I’m not going to admit how long I spent obsessing over this strip, struggling for the punchline. After getting some feedback from friends (and of course Mrs. Shoebox) I finally realized that the “Mr. Supdawg” bit, which was originally squeezed into the second panel, was the best line I had – so I promoted it to punchline. It reads a bit wrong to me now, but I’m hoping this is just because I spent so long staring at it in the middle of the strip that I somehow feel that’s where it belongs. Whatever, I’m posting it, and I can go on with my life now.
Rejected punchlines included:
1. LEFT: “Dammit, you just had to mention Steve Martin. Now I can’t set it on fire.”
2. LEFT: “He’s going to be part of my new exhibition.” RIGHT: “I thought you were doing a piece on animal cruelty!” LEFT: “Picture him holding a cow’s tail in his left hand, and wearing a name tag that says ‘Spanky.’”
3. RIGHT: “It’s like Martin Short’s Ed Grimley fucked Pinnochio, and started a
career in the JCPenney Activewear department.” (Suggested by the great Luke Ski)
4. RIGHT: “Well, I’ll go put him next to the stuffed woodchuck that looks like
Alf taking a shit.” (Also suggested by the great Luke Ski. I feel like I learned a lot about Luke this week.)
MRS. SHOEBOX’S ASSESSMENT OF TODAY’S STRIP (final version): Better. I’m not laughing, because it’s only because this is the fifth time you’ve shown me this thing.
In other news, check out the new random tagline thingy on the top of the page, courtesy of our wondrous Webmistress, Sara Trice! So far I’ve only got a handful up – refresh the page to collect ‘em all! Suggestions for additional taglines are of course more than welcome.
Planning to return to the “two strips a week” thing starting next week. See you then!
-=ShoEboX=-
Struggling to think what the ninth syllable of the “dawg” part is. Are you saying it’s an extended “daaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwg”? If so, I don’t consider that to be more than one syllable. Sorry if I’m ruining the joke by overanalyzing.
Brandon, I will see your overanalyze and raise you an nitpick: If dude’s a mannequin, why isn’t his shirttail hanging straight down? The artist did a decent job of conveying motion. And dorkdom.
In answer to the nitpick: Easy. His shirttail isn’t hanging down because it has been fastened to make it LOOK like he’s in motion. You know how those mannequin-dressers are.
He was a perfectly normal mannequin until a burning barrel of clearance T-shirts got lodged behind his knees and they had to lift him out of the fire by his forearms.
I want a douchey mannequin
This mannequin needs the FPSRussia treatment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP4FjODPDFA
Yeah, the “ninth syllable of dawg” didn’t make any sense to me either. I think we need author clarification on that.
The rest of the comic was good, though, and the characters amalgamated together do indeed look like the mannequin in question.
Is it too rude to suggest this as a tagline?
Planning to return to the “two strips a week” thing starting next week.
The “ninth syllable” thing was not meant to be taken literally – just as a goofy way of describing how long the word was held and the style in which it was said (I picture it with a bit of tremolo, personally.) Clearly this is either stupid or just didn’t come across the way I’d hoped.
-=’Box=-
First thing I thought of “He needs an orange T shirt.” And that was *before* I read the comments about Luke
I think a more appropriate word, instead of “syllable” would have been “mora” – since that is the technical unit that defines the length of a syllable.