Rina Piccolo seems to be hitting her stride with her new web-only strip, Velia, Dear, as the characters, tone and pace begin to gel into something solid. The latest strip is her best so far, and a real gem.
When I read the first panel, given the recovering-Catholic angst prominent in the strip, I expected something about burying a statue of St. Joseph in the yard. (If you have to ask, you need to get to know more Catholics. Click and learn.) The actual gag was totally unexpected, and the whiplash between the second and third panel knocked me out of my chair.
When I was writing about new home construction in Colorado years ago, there was a builder whose trademark was a wallphone in the bathroom. I recently saw one in a home here on the East Coast, in a house I would guess was built at roughly the same time, the early 80s. This remarkable innovation was, of course, technically outstripped by the development first of cordless and then of cell phones.
But a cup holder? Nobody is going to make that baby obsolete.
Scary part is, you never know how much of this strip is autobiographical ...
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