Thursday, June 20, 2013

Hi and Lois interstice fail


[Hi and Lois, June 20, 2013.]

Anything can happen in the Hi and Lois interstice: furniture can disappear, hairstyles can change (if they can be called hairstyles). I have seen these things with my very own eyes, and they make me feel like Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight.

No, wait: I now believe that I am Ingrid Bergman. The Flagstons have made me mad.

The best explanation I can manage for today’s strip: it’s the work of a two-man operation. Let not thy right panel know what thy left panel doeth.

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

comments: 4

Anonymous said...

Because the characters exchange place in the two panels, the viewer is seeing two opposite walls of the same room. It is something like a two-camera shot for a sit-com. Let us call this a sit-comic. If inter + sistere = to stand between, then one need only know where to stand -- between. No?

Michael Leddy said...

But then we’d be seeing the backs of their chairs, no?

Anonymous said...

Were it picture perfect, it wouldn't be a cartoon, of course. This is always an interesting problem for film and video, which is why the continuity advisor is often crucial to a director's success (Or cartoonist's clarity). I wager the intent is as I suggested, while the execution is "less than." But perfection would render cartoons into reality. Some have quite enough of reality already, wouldn't you agree? (This comment becomes most amusing, as the Captcha proof requires typing "being." All too Jean-Paul without the exit.)

Michael Leddy said...

I’m not looking for reality in comic strips. But I do want to see the furniture remain in place when we’re in the same scene. :) Or change appropriately.

I’d say that cartoon perfection might be something very far from reality: for instance, the stylized world of Nancy, or the minimalism of Peanuts. But a dictionary with thumb notches along the top edge (another Hi and Lois wonder) is just a mistake.