Similarly here, I would have expected a few seconds of (Just one frame) of.."Umm..." and then Lip Lock.
A tiny tiny subtlety... nothing else...
Whereas I automatically inferred that pause - if for nothing else but for them to process what they just said in that penultimate panel, in relation to what they're feeling - so it didn't matter that I didn't see it. Nothing seemed rushed or sudden to me. The entire scene is already animated in my head. I don't need everything animated on the page.
But that's my exact point.
You say yourself that you felt it *needed* that pause.
The only difference being that you just didn't need to *see* it.
But isn't it groovy that we're all differrent and may see things a little differently?
I felt that moment's pause, a tension if you would, was... needed is a bit strong a word... let's just say, required.
So - why do I disagree with your last sentence?
Mainly because animation is one thing. A Comic Strip is another.
(Unless it's a motion comic, some of which look great and some are awful!)
You see, to my mind, two of the absolutely
greatest Comic Strip writers the world has ever seen (Schulz and Watterson) deliberately included such pauses as I mention above for precisely those reasons.
Maybe that's the rub, maybe my expectation of great comic writing includes using those kinds of pauses - and, as I have said MANY times before, Jeph is at his absolute best when writing for Bubbles...
There has been a deliberate and obvious slow burn for well over a year.
How much longer did people want it to go on? An entire weeks' worth of comic to them just awkwardly standing in the shop "um-ing" at each other?
I think the point was made fairly clearly above... "(Just one frame)... A tiny tiny subtlety... nothing else..."
(and I just had a quick look above... another poster said exactly that as well.. one frame...)
I don't mind you disagreeing with me... just don't put words into my mouth.