Saffron and Sage

So when’s your college thesis on why Octopus Pie is the greatest?

It’s not even that it’s “the greatest” (I wouldn’t even put it in my top three). It’s merely good, but it consistently does things in a logical and intelligent way that makes it good to study.

Okay, like, this

Pretend this is one whole comic. Eve is at a gynecologist’s office getting an examination done, and the joke is that she claims it didn’t hurt and is obviously lying.

Imagine this as a Questionable Content strip.

No, don’t keep reading. Stop. Think. Imagine this.

 

Back? Okay, cool.

So, we all imagined a four-panel grid comprised entirely of mid shots with the characters standing straight and facing each other, with one on the left and one on the right?

Perhaps we’d get an above shot of Eve on the bed, but immediately back to form, like here when Faye immediately sits up after waking up from a booze coma so that we can go back to mid-shots.

Jeph might do the reaction shot for panel 2 (I can’t even visualize a QC-style mid-shot for this). but 100% Eve and the doctor would be facing each other in mid shots for panels 3 and 4.

But Octopus Pie doesn’t do that, because Meredith Gran cares a lot about tone and mood.

In panels 3 and 4 of the Octopus Pie strip, the Doctor is talking to Eve while looking at her computer. At no point in that page are the two facing each other, because the whole point of the page is how clinical, impersonal, and uncomfortable it is. A QC style conversation loses that tone, and returns to the bland emotional flatness that makes up most every QC conversation. Having the doctor not look at Eve is a really basic, simple decision that’s totally obvious when it’s explained to you. Of course the doctor shouldn’t be looking directly at Eve in a scene designed to be uncomfortable. Most people understand that, but most people would still make webcomics where Eve and the doctor are looking at each other.

It’s just that little bit more that OP does compared to other comics, but it does it every time, and for that is a comic that you should be reading and keeping in the back of your mind