04 November 2006

Guess Your Intention

See it here.

I don't have time for a full deconstruction, and usually lay off on the weekends. But I just couldn't let this panel go by without a few comments, because it really struck me.

First off, I think a good rule of thumb for any cartoonist would be that if you cannot depict characters which are distinctly in different age brackets, any joke which depends on a disparity of age is a losing proposition. Given that Burl's high school math teacher looks exactly the same age as Burl, the only conclusion I was able to draw was that Burl failed high school so many times that he was the same age as his math teacher when he finally graduated. Which, come to think of it, is not all that implausible.

Second, that big black blob hanging from math teacher's neck is, I know, supposed to be huge wrap-around sunglasses. But it looks like a really saggy bikini top. And that is totally off limits.

Finally, a mechanical scale does not guess your weight. It reports your weight. The grifter next to the scale is the one who guesses your weight.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

OK, if you look at the "win a prize" game in the background, there's a man-eating plant growing in it upside down. No, wait, on second thought, that's a prize-eating plant. That's what happened to all the prizes.