Hard Read

[prog]

I finally just got the joke in this PBF comic after encountering it for the third time. It's pretty funny, but it should have emphasized more that the book-people aren't looking at each other in the middle panel. In fairness, I suppose this is tricky to do if your characters lack faces.

(At first I thought maybe the man-book was apologizing for impotence or something, but that didn't really explain why they're books in the first place. I found myself feeling a whisper of 6th-grade anxiety that here was a dirty joke that all my friends were laughing at while it only perplexed me.)

Comments

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

You must have actually done the reading when you were in school. Those of us who slacked away with Cliff or Monarch Notes are probably in better position to get the joke.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Do they still sell Cliff's Notes? I'd imagine Wikipedia's obviated a large part of their value.

I was totallly Cliff's Cultured, so that as soon as I saw the yellow-and-black I got the joke. But it took me a long time to see it. (Something to do with the naked lady being in the same panel, probably.)

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

I thought that was funny, too.

[toonhead-npl.livejournal.com]

It took me a sec or two to see it as well. If it were Monarch Notes, it would have jumped right out and I would have gotten it immediately.

[queue.livejournal.com]

On a first read, it didn't even register with me that there was even a CliffsNotes book there. I agree that something more should have been done to point at it.

[cortezopossum.livejournal.com]

I had the same reaction. One simple way would be to add a ! above the woman-book with a dotted line from her 'eye' to the cliff notes but that's an old old method which probably would have been common in the 1930s. Zip-a-tone to shade everything but the area around the cliff notes would also work but would also be more of a 1960s-1970s style.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Likewise. I went back and forth between panels 2 and 3 for a while before I picked up that detail - and then dredged up what CliffsNotes were. I never used them.

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

I LOVED that it wasn't telegraphed from a mile away. That's what makes some of the funniest PBF comics--it takes you a moment to get them, so the payoff is that much funnier.

[prog.livejournal.com]

The problem is that following characters' gazes is a tried-and-true way to highlight something with a dash of subtlety, so the cartoonist chose to emloy that here - overlooking the fact that it's rather difficult to tell what a person with a book for a head is looking at.