Early update for September 29, 2025
Added 2025-09-28 03:55:01 +0000 UTClike a potato
Comments
I'm trying to figure out how Dorothy's pose in the first panel reads as so goofy. She has her right hand behind her back—often an indication of delivering rehearsed dialogue—but her left hand is waving in a gesture that she seems to use to minimize or make less serious what she's saying. Her weight is on her rear foot, but her trunk is tilted back as if she's not really walking in the direction she's going. She is seen over Hank's shoulder in the foreground: this establishes that she's addressing him; her screen size shows her distance from the Hank/Becky/Joyce cluster. Willis carefully includes the shadow of her leg in the light from the windows—I don't think he needs it to establish the plane of the floor with the edge of the (?) carpet present, but our author is typically careful about light sources, and this is one more case. The character-dancing continues, with Dorothy supplanting Jocelyne in proximity to Joyce. Joyce's contact with Dorothy in panels 4 and 5 starts with her right hand around Dorothy's neck from the back and left hand on left shoulder from the front, their heads adjacent as we get Hank's point of view as Joyce starts to babble and Dorothy flashes the goofy toothy smile. Then they separate a bit to do some new-lovers gushing, with Joyce's right hand on Dorothy's left shoulder from the side, all portrayed in a point of view that's either objective narrative or (maybe coincidentally) Jocelyne's. Becky, who entered this scene in a confident and equal conversation with Hank, is now grimly taking in the unmistakable situation from a position firmly behind Hank. In my comment yesterday I only pointed out the aspect of this scene that has Joyce and Dorothy just barely beating the IDS front page to out themselves to Hank, but I now agree with other commenters as far as giving a lot of weight to their motivation to dilute the blow from Jocelyne's incipient revelation. Jocelyne doesn't sound pleased at the interruption, but Joyce and Dorothy are a force of nature at this point. It's never just one thing going on in Willis's writing. The borderless panel has Hank correctly pointing out that he's been lied to since he arrived. We readers know the motivations in play, and many of us guess that Hank can ultimately be trusted once he gets the real facts to work with, but he's had four people he cares about basically singing and dancing around him, and he's not enjoying the show.
Dan Rabin
2025-09-28 21:19:02 +0000 UTCI was waiting for someone else to make this joke so I wouldn’t have to.
Tifani
2025-09-28 18:17:18 +0000 UTC*borat voice* my wife
Jasmijn Wellner
2025-09-28 17:41:44 +0000 UTC
