Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, October 21, 2019. Click for a larger view.]

Anything can happen in a Hi and Lois interstice. Take today’s strip: the window has moved behind Ditto after losing its glass and strangely placed muntin. (I think that’s a muntin.) Or Ditto has moved to the empty chair, which would seem to require that the table has added a fifth side to accommodate Chip. A pepper shaker has appeared on the table. The burgers have gone from “Tasty” to “Ug.” Properly spelled ugh. But Hi still isn’t home from work.

Other things I notice: Ditto’s chair curves at the top, which means that the chairs are not a matching set. Unless Lois “clears” by first removing cutlery, the meal has been eaten without forks and knives, and perhaps without napkins. Which makes me wonder what might have been served from that bowl.

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Hi and Lois watch

[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 watch

[Hi and Lois, May 27, 2019.]

The Flagstons have now had two cookouts in two days. That’s odd.

Lois’s willingness to placate this “neighbor”? That’s odd. A better reply: “Sorry, but today it’s for our family only,” followed by a weak smile.

Not so odd, considering how things sometimes go in this strip: Hi and his grill have traded places in the interstice. In the second panel the grill should be to Hi’s left.

The Flagstons’ tree, frustrated by recent developments in this strip, has chosen not to appear in the second panel. The tree is hiding, for now, in the interstice.

I now imagine Ditto at the family table: “Mom, Dad, I found him in our tree fort the other day.”

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[Three Hi and Lois posts in three days? Yes, but I thought it’d be irresponsible not to make this post.]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, May 25, 2019. Click for a larger view.]

Anything can happen in a Hi and Lois interstice. Here, it appears, both the trapdoor and Thirsty Thurston have changed position. I’m not sure which of the two is less likely to have moved.

The tired misogyny of the “He-Man Woman Haters Club” dates to 1937. Give it up, boys.

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Nancy interstice

[Nancy, April 17, 2019. Click for a larger view.]

Snooty nameless girl from the magnet school has reappeared: “Well, well — what a coincidence. Fancy running into Esther’s friend here.”

Olivia Jaimes is rocking the interstice.

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[I owe my acquaintance with interstice to the poetry of Ted Berrigan. “Interstices” is a one-word poem in In the Early Morning Rain (1970) and the title of a poem in A Certain Slant of Sunlight (1988). I’ve had occasion to use interstice only in relation to comic strips.]

Mark Trail’s side-eye

[Mark Trail, November 27, 2018. Click for a larger view.]

I would like to imagine that in the interstice, Mark has dashed in front of the other guy, the better to give him the old side-eye. But what’s “strange” here? That someone has an education? And went away from “the jungle,” to a school, to get it? Does Mark believe in (so-called) distance learning for place-bound students?

And speaking of education: if Mark were a little better educated, he might spell José with an acute accent. And the other guy might speak a little less clumsily: “Well, now that you mention it, he does seem highly educated for someone who claims to have grown up around the jungle. But I think he said he went away to school somewhere!”

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[“The other guy”: aka What’s-his-face, aka “Professor Carter.” Wait, he’s a professor? I know that not everyone spells José with an accent. But in the work of an Anglo cartoonist, its absence looks like a mistake.]

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, July 7, 2018. Click for a much larger view.]

I doubt that Nancy has ever stepped into a church. Or if she has, it was probably to “borrow” a dime from the collection box (for a soda). Or candles for Sluggo’s birthday cake. Or something. All that aside: today’s strip is a pleasing assembly of comic-strip characters, all of whom attend a Christian house of worship with non-representational stained-glass windows. From front to back, left to right, I see Nancy, Curtis Wilkins, Dennis the Menace, Mary Worth, Archie Andrews, Earl Pickles (where’s Opal?), Popeye the Sailor, Perfesser Cosmo Fishhawk (Shoe), and Dick Tracy. The couple in the second row, the guy with the red tie, and the angry-looking bird: no idea. Anyone? A little help?

A mystery of the Hi and Lois interstice: the guy with the red tie changes his seat between the first and second panels.

July 8: Eric Reaves, the strip’s artist, explained in a comment at Comics Kingdom: “The couple is my wife and I (the artist of the strip). The red tie guy is a character I created many years ago for a rejected comic strip idea, and the lady in purple is my grandmother!”

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[Perhaps that bird is an Angry Bird. The Angry Birds now have a comic strip.]

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.

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Lawn, goodbye (Hi and Lois)

There seems to be a new person working the line at Hi-Lo Amalgamated. Interstice problems — the changing door, the changing greenery, the disappearing picture — are the same old same old. What’s new: the Flagstons’ front door now opens onto the sidewalk. Lawn, goodbye, for now.

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Hi and Lois and hair

Now I understand Chip's strange appearance earlier this week: there must be a new stylist at work at Hi and Lois, so dedicated, so passionate, that he or she is working even in the interstice, as in today's strip, cutting, parting, shaping, volumizing. New looks! And new colors. Thirsty has always — always — had "blond" hair — that is, yellow.

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Interstice

[Hi and Lois, October 25, 2008.]

I sometimes wonder whether the panels of Hi and Lois strips are a matter of piecework. (I've read that eight people "animate" the strip, whatever that means.) Composition by piecework is a plausible explanation of the odd continuity problems that vex the Flagstons, as in today's strip.

Or could it be that Hi and Lois is asking us to think about what happens in the strip's interstice? Are we to understand that while Hi ties, Lois makes the bed, rearranges the furniture, and adds depth to the headboard?

Nah, I didn't really think so either.

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