Saturday, 11 January 2020: Enter The Lizardbreath

[dreadedcandiru2]

The one where we pivot to Liz being a moody jerk to April because she blames her for her idiot mother's habit of seeing her as a free babysitter and not as a child.

(Original Publication Date, 12 January 1991)

Panel 1: History repeats itself when we see Liz angrily stomping on a toy because she's sick of it all. She's sick of hearing about the

Comments

[howtheduck]

And insisting she was killed by a brain tumor instead of an aneurysm.

[howtheduck]

Which would be kind of funny, considering I didn't have the variable lengths of Lynn's art-school enrollment in my head when I asked my question.

When Lynn is answering questions only one head is important to her and that is her own.

"HUM?!" is such a weird, idiosyncratic usage that when it was given to John, I thought it was completely made up. It was interesting to see that it turned out to be a pure Lynn-ism.

It means that when Lynn was writing dialogue for John, she was thinking the way she thinks when she doesn't want to answer questions.

[aprilp_katje]

When Lynn is answering questions only one head is important to her and that is her own.

Right, and this might mislead her into thinking she knows everyone's motives.

It means that when Lynn was writing dialogue for John, she was thinking the way she thinks when she doesn't want to answer questions.

This feels like such an insight into Lynn psychology.

[howtheduck]

Right, and this might mislead her into thinking she knows everyone's motives.

A characters are Lynn even in real life.

This feels like such an insight into Lynn psychology.

You might be right. Now I have to look for the situations when John says, "Hum!" to see if it matches. Sadly the archive has yielded only one John issued "hum" for me.

[aprilp_katje]

For good measure, I searched the AMU reprints site and found more:

[howtheduck]

While I have normally associated "HUM!" with John Patterson, I may have to rethink that one. April and Elly both have more than John.

[aprilp_katje]

I was certain I recalled John using it in his letters, but I was unable to find any examples when I searched. I only found Michael using it in a more conventional sense (like the hum of a machine).

Lynn spreads the usage far and wide, so it isn't just something that Pattersons say. Lynn clearly seems to think it's normal.

[howtheduck]

Lynn spreads the usage far and wide, so it isn't just something that Pattersons say. Lynn clearly seems to think it's normal.

In contrast, we tended to react to HUM! much the way we reacted to "stoopid" as unusual language choices.

[aprilp_katje]

Lynn and her characters seem to use "HUM" the way most people use "HMM." I wonder if Lynn has somehow misheard other people and/or failed to see how the sound is normally written.

[dreadedcandiru2]

Given her insistence on writing "how come" as if it is one word, I would tend to think that a combination of both factors is in play. She hears the word as "Hum" and she doesn't understand what she's seeing when she sees the proper version in print so here we are, watching her want us to let her ignorance go.

[aprilp_katje]

Lynn: HOWCOME YOU PEOPLE WON'T JUST LEAVE ME ALONE ABOUT HUM?!

[howtheduck]

Right. It's kind of like she is having the person say what they are doing instead of making the sound of what they are doing, like when she writes the sound effects "brush, brush, brush" when they are brushing Farley. The big difference with "HUM!" is that she normally doesn't have the characters say the sound effect.

[aprilp_katje]

Heh. It would have been mildly funny (in a weird way) if Lynn had Elly actually saying "BRUSH, BRUSH, BRUSH," "PEEL, PEEL, PEEL," etc. It wouldn't have made any less sense than when Lynn uses words like that as faux sound effects.