Walky, I don’t think this is such a great idea.
on May 20, 2017 at 12:01 amOn the one hand, yes, Joyce, make your voice heard. Walky should have consulted with you first on this.
On the other hand, it’s kind of upsetting that we’re still equating sex with destruction.
And on maybe the foot somewhere, jeez, Willis, I know at this point you’re averse to drawing the mouth anywhere but floating on the middle of the cheek, but in the first panel Walky is FACING AWAY FROM US so just, like, embrace proper mouth placement, just that once. I see you did in the final panel, if only to make the smooch actually land! Baby steps, I know, come on, but hurry it up, man.
Originally posted:
September 8, 2002
Aslo says Also,
Never noticed the mouth in panel 1.
It looks… really goofy.
Also,
I didn’t interpret this as Joyce equating sex with DOOOOOM!, but she does understand that moving in before a first date is moving too fast.
And she may be using anecdotal evidence, but it’s from a source very emotionally close to her. I understood it to be less about sex being dangerous, and more….
more how moving too fast in a relationship can be damaging to it.
That was also my reading. I mean, she clearly points out her problem with /two beds/ so probably she’s not really thinking about sex, but about the sharing of a private space, the “jumping of the gun” of going too quickly.
willis is likely remembering his state of mind while writing this. but, to be fair, given joyce’s occasional instability, restraint may not be unwarranted. i’m sure she’ll be fine, though! ^_^
Sidemouthed-robot Walky is the best Walky.
“STOP! If we do what we want to do, we’ll–”
“–enjoy it?”
“EXACTLY”
…fuckin’ hangups, this culture
G-Gotcha!
Why are you in costume?
Get on the rooftop
ALL RIGHT THAT’S IT
Where ya going
Blow to the head
Is someone in the vents?
Bitter sour buttcheese!
It’s a bloody tradition.
HONK!
I’m in your MIND!
Sal, you’re out of control!
Family troubles?
Giant pulsating guns!
Goodbye forever
Wasn’t it sorta obvious
Really unnecessary
Seven Mountain Dews
Old, Cold, and Alone
This is a proper meal
Help me bury this
Jared’s Subway Diet
This is war
Without Walkerton
Big Boss is down
SEMME wants to get rid of all their Subway-related merchandise, and Subway retaliates by declaring war. Walkerton defects out of a love for sandwiches, and Big Boss is killed in the ensuing struggle.
nonsense
I got it!
Gotcha both!
I LOVE CATS HONEST
Oh! Oh, hi, Dina.
Hey, Doggy.
Keep in mind that they’re giving Joyce sex-related objects
Friend party
Joe & Joyce Journey Through Art History, page 4
Mr. Hormones
Not only is the mouth on the cheek, he’s also doing a triangle smile.
That’s sure some random exposition backstory shade on your parents there, Joyce.
So…. sleeping in DIFFERENT BEDS is a problem now?
If so, you can avoid that by sleeping in the same bed!
Kinda weird that Joyce still had hangups about this stuff considering she’s not fundie-level religious at this point in this strip.
You could always just argue it’s her being subconsciously affected by her upbringing even if she’s not consciously being a fundamentalist
well th
This is clearly only happening in Joyce’s imagination. Just look at the characters tag
Don’t flame past Willis’ style so much, current Willis! While your style today is different, the one displayed here does make sense, too, and is quite appropriate for this strip.
Walky’s mouth is not on his cheek. We’re just seeing the lower part of his face from the front while we see the head overall in the diagonally-from-left-behind direction that matches the scene’s perspective. If it works for Picasso, I don’t see why it shouldn’t work for past Willis, seeing that is was executed just right:
– You (or at least I) read it intuitively “correctly” instead of verbatim, even (or rather especially) unconsciously. You see Walky’s facial expressions and feel his emotions, while also noticing where he’s supposed to look.
– Only when consciously considering how the cartoon graphics would translate to a photorealistic image (or a still cartooney, Pixar-style 3D scene) does one notice that the mouth placement doesn’t make anatomic sense when interpreted verbatim. (Picasso didn’t manage to do that for me with most of his multi-perspective-face pictures. If your past self’s suspension of disbelief is better than Picasso’s, you can be quite proud of that, I think. :-D)
So I’d say, even though maybe accidentally, the mouth placement here makes clever use of conventions established by certain styles of cartoons (not just Willis’ own comics) that we got used to interpret “right” (and that look “right” to us) even though they look “wrong” when rethinking them. If you’d keep the scene perspectives of the frames here but would place the mouths “correctly”, we wouldn’t be able to read Walky’s facial expressions so well, as we’d only see his hear and maybe an ear.
s/hear/hair/
Well… sex may not equal destruction, but unplanned pregnancy can be, and it sounds like that is what Joyce is referring to here. I may be wrong, though.
I mean, I can kinda see your point; I’m not a fan of the whole “side mouth” thing either. But in that panel, combined with his exceedingly simple eye, it adds a cartoonish innocence that I think actually helps portray how Walky is not thinking ahead and just kinda doing what first comes to mind like a kid would.
It’s totally not like having sex too quickly can destroy relationships.
Oh wait, it can, and has, on millions of occasions.