Take heart, snarkers: at least the pop-cultural reference in today’s strip is from only 30 years ago. Compared to Jungle Jim Toppers and Flash and Dale, this is some timely shit indeed. For once, the Sunday strip’s “creepy blue twilight” hues are suited to the subject matter. Hey, if Frankie is Vader, then does that make Lenny Lando Calrissian? Or Mace Windu? Discuss.
31 thoughts on “Snark Wars: The Empire Strikes Batiuk”
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Son of Stuck Funky 
No, Darin, your worst nightmare about your bio-dad will be the one in which he rapes you up the butt. We’ll all be laughing and having a good time, though.
I may be panned for saying this, but the Sunday strip was alright. And it was a reference everyone can understand.
Enough with the term “Bio-Dad”!
Well, Darin, if you’d never let Miss All-Smart over there talk you into agreeing to a solo car date with your bio-dad in the first place, you wouldn’t be totally shanking getting some sleep.
… sorry, Batiuk, this still doesn’t look like English as we know it.
I have to kinda agree. Today’s is actually a little funny. And the art is better than usual.
As FW punch lines go, today’s about as good as it gets.
Wow, I don’t blame Boy Lisa for being shaken. If my dreams consisted of pop culture references featuring terrible Tom Batiuk gags that were probably rattling around in the demented little head of his for years before he found a place to use them, I’d be shaken up a little too. And then I’d reach for my pistol.
“Bio-Dad”, “Bio-Dad”, “Bio-Dad”…jeez, the repetition in this strip can be mind-numbing. We get it, Batom, Frankie The Sperm Rifle is a bad, bad dude, point made, move on. This arc is like watching a fat kid trying to ride a Big Wheel uphill in the snow…wheel-spinning and lots of padding.
I can’t help but think of this playing out similar to the Robot Chicken parody of that scene:
“No Darin, I am your father!”
“That’s not true! That’s impossible!”
“And your mother’s pregnancy has been retconed into date rape!”
“That’s…illogical…”
“And Wally’s PTSD has been cured by a cute puppy doggie!”
“What…?”
“And Jessica’s dad? Turns out he was shot by some weirdo in a plant costume…”
“Look, if you’re not going to take this seriously, I’m leaving…”
Man, it sucks being born in the ’90s. I want to watch Star Wars so badly, but I can only find the special edition. I even got the trilogy on VHS and bought myself a VCR, but it turned out one of the tapes was just an empty sleeve. It’s the famous movie and I can’t even watch it unaltered!
Huh? Funky Winkerbean? Right, that thing. What about it again?
It’s not that I dislike this strip so much as I’m disappointed in it. It’s really just one long shout-out to Star Wars rather than something of actual humor (since I have to assume it was intended to be humorous considering how out of place it is) or of drama. If we were supposed to see how worried he was, why not something grim about Lisa and Frank in his dream?
Needs work.
It’s not a reveal, because Darin already knows that Frankie is his father, so the comparison becomes an odd nonsequitur.
He could have had it make more sense if he had quoted Darin back at him about Fred’s shortcomings as a father, as Darin indicated to Jess when Fred had his stroke, but that’s a narrative too complex for TB. Besides, that was just a throwaway detail of no consequence or value beyond the fleeting pathos it provided for that individual strip. A day later, it was forgotten. It was certainly forgotten by the time when Darin said he wanted to be as good a father as Fred was.
When Darin refers to Frankie as his “bio-dad,” is that seriously what he calls him (a term unheard-of outside of Westview, but that’s never stopped Batiuk), or is he using the phrase as a joke (which he’s going to continue using until it gets a laugh)?
Will this story ever stop sucking?
Before anybody answers – yes, that was a rhetorical question…
All together now:
Who’s that riding into the sun?
Who’s the man with the itchy gun?
Who’s the man who kills for fun?
Bio-Dad! Bio-Dad! Bio-Dad!
Quick with the gun, but he loves his son.
The strip isn’t bad on its own merits, but dammit, once again TB avoids telling us what exactly Durwood actually knows or thinks he knows about ‘bio-dad’. Why didn’t he modify the conversation to reflect some real information? Afraid it would kill the ‘joke’? Afraid we wouldn’t get the reference if he changed some words?
Honestly it’s like his comic-book cover Sunday swipe strips–a faithful ‘homage’ that reflects no creativity on the part of the author.
I’d rather see BattySplat use the goofy term “biodashdad” fifty times a week than see him log into Comics Kingdom ONCE to tell another user “Cool story, bro.” There’s something just a little too weird about an uptight, 70 year old geezebag like BatYulch using “cool” and “bro” in the same sentence.
Meanwhile, Swishy Tom, look in your rear view mirror. There’s a glacier behind you flashing its brights. Wants you to move the Hell outta the way so it can pass. We’re in for weeks and weeks of buildup that I’d guess, from everything I’ve seen and everything I know about this comic, is going absolutely nowhere.
The set-up’s alright, but some of the lines fall flat (“youngster”?)
The text looks a bit strange, but this is the first panel of my version. Hopefully I can get Darth Frankie cutting off Darin’s hand and letting him fall into the abyss.
ANOTHER nightmare? How much time has passed in this arc?!?
The impression Tom gave was that Darin’s huffy phone conversation, nagging session with Jess, and agreement to meet Frankie at Montoni’s ALL occurred in the same day, within a period of only a few hours.
How in the world could he have had time to fall asleep and have a series of recurring nightmares? Enough to rate them on a scale? YEESH, Tom, figure out your own story arc BEFORE getting it on the page!
Filler! I just hope Batiuk lives long enough to finished this storyline.
I agree with bad wolf, if Batiuk could have done this as a Star Wars comic book cover he would have. Tip of the Funky fedora to George Lucas!
Funky is Jabba
I was going to praise this strip for not having been traced from another comic, but I don’t know that. How many comic serializations are there of that scene? Plenty of source material to plagiarize must exist.
In the title panel, never has a skinny guy wielding a light saber looked less virile than Durrhey.
Man, this is going to be one long, long-ass arc. Now Boy Lisa has to meet FTR which is at least a week, then Jessica has to express her reservations, another week. Then she goes to Les (under the guise of returning the JD book) and talks to him about FTR. Then he reveals Lisa’s “secret journal” and lets Jessica read it. That’s five, six weeks right there. Then she has to break the news to Darwood, after which he has to send FTR packing, minimum of two more weeks. That’s two months of FW at the least and maybe even more if TB interrupts the arc to have a character name a car or something. Wow. Just epic.
Someone tell the Emperor that Montoni’s is Alderan and use the death ray to blow that shit up.
Your damn right its’ frightening Darren.
It means that Jessica is your sister!!!!!
Think about it.
Blonde hair, blank expression, questionable parentage…
But then again somehow you’ve always known that….
Gaah! Batboy had the opportunity today to make a meaningful contribution and advance to story or at least gather some loose ends. He could have had an extended meeting over multiple panels and really fleshed things out. But noooooooo, he had to take almost a comic book approach and just flat waste the Sunday strip and all the opportunity it offered. These pissant self-indulgent, near-comic book excursions into nerdia lead to nowhere and are best forgotten. And if that’s nitpicking, well, excuuuusse meeeee.
Merry Christmas to all !
Just wanted to get that in before this story arch ends.
Didn’t a recent study link light saber use to cancer?
Gotta say he did a better job quoting this famous scene than most people. Emphasized the wrong words here and there, but at least he was sorta paying attention. Actually chuckled a little at the “take your son to work day” line.
@John – I wondered about that “another nightmare” thing as well, but I think I figured it out. Earlier in the day, Darin had a nightmare when he took a nap after Story Time and Snack.
Perhaps Darin is going to learn that the world isn’t as simple as it seems. Maybe Frankie tells him that it was *Lisa* who seduced him, that the affair was consensual, that there was a relationship. That Lisa made up the date rape thing because she couldn’t tell her family about her and Frankie being involved, and told it so long it seemed real.
That Frankie rather than being a sociopath, is a father who was denied the chance to be in his son’s life because the mother was lying about him. Now he has a production company and wants to produce Les’s movie because a) he wants to finally know Darin and tell him the truth and b) he wants to make sure the movie doesn’t tell Lisa’s lies.
Frankie, like Darth Vader, turns good in the end and is redeemed. Darin takes the mask off Vader and sees a man, a human being, ready to call him ‘son’