Pain Has An Element Of Blank;

Today's comics are particularly depressing, even by Lockhorns standards, so we're in for a splendid treat. Don't be surprised if you find it difficult to vote for the best panel. For example, in Panel One, Loretta shows why she is the very best when it comes to her craft: she has elevated nagging to an art form, as she cleverly contorts cliches to enable her to say something only once, and yet a thousand times. Loretta exhibits another of her specialties in Panel Two, the play on words, or the metaphor, as applied to a popular adage. Today she has chosen "don't put all your eggs in one basket" as her medium, and she performs her perfunctory task with a heavy sense of ennui and despair, as if she has carried on her noblesse oblige alone on unappreciative ears to the point of wearying strain. Leroy in Center Panel shows Loretta up at her own game. His clever twist, brilliantly timed, on the cliche "come as you are" puts Loretta's efforts in Panels One and Two to shame, especially since he also worked in an implied insult. There's no stopping Leroy once he gets on a roll, and he lets Loretta have it in Panel Four, as yet another unwitting dinner guest is feeling the discomfort of acute nausea, thanks to Loretta's dreadful cooking. Panel Five sees Leroy and Loretta driving off from a visit to Loretta's ridiculously anachronistic mother, a.k.a. "Queen Victoria." Loretta, as well versed in psychobabble as she is, nonetheless prefers not to explore Leroy's acrimony toward his very strange mother-in-law.