Three in a row

It looks like three today:

B.C. by Johnny Hart
Dog Eat Doug by Brian Anderson
Rose is Rose by Don Wimmer

Johnny Hart shows how to put a silent penultimate panel in-between two other silent panels.


I did miss an SPP in yesterday's Dog Eat Doug. (Thanks, Charles.) That makes three days in a row. Here they are, all lined up together.



The rhythm gets sort of dull after a while, doesn't it?

Pictures

Four from four usual suspects.

Pictures for now. Feature-length update Sunday.

Appearances

Four, with pictures, today:
Dog Eat Doug by Brian Anderson
Garfield by Paws, Inc.
La Cucaracha by Lalo Alcaraz
Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis

This marks a rare appearance for La Cucaracha. Of the non-serial strips I see each day in the L.A. Times, La Cucaracha, Jump Start and Dilbert are the rarest offenders.


Garfield, which I avoid everyday except when there is a gaping, wordless panel to draw my attention, is one of the most common offenders.

Every once in a while, someone tells me that I'm misguided in my crusade, that silent reactions are a classic comedy staple, and that a certain gag needs the SPP. What gets lost in the argument is that most often the punchline that the SPP precedes is terribly lame. In these instances, SPPs provide the appearance of a gag when there is none actually there. Today's Garfield, for instance.

Technical trouble

I'm having trouble with uploading images to Blogger. I'll have to make do.

There are two silent penultimate panels today:

Andy Capp by Roger Mahoney and Roger Kettle -- Here, Andy Capp is at a bar with a guy reading a newspaper. Capp stares blankly at the pint of beer in front of him. No doubt he is contemplating how life has slipped by and how he keeps putting off the colonoscopy that his doctor says he needs.

Sherman's Lagoon by Jim Toomey -- Here Sherman's wife stares blankly at the newspaper in front of her. Sherman looks on longingly, no doubt remembering their first year together, when the music they danced to seemed fresh and all colors around them brighter.

I'll try to get the pictures up later; I might be reading more into these than I should.

Update 1/18
Ta-dah:

Max

Two on this Tuesday:

Cow and Boy by Mark Leiknes
Piranha Club by Bud Grace

Something about that Cow and Boy panel disturbs me. A talking cow and a boy naked but for overalls--they allow this in the paper?



The extended family circus is filled with these sorts of one-shot, random characters. They appear just for the sake of a gag. In this instance, Max has a champion goatee of the kind only worn by nineteen year old rap metal bass players from the Inland Empire. With this sort of influence, Billy will be making backyard wrestling videos of himself falling in to racks of fluorescent light bulbs at the age of fifteen.

Monday

Four today:

Baby Blues by Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott
Cathy by Cathy Guisewite
Drabble by Kevin Fagan
Hagar the Horrible by Chris Browne

That's all I have time for, regular feature-length posts will return tomorrow. Thanks for being patient with me this weekend.

Snappy

Three SPPs for this Sunday:

Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson
Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller
Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis

Adam@Home and Pooch Cafe don't quite count, but they still suffer from awkward rhythm. Snappier almost always equals funnier.