Let me see if I can summarize my feelings about today's panel succinctly: This is the exact same joke as yesterday.
Admittedly they moved to a different store to shop for Britta's birthday present. They picked up Verl somewhere along the way. They are shopping in some sort of "secondhand crap" store rather than a book store. The density of marginalia is far lower. The words are different. The picture is different.
But none of that can alter the fact that today's panel is 100% redundant with yesterday's.
Perhaps the artist sent two panels to the syndicate and asked them to pick the one they liked best, but they misundersood and published them both on consecutive days.
Perhaps this is an intellectual exercise wherein the reader is supposed to compare and contrast the two panels and draw a larger conclusion from their similarities and differences.
More likely, this is either a bankruptcy of new ideas or a completely unnecessary strengthening of an already pervasive theme, Burl's cheapness. I'll let the reader decide for themselves which explanation they favor.
The names of the marginalia have been changed to protect the innocent:
- As if repeating the same panel were not enough, Joy's "Buy One Get One Free" T shirt makes a comeback, which is something I am sure none of us ever wanted to see again.
- The Holy Grail appears to be on the shelf in the back, just below the ceramic elephant.
2 comments:
Beyond the whole, "my eyes, my eyes, my poor useless eyes" event that occurred twice now as the orbs were seared in their sockets by Joy's t-shirt, there's the question: did they spend two days shopping? They're still out looking for a present, one would have to assume on the same day. What gives? They just changed their shirts?
Off to scrub my brain with clorox.
I guess this is The Dinette Set's idea of a story arc -- just repeat the same joke in a different setting the next day. Burl's pants bother me... pants often do in TDS, because they're drawn exactly the same way as window screens.
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