Some Parts Work / Some Parts Don’t
Today has one of those subtle moments where you can tell we are in Canada. I am speaking of the blue-coloured money Elly has in her hands to pay her bills. This is the first part of today’s reprint of For Better or For Worse that makes sense.
The second part that works is little Lizzie latching onto the wrong leg. I can speak from experience that I have been latched onto by small children who thought I looked like their father from the knee down. Although those kids did not SHRIEK! like Lizzie did, they definitely looked disconcerted when they realized I was not their dad.
The premise of the strip is that Elly and this man are wearing the same jeans and Lizzie got confused which was which from the knee down (joke is that Elly’s legs are very manly). We even see in Panel 4, 2 sets of legs with jeans on them and Lizzie attached to one of them to emphasize this. The problem is that we never see Elly’s pants. We don’t know if the set of legs Lizzie is not grabbing in Panel 4 belong to Elly, or if Elly is even wearing jeans. In fact, there is some evidence she is not. Panels 1 and 3 show the people standing around Elly, and they do not look like the people standing around the man with jeans in Panel 5. Moreover, in Panel 3, Elly is looking around and cannot see Lizzie. If Lizzie was right next to her, as the Panel 4 picture of 4 legs in jeans might suggest, then you would think Elly could spot her easily.
For these reasons, it does not make any sense when the man says, “Same jeans…Wrong leg!” unless Elly is wearing jeans also. The joke does not work unless you can see clearly Elly is wearing jeans. Otherwise, you just sit there wondering why it is that Elly couldn’t spot Lizzie standing right next to her.
The second part that works is little Lizzie latching onto the wrong leg. I can speak from experience that I have been latched onto by small children who thought I looked like their father from the knee down. Although those kids did not SHRIEK! like Lizzie did, they definitely looked disconcerted when they realized I was not their dad.
The premise of the strip is that Elly and this man are wearing the same jeans and Lizzie got confused which was which from the knee down (joke is that Elly’s legs are very manly). We even see in Panel 4, 2 sets of legs with jeans on them and Lizzie attached to one of them to emphasize this. The problem is that we never see Elly’s pants. We don’t know if the set of legs Lizzie is not grabbing in Panel 4 belong to Elly, or if Elly is even wearing jeans. In fact, there is some evidence she is not. Panels 1 and 3 show the people standing around Elly, and they do not look like the people standing around the man with jeans in Panel 5. Moreover, in Panel 3, Elly is looking around and cannot see Lizzie. If Lizzie was right next to her, as the Panel 4 picture of 4 legs in jeans might suggest, then you would think Elly could spot her easily.
For these reasons, it does not make any sense when the man says, “Same jeans…Wrong leg!” unless Elly is wearing jeans also. The joke does not work unless you can see clearly Elly is wearing jeans. Otherwise, you just sit there wondering why it is that Elly couldn’t spot Lizzie standing right next to her.
posted by howard at 10:45 PM
2 Comments:
For these reasons, it does not make any sense when the man says, “Same jeans…Wrong leg!” unless Elly is wearing jeans also. The joke does not work unless you can see clearly Elly is wearing jeans. Otherwise, you just sit there wondering why it is that Elly couldn’t spot Lizzie standing right next to her.It seems to me that we're supposed to assume that Elly is wearing jeans; that's probably because Lynn used wearing them as visual shorthand for "person trying to be trendy". This matches her use of overalls as the all-purpose casual garment for children under twelve.
Here's a tidbit for you, howtheduck. In the strip as it appears in More Than a Month of Sundays, the left-side "jeans" in the fourth panel are green. So when I read the strip there, I never interpreted those legs as belonging to Elly. Instead, I thought Liz had been holding onto the mystery leg long enough for Elly to walk away into another panel.
The bearer of the jeans seems to me one of those gender-ambiguous people Lynn draws from time to time. I'd initially read this a s a woman (especially based on the last-panel face), but in panel five, I do see what looks like a male torso.
My other question is why did John forget his glasses and then stand in line behind Elly, yet take no part in helping her find Liz? (Okay, I know that's not supposed to be John, but he looks like John in panel three, while in the first panel, his jaw is too square to be John's.)
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