This panel really represents Burl and Joy at their level best, turning a gesture of warmth and welcome into a seething expression of deepest loathing.
But what could possibly be the reason for such hatred and scorn?
As we look down the street, first at Burl's house with its snowman-adorned Winter flag and then at the house beyond with its snowman-adorned Winter flag, the reader must marvel at the apparent homogeneity of the neighborhood. Window, flag, porch, sign...all are in near perfect alignment and agreement. This is suburbia as it is meant to be, no rancor, no clamor, no disagreement. Just perfect and blissful conformity of thought and action.
Into this environment comes an iconoclast, introducing a discordant note into the perfect uniformity and simply begging for retaliation. Based on Burl's math, not only has he left his fall sign up far too long, but he also introduced it far too early as well.
Given this egregious violation of the tacit terms of occupancy for this neighborhood, it's probably worth noting that only the wary-looking neighbor husband seems to appreciate the danger they are in. This act of passive aggressive gift-giving could just as easily have been an act of arson.
Frosty the Marginaliaman:
- There is no excuse which could possibly justify the neighbor's shirt.
- To make matters worse, that same neighbor-lady is wearing the dread screen-door pants.
1 comment:
Now new people are moving in with the pants... they just won't stop.
I can't imagine Burl and Joy actually spending their money on something as irrelevant as a snowman flag for their house. And from what we know of them, I think their miserly ways would win out over their desire to be obnoxious when it comes to buying one for the neighbors, as well. But they've obviously done both those things, despite how much they go against all we've learned about them before, so there must be some incredibly compelling reason for them to care so much about it. Therefore, I've come to the conclusion that the Pennys' neighborhood works like the one in that episode of the X-Files where the trash elemental comes to kill you if your house doesn't meet the neighborhood standards.
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