Quick Saturday update
Quick Saturday update with another big haul of silent penultimate panels
Barkeater Lake by Corey Pandolph
The Duplex by Glenn McCoy (thanks, Ugliness Man)
Monty by Jim Meddick
Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller
Barkeater Lake is this week's champion with three out of the six days using an SPP.
The Duplex gets honors for a particularly useless SPP.
Just when I start to think my work is done here, things like this come along. I'll never rest.
posted by Matt Gill at 3:40 PM
6 Comments:
I'd like to call attention to something that is not a SPP, but perhaps should have been one: today's Candorville.
Putting the silent panel in the second position brings the action to a halt too quick. The whole point of the SPP is you've grabbed attention enough to hold off the punch line. A wordless panel to soon kills momentum.
If anything, the third panel should have been an SPP with Clyde looking down at the paper, and then saying, "I know dawg, I'm slipping. I'm slipping." in the fourth. Or just make it a three panel thing.
You're the expert, Matt. What say you?
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
In the Candorville strip in question, the second panel is silent because the character is reading, making it an action panel. It's not related to comic timing, which is the most important aspect of true SPPs, which usually don't have any action except perhaps staring.
True, but his reading the paper should come in between panels, because it stalls the action for no good reason.
What does the panel of him reading the paper add to the strip?
I'm saying it is a comedic timing thing because it's an awkward timing to have a character stop dead and read and then return to set-up, not punchline.
You're right, Ma--Mr. Black. The strip does have an awkward rhythm. It probably would have worked best with just three panels. One thing that might have worked: the "Sure, Clyde" balloon could have gone in the second panel, to keep some momentum through that panel. The Stan Lee principle says that spoken words and actions don't have to happen at the same moment. Time passes in the gutters, but it can also pass in the space between the balloon and the speaker.
Post a Comment
<< Home