Weekly totals

Five silent penultimate panels today:

Candorville by Darrin Bell
Drabble by Kevin Fagan
Frazz by Jef Mallett
Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley
Heart of the City by Mark Tatulli
Peanuts (1959 reprint) by Charles Schulz

There is no clear champion of egresiousity this week. Chickweed Lane, Prickly City, Candorville, Pickles all used two each. (As well as Charles Schulz this week in 1959.)

Barkeater Lake

Four for Friday:

Barkeater Lank by Corey Pandolph
Monty by Jim Meddick (despite the sound effects)
Pickles by Brian Cane
Red & Rover by Brian Bassett

After contributing to our lexicon with five SPPs in a row (a feat now know as a barkeater,) Barkeater Lake has been almost non-existent on the watch. Is this because of my influence? I'll certainly take the credit.

Dagwood

It's been a busy week full of late night, quick updates and tonight is no different.
Today we have:

Blondie by King Features
Sally Forth by Francesco Marciuliano and Craig Macintosh

I've said before that I don't necessarily have a problem with the concept of legacy strips. But the real problem with them is that once the original creator is gone, no one really wants to change anything. They just repeat the same jokes, only changing certain random details to keep the strip from looking entirely like an anachronism. (Check out Dagwood's flat-screen monitor.)


So I'm happy that Dagwood's sandwich shop might force some changes in the Blondie universe. But I don't know if I appreciate the strip acting like an advertisement for a real-life chain of Dagwood fast-food places. Charles Schulz may have made his fortune with licensing, but Charlie Brown never shilled for his own Pez dispenser.

Technical trouble

Edit 7/28 Here are the pictures:



Blogger seems to be having trouble tonight. And that's a real shame because today, well, to say that today's crop is “veritable bonanza” would be a cliché. But since that is what this blog is all about, we had a veritable bonanza of silent penultimate panels today.

9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney
Candorville by Darrin Bell
Mutts by Patrick McDonnell
Overboard by Chip Dunham
Pickles by Brian Crane
Prickly City by Scott Stantis
Red & Rover by Brian Bassett

Oh, all the great things I had to say for today,--and Blogspot won't let me post images. I'll add the pictures later.

Peanuts

Still slow this week as one of today's three silent penultimate panels is almost fifty years old.

9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney
Peanuts (1959 reprint) by Charles Schulz
Prickly City by Scott Stantis

The similarity between the Peanuts panel and the Prickly City panel just shows how influential Charles Schulz is. It is either a testament to Schulz's timelessness or to the stagnation of contemporary strips that Peanuts strips from 1959 do not look out of place on today's comics page.

Another shut-out

I was wrong last Friday when I said there where no silent penultimate panels. But I really think it's happened this time. None today. None at all. The closest is this almost from Piranha Club:



The panel may not be necessary , but it does provide new information, thus disqualifying it as a true SPP.

So, well, how about this joke from the Kid's Reading Room section of the L.A. Times? (The same page as Heathcliff and Marmaduke) Why did the martial arts expert feel achy? He had kung flu.

Ha.

We'll see what the rest of the week holds.

Quick update

Another quick update here. This is the closest I've come to actually missing a day.

Five for now:
Andy Capp by Roger Mahoney and Roger Kettle
Frazz by Jef Mallett
Garfield by Paws Inc.
Sherman's Lagoon by Jim Toomey
Animal Crackers by Fred Wagner

It's late; I have to go to bed. I will expound more tomorrow.