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October 20, 2005
Pooch Cafe Analysis
The comic I have chosen to analyze is entitled “Pooch Café” by Paul Gilligan from Sunday, October 9th. In this comic series, the dogs can communicate with humans as well as other dogs, and from what I have seen, it seems that each comic displays and makes a joke out of something that is associated with dogs. In this particular comic, it is making fun of the concept that dogs fetch the newspaper for their owners. The main dog in the comic developed a device with a conveyor belt that brings the newspaper from the window of the house to the kitchen table in front of the human. Then once the paper arrives, the owner says “Somehow it’s not quite the same as you fetching it for me” and the dog replies, “You got yer paper, didn’t ya?” I thought this was very clever and I enjoyed it.
This comic is quite simple in its concept with very little wording. It uses mainly representation in its drawings with a little bit of symbolism, but no abstraction. The symbols include an arrow on a sign showing the paperboy where to put the paper, and also lines that indicate the newspaper moving along the conveyor belt. All the other elements in this comic display representation. For example representation is displayed with the house, window, conveyor belt, newspaper, kitchen table, coffee mugs as well as many other things.
Paul Gilligan uses the whole comic strip, I think, as metonymy for the concept of dogs fetching the paper for their owners. The first panel to the second is action to action as the paperboy sees where he is supposed to put the newspaper and the next panel shows the paper after he throws it. Each other panel transition is moment to moment as you see the newspaper moving along the conveyor belt until it reaches it final destiniation. In the first panel, the words are part of the image as they are on a sign. Most of the comic is picture specific as there are no text bubbles until the last panel. The last panel is interdependent though because the joke is in the wording. Although you probably could infer the meaning from the comic without the words, except it is much more powerful with the words. I also don’t think this comic has a deeper meaning; I think it is just commenting on the life of dogs and its purpose is just to make the reader laugh.
-Jessica F.
Posted by lcisfaria at October 20, 2005 08:35 PM