Today's "Close To Home" comic

Do you get this? Today on Close to Home - Comics by John McPherson - GoComics If you’re reading this after 4/29/2011, then select the 4/29 comic.

I don’t get it.

This single-panel comic runs in the Washington Post.The gags aren’t funny, the drawing the worst I’ve ever seen, and yet the Post still carries it. My eye is attracted it to the way your tongue is attracted to a sore tooth. I really try not to read it but today I glanced over. Usually I can at least tell what is intended but this time I have no idea what’s going on.

She is storing the perfume in her mouth. Chemical burns and self-poisoning is extremely funny, y’know.

I think she is going to screw the guard.

Good for you, man. I did not get that. I guess my mind confused her mouth as “whistling” even though it’s supposed to be humming.

Yup. But my first thought was that since we could not see her right hand she was about to stuff it up her… dress.

How do you arrive at that conclusion from what is drawn? I looked at this stupid comic this morning for ten minutes and could not figure out WTF the cartoonist was getting at. How does humming or anything else equate to storing the perfume in her mouth?

I’m another person who detests this cartoon, but end up looking at it because it’s right next to Bizarro, which is almost always funny.

The chipmunk cheeks were the givaway. Cartoon whistling involves pursed lips and concave cheeks-which leads to the assumption that she is humming while holding a mouthful of something.

Hell, I saw the cheeks, and assumed the artist was so incompetent that he drew her whistling, but wrote her humming.

It’s a pretty common comic convention that humming is used to distract others from noticing whatever it is you are doing to pull something over on them. Whistling too, actually.

I didn’t get it either. The art work on this comic is jaw-dropping bad, almost every day. He is especially pathetic at drawing any kind of animal, and machines don’t fare so well either. His pine trees and flames are so poorly rendered that the first few times I saw them I couldn’t even figure out what they were supposed to be. It’s as if he is drawing things he’s never actually seen, based on someone’s vague description. This is not the first of his comics I didn’t get, either. About 1 in 20 is so poorly drawn or poorly thought out that I just don’t get it. About 1 in 20 is funny enough to make me smile. Like Chefguy I read it because it’s right next to Bizarro. Dan Piraro is the best comic artist working these days, IMHO.

Also, the belt is running in the wrong direction (look at the fabric flaps).

Also, part of the dress pattern is overlapping her left arm. It’s really amateur hour.

I think that line is part of the squeeze bulb on her perfume atomizer, and not part of her dress.

That was supposed to be an atomizer? It looked like a fez.