03 October 2006

Just desserts and tragic irony

See it here.

Usually when The Dinette Set makes the decision to challenge conventional conceptions of the purpose of a comic, most often by refusing to include elements which would be recognizable as traditional forms of humor, it does so for the purpose of elevating the art form to explore and ennoble the human condition.

Not so today.

Today The Dinette Set explores the darker side of human impulse. Clearly emboldened by the rather effete image of the service person on the outside of the van, Burl and his posse engage in a bit of gay-baiting. It starts with Jerry, whose own heterosexual masculinity is re-affirmed by both shirt and arm hair, engaging in a bit of sing-song taunting and ends with Burl's rather clumsy, but obvious, Jaccuzi-based sexual come-on.

As is always the case in The Dinette Set, however, the universe retains its moral center and will engage in a bit of punitive bashing to set things right. One can only imagine the carnage which occurs in the next few moments as the psychotic-looking repair man, adorned with crudely rendered "prison tats," shoves his toolbox deep within one of Jerry's orifices before eviscerating Burl with one of the knives the van indicates he carries.

Dale alone will escape, ironically screaming with girlish horror as he flees the scene.

All the detectives found was a pool of blood and the following marginalia:
  • Interestingly, the psychotic repair man, despite having motion lines near his head, appears unable to swivel his head a full 180 degrees.
  • One wonders why the artist chose to make the back window of the van out of opaque glass.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

DS offends me in may ways. It is unfunny, it is illogical, it is badly drawn. Yesterday's issue was one of the times that bothered me in all those ways. Usually, I can tell what the "joke" is supposed to be. I couldn't yesterday.

Today, however, DS has managed to offend me in entirely new ways. Wow. While Jerry and Burl were merely annoying to me before, now they are downright repulsive. Now I actually *hate* the characters in DS. Joy for the way she treats her mother, and Burl for being a homophobic creep.

Anonymous said...

I have spent most of my life in one service-oriented job or another and I can relate to the repairman in this panel. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to mutilate people by shoving hot pizza in their pasty little faces as they taunted me with cries of "pizza man! pizza man!" Then, as a plumber, I comforted my rage and sorrow with daydreams of ripping a toilet from a second-story bathroom, hurling it over an oak bannister, and sending it, in all its stained and brackish glory, onto the head of the pampered homeowner who gazed helplessly up as he stood on the hardwood floor of his foyer. Actually, I'm not sure if any of wht I just said has anything to do with today's DS, but I feel better for saying it.