Is there any reason we’re treated to three different views of Summer plopped on a bed and reading in today’s strip? Panel 1 I guess is okay, but I think just a little floating head of Summer above the scenes of what is being described in the journal would have been nice.
If this trend continues we’re going to be treated by even more bizarre angles, such as pet-mouse-view and helicopter-view.
Son of Stuck Funky 
All that’s missing is Batiuk waving a big sign saying “LOOK, IRONY!!!”
“So in Westview when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over Cleveland and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to Mentor on the Lake, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Akron I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Batiuk? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the pizza, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all of Tom’s studio in his mother’s attic, craps out the stories and folds the final stink in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Darin Fairgood, I even think of Old Frank Pierce the bio-father we never found, I think of Les Moore and of puking
Lisa didn’t include dates in her diary entries? Gee, that might make it difficult for it to hold up in court as evidence. Unless we’re looking for evidence of a dumb plot development, of course.
Oh, jeez, Pookster, don’t stop now!
…puking out reams of literary screams when the boys, oh god, the boys of Summer, fail to understand the literary might of my sequential long form art form fill out the form, boys, sign up for Dr. John’s seminar so you won’t be hidebound literalist beady-eyed nitpicker unwashed unlearned unschooled uncool mundanes that the world and that goddamned internet are teeming with teaming up against me, against Les, against Lisa, all Frankie raping this opus, this work, this Westview—so gather ’round, boys, gather ’round the shelves at the Zerial Art Phorm Korner—nay, not Komix! not hidebound!—and learn, learn, learn, and drink deeply of my knowledge.”
In East End London accent: “Breath deep, the gathering gloom, watch loights faid…”
Yep, that’s some really subtle foreshadowing right there. Why not have her next diary entry say “tomorrow we’re going skinny-dipping at the old abandoned summer camp way out on the woods, near that mental hospital”? What a f*cking hack.
This “dialog”, I guess you’d have to call it, is laughably awful, even by the teen girl diary standards he was aiming for here. Just unbelievably hackneyed and trite to the extreme, the lazy work of a lazy writer who stopped trying a long time ago.
And look at Summer, she’s just like her father. Sitting there wallowing in Lisa’s misery, soaking up the sadness as they constantly relive the endless parade of tragedy that was her life. You can almost hear Batom salivating as he prepares to drop that other shoe on Lisa yet again, this time retconning her into a domestic violence/sexual assault survivor because of course she was. Just a revolting display all around. These were the sort of strips that chased me away from FW for years at a time in the past, the ones that try to be “profound” and “touching” but instead do nothing but make me gag in disgust.
Apologies to Jack Kerouac.
I think most anyone with that hot, hot diary in their mitts would thumb ahead to the action. “new school…date…Frankie…Football team…OK, OK, let’s get to it….throbbing….repeated thrusts….quivering quim…NOW, der ya’ go! der ya go!!” I also look forward to the parts where “this schmuck Les” gets all weepy and shit and tries to come on to her after she’s started to show. “What a perv!”
It’s actually kinda haunting, which means its presence is totally unintentional.
Lisa won’t stay dead, is unstoppable, causes us to shriek and hyperventilate… the Zombie Apocalypse is WAY worse than I’d imagined.
Hey snarkers: guest hosting opportunity! If you’re one of those who got back to me about guest-authoring a week of posts, or if you’re interested and haven’t gotten back to me, hit me up at tfh@sonofstuckfunky.com
–Summer’s stuffed animal of indeterminate form… Is it a bear? A horse? A gopher? A dog? An anthropomorphic cancer cell?—
It’s Summer’s previously unmentioned pet Schnauzer, Sniffles, ….who apparently chose to commit suicide rather than endure another moment of Dead Lisa diatribes. An appropriate metaphor for the readers of the strip.
I thought Frankie went to Big Walnut Tech?
“all the pieces as coming together”
the foreshadowing here is as sublte as a cinder block to the face.
There’s a very good reason why we’re watching Summer read, rather than watch what she’s reading play out in drawings. Summer, like Les, is one of the Precious. Tom Batiuk believes we would much rather not be deprived of one moment of their presence than see some boring ol’ action.
Friday’s strip potential:
Panel One: (Les opens door, he is angry)
Les: Summer, what are you doing? That’s the journal of LISA! Give me that!
Panel Two: (Les has the journal in his hand, he slaps Summer hard across the face)
Les: Don’t you EVER touch this again!
Panel Three: (Summer is alone in her room. From either physical pain or the violent sexual fetish her father has of her mother, she weeps)
Alright, I have to say that the strip isn’t bad. At least it’s nowhere near the seven days of people yelling about reality TV. It’s just (using some arbitrary standard here) sub-par because Batiuk isn’t a teenage girl and has never been one. The journal entry doesn’t really read like something a teenage girl would write because of that.
Lisa’s Diary : I desperately want to fit in here at my new school. I went in today dressed up as Wonder Woman, carrying a box of pizza and a case of band instruments, but everyone just looked at me funny! I wonder why?
Summer: *wistful sigh* “Oh, Mom, you were so perfectly pure and innocent.”
Lisa’s Diary: I couldn’t believe it today when one of the football players here at Westview High School, named Frankie, asked me out to lunch! Well, actually, he just couldn’t finish his lunch but gave me the rest of his. Well, actually, he just asked me if I could throw his trash away, because the can was closer? And there were still some Fritos left in the bag? So I ate some? And then I -squeezed- the yogurt can to get out the fruit gunk on the bottom! Frankie just stared at me. I must have really impressed him!
Summer: “….*…..EwwwWWWWWwwwwwWWWWwww!”
Lisa’s Diary: I knew from that moment on that because of that moment where I shared his lunch leavings, that I and he were joined eternally by chains of gold forged by the Angels of Heaven itself! The moment I get alone with that hot stud, I’m going to blow his football-loving mind! Mmmmm. So dreamy. Certainly a much better fellow than this “Les” geek who keeps giving me these creepy cow-eyed stares. Get a life, you sick dweeb!
Summer: “Heh. If you only knew, Mom. That obsessed, creepy dweeb was your future husband! My Dad! …*….come to think of it, the same Dad who welcomed me home by dropping the bomb that you were date-raped and every adult in Westview knew for years but never told anyone. ….HEY! He IS a sicko!”
I love how florid, overwritten, melodramatic and most importantly, detached from her immediate experience this writing is. This hasn’t been written by a teenage child who was living in the here and now. This was written by a preternaturally self-aware girl who’s writing everything as if for posterity. There’s no “Suzy Kaplan is a mean bitch for hitting me in the face with that tissue box today”, instead it’s all “I’m desperately lonely and here I am going to a new school and I hope to fit in because, you know, I’m totally aware of and clinical about my social awkwardness and it’s been hard, oh so hard, to find people who like me for who I am. I think, and hope, with this new environment perhaps I can be more comfortable with myself, which may make others more open for friendship with me.”
After all, her deeds that day, and every day, in fact, echo in eternity.
“It’s called PLODDING!”