Them's fightin' words

There has been a popping up of the term "frames" in reference to what are known traditionally as cartoon panels. I'm irked by this. In a conversation with a friend this weekend, use of the word frame came up again in reference to cartooning.

Scene 1 begins when the fighting words rolled off his tongue: "Frames, panels .. same thing."

Next frame: "What - did - you - say?" She was all up in his face with that, there at the bar. "You are wrong, buddy. Dead wrong."

Frame #3: He brays the rhetorical question back at her: "No, missy -- you're wrong," pronouncing 'you're' with cadence like a little lamby-sheep would do.

They both knock back a shot of house whiskey.

4: She inches closer, getting toe-to-toe, eye-to-eye, moment-to-moment. Beads of sweat forming, gloves off. "Let me clarify, flank-steak. To say frame means you're referencing film or have read comics 'how-to' manuals . . . .  which means you're there looking at that."

Frame 5: He jeers across his rotten crowns right at her with another rhetorical question. "What's wrong with that -- Lady Purist!" One of his caps is almost pure motherlode gold-plated. 

Frame 6: He spits and reaches.


Frame 7: Quickly outdrawn, she's gets him down at heel.

8:Towering over him, all statuesque and lovely, she states gently and yet emphatically, as if she were a glowing apparition of truth: "It's called tradition, my friend. Real cartoonists make panels."

9: Triumphantly, she steps across him, walks through the double swinging doors and bee-lines it back to the drawing table.


FIN