Hi and Lois, the sixtieth anniversary

I’ve noticed in recent weeks that the artwork in Hi and Lois seems to be getting better. I don’t think it’s my imagination: as I learned today, the strip is nearing its sixtieth anniversary, a good reason to neaten up. People are watching. You can read more about the anniversary here and here. But let me make my case about the art:


[Hi and Lois, September 16, 2014.]

Those walls! Or is it wall? This panel has the general strangeness that has prompted me to speculate that the Flagstons live in a German Expressionist suburb. See also this 2011 interior.

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[Hi and Lois, September 19, 2014.]

The rooms of the Flagston house are often rendered, at least in the daily strip, in the most minimal way: white space and dripping black lines. The panel above is representative.

*


[Hi and Lois, October 17, 2014.]

Again with the dripping lines. But the background is, well, backier. Things are getting better.

*


[Hi and Lois, October 11, 2014.]

Here too, a better background. I especially like the care the artist has taken with the clapboards. Consider this 2008 panel as a contrast.

*

Sunday’s Hi and Lois always seems more carefully drawn. And for some time now, the Sunday strip has been getting its gradients on. (Does any other strip vary so much between daily and Sunday modes?) But look at the difference between these Sunday panels:


[Hi and Lois, September 28, 2014.]

The only real background: Lois. Lois, you’re a fine woman. You deserve better.


[Hi and Lois, October 12, 2014.]

The amount of background detail in this panel from today’s strip is especially noteworthy. Depth!

I look forward to the week of Hi and Lois anniversary strips that starts tomorrow. It will be interesting to see what happens to the strip’s art after that.

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[Uh-oh: you might want to read the added bit at the end of the post before continuing.]

I daresay many a close reader will be troubled by the calendar in today’s Hi and Lois. In saying “many a close reader,” I mean me.


[Hi and Lois, February 2, 2020.]

Yes, a calendar’s weeks can begin on any day. But even the iOS Calendar app notes that Sunday is the “United States default.” Today’s strip is not the first Hi and Lois with time-management trouble. See also a 2009 calendar with twelve twenty-eight-day months.

It’s easy to make things less troubling:


[Hi and Lois revised, February 2, 2020.]

I can’t do anything about the annunciatory dialogue in this panel, which sets up a gag about six more hours of football season. No, wait — Irma and Lois have taken charge.


[Hi and Lois revised again, February 2, 2020. Click any image for a larger view.]

The wives have left this kitchen and gone out for dinner. The guys can get their own guacamole.

As the son of a tile man, I regret that Irma and Lois have taken the tile with them. Oh well.

*

11:27 a.m.: Uh-oh. Fresca points out in a comment that the X marks a crossed-off Saturday, February 1. I assumed that it signifies the Big Day. It never occurred to me that the X might mean anything other than the Big Day. Oh well (again). It was a fun mistake to make.

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[I used the free Mac app Seashore to alter the original.]

The cabinet of Hi and Lois

I don't want to keep going with Hi and Lois, but I must. (If nothing else, close-reading Hi and Lois offers a break from the looniness of the real.)

Today's strip reminds me of the children's game of spotting the differences between pictures. Did the same hand draw both panels?

[Hi and Lois, September 2, 2008.]

The curtains shorten.

The window panes widen.

The glazing bars shrink. (Thanks, Wikipedia.)

The painting (a Cy Twombly?) shrinks and moves up and away.

Lois's shirt is on backwards. (Kidding.)

Note too that the window sill does not follow the slant of the wall — more disturbingly so in the second panel. The Flagstons must be living in a German Expressionist suburb, next door to the Caligaris.

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Hi and Lois' dictionary

[Hi and Lois, September 12, 2008.]

Thumb-notches at the top! Not drawn from life.

[Yes, they're thumb-notches. The alphabetical tabs are thumb-index tabs or index tabs. Thumb-indexing or thumb-notching goes back to at least the late 19th century. I wrote to Merriam-Webster years ago to ask what those thingamajigs are called, never guessing that the reply would be relevant to Hi and Lois.]

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[Hi and Lois, January 10, 2012.]

[Hi and Lois, January 16, 2012.]

Though its characters haven’t aged in years, the Hi and Lois world is ever in flux. Furniture disappears and windows change shape in the interstices; a neighbor changes his hair color and no one says a thing. I like the contrast between the speech balloons above: first Hi’s risqué suggestion, then the twins’ cheerful cure for Lois’s seasonal affective disorder.¹ I notice too that the windows have again changed shape.

But there’s a more fundamental difference (as Professor Gingrich might say) between the above panels. Notice how the art has changed: as of January 15, every character, every object, every speech balloon is enclosed by a thick Sharpie-like line. I’ve read that eight people “animate” the strip: it looks as if they’re taking turns.

Update, January 22: Things are back to normal on the Hi-Lo production line. (But that shadow?)

[Hi and Lois, January 22, 2012.]

¹ Re: seasonal affective disorder: that’s what Lois thinks is wrong. I suspect though that it has something to do with Hi’s clumsy attempt to “turn up the heat.”

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In today’s Hi and Lois, the talk has shifted to “the new series on Netflix.” “I thought this was a book club,” sniffs Lois.

[Hi and Lois, September 28, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

The third hand from the left: is it on Lois’s leg? I don’t think so. I think there must have been a problem with the instructions for the assembly of today’s strip. Or to say it less fancifully: the colorist messed up.

[Hi and Lois, September 28, 2021, labeled by me. Click for a larger view.]

I think that Part A, or at least part of Part A, is really the arm of the middle character’s chair and should be green. Part B is Lois’s other pant leg and should be blue. I think.

As for figuring out the oddly shaped book in Lois’s lap: I give up.

[Click for a larger view.]

*

6:08 p.m.: I think I have it: the small brown and white patches should be green. They form the arm of Lois’s chair in partial profile.

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[Is there such a dearth of imagination at Hi-Lo Amalgamated that all three characters must wear pants of the same or nearly the same color? Maybe it’s the club uniform.]

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[Hi and Lois, September 9, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

No masks, no distancing in today’s Hi and Lois ? Okay, it’s the comics. But no legs on the desks? There’s a way to fix that problem.

[Hi and Lois revised, September 9, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

If you look closely, you’ll see that I’ve made another revision that all self-respecting teachers should appreciate.

*

An observant reader points out that the dog on the poster is Odie from Garfield. Thanks, Kevin. And we agree, given that it’s a Garfield poster, it should come down.

[Hi and Lois revised again, September 9, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

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In August 2008, the sight of baby Trixie riding in the front seat of a car turned me from casual Hi and Lois reader to close reader. No job too small!

In today’s strip, Trixie is wondering about where the dirt in the vacuum cleaner goes:


[Hi and Lois, June 16, 2010.]

The scene calls for some sort of response. I think I have it: HI! AND LOIS! CHILD-PROOF YOUR OUTLETS! Yes, I’m shouting.


[Hi and Lois, June 16, 2010, with reader-supplied outlet cover.]

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[Hi and Lois, June 1, 2019. Click for a larger view.]

Credit where it’s due: Hi and his suburban signifier trade places nicely in the second panel. That’s a significant improvement over Monday’s strip. And let’s grant that as Hi tends to his lawn, he has moved past an inert Thirsty. Still, there’s a problem with today’s strip: the overgrown lawn that prompts Hi’s question is missing from the first panel. Look at the second panel: the grass is nearing the top of the fence. Does grass grow in an interstice? If not, the problem might be solved by beginning with a closeup. And not until — wait for it — the second panel do we get to see the disaster that is the Thurston backyard. The delay might make for a better joke:


[Hi and Lois revised. Click for a larger view.]

Or maybe they should have just drawn the grass to begin with. I dunno. But given reality, I’ll take the problems in Hi and Lois any day.

*

As Elaine points out in a comment, the fencepost switches sides. It’s always something.

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[Hi and Lois, September 2, 2021.]

Wrong-way swodniw are a fact of life in Hi and Lois. Though that’s not necessarily a wrong-way window. Lois and Trixie could be dining al fresco in today’s Hi and Lois. But it sure don’t look it.

More troubling than the window: the menu has a picture of a juice box. Jeez.

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[Yes, swodniw is a plural.]

9 - 6 = 3

[Hi and Lois, September 6, 2008.]

Shouldn't that arithmetic problem be on the blackboard, where it belongs?

The levitating oval and triangle on the dresser must be a perfume bottle. But it took me several long looks to figure out the objects stuck in the door. Fishhooks? Safety pins? Darts? If you give up and would like to see my best guess, highlight the empty space following the colon: perspiration.

[Second-guessing: that could be an Ad Reinhardt, not a blackboard.]

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[Hi and Lois, July 31, 2013.]

Says Hi, “Housewives used to dress up to greet their husbands when they came home from work.”

Yes, and houses used to have their kitchens not in the living room. See the three little windows? You can’t tell me that that door isn’t front. It’s possible that Hi has walked around the house and entered through the kitchen — which would make him a back-door man in his own damn house. But that’s still a front door. And yes, there aren’t enough chairs.

And why is Hi under the impression that Lois is a “housewife”? Wake up, Mr. Flagston: your wife has been working since 1980. A 1984 chart tracking the strip’s history marks the event: “Lois Joins the Women’s Movement and Gets a Job Selling Real Estate” — aka Etatse Laer.

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[The chart appears in Mort Walker and Dik Browne’s The Best of “Hi and Lois” (1986).]

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[Hi and Lois, February 24, 2013.]

Yes, this post is the third Hi and Lois post in four days. But you know what Dr. Johnson said: “When a man is tired of Hi and Lois, he is tired of life.” Although it is true that he spoke in the earliest years of this long-running strip.

In 2008, I noticed that Trixie was riding in the front seat of the Flagston family car. Ever since I’ve kept an eye out for Hi-Lo incongruities and mishaps. In 2010, Trixie was stashed in the back of the family’s station wagon. So I feel honor-bound to note that today Trixie rides safely in a car seat.

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[I know: Lois isn’t wearing a seat belt.]

House?

The siding contractor has walked off the job.

You can see what the artist is after in the three Ernie Bushmiller panels at the top of this page. In Nancy, the result is elegant. In Hi and Lois, just clumsy. Time marches.

[Hi and Lois, August 29, 2008.]

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[Hi and Lois, December 16, 2013.]


[Hi and Lois corrected, December 16, 2013.]

Good answer, Hi. But I had to do something about the faulty mirror — or is that a vampire bracelet?

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[All Hi and Lois repairs made with OEM parts and Seashore, an open-source image editor for Mac.]

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[Hi and Lois , April 30, 2016.]

It’s not the first time that Hi and Lois has given us a facade that opens onto an interior room. I almost expect to see more of the kitchen out in the front yard. And those angles. Granted, the glimpse of the kitchen (salad, pepper mill, and — is it wine?) is a way to signal party . But some tastefully festooned decorations could have made the point as well, or better. Shoes always help, too.


[Hi and Lois , April 30, 2016.]

Does the ostensible host even live in this house? If she does, she should know that the kitchen is — or was? — in the other direction. Perhaps she’s taking a shortcut. Notice the motion lines. Or is that a stray piece of baseboard?

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[Hi and Lois, April 26, 2012.]

There are five-string cellos, and there are left-handed cellists, Charlie Chaplin among them. And there may be, somewhere, a left-handed five-string cellist. But come on.

If there is an in-joke here, it remains very inner. To the average comics reader, or to me, today’s Hi and Lois will look merely goofy. I made a few improvements in about five seven ten minutes, using the open-source Mac image-editor Seashore. Nothing to be done about those F-holes though. Skritch.

[Hi and Lois, later that same day.]

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[“Very inner”: after the poet Ted Berrigan: “There’s a great inner logic to this poem, which I try to keep very inner.”]

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I noticed a Flagston thermostat, or “thermostat,” in 2009. And an improved thermostat in 2012. A “thermostat” returns in today’s Hi and Lois, as the strip mines the apparently inexhaustible comic premise that Dad will see his family freeze rather than turn up the heat. Thrifty Dad! Now the whole family can fight over Trixie’s sunbeam.

[Hi and Lois, December 30, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

Perhaps the colorist wanted to call attention to the thing on the wall. And Nest thermostats do make use of color. But not like that. I suspect that the Flagston wall is meant to hold what it appeared to hold in 2012: a Honeywell T87, a classic mid-century design. Allow me:

[Hi and Lois revised, December 30, 2022. Click for a larger view.]

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Dot Flagston has just wished that it were possible to celebrate “the holidays” earlier. Because right now the world is a carousel of color, sort of:


[Hi and Lois, October 9, 2017.]

Today’s Hi and Lois makes me think of the first sentence of a poem I made from remarks of my then-very-young daughter Rachel: “The colors are / broken.” They are, indeed. And I’m certainly not going to take the time to fix them. Tinkering with what’s in the balloon makes things dumber and funnier:


[Hi and Lois, altered, October 9, 2017.]

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Hi and Lois caption challenge

[Hi and Lois modified, January 6, 2011.]

My wife Elaine suggested that I turn this Hi and Lois panel into a caption contest. So I have. Take your best shot in the comments. And please, keep things relatively clean. I know, I know: Ditto is dripping all over the floor. But still I ask: keep it clean. (My mom reads my blog.)

I’ll send a pair of Black Pearl erasers to the winning entry. Or entries, maybe. I’m making this up as I go.

Please post your captions by 12:00 p.m. Central Time / 6:00 p.m. GMT, January 8. (Central Time=GMT-6.)

January 8, 1:15 p.m.: The winners have been announced in the comments.

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