Week totals

Another four today:

9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney
Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller
Overboard by Chip Dunham
Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis

Frazz should count --but for the minor technicality of the silent panel not being penultimate.


Chip Dunham is this week's champion with three uses of the silent penultimate panel.

Friday night pictures

It's Friday night, and that means a quick, picture-only update:

Monty by Jim Meddick
Sherman's Lagoon by Jim Toomey

Jack Elrod continues his award-winning ways and picks up today's conspicuous signature award.

Four today

Four silent penultimate panels today. And we have a lot of the usual culprits:

Heart of the City by Mark Tatulli
Overboard by Chip Dunham
Pooch Cafe by Paul Gilligan
Sally Forth by Francesco Marciuliano and Craig Macintosh

Ferrick pointed out that I missed yesterday's Doonesbury. For those of you scoring at home, adjust your card accordingly.



As far as Americans go, I'm a fairly big soccer fan. I had planned on getting cable and Tivo specificity for the World Cup, but then I remembered I had Univision and a VCR. Aside from the fact that I don't speak Spanish, it's worked out just fine. But trying to avoid the day's results while still scouring the internet for silent penultimate panels can be difficult--especially when the Washington Post has both a great comics selection and thorough World Cup coverage. I mean, I could have guessed that England beat Trinidad and Tobago, but I wish my need to download today's Sally Forth didn't have to spoil the score for me.

Redundant panels

Three more silent penultimate panels today. (And I love how lascivious that rabbit looks next to the Chickweed Lane girls.)

9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney
Overboard by Chip Dunham
Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman

The Redundant Panel of the Day Award goes to Jack Elrod:

The only thing missing is a caption in the third panel that says "Mark meets with his New York agent! ...And he looks great!"

Three classic SPPs

Three classic, indisputable silent penultimate panels today:

The Duplex by Glenn McCoy
Garfield by Paws, Inc.
Luann by Gregg Evans

Call me slow, but I just realized that the Duplex's Glenn McCoy is the same McCoy that does The Flying McCoys. It seems there are a lot of two-strip creators now. Have comic strips suddenly gotten easier to make?

I didn't count today's Overboard, but I probably could have. It's just not quite the typical SPP. But it isn't that great, any way. Either the third panel could be eliminated or the fourth panel's dialog could go in the third. Chip Dunham is fairly witty, but this strip can be so visually clumsy, he makes Scott Adams look like Winsor McCay.

Seven

That is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven silent penultimate panels today. This might be the biggest single day in our short history:

Andy Capp by Roger Mahoney and Roger Kettle
Barkeater Lake by Corey Pandolph
Cow and Boy by Mark Leiknes
Garfield by Jim Davis Industries
Peanuts (1959 reprint) by Charles Schulz
Red and Rover by Brian Basset
Sheldon by Dave Kellet

And look at Doonesbury--a silent second panel.



It really serves the same function as the SPP. The punchline is in the third panel and the fourth is the post-joke trail off that is used to extend an awkward situation. But that is not what we count here--so it's off the watch.

Mutts' excessive white space.

Per the usual, Sunday is a big day for silent penultimate panels.

9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney
Luann by Greg Evans
Pooch Cafe by Paul Gilligan
Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller
Sherman's Lagoon by Jim Toomey

So what about today's Mutts?

Patrick McDonnell, more than anyone else working in comics today, is a master of comics grammar. If he does something unusual with his layout, it is for a good reason. But as far as what purpose this sea of white space serves, I have no idea. It does indicate a major passage of time, but I don't see how it serves the joke better than a standard series of time-passing panels would have. I will just assume that I'm missing something here.