#264: Shark in the Aerie

Shark Week is upon us. Artie’s still trying to out-minimize Hanelore and circumvent the caption approval process. And so we have a captionless triptych in which an overly-ambitious eagle plucks a shark from the water and struggles to carry him back to the aerie. He succeeds, but his success is short-lived & he probably wishes his ambition had been tempered. The shark enjoys his momentary come-from-behind victory, until a new realization sets in. Personally, I like the triptych concept, and the imagery, but I’m not sold on the lack of captions. I feel like a dimension has gone missing. Why did the eagle harbor such ambition? What formative experience as an eaglet led him to a life of such extreme and careless risk-taking? And the shark... What’s his story? I like to think he had a recurring dream in which he could fly. They say sharks don’t sleep, so maybe it was a recurring daydream. But maybe it’s all better left open to interpretation. Regardless, the triptych passed the focus groups and the Committee bc it was late on a Friday afternoon and the sun was out & attentions were wandering. Slothrop made a passing comment Artie embracing the silent movie approach to comics, to which Krenshaw replied that silent movies actually had captions, that was sort of the whole point, they just didn’t have audio. This caused Hanelore to suggest a fourth panel that just said “Fin”, which I thought was pretty funny, but everybody left and there was no one left to produce it, so I’m posting what I take to be the approved final. Meanwhile, Artie and Syd will be watching Discovery Channel and finalizing their honeymoon plans this week one way or the other. -Ed.
#sharkweek2019