As performers can nurture laughter while displaying a lack of thought, this gap between the thought being presented and the challenge to an audience to think isn’t necessarily a best practice in performing comedy, but it does seem to be a best practice in comics. Comics are hostile to subplots (heavy subplots are still a barrier to accessing Alan Moore’s work to some who I try to introduce his work to). And in comics any cropping of the figure disproportionately risks losing the reader, since each panel represents a substantial proportion of storytelling “time.” The choices (or abdication of choices) of a cartoonist or an intimate collaboration of creators in minimizing and bypassing these things that fit comfortably in other media is right there on the comic page. This is in addition to the labor in manufacturing the art in which the art is a prominent feature for the reader, and everything else in a story that goes on regardless of media.