It's always a little hard to understand the artist's intent when couples like the one in the background appear, so forcefully do narrative and visual elements work against each other.
One the one hand, we are clearly meant to be uneasy about the over-educated and over-spending East Coast intellectual parents, flaunting their Yale education and their wealth with a Boden sweatshirt and an imported Baby Bägo. They aim to make every other parent in the room feel less important through the sheer audacity of teaching their child manners and the alphabet (via the high chair).
On the other hand, next to Burl and his dysfunctional family unit, it's hard not to feel a glimmer of hope for the upcoming generation of Crustwood's youth, given that Patty's chances for happiness and success were thwarted through an accident of birth. Of course, leaving this mouth-breathing community would probably be the best option for both Patty and baby Tommy, but that may be too much to ask.
On yet another hand, given Patty's unnatural devotion to her parents and the fact that Burl's fathering has made her incapable of a fulfilling long-term relationship with a man, the reader can be more hopeful that the Penny's DNA will disappear from the gene pool before it has a chance to pollute another generation. Which is a relief, because Burl's influence meant it was just as likely that Patty could have ended up with 6 kids from 3 divorces before she was 30.
Then again, it looks like the over-educated wife is wearing brass knuckles on her right hand and is getting ready to punch Tommy if he does not say "thank you."
So, all-in-all, I don't know what to think.
Send in the marginalia:
- It took me a while to pick the baby out of the mess of squiggles in the background table. While searching, I thought it looked like the husband had a tiny, shrivelled right hand (holding the balloon) to go with his wife's clubbed right hand.
- I'm sure it has always been this bad, but recently the punctuation in this comic is starting to really bug me. Like the poorly-placed apostrophe in husband's and the odd question mark/ellipses combo.
- Is it just me or is that a scary damn clown?
2 comments:
Scary clown, but it looks just like the clown picture in their living room. I'd like to think that Burl is topless right now, and we're looking at a tattoo of the word 'carters' on his left arm.
Yeah, it looks just like the clown painting, right down to the strange dot in the teeth. Has Ms. Larson never seen someone actually made up as a clown? She apparently thinks all clowns are just wearing masks and therefore have a breathing hole instead of teeth.
Amazing that the idea-reinforcing marginalia almost approaches a joke today... Burl's shirt presumably says Carter's so we'll realize he's just an overgrown baby.
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