Link to today’s strip.
Good lord, I’ve never seen anyone so utterly transformed by a comic book. The amount of joy Jff is experiencing is mutating him into an unearthly being! In that last panel, Jff looks like he’s turning to bite Holly’s head, and he’s got a set of jaws that can do it in one gulp!
Isn’t it odd that people get excited over this stuff, but then refer to the issues in such a clinical way? It’s not, “I can’t believe I’m actually holding the issue which first introduces gold kryptonite!” but this weirdly specific “Action Comics #243!” I suppose people who are dedicated collectors would do this, but it seems odd for fans. If you got A-Rod’s autograph, would you yell “Hey, I got NY Yankees’ Number 13’s autograph!”? It just seems, again, like someone who enjoys collecting, but doesn’t actually enjoy the actual article itself.
Whichever it is, you know, Mr. Batiuk, we get it. We really do. You think collecting comic books is just the greatest pastime ever–even collecting remarkably stupid ones like Action Comics #243. And that’s okay, I mean, I’m sure we all have our little “guilty pleasures.”
It’s just that none of the rest of us bring them up, in public, every damned time we meet someone. I mean, come on. Give it a rest.
If those damned things mean that much to you, there’s only one thing you must do. You’ve already made a good start here, turning Jff into a shark, but you need to go all the way.
You need to turn Les into a lion. And not just as a comic book tribute, but as an actual week-long storyline. Anything less would reflect poorly on comic books–and I don’t think you want to do that.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Even dressed as Superman, Les is still infinitely punchable.
Hilarious and disturbing, BC. More smug than a mighty locomotive. He leaps tall buildings with a single smirk.
It’s not merely comic books, it’s the joyful nostalgia for days gone by that one feels when one receives an old comic book from some weirdo they barely know. THAT’S what’s really important and it’s why comic books from a very specific era are an indelible link to a simpler time and (zzzzzzzzzzzz). It’s one of his pointless and really weird little fantasies that he feels compelled to keep revisiting, again and again and again. This time, in the form of taking a week to have one character hand another character a comic book. Quintessential Batom.
Note how he hasn’t even opened the comic yet. No worries though, he should be able to get to that point sometime within the next two days…maybe. Bear in mind as well that the great SJ arc isn’t finished until the Corporal actually gets the collection. Retreiving the comic box, opening the comic box, looking inside the comic box, reacting to the contents of the comic box…we could be looking at week after week of silent panels here.
If getting this roughly $75 comic book is the highlight of his life, I have to wonder how miserable Jff’s existence has been up until now. (Then again, he did live with Ed Crankshaft for many years, so a miserable existence is to be expected.)
By the time a normal man has reached Jff’s age, he is over this kind of crap.
IMO there were other people Holly should have thanked and or apologized to before these dimwits, who after all only allowed her to clamber up to their attic to rummage through what was essentially trash. Pete, who gave her valuable artwork, would probably be first. Then Hagglemore, who she threatened with scissors, then the scuzzy biker guy I guess. But THEY don’t have their own comic strips now, do they?
It’s not that I don’t read “Crankshaft”, it’s that I can’t. If by chance FW and CS both feature horrible puns and or too much smirking on the same day, my Batiukian immunity begins to weaken, potentially to a degree that could theoretically render me too wry to go on living. And no way I’m risking it because I bet it happens a few times every week. I nearly died several times over back when FBOFW ran right next to FW in the local paper (too much sap content) and I’ve had more than my fill of nearly-fatal comic strip related illness for a lifetime I’ll tell you what. Maybe if I had special goggles, I don’t know.
Just kidding. I wouldn’t read that crap if I had special goggles that made it funny. IF such a thing existed. And it does not.
I’m totally lost with the whole “Jff” thing. Someone explain please?
I bet this would be really exciting if I knew WHAT ANY OF IT MEANT
The “Jff” thing goes like this. Forgive me for including a lot more of the plot than was necessary because I love how stupid and needlessly convoluted the whole thing was.
Frankie, Darin’s biological father and the man who stole Saint Lisa’s virtue, nefariously returned to Westview under nefarious circumstances to do something nefarious. As it turned out, he told Darin that he heard that Lisa’s Story was going to be turned into a movie and he wanted to make a reality show around Lisa’s first lover reuniting with her adopted-out son, because the fanfare around Lisa’s Story was just so great it’d be able to carry a project like that, or something.
Darin didn’t like it, and took the better part of six weeks walking away from Frankie because he couldn’t believe how crass Frankie was, using his past relationship with Lisa to make a television show, but eventually he did so. He gathered everyone around for a brainstorming session about how they were going to be able to stop Frankie from making that abomination of a reality show centered around Lisa and her story. Les was befuddled. Fishstick was similarly lost. Jessica had no idea because of course she didn’t because Batiuk portrays her as an idiot. I think Summer and Keisha were there as well and they had no idea what to do either, despite making a special trip back from college to join the brainstorming session. Cayla was serving everyone coffee. All hope was not lost, however, as former principal Fred Fairgood, whose brain was left a lumpy pile of mashed potatoes from a stroke earlier in the year, was off to the side murmuring “Pm nd Jff. Pm nd Jff.”
This enabled Fishstick to realize immediately exactly what Fred meant, as it was obvious that he was referring to an incident that Pam and Jeff had witnessed over thirty years earlier. This incident was a domestic dispute between Frankie and his then girlfriend Lisa.
Jeff came to visit later and everyone hauled their ass over to Les’ house to hear the fascinating story. Les was distressed. Darin and Jessica were desperate. Fishstick and Fred were there for some reason, and Keisha and Summer had come back from college to listen as well. Cayla served coffee and hung around the kitchen while Jeff told his story. Thirty-some years earlier Pam and Jeff were living in a rough neighborhood and they broke up an argument between Frankie and Lisa. They took Lisa home or something and made sure that Frankie wasn’t going to beat her up. To finish up the story, Jeff made an offhand and totally absurd statement about how Lisa said that at least she had something to write in her journal.
Cayla overheard this because she wasn’t actually part of the discussion, but she was the one who realized that the journal that Jeff had just mentioned was a journal that she saw stashed somewhere in Les’ house. Les apparently didn’t know about it because Les is so self-absorbed he would never have noticed such a thing despite having lived there for decades. Cayla brought out *The Journal* but Summer was the only one brave enough to read its contents. In it Lisa said that she didn’t like Frankie and that she hoped that the child she was giving up for adoption wouldn’t have to meet him. Jessica, because she was of no other use, filmed a video of Summer reading *The Journal* and had Darin threaten to put it on YouTube if Frankie didn’t back off, because that’s just the sort of YouTube video that would ignite a major scandal. Frankie backed off and Darin won the day, or something.
Anyway, that’s where “Jff” comes from, because of course Jeff would randomly, independently show up in two different storylines because there are only about 200 people in the Funkyverse.
What bothers me is that Batiuk seems to not want to know how easy it would have been for Jeff to get his oddly referenced love object. It would seem that working smarter, not harder cheapens the experience.
Wow, Jff really became unhinged in panel 3.
Elder Pmm keeps morphing into Fishstick.
TB turning Les into a lion would be a nice homage to Action Comics #243 if done right, but he would probably screw it up. Remember his last comic book plot homage: Lois Lane #106? He did the dang thing backwards…
He’s amazed and can’t believe he has a copy of a comic book which he could have gotten on ebay years ago at roughly $50-70 but it’s like some otherworldly, unattainable relic. And yeah, don’t understand the preoccupation with the numbering. I’ve heard comic fans rattle off issue #s but in my experience they’ll also usually add something about the actual *content/story* of said issue as pointed out in todays post.
Also, in a follow up story Holly could start delivering old Nintendo and Atari cartridges to the children of Westview whose over-the-moon appreciative parents never thought they’d be able to show their kids what classic games look like.
The true awesomeness of this comic strip arc is that nothing has been accomplished in it.
Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Rien
And the worse part of it is that none of us are certain that it has concluded yet! I still think we will see another 13 weeks of strips in which Holly is going around making amends to Starbuck comics donees.
And the real idiocy of this is that it started with a soldier in Afghanistan. Yes, a soldier in Afghanistan. An infinitely more interesting story arc that could have me emotionally involved.
Congrats, Batiuk. You have done what Seinfield could not do. You have truly created a piece of arc about nothing.
Regarding the strip that was helpfully placed in the middle of my post (Thanks!):
Is the “Ditto” line of Cayla’s not the most perfect line ever written for her? Could there possibly be anything more appropriate coming out of her mouth hole?
“I have nothing to add, so put me down for exactly what my husband just said,” only in fewer words.
Batuik doesn’t really get happiness does he? As in how it works – so we get this excessive joy over something trivial.
Charles: brilliant recap. You almost made it sound like a real story and that’s not easy. Nicely done.
Of course, “Jff” is supposed to be funny because disabled old coots are inherently hilarious. But if you read FW every day you already knew that.
captiancab: Old board games from the 1940s would probably be more likely. “Why, we’d gather around the ol’ radio and play “Nazi Smasher” right up until it was time for “Fibber McGee and Molly” and it was BETTER!”.
On 1/27/2007, guest host “Uncle Lumpy” of Comics Curmudgeon wrote (of FBoFW): ” … creatively as dead as they come … But suppose somebody wanted to make it good – and without losing the current audience. Could they do that? How?”
Some people work sudoku puzzles. I try to figure out how FW could be fixed, or at least improved.
As a possible fix for this comic strip I propose the following: Cayla goes to the animal shelter an adopts a cat; it looks exactly like Le Chat Bleu (except that from now on TB will instruct the colorist to color the hallucinatory cat blue). Most future strips will feature one or both of these cats. The End.
Or this: Thelma, weary of the shallow life of Hollywood, and being a Midwestern girl herself, longs for a return to the humble pleasures of a small Ohio town. She moves to Westview, gets a job at WHS, and from here on the strip is about her.
Then again, as I read Charles’ excellent synopsis above, I realize that, like “Mary Worth,” FW is perfect just as it is.
Making FW better? Well, first thing I’d do is hire someone to stand next to TB as he works so he or she can occasionally poke him with a stick when he gets sleepy. Perhaps that person could also act as a proofreader/test audience for his “jokes”. Then I’d recommend trying to write a story where something actually happens as opposed to repeating the premise over and over.
And fewer dead people. That’s a must.