Matriculations

This is quiet for a Sunday. Four silent penultimate panels.

The Duplex by Glenn McCoy
Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis
Pooch Cafe by Paul Gilligan
Sally Forth by Francesco Marciuliano and Craig Macintosh

The L.A. Times shuffled its Sunday comics today, adding the Sunday Lio, and dropping the Sunday Prickly City. Fabulous. However, I can not say the same about the front page cosmetic changes. I counted at least eight different type styles and sizes above the fold alone. Damn, Tribune Media, did a font vendor give you a bulk discount?

A reader named Joe pointed this out to me. It's from a "matriculation exam" in South Africa. (The Madam and Eve website discusses it here.)


Question 5.7 asks "account for the absence of dialog in frame 3." If you answer "it's an over-used comic strip device that creates only the illusion of comic timing rather than the actual thing," well, you might not graduate from school in South Africa, but you'll get an A in my book.
But I must say, hooray for South Africa for considering comics literacy a vital skill.

I appreciate that the folks hired to create Sally Forth attempt to shake up its inherent staleness with new things. But the Will Eisner borderless panel thing simply does not work here.
Question 1-A. Please account for the sedan growing out of the back of Sally's head in panel 2.