I thought of this reading the Luanne thread, but decided I should start a new thread. Is it just my dirty mind or do a lot of comics have very subtle, unstated undertones- one might say “sexual tensions”- between their characters?
The best current example I can think of is the current storyline in Judge Parker. Neddy(sp?) is being taken to the prom by Rowland, the son of the psychiatrist she was seeing for anger management. I swear that Rowland’s mother’s jealousy borders on the incestuous (which of course they could never ever state explicitly).
I wonder if comic authors do occasionally put stuff in their strips for people to “read between the lines”.
Outstanding! I’ve inspired something on my second post!
Truly, I’ve always found the final frame of every installment of Sally Forth to be just totally filthy in its double entendre-ness. Seriously, just read the final line out of context and you’ll what I mean. Plus, they’re always smirking, you know, and that makes it seem so much dirtier. Even the little girl’s gotten in on it.
D’oh! Earl of Sandwich beat me to it.
Arlo + Janis does occasionally have a sexual subtext. There was one I remeber from several years back where the son (Gene?) was visiting a friend’s house with another friend. The first friend’s mom served them some snack or something, and the second friend nudged Gene and made the unmistakeable hand gesture recognized the world over as meaning “Check out those hooters!”, but there was no dialog in that frame. A friend of mine read it too and asked me “Is this about what I think it is about?”
“Gil Thorp” always has stuff going on between the team and the cheerleaders. But since it’s written by the author of Left Behind, don’t expect much in the way of explicit teen raunch.
Ooh yeah. I’m often astonished by how much “Arlo and Janis” manages to get away with in the prudish confines of US newspaper comics pages.
Of course, in other environments, it doesn’t even need to be understated. One of my favorites, Pondus, features Jokke’s (Raymond in the English version) constant futile attempts to pick up a suitable one-night stand at a bar, while his aging mother and step-father are clearly having a lot more fun at night than he is.
The last panel from today’s strip (and yes, they’re smirking like fiends):
Sally: “Why do I fear tonight’s vegetable side dish will be ‘golden fried’ and served in a red sleeve?”
Ted: “Better super-size my vegetables. man can’t live by quarter pounders alone.”
I know, I’m bumping my own thread. But what is going on with Luanne and Tiffany this week? It’s like they’ve discovered radio-synchronized vibrating ben-wa balls, or something.
