Month: May 2012

If These Walls Could Talk

Nate’s prom night reverie is interrupted by what appears to be a talking castle.

More TB News

So Marvel Comics is jumping on the “Boys in the Band” -wagon, gay-marrying superhero Northstar to his non-super partner. The Washington Post sought out Tom Batiuk for comment, since he’s a cartoonist and a comix fanboy. He offers up basically the same talking points he’s given everyone else since before Promagaydon:

“I think I’ve created a space for myself” to deal with serious issues, Batiuk tells Comic Riffs. “It’s not such a big deal for myself as some other strips. It’s been incremental … that I can grab my readers’ hand and [say]: ‘Let’s come over here.”

What really makes the Post piece noteworthy, though, is this illustration:

…it depicts an alternate reality in which actual confrontation takes place! This would have been so much better than the way it went down. Note the dude holding the “It’s Our Prom” sign: where’d he come from? My guess is that Batiuk inserted him into the tableau lest non-readers assume that the same-sex couple is Summer and Keisha. The “real” gay couple (and they don’t even match; are they sure they’re gay?) stand meekly behind their fellow students as Roberta gives them the evil eye, and Mr. Blackburn silently rolls tape.

Who's That Lady?

A good comics writer can keep the reader off-balance with any number of literary and/or visual devices. TB accomplishes it by employing lax, slipshod storytelling and draughtsmanship. I assume that’s Nate’s wife, and not Cayla from a hairstyle ago plus glasses. We were able to establish that Mr. Blackburn appeared in earlier Funky Winkerbean strips; can any of you FW scholars tell me when, if ever, we’ve been introduced to Mrs. Nate Green? I mean before today?

I'll Be GLAAD When This is Over

“Camelot” is the prom theme for 2012, huh? That’s timely…bet it was the theme for Batiuk’s own prom at Midview High back in ’65.

Linda and Becky are still (weeks later) discussing Mr. Blackburn’s public dressing-down of his wife in front of the whole high school. Becky shares that her hitherto meek Dad, the father of four girls, “hardly said two words the entire time” she was growing up. TB must think that having him finally find his voice in order to publicly tear his wife a new one over her opposition to the same-sex prom couple makes Mr. Blackburn seem heroic. I think it makes him seem pathetic.

99 Percent Bullshit

Hoo boy—she is mad, too! Just look at her little fists clenched in front of her. This is the strongest display of emotion we’ve seen from Cayla in a long time!

Now that he’s put “the intolerant” of the world in their place, the un-didactic Mr. Batiuk takes a(nother) swipe at those wicked Wall Street Billionaires, who in Cayla’s mind have somehow (how, exactly?) made college tuition difficult to afford. Les soothes her by relating an anecdote that Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. had shared in his commencement address to Rice University’s Class of ’98:

I’ll pass on to you what another Methuselah said to me. He’s Joe Heller, author, as you know, of Catch 22. We were at a party thrown by a multi-billionaire out on Long Island, and I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to realize that only yesterday our host probably made more money than Catch 22, one of the most popular books of all time, has grossed world-wide over the past forty years?”

Joe said to me, “I have something he can never have.”

I said, “What’s that, Joe?”

And he said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

Let’s don’t quibble over the distinction between having “the knowledge that I’ve got enough” and just “enough”. Cayla expresses to Les her concern over the expense faced by their soon-to-be-blended family, and Les’ idea of easing her mind is to (mis)quote a writer, because writers are wise and all-knowing. Billionaires, on the other hand, are “greedy, amoral morons” who fuck things up for decent folk like “us”.

From April 2010:

Cojones Grown

Well, today’s strip is just so epic that I’m gonna invoke “fair use” and reproduce it here. Today’s our payoff, snarkers, our “ending earned”; here’s where it all comes together. Why did TB dredge up not just Roberta, but her limp dishrag of a husband? Why did Nate, instead of dealing with Roberta in his office one-on-one, assemble “every student, teacher, and parent volunteer“? Why, it was all setup in order to provide old, fat, evil Roberta’s very public dénouement, at the hands of the aforementioned wimp husband, no less.

In all honesty, panel 3 had me confused for a moment: I didn’t get why Summer was gasping “Dad?” while Dad was standing way behind her. Then I noticed the highlights in her hair were not blue, but brown, and realized I was looking at Becky. Please, please let her startled expression not be due to Dad finally asserting himself, but rather because she’s just witnessed her father being shanked by her berserk, hateful mother.