I thought “the kibosh” had been put on everything yesterday, but the stupidest story arc in FW history continues with today’s expositionfest.
It stands to reason that since Summer and Keisha arrived at KSU a month after classes began, that they’d be coming home a month after they’ve ended. Les regales the girls with a rehash of the last two months of strip “action” (oh, wait: he left out “Your half-brother Darin is going to be the birth father of his wife John Darling’s daughter Jessica’s daughter”).
Son of Stuck Funky 
TB: Everyone still reading knows the backstory. Wall o’ text is off=putting, especially when you consider the size most strips are now printed. And your fan’s failing eyesight.
Plus, Keisha has to ride in back? For shame.
Rusty, be glad that they even remembered Keisha exists.
Nice to know you care for your daughter and stepdaughter so much that you haven’t bothered to tell them about important family events until now, Les. Dipshit.
“So why didn’t Darin just decline the offer?”
“He did. But then he got really pissy about it and decided he needed to stop the whole thing entirely.”
“But no one who knew Mom was participating in it anyway?”
“That’s right.”
“So who do you know who can put a “kibosh” on it and how are they involved?”
“Well, we were all talking one night and Ann related this old story about her former upstairs neighbors, who once told her about how they rescued a young woman who was struggling with a guy in a parked van. Turns out that the witness was Jessica’s uncle and the woman was your mother. We believe Darin’s bio-dad was the perpetrator. We’re going to meet with these people so they can tell us the story again, then we’re going to use the accusations to run Frankie out of town.”
“Oh, ok…wait, what?? Are you telling me that Darin was conceived by someone who raped my mother and that the rapist is wandering around our town right now??? And that a bunch of people knew about it all this time? And you are seriously dropping this information on me all nonchalantly and matter-of-factly like it’s all some big zany adventure?? What the F*CK is wrong with you???”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? He wants to cash in on “Lisa’s Story”. I have interests to protect here, Summer. Who do you think foots the bill for that fancy KSU education of yours, hmmmm?”
“I’m on a full-ride basketball scholarship.”
(dead silence)
Adding Summer to the story…yes, yes, yes! That IS how it could suck even more! Let’s have the whole family gather ’round, pitch in and help Lisa’s bio-son use the information pertaining to his mother’s long-ago sexual assault to extort some slimeball into leaving town! As a FAMILY! Good old fashioned family bonding, FW sure could use more of that.
“Lisa?”
“My dead wife.”
“Oh, you mean MY MOTHER.”
Crankshaft’s neighbors, or whoever they are, will end up just being a distraction: The storyline will really end when somebody finds a videotape Lisa left behind (and tracks down a working VCR), labeled “When Frankie Comes Back,” which starts out “In the event that anybody finally gives a shit that I was raped, even if it’s 35 years after the fact, this is what really happened…”
With all that text, I wondered why he bothered to put in any drawings at all. Not that he managed to make them any good, mind you.
“Was “Not much?” not a concise enough way to answer this question while still explaining the last few weeks’ worth of strips faithfully and completely?
Hey… have we seen any kind of fatherly interaction between Les and Keisha? I mean, I know she’s college-aged and out of the house, but there’s gotta be something, right?
Hahaha. Waiting to be wrong.
You just have to love Les’ indignation about anyone else besides him cashing in on Lisa’s story.
Inkwell, they barely had a relationship when she was IN the house. What makes you think they actually have anything like a father-daughter bond when she’s out of it?
Nice to see the lovebirds have returned. And they brought a suitcase full of D batteries for their “personal massage devices.”
I just don’t get the premise that Frankiebeans and Crayolaman can just show up and do what they want and get what they want, whether or not anyone cooperates. And even if they videoed whatever the Hell they want to video, I don’t see how they make even a dime on any of this. Who would care about any of it?
Only in that ping pong ball-sized brain rattling around in BatHump’s ponytailed head does ANY of this make sense.
But these weeks of nonsense will be completely worth it if Frankiebeans can get candid shots of Slumber and Karaneesha doin’ the nasty.
“Dad, classes at Kent State ended a month ago. Where have you been all this time?”
“What? Oh, I’m sure it was something important. Now get in the car and… wait, Keisha, no, you go in the back.”
…”Your half-brother Darin, husband of Jessica Darling, daughter of her father John Darling, murdered husband of Jan Murdoch Darling, sister of Jeff Murdoch, husband of Pam Crankshaft, daughter of Ed Crankshaft, the son of Gudleif, half brother of Thorgier, the priest of Ljosa water, who took to wife Thurunn, the mother of Thorkel Braggart, the slayer of Cudround the powerful, who knew Howal, son of Geernon, son of Erik from Valdalesc, son of Arval Gristlebeard…”
I kinda like it. In print, it looks like the ants from B.C. are plotting to put the kibosh on everything.
And again for those of you who’ve been on a bender – a Wall o’ text recap of what hasn’t been happening – to be honest Waiting for Godot has more forward movement. And considering the reality tv show turns out to be FTR and the bald guy lugging a camcorder there doesn’t seem much to put a kibosh on.
GAH. I assume that woman in the masthead is the newly retconned Lisa, rejecting Frankie’s “advances.”
Tom Batiuk, you are rapidly becoming the worst hack in the history of everything.
Batiuk and all you beady-eyed nitpickers left out the most important part for the exposition. “As you know, I wrote a book about both Lisa and John Darling.”
Suddenly, the Promageddon arc is looking like high art.
Once in a comment I snarked that TB was up for the Stephanie Meyers Writing Excellence award. I would now like to apologize to Stephanie Meyers.
David O, just testing here.. Hmm! I was able to log in with Twitter…
Sadly, we’re in for at least two more months of irrelevant and redundant exposition about Big Frankie and the Viral Show of Utter Irrelevance. This is because Batyuck has penciled in THREE months of irrelevant and redundant exposition about Saint Dead Lisa’s Missing Diary Of Finally Explaining Everything. (Followed by a solid year of exposition about how glad they are to have finally laid the past to rest.)
Check out that pic of Cringing Terrified Lisa above. So we’re almost there, eh? The moment Batom has been waiting decades for, his big chance to retcon away the only stain on Her heavenly virtue. This will be nothing short of hilarious.
Yes, that pic of Cringing Terrified Lisa is already hilarious. It brings to mind Seinfeld’s “he pulled it out!”.
Overall this arc reminds me of the Foobpocalypse, but without the comfort of knowing there’s an end in sight.
I think Les is going to meet with Crazy Joe Davola!
That cringing Lisa (who I didn’t recognize because of course Batiuk won’t be true to how he used to depict her) makes it so tempting to look ahead to see what’s coming, but I have to resist. I want to savor the awfulness one day at a time.
Summer: “So, what happened?”
Les: “Well, an unnamed producer for a company called Cable Movie Entertainment that nobody has ever heard of before decided to buy the option to make a film out of Lisa’s Story. A TV movie, that is.”
Summer: “Different from the unnamed producer who bought the same option two years ago?”
Les: “What are you talking about?!? Anyway, Funky for some reason was chatting about this with his bitterly estranged ex-wife. And SHE put it on the evening news.”
Summer: “…uh-huh. Um, why would she do that? Books are optioned as films all the time. That’s not exactly news. Heck, it doesn’t even mean the film, er, TV movie in development will actually get made!”
Les: “Listen, is this your story or mine?!?”
Summer: *sigh*
Les: “Anyway, Darin’s evil birth father evilly came back to town with his evil partner to do an evil reality TV show made of evilness. Because they’re evil!”
Summer: “…go on…”
Les: “Anyway, we can stop it! The good news is that Lisa was raped years ago! But it was the most heart-warming date rape ever, because it lead to her getting a ride home from people who witnessed it but didn’t report it!”
Summer: “….WHAT?!? W-what was the…’heartwarming’ part?”
Les: “Hmmm? Oh, well, see, the witnesses knew Fred and Anal. That means everything will be hunky dory!”
Summer: “…*….uh…uhh….”
Keisha: “….I’m fine too Dad, thanks for asking!”
Les: “Hmm? Oh, hello Keisha. What are you doing here?”
Keisha: “AAAAAAUGH!”
I thought I’d try to eliminate all the unneeded verbiage in today’s strip (though when you think about it, none of it is really needed). I had to add two words, while removing around ten.
That second panel is such a perfect storm of awful writing that I don’t think anything could ever fix it.
Helskor, was that Njorl’s Saga (Monty Python) you were describing??
I’m imagining Lisa in the masthead is staying away from Les, not Frankie. Makes some sense, doesn’t it?
S. Tortilla: If someone could Photoshop Cringing Terrified Lisa into that one where Les wets himself in the janitor’s closet, we’d really have a retcon to remember.
It’s quite obvious to me that the only reason why he’s doing this is so he can just waste time and marvel at what a tremendously engaging plot he’s thrown together. No one admires their work quite like Tom Batiuk.
You know how I know this? Why isn’t Cayla in this strip? Was she not interested in picking her daughter up at college? He didn’t even consider including her for a moment. This is all about Lisa Lisa Lisa. Cayla couldn’t possibly be anymore superfluous.
—Why isn’t Cayla in this strip—
Not enough room for the word balloons.
I’m going to assume that Les and Cayla hasn’t spoken a damn word to either of their offspring since they left for college. You would think something this groundbreaking would have come up in some telephone conversations.