I just resized my browser window, so the bottom of the window is above the GIF, but below the NEXT button.

It is an animated gif. You used to be able to just press escape to pause them, but Firefox and Chrome have both removed that behavior. Instead you can install a plugin, or in Firefox you can set `image.animation_mode` to:

`once` - play once on load then stop.

`none` - do not play on load

`normal` - loop forever if the gif says to

With the popularity of animated "emoji" on some forums these days, I couldn't function without some way to globally disable animated gifs.

I'll warn that it quickly becomes not very cute. But a very good webcomic nonetheless!

Ad blockers typically have an option to select something to disable, like a single image URL.