Hey snarkers, thanks for your patience as I try to transition this blog back over to wordpress.com…meanwhile back in Westview:
34 thoughts on “Thursday, June 6”
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Son of Stuck Funky 
Damned if that ain’t the house from yesterday’s Crankshaft…the very strip that also referenced Bedside Manor.
Oh, fer chrissakes. So let me guess: Pam and Jeff Murdoch witnessed Frankie raping Lisa back in the day, but promised they wouldn’t say a word as long as Frankie agreed to never produce a reality TV show about falsely reconnecting with their bastard love-child at any point in the future? And they got that in writing from a man who never reads? By leaps and bounds, this plot grows stupider with each passing day.
Well, now we know what only Pam and Jeff can do. They can give unsubstantiated accusations about a man (which might be grounds for HIM to sue THEM for slander) in the apparent hopes of preemptively shutting down a TV show when Les, Darin and Jessica could just publicly reveal that Frank abandoned Lisa and her son and was only interested in making this show when he reappeared.
Damn it Batiuk, a guy who pushes a girl into having sex and then takes no responsibility is already low. You didn’t need to change it from ‘pressured into sex and then cast aside’ into ‘rape’.
Even worse, I looked into this. Apparently in some states it actually was not legally considered rape if you drugged someone until relatively recently. So there might have actually been a reason why St. Lisa never accused Frank. HOWEVER, if it’s become ‘Frank physically forced her to have sex’ then that’s a clear case of rape, even decades ago.
This is horrible. There is no excuse. And there is no redemption for the author. It is gross. Please stop it now.
Tom Batiuk officially enters Morton Downey Jr/Piers Morgan/National Enquirer territory. Please accept my apologies for EVER giving the man credit.
I hope the next strip’s dialogue continues thusly:
Ann Fairgood: “…when they came across a young girl struggling with her boyfriend by his van…she was screaming, screaming “You’d better put out, hoss, or the school newspaper hears about your ‘playing for the other team!'” He was sobbing, pleading with her, “Please! Please, you know it’s the seventies, I’ll be run out of town! You’ll ruin my life!” “Exactly!” she screetched, in a voice like nails on a blackboard. The poor man disappeared the next day–never even graduated from high school–while the van slut paraded around the town with the widest smirk you’d ever seen. There was only one person naive enough to buy the story she decided to sell, of course…you probably know him by his OWN mile-wide smirk. Les Moore.”
Dear Tom Batiuk: I officially hate you.
Yikes. So what was originally Lisa having sex with a jock because she wanted him to like her gets retconned into date rape, and now into a violent assault. At long last, sir…
I’m trying to decide whether I do or don’t want to see Pam and Jeff prosecuted as accessories.
So wait, Pam and Jeff saw this and told Mumbles over there about it, so he knew about the incident and could somehow today specifically link it back to Frankie and Lisa and the day his adopted son was conceived?
So they had this much detail about the incident but they said NOTHING about it until the day Frankie shows up and wants to do a Reality show about Lisa? (Let’s remember that he never suggested it was going to be negative about Saint Lisa. Darin was just appalled by the idea of commingling Saint Lisa and Reality Television) And the only reason they’re bringing this up now is to stop him?
If these people existed I’d light them on fire.
Have to admit that it’s hilarious how skilled Batiuk is at making his characters look worse when he wants to make them look better.
That’s right, Mr. Batom, you show that plausibility and credulity who’s boss! Now I’m no professional writer, no one pays me for my ideas, nor have I ever been nominated for any prestigious writing awards. So it’s just one man’s opinion. But if I ever wrote anything as painfully contrived and totally intelligence-destroying as this piece of garbage is, when I finally emerged from my opium, PCP and whiskey bender I’d be embarrassed to show my face in public until I made some sort of sincere atonement, like chopping off my own hands, for example. Then I’d promise to never bother anyone ever again and I’d sail off to exile myself on some remote south Atlantic island to die a hermit.
Seriously, if he’s not cringing in abject horror and embarrassment after seeing this crap in print, the man is totally beyond all redemption. This is just shamelessly bad on every level. You always know going into one of these mega-arcs that it’ll be bad, but this is maybe Act III’s all-time low point right here. That last panel is a perfect example of why this horrible comic strip generates so much rage, if that doesn’t set your teeth on edge nothing will.
…There might have actually been a reason why St. Lisa never accused Frank.
Ummm, maybe because THERE WAS NO RAPE! This was a classic case of desperate, easily-played skank is had by a classic bad boy (who looks like he may well be a love child himself, with Dick Tracy as bio-dad).
Skank gets laid, skank gets knocked up, skank gets dumped. Nothing more, nothing less.
When she was still alive, Lisa grew up to become a lawyer. Why didn’t she herself pursue a lawsuit against Frankie if he raped her in their youth? That would have been as good an opportunity as this nonsense moment is. Or did she not want to risk tarnishing her saintly reputation while she was alive? Eh, the more beady-eyed questions I ask, the less any of this arc makes sense, never mind remixing Crankshaft into the equation.
@Jeffcoat:
Looks like your autocorrect misspelled retconning.
Retcon time! Do over! Do over! Re-write!
“Oh, BY THE WAY – 38 years ago, Frankie forced St Lisa to receive his demon seed. Just thought we’d toss that in.”
Tomorrow, TomButt rewrites the story of World War II where the Germans win.
So Pam and Jeff (Jessica’s aunt and uncle) were there when their niece’s husband was conceived. So what did they do? Did they hold Lisa down? Did they join in? Did they watch? Just wondering because their current timeline is 10 years behind this one, which begs the question: Are they still alive and how are they relevant to a reality TV show concept?
Does TB talk this stuff through before he writes it down?
“I remember that one night they were returning from a walk through the alley across the street…”
^ A walk through the alley; this is what people do for recreation in Westview. Says all you need to know about the place.
Un-flipping real…but totally expected from the mind of Baron Von Munchasen (aka Tom Batiuk)
Before he’s done rewriting The Saga of The Drunken Screw, Frankie’s going to end up pulling a knife on Lisa. A knife dipped in CANCER!
Baituk is raping the minds of readers everywhere.
I knew the “reveal” in this arc would be stupid, but Batiuk has exceeded even my expectations. So Ann and Fred just happened to be neighbors to Pam and Jeff who just happened to be walking by casually when Frankie was forcing his attentions on Saint Dead Lisa (and they just happened to do nothing about it), an act which just happened to be the conception of Fred and Ann’s adopted son? And nobody happened to make this connection and/or happened to talk about it before now?
so storywise here – she’s about to have someone else’s Flashback. This is rarely used narrative devise mostly because it is jaw droppingly lame. This device was used in the Mesa Of Lost Women a film so bad and awful that a lot of folks have assumed Ed Wood Wrote it.
And the less said about the rape retcon the better. as noted above, Mr. Batuik has reached a new low.
Yes, it’s worse than i ever imagined. Whenever i think i am too hard on TB i will remember this hamfisted bit of self-indulgent fan fiction.
Anyway, here’s something for that.
In re. OB Dan. The point was about the RETCON. If it was date rape involving drugs, that might not have met the legal definition of rape in the state at the time. If, however, the retcon has turned it into rape through physical force, that’s going to be an open and shut case.
Why not just drag in Beetle Bailey and the Family Circle kids as witnesses, too?
From the Facebook frame on the FW page:
“573 people like Funky Winkerbean”
This seems… optimistic.
Good point, firedmyass. Let’s compare to some other strips:
Apartment 3G: 54
Mary Worth: 223
Crankshaft: 428
Mallard Fillmore: 793
Amazing Spider Man 3,781,472
Well, obviously the last one is using the comic book/movie character to boost their ratings. It’s MF i’m most surprised by, frankly. Batiuk, you’re less popular than Bruce Tinsley!
Woops, that 428 “Likes” is for King Features, not Crankshaft. Apparently no one likes Crankshaft.
Actually, Lisa was walking through that alley when Joe Chill raped her. Leading into Batiuk’s next “Sunday comic book cover homage”
So, Frankie raped Lisa because they were in a poor neighborhood. And it was witnessed, but nobody ever thought to bring it up, just because. Poor neighborhood.
Dear gawd, Tom. You really AREN’T edited, are you?
If he’s really going to have his caharacters use a thirty-plus year old sexual assault as ammuntion to “stop” Frankie from filming his TV show, he’s far sicker and way more desperate for ideas than any of us have ever considered. The very idea that two of his characters from another strip “witnessed” Lisa “struggling” against Frankie’s rapey advances all those years ago is repugnant enough, but expecting anyone to buy how he’s shoehorning that idea into this arc is downright insulting.
Likewise, it’s very hard to believe that no one within his Funky little circle has politely suggested that perhaps it’s time to let Lisa go already instead of finding new and increasingly stupid ways to keep her “memory” alive. Over the last few years he seemed to tone that nonsense down a hair, but here we go again with it. The sad way he’s spent much of the last six years looking for cheap ways to work his Lisa-drama into the strip is one of (and maybe the chief) reasons FW is so consistently loathesome and awful. If this apparent direction is actually where he’s going with this, the outrage is going to be fierce and justifiably so, too.
In re. OB Dan. The point was about the RETCON.
F*** the retcon. That’s a load of crap. You can’t rewrite an existing storyline just to add a little unpleasantness or please a group of snarkers. Did Batiuk actually do this, and acknowledge it was a “tailored to fit” retcon? I must have been out having a life that day, and missed it.
O.B. Dan: The CBR interview where Tom revealed his big prestige arc this year would involve the discovery of Lisa’s diary and the revelations it would spill out about how her relationship with Frankie was now ALL about “an element of coercion”.
I must say, I’m a bit amazed that -this- is what’s setting you off, given the past few years have seen severe retcon after severe retcon.
(Bull only PRETENDED to bully Les! Ann and Fred’s marriage was a sham built on lies and convenience that shattered Ann’s dream of being a writer! The option to Lisa’s story was purchased only a couple of months ago, not two years ago!)
Fun fact about the NJ site today. They refused to let my comment (which just pointed out that Pam and Jeff never called the police and that Darin and Les didn’t seem troubled by this story) through. Funny, considering that allegedly they moderate comments to prevent profanity and offensive speech, yet they allow someone to use the word “bitch” on those comments.
Assume NJ is run by hypocrites, people.
I have to stick up for my home state of New Jersey and point out that Comics Kingdom is a service of King Features syndicate. The same comics content appears on dozens of newspaper sites and King Features, not nj.com, moderates the discussion.