Imagine If He Were Also a Philatelist

Alert: This may be my only post this weekend, due to my being in Iowa this weekend to perform, as detailed here, in a Renaissance Fair. I’ll be taking the computer, but I have no idea if my the hotel will have handy-dandy internet access, so don’t be shocked if I don’t post again until Monday.

Now, to today’s strip:

My first reaction to this is, that’s what this whole plotline has come down to? Scheming, cheating, nastiness, and in the climactic confrontation Amanda Lynn has nothing better to hit the scumbag with than calling him a sleepwalker? Which, when I last checked, didn’t hold much of a stigma.

Plus, it’s hardly the most important part of his personality. I don’t know that I’d even remember he were a somnambulist if I hadn’t made it part of his Homeric ephitet.

But ultimately, rather than anger at the foolishness of the wind-down of this plotline, I’ve decided to take pleasure in just how much the characters are committing to it. Sure, Amanda Lynn thinks that this is the absolute nastiest thing she could ever say to our favorite philandering somnambulist, but we already knew that she isn’t so good with the whole English language thing. (If Sturdy were also a philatelist, or worse, a herpetologist, her head probably would have burst into a universe-destroying matter-antimatter matrix). In panel 3, however, we discover that this linguistic challenge is something of a Pye family tradition. Those Pyes are horrified that their sweet little not-exactly-relative could use such a horrifying obscenity. And without even having the decency to say it in humorous pictographs!

Plus, rather than acting like they’re real humans, they hypothesize that they’re all just two dimensional characters on a newspaper page, living out their lives for the amusement of literally dozens of people every day. That’s very deep, and very philosophical.

Maybe the Pyes went to college for philosophy. It would help to explain their homelessness.