Sunday, February 14, 2010

Happy Birthday, Jimmy Hoffa

Lockhorns Sunday kicks off with Panel One, where we see Leroy using a loophole to shirk his duties on Loretta's chores list, prominently posted on the kitchen wall in the fashion of comic strip housewives everywhere. Panel Two sees Leroy at odds with his baldness, while Loretta seizes the opportunity to humiliate her husband mercilessly in front of a visiting neighbor. Leroy is at his subtlest in Center Panel. Given his accident proneness, it's simply a matter of survival that he avoid all skiing trips. Here, he manages also to lampoon Loretta's pretentiousness by facetiously referring to his favorite pastime, the plebeian bowling, in the same vein as one would to the bourgeois pastime of skiing. Panel Four finds Leroy between a rock and a hard place. He's got Loretta right there beside him, nagging him about being late, and he's got a state trooper right on his tail, ready to pull him over for the slightest infraction. Since they're probably on the way to visit Loretta's freak mother, Leroy should just floor it. It's unusual to see Leroy perform even the simplest of household chores, as he does in Panel Five. Thus we learn of his special McDonald's Flintstones cup collection, which he breaks out only on special occasions. Loretta's contempt for Leroy's lowbrow tastes is indicated by her grand gesture of placing her hand over her purportedly fluttering heart, thus making it clear that her remark is soaked in pure sarcasm. Look closely, and you may wonder if she's flipping Leroy off.

2 comments:

Wings1295 said...

Gotta pick panel five. Just too cheesy good to pass up!

Mr. Beautiful said...

Wings: That's a good choice. Do you think she's flipping Leroy the bird? It's hard to tell with her Mickey Mouse four fingered hands, and the resolution isn't all that good either.