. At least there aren’t any quotation marks around it.

I really enjoy (and by “enjoy,” I mean “enjoy ironically”) the titles of movies and names of rappers used in Curtis. It’s as if they’ve been chosen by someone who doesn’t himself have any contact with pop culture, but sometimes talks to a guy who does.