Oh man. We’re still walking.
Walking, walking, walking, in today’s Strip
Lisa died of breast cancer, right? Why did the cancer walk get hijacked by Funky’s trick knee, gout, bursitis or Les’s.. um, never, mind, Les is aging apparently only by getting a cool stripe on the side of his head.
In any case, my take-away from all of this is Tombat fishing for accolades for realistically aging his characters, weird time jumps aside. Which is fine, if you want to call the strip Aging Boomers or something. But the idea this strip depicts contemporary issues affecting young adults in a thought-provoking and sensitive manner is now a meme unto itself here. It’s a joke. This strip is about the horrors of growing old in an inescapable town while surrounded by terrible people and situations.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Basically, you could replace the entire week of dialogue with “We’re old, we’re old, oh woe is us we’re so old”…
Due to my error, this post was credited to me but was in fact authored by DavidO. “Cool stripe”…LOL.
TFH sez: Fixed it 🙂 !
So is FW’s battle against humor, Funky.
The problem is one I’ve mentioned before: Batiuk thinks that he’s a young adult….therefore, having young people like Les and Funky talk about the bursitis and dementia that ravage the lives of his contemporaries at the diner in a sensitive and thought-provoking manner is doing the world a service.
The effect of this strip on the reader can be summarized in one line from Mark Twain’s WAR PRAYER:
“imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it”
A message to the folks at King Syndicate. When BatHack complains he doesn’t get enough vacation, please remind him that he took this week off.
Don’t smirk gently into that good night.
You know Batiuk is in rare form when you literally forget you’ve read today’s comic an hour later.
We knew he was going to drag out a whole week on the Lisa’s Legacy® Run, this being breast cancer month and all. And he’s basically continuing the theme from last year’s arc, in which Funky collapsed during the race an the paramedics came, set him on a bench, gave him a cup of Gatorade, and sent him on his way. The “main characters are getting old and falling apart” meme is a dead horse that’s been beaten for a few years now. There’s so much he could be doing with the other characters in the strip that we haven’t heard from (Summer/Keisha, Wally/Buddy/Rachael). It’s just frustrating as a reader to have to sit through this crap week after week.
It’s an elementary rule of film-making that you’re not supposed to cross the axis. In other words, if you show a car driving from screen left to screen right, your next shot shouldn’t show the car moving from screen right to screen left. It looks to the audience as if the car is going “the wrong way.”
So I’m at a loss why a cartoonist whose career spans over 40 years is making such an elementary mistake. Especially when you consider that the second panel could easily be flipped horizontally and it wouldn’t impact the *cough* joke at all. In fact, from a purely Batiukian perspective, that makes the strip “better” because Les’ smirk is the final thing the reader sees.
Is “sheer unadulterated laziness” one of those issues that affects young people?
Actually, looks more like Scott Wedman…
Running like what, Les? Are you attempting a Marx Brothers routine? The humor is about as dead as the Marx Brothers.
This is weird. I’m defending TB for a second time in short order. @BeckoningChasm thinks TB crossed the axis, a rookie move if ever there were one. But I give TB a pass, because he’s just doing a reverse angle.
Standard disclaimer applies: this does not make today’s strip funny or otherwise entertaining.
If the battle is a rout why don’t you two waive the white flag and spare us this terrible dialogue!!
Wow, these guys act like they’re in their mid-late 60’s instead of their 40’s.
Thanks TFH! As far as the artwork goes, I’m just tired of the smirking. And the leaves. And Les’ stupid face. And DavidO is right, Les just gets more “distinguished” looking as he ages but Funky is a total nightmare, with disgusting f*cking dots on his nose, misshapen squggly eyebrows and those horrible sweat beads flying around all over the place. This is one of the most tedious Lisa Legacy arcs ever. Think about that. Wow.
You know, there are strollers that are designed to be pushed by someone who’s running, so you can take your child out with you while you’re exercising. The one the Dipshit Twins have is not one of them.
A funnier joke would’ve been the two of them seeing Skyler being pushed, and Funky saying “I bet that’s me next year”.
The funniest joke of all would be if a car came careening through and smashed into Les, killing him horribly. As the shaken driver staggered from the car, the grateful citizens would surround him and congratulate him. “Our long Ohioan nightmare is finally over.”