Jess Knows Best

Since Batiuk has so haphazardly laid the groundwork for his latest epic narrative, it’s up to us readers to try and connect the dots; for example, why Frankie knows so much about not only his estranged son Darin, but seemingly everyone else in Westview. As for how much Darin knows about his Bio-Dad®…

Charles
May 9, 2013 at 3:23 pm
It’s so easy to believe but still so appalling that Les simply used everyone’s real names in “Lisa’s Story” and passed on a lot of personal information on them that probably wasn’t relevant to…Lisa’s story.

But I’ll be willing to bet that Les doesn’t take any heat for this whatsoever. “Hey Blabbermouth, the state keeps adoption records sealed for a REASON, you know. But who cares about that, you have a book about your dead wife that must be written!” And, you know, it’s absolutely essential for that book to recount every single detail exactly as it happened, because it happened, you know.

Then I’ll assume that, if he didn’t hear it from Lisa herself upon their reunion, Shrimp Sauce learned from Les’ book that he’s the product of an unintended pregnancy (at best; pending the coming retcon). Yet Jessica insists that Frankie’s side of the story be heard. If Jessica never got around to reading Les’ book about her own father, it’s likely she hasn’t bothered to read Lisa’s (and Darin’s) Story either. No wonder she won’t let this go.

28 thoughts on “Jess Knows Best”

  1. “Now Darin, just because your biological father had unprotected and possibly non-consensual sex with your mother, leaving her to deal with the ensuing pregnancy and social ostracism entirely on her own, that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person!”

  3. It’s just baffling. Frankie even knows things about the Fairgoods that happened LONG after the cancer book was published. How? Who knows? And how does the ever-cynical Boy Lisa know all about Lisa and FTR? Did she tell him? THAT was in Les’ stupid book too? Why? I thought the book dealt with Lisa’s tragic losing battle against cancer, I wasn’t aware it was an encyclopedic history of her entire life as well.

    FW requires the reader to make a shitload of assumptions and leaps of logic because TheAuthor isn’t really concerned with things like continuity, believability or coherence. He just really, really, really wants to get to the Lisa part and we all know it. And when he finally (finally) does, we’ll be expected to swallow even more BS, such as the notion that a Lisa-obsessed Les Moore somehow “overlooked” a “secret journal” where Lisa revealed the REAL FTR story, which will no doubt involve a doe-eyed frizzy-haired innocent teen and a deviant sex pervert and all-around sleazy no-goodnik who forced acts of unspeakable depravity upon her virginal soul, acts so vile she couldn’t even share them with her SoulMate during the various other lovely retcon moments they had through the years. A journal that will reveal “the truth” about Frankie to Derwin, a sort of final gift from Lisa, the corpse that keeps on giving. How conveinent and totally non-contrived.

    Knowing the BatFraud’s work as I do, I’d say it’s 50-50 that he ever even explains FTR’s motives at all. And if he does, it might not amount to more than “just wanted to get my mitts on summa dat Hollywood loot of yer’s” or something similarly lame. Yep, it’s all starting to come together all right….(sigh).

  4. Bi0-dad is a creep?? I’ve got news for you, Sonny Boy — if I went to meet my birth mother and found THIS:

    I’d be pretty damn creeped out, too. Finding out she’s married to Les would be a turn-off as well.

  5. A “creep”, and look who you’re hanging around with? Your half-sister’s father? THE PERV’S WORKSHOP RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO YOUR APARTMENT?

  7. Jeffcoat: That’s the “Birth Of Boy Lisa” strip right there. He wasn’t even being subtle about it either, you know? And look at Jessica, feeding off the drama as always. So attention-starved.

    And there She is, Mother Maudlin, The Patron Saint of Saintliness herself, Lisa. Just sitting there on their beloved porch, wistfully pondering the comic books she’ll never get to read and the slices she’ll never get to eat, waiting patiently for death’s cold embrace to finally close in. Man this FW is a riot, isn’t it?

  8. Oh, Lord I think I just figured out this whole plot. Boy are we in for a lame one.

    Frankie’s going to be revealed to have prostate or lung cancer isn’t he?

    So he’s going to become the become the male answer to St. Lisa.

    Get ready for Franky’s Story…also titled “My Left Nut”.

  9. apologies. I think my reply was on the previous post. My bad.

  10. I had to go to the comic strip’s page to see if the word “Bio-Dad” was actually used, and not just a Phunny Photoshop. I was FLOORED

  11. “His side” sounds like something for lawyers. Jesse is living in a dreamworld with reuniting him with his dad. Its just annoying with all the seriousness Batiuk tries putting in these comics. You think she’d realize that not every parent is like her father or any version of those tv sitcoms. There are some parents who are just plain cruel, manipulative, greedy, selfish and plain assholes. Its been made pretty clear by some people that Frankie wasn’t a good guy in school. Where was Jesse when Darien was learning these facts? Watching Family Matters?

  12. I’ve never seen the strips, so maybe Frankie is a creep. But Darin has no firsthand knowledge of that. Presumably, he’s going on either Lisa’s word, Les’s word, or a combination of both. I can’t even imagine the Fairgoods know one way or the other. But, hey, let’s drag this out for another six weeks, so that by the time this arc is resolved even the “beady-eyed nitpickers” won’t give a shit if it’s consistent with everything we’ve ever been shown in the strip.

  13. [sung to the tune of “Ironman” by Black Sabbath:

    I am Bio Dad
    Am I creepy
    Or just plain sad?

    Am I primed to kill
    Or just fucking
    Space to kill?

    Nobody wants me
    I’ll just glare at the world
    Planning my vengeance
    Against some random girl

    I am Bio Dad
    Boy oh boy I’m really bad
    Yessirreebobdad
    I sure as heck am really bad!

  14. Somewhere in an Ohio attic, a “cartoonist” checks the internet… “What? How do these bastards always know what I am about to do? They totally ruined the first dance idea I had of Lisa showing up at Les and whats-her-faces’ wedding – so I couldn’t use it; darn it. Now they’ve guessed at all the surprises I had lined up for the entire line up of Summertime strips. I hate these people! Wahhhhhhhhhhh!!! Nobody loves my geniusness!”

  15. I don’t recall Frankie raping St. Lisa; I got that it was a jock douche taking advantage of a skank geek nobody in the back of a van – and that’s it.

    Am I right or wrong here? I remember a scene with Frankie and Lisa’s parents, where they tossed him out with a “don’t ever come back here again” admonishment – but that was it. Parents talk like that to the boys who knocked up their saintly virginal daughters (well, they used to), but not the ones who raped them.

    That said…this whole Frankie story is going nowhere fast, while moving as slow as possible.

  16. “You might as well go see him. I need you to pick up a fresh crate of hair gel for me anyway.”

    This is miserably “written” doo-doo. Hitler, Bin Laden, and other assholes throughout history had their side of the story too, but who gives a shit?

  17. To make things more interesting, I’ve taken to blotting out the words in these Jess and Durwood strips, reimagining them as a debate about the US tax code between two Swedish nationals. Given the hair, I assume the debate takes place somtime between 1988 and 1994.

  18. Here’s another thing–how is Bio-Dad a creep when Other Dad was the one that abandoned families and had a daughter that he had never heard of, and his Other Mother admitted how their marriage was a scam, et cetera?

  19. I think OB Dan is right – Frankie’s not a legitimate rapist, in the parlance of our times. By all accounts Lisa consented to the hideous congress and to think otherwise is to deny Les the skin-crawling fear and loathing he so richly deserves, and also acts to elevate Lisa to victim status, which she does not deserve. She wanted what Frankie delivered and suffered the consequences via Dolphin. Even with eyes on the side of her head and a startled deer aura, Frankie knew he had to have her and she was seduced 70’s style with Aerosmith 8-tracks and shag carpet on the bulkheads of a Dodge van. As for modern Frankie, I am still hoping that Cayla will cut him … and Les, too, for that matter.

  21. Bravo and mega dittos to Ob Dan and the ole Sgt.
    The biggest Creep Dads here are Lisa’s Father and Fred

  22. I want to second OB Dan and the good Sergeant here– that is exactly how I recall the story line.

    Also what the hell is that on the side of Dagwood’s head in panel three? At first I thought Jess was talking to herself in the mirror. Is it supposed to be an ear?

  23. Comrades, any memories you claim to have of old strips showing Frankie as anything other than a date rapist is thoughtcrime. Frankie has always been a date rapist (and Eastasian). Fallen Star was published before Lisa’s Story. Wally has always been Funky’s cousin nephew cousin. The past is whatever Big Batiuk says it is at any given moment. Be like the good Party members at the Ministry of Retconning Comics Kingdom and love Big Batiuk.

  24. It’s so easy to believe but still so appalling that Les simply used everyone’s real names in “Lisa’s Story” – Charles.
    And thus proving once again Mr. Batuik needs absurd mechanisms to get his plots in motion (The doctor misfiling Lisa’s X-Rays – the Army Saying Wally is dead and now…) One of the things publisher’s do when dealing with a non-fiction or even something based on an actual even is ask the author – you do have their permission to use their names right Les? It’s simple survival – anybody suing is going to sue the publisher (who the other side’s lawyers will assume have deeper pockets) along with the author. I mean what bugs one is that he’s had a few books published and yet doesn’t seem to have the faintest Idea how this works and isn’t willing to put in the effort to find out.
    And forget the movie people – they would flee this work like it was radioactive if they found Les used real names without their permission.

  25. If Les used real names in his books, does that mean that Tom Batiuk uses real names in his comic strip? We know Dan (from the Kilimanjaro trip) was a real person…maybe the real John Howard, Harry Lunaire, Nate Green, Cayla Williams, Frank Pierce and of course Funky Winkerbean are about to get really, really angry over how they’re portrayed…

  26. I’d like to envision Frankie as Clint Eastwood from “high Plains Drifter”, coming back to gain revenge on Westview.

  27. So here’s a question. Does Darrin know if his father is a rapist or not!? If he does, then that’s a great reason not to want to meet him. Does his wife know? Because then I would say to her ‘stop pushing this’. Batiuk, what do these people know? What in hell was in that damn book?

  28. O.B. Dan, Sarge, it doesn’t MATTER what the actual strips originally depicted, ya sillies! Tom already stated on his blog that the almighty RETCON PUNCH has eradicated the former version of history, bringing in the all-new, all “element of coercion” Frankie/Lisa back-story!

    Bull only PRETENDED to bully Les!

    Fred an Ann had a loveless marriage that shattered Fishstick’s dreams of being a writer!

    The option to “Lisa’s Story” was only picked up a couple of months ago, not two years ago!

    Get with the program, guys! Accept that the Funkiverse continuity is whatever Tom says it is. 😛

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