Tonsil Hocky

[brigid]

12-03-2022

In actual history in this strip these two Had A Moment after Edda had a ballet recital that Amos played piano (even though he's a cellist) for. They both promptly had a series of misunderstandings/freak outs, broke up, and proceeded to have a will they/won't they situation that had absolutely no heat to it whatsoever because neither ever actually had a relationship with another person.

(I'd forgotten he played piano for that story and I don't remember when he's ever played piano or any other instrument again outside of "I want my characters to fuck on a piano" story lines)

The entire time they've been in a relationship it's been relentlessly obvious, up to and including Amos sucking her toes in public while people, including a police officer, watch and provide commentary.

I don't understand why we're seeing these characters from the back, unless it's meant to imply that we're peeking at them, seeing over their shoulders into something intimate? Or are we even seeing them both from the back?

The way Edda's head, neck, and torso are arranged I keep having a hard time telling if we're actually seeing her back or if we're seeing her front. You know those optical illusions of the old woman/young woman or the duck/bunny? You see one then your vision suddenly flips to the other one? That's what keeps happening with Edda's torso for me. Part of it is because she's so straight on visually. She's not turned toward Amos at all, while he's turned toward her. Not much, but a bit. You can see his shoulder sloping to indicate that.

Are they facing in the same direction, or is she facing toward us and speaking to him over her shoulder while he has his back to us? Either way her anatomy doesn't work.

It's nice to see some care given to Amos. He looks like a character and not an afterthought, an accessory.

The conceit of the second two panels is cute, that the gutter is meant to hide their kiss from prying eyes. It should be wider, though, to cover more of their mouths because what we see is kind of gross. There's three gutters and they could have gotten progressively wider, more like a censor bar. I didn't need to see that their lips are slightly parted, the better for Edda to suck in Amos' enormous upper lip which is brushing sensually against her uvula.

Or is his upper lip just mashed up against hers like a sack of firm pudding?

Because that's a huge upper lip and all McEldowney needed to do was have their heads tilt enough we could pretend they weren't meeting each other straight on. Which is how most people turn their heads when they want to do more than a chaste peck, anyway.