28 thoughts on “The Little Tramp!”

  1. And this is just Wednesday’s strip. I can’t wait to see these frames repeat through Saturday when she finally pulls herself together enough to start reading Page 1. With any luck, this will be Darrin’s Mailbox all over again.

  2. So can we assume that this scene happens several hours later and the Saint Lisa Revenge Squad adjourned for the day, cursing Les for being such a putz as they sulked off into the night?

  3. “…And Summer. What a wretched little androgyne that helmet hair creep impregnated me with!”

  4. I don’t get this. So the assembled Lisathians all adjourned without deciding anything about the diary? When the entire purpose of the gathering was to find a way to stop Frankie…which the diary might help them to do? And they all just left? “Oh. Oh. A diary. Gosh, fellas, that’s heavy. We’d better call the meeting off for now, while each of us deals with this in his or her or its own fashion.”

  5. In BatVoid’s mind these dramatic wordless strips are increasing the suspense, but actually they’re just prolonging the boredom. Just get to the sepia-toned corner thingy part and spare us the touching scenes of Summer contemplating the emotional weight and life-altering gravity of what she’s about to do while casually loafing around on her bed as kids her age are prone to do, OK? I mean geez, he’s been telling this awful story for like fifty weeks already, the last f*cking thing it needed was a time-killing silent strip.

  6. looks like sSummurs going start reading the end first,good idea lets get this mess over

  7. … okay, Batiuk, look. I was a tomboy too – for a period in my teens I even had that terrible haircut – and I’m not exactly the daintiest, most delicate specimen of femininity now, but some indication that the character sitting on the bed is actually supposed to be a young woman and not Mopey Pete’s kid brother? That might be nice too.

  8. No, go ahead, take your time. It’s not like learning the truth about your mother’s relationship with Frankie is a time-sensitive issue or anything, what with him trying to film his eeeeeevil reality television show while you’re all dithering around…

  9. “Dear Diary,
    Tonight was absolute bliss. Frankie found a new mattress for the Love Machine and we drank, smoked and did it three times while playing his new Styx 8-track on his bitchin’ stereo. Afterwards we were talking outside his van and there was this huge spider right behind me. Frankie went to kill it and these two dorks came running over thinking he was going to punch me! I really hate nosy imbeciles like that.

    Anyway, I’m growing increasingly concerned about that Les creep. He just won’t leave me alone. Everywhere I go there he is, creeping me out with his geekiness. I mean seriously, give it up! I’d have to be pretty desperate to resort to him, ha ha ha! Imagine how ugly his kids will turn out? Blech, it makes me sick just to think about it. But whatever, it doesn’t matter because Frankie is ten times the man Les will ever be and he’s all mine! Lisa n Frankie 4-Eva!!!!!”

  10. I drop my son off at his high school every day, Summer is wearing more clothing inside than the girls at his school wear walking from the parking lot during New England winters. Yeah, I get it, she’s a jock, even they wear jogging shorts and tank tops. You know Batiuk is dying to draw her with Les’s old glasses on, but doesn’t dare.

  11. If there’s a Graham Coxon lookalike contest at the local pub, Summer has it made.

  12. So…today’s Wednesday, and Sum’ Mo’, cloaked in a silence that makes the monasteries of old jokes seem like a Led Zep concert, is opening the book at the cover. If I come back somewhere around Sunday, will I still get to see the stunned look when she reads what Our Lady Of Perpetual Visitations says in her first sentence…?

  15. Wow… given Summer’s gigantic pedal extremities, I woulda thunk she’d have gone in for water polo instead of basketball…

  16. It’s a haiku kinda day…

    Wearing old game shorts
    John Roche sits Indian-style
    Needs a new sweatshirt

    A former Gamecock
    Roche’s KSU hoodie
    Makes no sense to me

    Perhaps KSU
    Means Karolina South U
    Sounds like Clemson joke

    Summer is John Roche
    If the joke ever gets old
    I have Scott Wedman

  17. Was she just going to keep the journal on her bed, but not read it? Batiuk should of had her fishing it out of the shoebox after everybody left. Meh.

  18. I thought Summer had three feet, but no, that’s just her fingers on her knee. The War on Limbs continues, though.

  19. I really hope this turns out to be the second coming of Laura Palmer’s diary, replete with sordid tales of cocaine binges and dark erotic encounters with multiple sociopaths. Maybe they can bring in that dwarf who used to own the comic book store to dance to spooky music…

  20. Summer: “Welp, enough of scratching my raging eczema until my fishbelly white legs are sore and bloody! Time to see what this journal doohickey’s all about!”

    (Summer gradually lifts up the cover. About one sixteenth of an inch every fifteen minutes.)

    Summer: “Almost…there…”

    (98 minutes later, the journal is open. The first page is blank. Summer frowns, her brow furrowing as she slowly, carefully turns each and every page. 130 minutes later, and it’s become clear: The entire book is blank.)

    Summer: “This doesn’t make any sense! Unless…”

    (Breaking out in a cold sweat, hand trembling, Summer slowly lowers a Sharpie to the first page and writes “My name is Summer Moore.” The book’s pages suddenly pulse with a sickly light, and beneath her text emerges another sentence in different handwriting. “Hello, Summer. My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle.” Summer goes pale.)

  21. Poor summer and her asymmetrical feet: one almost dainty (albeit poorly drafted), the other the size of a Buick. There’s no prose in this episode, but the decor is decidedly purple. Yecch!

  24. Look. Summer. I know your finally alone in your room, on your bed with some time to yourself …But for God sake’s, choose a better masturbatory aid than your deceased mother’s long lost journal!!!!

  25. Haven’t been posting at my usual clip because I’ve been dumbfounded by this whole stupid story. It’s extraordinary. It’s as if TB had one idea, to retcon Lisa’s pregnancy, and every other element of the story was the first thing that popped into his head when he considered it. He spent no other time thinking about it. It was just the first thing and he went with it, convinced that every thought he has is brilliant. It’s possible that he could have introduced Lisa’s journal in a way that could be at least plausible, but he apparently didn’t care to do that for even a moment. I wonder if he even realizes that he should do that. He’s not one of those terrible writers who leaves everything after the first draft. He leaves everything after the first thought.

    And… I was going to say I’d bet, but there’s no one alive who would take the bet, so betting on it is superfluous, but he’s just going to repeat himself, similar to how he’s stalling in today’s strip. Of course Summer was going to read the journal, so there wasn’t any point in spending a day to show her apparently deliberating doing so. (That is the point of today’s strip, right?) And the sad thing is that the journal’s probably going to hash over what Jff had to say last week, which was simply a rehash of what Fishstick said a week before that. And then there will be more angsting, followed by more ludicrously self-righteous condemnations of the painfully obvious and ineffectual villain, bolstered by stupid coincidences and absurd idiot plot developments.

  26. Charles, it has reached the point that calling Tom a hack would be an insult to hacks everywhere.

  27. Charles and John, yeah, this is so beyond hackery. I find it hard to imagine anyone writing this kind of non-story nothingness, then sitting back with a congratulatory self-handshake while thinking “It’s outta there!”

  28. @beckoning, don’t forget the tiny, tiny baseball diamond, which mighty author Les—I mean Batominc—bestrides like a literary giant!

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