They grow up so fast

So, it looks like Francis may be done taking lumps for getting his groove on.

(I'd like to know who gave Marcy her lumps. She got lumps too, right? Right? I mean, if we're going to be puritanical we're also going to be even-handed about it, right?)

(Sorry. Sorry.)

He seems rather unaffected as we're treated to a shopping trip that may lead to the ouster of the Big Skull Shirt.

Personally, I've always thought Francis' limited wardrobe was a missed opportunity for humor. No kid wears the same shirt everyday (ok, some kids would if they could, but now that he's older, maybe he can get a little more sophisticated?), and changing up his t-shirts could offer an extra level of commentary about the strip, or simple non-sequitur gags, or even make real-world references. (Pop culture jokes can work better if they aren't the main focus of the strip. I would LOL pretty hard if I saw him wearing a shirt that said RELAX.)

(You could compare them to Judah Friedlander's trucker caps in 30 Rock. Berke Breathed did that kind of stuff in old-school Bloom County with shirts and pictures hanging on walls and stuff.)

Eeeerrggghhh.

I have no criticism of today's strip (Entendre. Make it a double).

Cole is taking a somewhat conservative stance that apparently reflects SK's own thoughts on the issue. This is totally fair. Scott is entitled to his opinions, and is entitled to express them as he sees fit.

I personally do not agree with them, so we're talking about a larger issue than "do I like PVP" at the moment. I suspect a fair number of PVP fans are disagreeing with Cole right now, and whether SK knows it or not, this could become a sticky storyline -- people stop consuming products when they find out that the owners/creators do not share their opinions on some things, and sex is one of them.

I'm not saying people are going to jumping off the PVP ship with any volume, or that anyone is going to be burning Kurtz in effigy, but some of them, like me, will be thoughtful about the story.

I'm going to wait and see where this goes.

Niagara Falls!?

I wish the interrobang were a standard element of punctuation too (Don't Be Silly Lois), but three in a row?!

If everything is at maximum emotional volume, then where is there left to go?!

I can see two in a row, then dampening down the last panel to imply "man I should have seen this coming", but three in a row?!

It was a good joke otherwise.

Have a good weekend :)

WTF Robbie (plus open thread)

Rude. Ruuuuude.

After making such a big deal of making everything about the wedding special, I'm surprised Kurtz ended it this way (You don't have to go home...).

Mouth, meet bad taste. Ech.

---

Update: I might as well make this the open thread for No Regrets. Anything I could have said has been said much better by Stephen Geigen-Miller.

Elsewheres

I've liked PVP more than usual recently, and a bunch of other strips have been funny lately as well -- let's take a break from whinging about PVP for a moment!

• Last week in Penny Arcade, Gabe refuses to shoot his pony.


• Diesel Sweeties dissects Garfield


• Anders Loves Maria comes back from hiatus with an awesome pregnancy origin story. ("I'm keeping this baby you motherfucker")


• Philippe from Achewood learns about hobos (blog post).


• Cyanida and Happiness really get their dark humor on.

What does everyone else read?

Slammin' Silhouette

We give SK shit for using the silhouette too often, but Safety First uses it perfectly. In the final panel, it really slams our attention on to Robbie, which makes his punchline laugh-out-loud funny.

The script for the second panel frustrated me in a way that many other strips have in the past, but I haven't been able to get the explanation out of my brain yet. I'm collecting examples and will do an Access Hollywood-style expose eventually :)

I look forward to Jade getting back in her civvies.

Shushies.

My Two Dads is better than the sitcom that inspired the title (the whole run).

I el-oh-el-ed at the third panel, it's a great moment. Offhand I can't recall the last time the text went to the lowercase, and it works. That having been said, I personally would have swapped the second and third panels, giving the "shushies" time to linger while they debate their response.

I'm also not the biggest fan of the text in panel two:



It reads like SK is trying too hard to "write how people talk" here. Cole's "I mean" refers to nothing stated, and I'm all for making the subtext play a role, but here it seems awkward.

Brent's "do you want to do this" is meant to imply to the audience that Brent and Cole are already on the same page in terms of the response required by Francis' outburst -- not only are they on the same page that response is required, but the "do this" implies that they know what specific response is required.

That's all fine, as far as motivation goes, but the subsequent "or should I handle it" makes the line lumpier than it ought to by changing the verb ("do this" vs. "handle it").

A cleaner line would have been "Do you want to handle this or should I?", or, to keep intact the idea that they know exactly what's coming, "Do you want to do this or should I?"

Some writers can get away with the overlapping thoughts and partial statements that make scripts seem "natural" -- having read some of Aaron Sorkin's scripts, I know that just about every word that comes out of the actors' mouths are in his scripts, but it's so freaking hard to get right. Most of the time this work is done by the actor, and it's especially hard in print.