I am disturbed by a new development in Lynn Johnston’s strip–at least in the online version.
I have my mug of tea, my early morning radio program, and the few sites I cruise by while drinking my tea: The Globe and Mail, the weather, this and that. FBOFW strip fix is one such morning stop on the web.
Until it started blinking at me, that is.
I noticed it a few days ago. The strip with the squeaky fan and Michael being unable to sleep. He blinked at me!
Now every strip’s got a character or two or three–blinking.
Aaack! I went to the website and noticed it, too. It’s very weird, and, if you hadn’t warned me, I would have thought, “Huh?!? Did I really see that??”
I hadn’t been to the website before, so I poked around a bit, and one of the things that really disturbed me was the image of Elizabeth in the “Meet the Pattersons” section, where she’s doing this kind of flirty, cheesecake-y thing while sitting on a desk. The adult Elizabeth has been depicted in the strip as a grounded, thoughtful, independent woman.
But damn if I didn’t get sucked into the Farley story again. Wa-a-a-a-a-a-ah!
In this one, Liz’s hands in the 3rd panel move as well.
I agree that it’s pretty creepy - I hadn’t been reading on the fbofw website but on another site, and hadn’t noticed the animation.
I didn’t see anything at first either, but the blinking just happens intermittently. I’d almost prefer it if the animation was constant, instead of there just being this occasional movement in a strip that you expect to be stationary - it’s creepier and more likely to make you start questioning your sanity.
There’s been quite a bit of discussion about this nasty new wrinkle over at the Comics Curmudgeon website (slogan: “Josh reads the funny pages so that you don’t have to!”).
The best aspect is that it’s encouraged some of the Curmudgeon regulars to animate other comic strips, including an instant classic with Mark Trail being raped by a bear.
If you should happen to go to the 25th comment following the top entry (from Jonnya), you’ll find the magic linky.
I kind of like the animations in the For Better or For Worse strips. Seeing all the animations in any given cartoon is a little like finding the "Nina"s in the old Hirschberg cartoons. The animations are small, relatively subtle features of the strip, and you have to pay some extra attention to the drawings in order to see all the little moving parts.
I wouldn’t say I find it creepy, but it is annoying. You’re in the middle of a sentence in panel two and suddenly there’s something twitching in your peripheral vision over in panel four, interrupting the flow. Since the animation is invariably irrelevant to understanding the strip, it’s just a useless distraction.
