Humpback, eh?

[brigid]

11/12/2022

I can just imagine Nelson Muntz or Sherri and Terri cornering the girls on the playground.
"Nice outfits, dorks! Did your mommy dress you today?"
"No, our daddy did!"

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It's usually Amos rocking the turtleneck and blazer, I want to say, with Edda sporting a turtleneck dress and cardigan - as she is now. You know, the kind of clothing that an active young former superfamous ballet dancer and supermodel would wear while walking along the beach front on a brisk fall day. It's just as appropriate as a button down collared shirt under a sweater topped off with a duster/rain coat. A camel colored trench coat?

Sartorial choice aside (see how I'm channeling the strip there by saying "sartorial" instead of "fashion"? I, too, am an over-educated dork who went to Catholic school!), this is a prime example of Amos and Edda interacting briefly with their kids then proceeding to get sexual with each other.

This would be cute if:
1) They don't have an established pattern of getting extremely sexual in public
2) They don't have an established pattern of getting sexual in front of their children
3) They weren't grinding themselves together passionately

"Oh look, a humpback whale!" and then a cute little smooch on a nice fall day. Instead it looks like they're about to tear each other's clothing off and come up for air flushed and sticky.

And the overly wordy "punchline"? "Just who do they think they're fooling" is much pithier and sounds more like what actual children would say. And if the expression were an exaggerated eye roll instead of weary disgust? Ok, that's more teen behavior I guess and these girls are somewhere between the ages of four and eight, that nebulous age range so popular in comic strips.

The small children staring out across the ocean with determined expressions, one saying "I don't see any whales!" is its own form of punchline, as well. One that doesn't rope the children in to their parents' sex lives as well as retaining their childlike naivete. They trust their parents, they look for the whales. They don't think about their parents kissing, or humping and grinding in public.

Kudos to McEldowney for drawing a background, though. His hand was forced, I guess, by mention of humpback whales specifically. It would be pretty odd to mention them against a white, or muddy tie dye, void... although he did represent a zoo that way, once.

We'll draw a curtain upon this little family now, leaving the parents to hump and then make the beast with two backs as their small children wander along a spit of sand next to the Atlantic Ocean.

Good job on sneaking that leg in, I guess.