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The Lockhorns, 7/31/21

A fascinating thing about longstanding legacy comics is that many of their running jokes are built on cliches pulled from the broader culture at large, and then they keep on using those cliches for decades, even as they completely lose all real-world relevance. For instance, The Lockhorns posits a world where opera still holds a place in the cultural sphere that leads downwardly mobile middle-class suburbanites like Leroy and Loretta to occasionally attend, even if enjoyment of the form is strongly gendered for joke purposes. Maybe this was true in 1968 when this strip debuted, or maybe adults in 1968 had memories that this was true for their parents’ generation, but I would strongly disagree with anyone claiming this is true in the year 2021. Opera today is very niche, and I think its shrinking modern audience is probably a fairly specific slice of intellectual urbanites, and older ones at that, whereas Leroy and Loretta are are somewhere in the 30-50 range (that’s right, folks: with each passing day, Leroy and Loretta are more and more likely to be millennials).

Now, you could probably do a more realistic version of these jokes with “the philharmonic” rather than opera, but, you know what? The Lockhorns has been doing opera jokes for more than 50 years and it’s not going to stop now just because “no real-life version of Leroy or Loretta today would ever be caught dead at the opera” or whatever! And they’re not going to dumb it down for you, either! Did you know that Nabucco was a Verdi opera? I definitely did not! I definitely had to look it up! Is there any other way you would know that it’s opera specifically that Leroy is griping about in this panel, if you didn’t know that off the top of your head? Not as near as I can tell! They could’ve thrown us a bone and used Aida or The Ring Cycle or something ore obvious, but no, if you’re not intellectual enough to “get” this Lockhorns panel or do the research to bring yourself up to speed, then that’s your problem, friend.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 7/31/21

“Ha ha! Overswept! But seriously, a child under our care has collapsed into exhausted unconsciousness because she’s done too much manual labor. That seems … not great?”

Beetle Bailey, 7/31/21

Sadly, that night an enemy unit was able to ambush the sleeping soldiers of Camp Swampy, killing most and capturing the rest. RIP Beetle Bailey, 1950-2021.

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Folks! It’s your comment ….. of the weeeeeek!!!!

“You’re telling THIS guy he needs to come up with a name? Based on his history, he’ll be on the phone to Sarah in about twenty minutes.” –Weaselboy

And your very funny runners up!

“Jesus, can you imagine after your own death finding out that not only are you a ghost but you have to haunt your old elementary school? ‘Sorry, but you’ve been assigned to Dunning Primary as part of a package deal with the graduating class of 1922. The thinking was that if any kids come by the old place and ask open-ended questions about the former students that you’ll be there to do a brief demo, assuming that they can see you. Anyhow, you can expect a tour to come by every couple of years, have a happy eternity.’” –pugfuggly

“I love that Ashlee is giving Drew a five-grand shakedown as they stroll through the waiting room. The adult patients are thinking ‘I waited six weeks for an appointment to see this dummy?’ while the little girl thinks ‘This guy looks like an easy mark.’” –Arabella

“Here’s hoping Ashlee is seeing her current Instagram stardom goals as shallow and materialistic, and is inspired to go into nursing, where she can do choreographed TikTok dance routines extolling her own heroism instead.” –bad wolf

“Eleven years ago, terrified by predictions of overpopulation and Malthusian catastrophe, a CIA psyop team began a monstrous secret project: to cut the birth rate by rendering the entire population impotent through subliminal psychological attacks that would make the very idea of sex repulsive. Over the next decade, they worked to create the most perfectly hateful, grotesque human imaginable — a person so foul that any right thinking person would recoil from the slightest association from him, even just sharing the basest human instincts — and hid him in plain sight in newspapers across the country. Today, Operation Dustin’s Dad advanced to Phase Two. May God have mercy on us all.” –Schroduck

“I find it entirely unbelievable that a bunch of obsessed nerds didn’t bother to verify his death, or even look for the website of whatever funeral home was handling the arrangements to offer their eCondolances. Anyway, kudos to Batiuk who made a plot device character about how women creators overwhelmingly get ignored and then ignoring her during the story line where she gets inducted into a comics hall of fame.” –BeeKey

“[several minutes of increasingly improbable misunderstandings later] Yes, I too am pregnant with ideas for future stories, I don’t see why you need to make it a competition.” –Dan

“Tragedy strikes when Kyle discovers his arms are permanently stuck in an ‘it was this big’ position, making it impossible for him to ever work again.” –made of wince

“Well, one thing is settled: there is no level of density for plugger body hair I am comfortable with.” –Frissen Frassen Russen Mussen

“Another old fashioned thing: wearing dress shoes for black ops. Don’t slip!” –Jerp+Jump

“I have gotten used to the creators of Beetle Bailey having no idea how the military works, but you might think they would know how movie ratings work.” –Rube

“Even the lovers on the poster are three feet apart.” –Tom T.

“Dennis’ dad, rather than appreciating the dad joke, is upset at the goatee he’s seeing on TV. They have beatniks on TV? What’s next?” –DAS, Dad Joke-maker Extraordinaire

“The dark canine demimonde of gray-market resales, where literal fleas run the market, Chuck Wagon is the reigning currency, and nobody asks questions about the provenance of your birthday presents, is deeply weird.” –pastordan

“Blonde girlfriend seems to be wearing a very nice dress. She probably won’t enjoy whatever activity Chip has planned with his sweaty cut-offs and the $10 he’s getting for mowing the lawn. Pretty sure she’ll be texting Bruce before the date is over.” –lorne

“I can’t tell if that hand is Mr. Paley’s as he describes the trajectory of the ball or pro John Jawor’s as he karate chops Mr. Paley in the face. The only information pro John Jawor wants from Thorp is if Paley is the type of schmuck who sues after a stupid little thing like being karate chopped in the face.” –Tabby Lavalamp

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Hi and Lois, 7/30/21

“Gosh, I wish there were continuing storylines in Hi and Lois,” said … someone? One of you, maybe? Well, here you go, it turns out that one of the defining features of Chip’s teenage years is the conflict between spending time with pretty blondes or redheads and spending time mowing the yard in order to earn money to subsidize the spending associated with the aforementioned time with girls. Riveting stuff from America’s funny pages!

Gil Thorp, 7/30/21

This summer’s Gil Thorp is doing a fascinating experiment: can it weave a plotline out of golf jargon that is 100% opaque to me, a non-golf-fan, and still keep me, a Gil Thorp superfan, involved? I’m gonna hold on for dear life and see what happens! The closest analogue to reading this that I can think of is when I’m watching something on TV that’s in a foreign language with subtitles, and I absent-mindedly start looking at something on my phone and realize I haven’t understood anything anyone’s said for the past minute or two but have been kind of following along just based on the emotional cadence of people’s voices. Today’s panel two is putting an additional degree of difficulty in place by having the golf-jargon-speaker block a big chunk of his face with his hand so I can’t tell if he’s smiling or frowning or what, but I’m up to the challenge!