She’s correct: this can’t be good. And I’m willing to bet everything I own that it won’t be. Because it can’t be, you see? Anyway, TB appears to be dusting off the dustiest of old tropes today, the ol’ “idiot husband forgets anniversary” bit. How original. Check out Cayla’s vindictive sneer today, looks like Les is really (shudder) rubbing off on her. If the final panel of FW’s run doesn’t feature a silent panel depicting Moore Manor cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape, I’ll be shocked.
Speaking of the artwork, today we see why Summer isn’t a regular in the strip anymore. BatTom can’t draw her consistently, especially from a distance. That side view in panel one is hilarious and the almost triangular head in panel two is just as bad, it looks like an old nuclear bomb test film from the 1960s. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing. The less Summer the better, as she’s just grating and annoying beyond belief. Summer is like having a dog with fleas or a backed-up toilet, you don’t need to elaborate on why it sucks, it’s self-explanatory.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I think Cayla just smirked too hard.
Now really, Cayla, you expected your self-absorbed douchebag of a husband who still isn’t over his first wife to remember your wedding anniversary? You made this bed, sweetheart, you lie down in it.
Did they get married last year? That means he has never forgotten an anniversary in the past. Except for the anniversary of his make-out session with Lisa’s ghost that one New Year’s Eve.
If Summer and Keisha are both “jocks,” why is Summer always depicted wearing athletic hoodies while Keisha gets to wear civilian clothes?
Rusty: The wedding took place in September 2012. (Correction, it was indeed in October, it took a while to actually play out) I believe the NYE horror was NYE 2010 or maybe 2011.
The metamorphosis was nearly complete at this point….
For a strip that apparently prides itself on being mind-numbingly boring, this is really mind-numbingly boring.
No… but anything related to is dead wife Lisa of 15 years now is marked on the calendar hanging in their bedroom…. I mean Tom’s bedroom.
Ah, but did Les at least remember his and Lisa’s anniversary this year? After all, that’s the one that counts.
Les probably still celebrates the anniversary of every single date he and Lisa ever went on, by going to their booth at Montoni’s and talking to her ghost. While Cayls sits quietly at home waiting patiently for him to return.
And of course, the problems that brought Summer and Keisha home for this happy little occasion are completely ignored. How utterly typical. Let’s talk about how Les is a lovable doof instead! We never hear about that!
Ecch….
The master of monomania probably doesn’t think we need to know what horrors face Summer and Keisha because the outside world is scary and bad and cruel and delights in our misery. Better to focus on Les being an imbecile who needs a spotter to breathe than to see a world that doesn’t care about county fairs, band turkeys, Friday nights watching the Scapegoats lose, terrible pizza and Dial H for Hero.
People were rolling their eyes at “husband forgets anniversary” gags back before agriculture, more proof that there’s no joke too musty or dusty for this comic strip.
I guess TB figures there’s no real need for a sophomore Summer update, as the reader will assume she’s doing exactly what her dear old dad did back in his Kent St. days. Haunting the crappy old bookstore, dealing with those crotchety old profs, staring off into the distance with great angst and furious profoundity whilst feeling homesick for places she’s never been, cruising the ol’ quad in a VW Beetle with some cool hipster chick she sort of digs…shit like that. But with more basketball.
So… is this the coming wedding anniversary or the looming wedding anniversary?
Sadly I’ll never forget Les and Crayola’s anniversary–TB had the wedding on my own first anniversary, October 15, 2012. I’ve managed to remember mine so far but then I didn’t have a first wife who was a cancer martyr.
I could have sworn it was last year. How did he fill up last autumn’s strips, with the burnout quarterback? And copious falling leaves, of course.
Wasn’t the important anniversary, the Les and Lisa one, also in October? In fact, wasn’t it on Halloween? I’m sure Les remembered that one, and reminded Cayla repeatedly.
Yeah, this can’t be good!! It turned Keisha’s shirt from lavender to black!!!
How did he fill up last autumn’s strips, with the burnout quarterback?
@Rusty: October 2013 was taken up by the Zombie Homecoming, the Lisa’s Legacy Run (natch!), Battle of the Bands, and Wedgeman shaking down Alex for her Metamucil and kicked off the football team.
It appears Thing has found his way over from the Addams Family there in panel 2 and is nobly charging Cayla’s face to protect us from that atomic smirk. Too late, but I do appreciate the effort.
It was covered during the week of Halloween, October 27-November , 1996. The actual event seems to have occurred on October 29th, with the exchanging of the rings and uh… watches? Lisa is tossing her bouquet in the October 30th strip.
The whole week is linked below (provided all these links clear TFH). Enjoy the asininity of two people dressed as Batman and Robin getting married, a wedding DJed by an antique jukebox, Funky lifting up his Spiderman mask to shove pizza into his maw, Cindy AND Fishstick Annie wearing the same harem costume, and TB winking so hard you can feel it during a meeting between Lisa and young Durwood.
Forgets when he got married two years ago and this just after we’ve been treated to the annual worship of the dead St. Lisa and how long it’s been in strip time since the dead St. Lisa became the dead St. Lisa.
And the plot line of the kids are having problems as school has been dropped like a bad habit. I guess Summer just popped in one of the 15,000 video tapes Lisa made before dying this one entitled “So College really sucks right now.” which solved he problem.
billytheskink: Excellent post, thanks for the effort involved! Traveling down the Act II rabbit hole is never easy….
Didn’t Keisha or Summer utter that exact same sentence – school is killing us – the last time they showed up at Westview in the middle of a semester?
I keep hoping against hope that this will become an interesting arc. Wouldn’t it be something if this was the beginning of a story highlighting marital strife between Les and Doormat, mostly due to his inconsiderate behavior? Cayla finally develops a spine.
Cayla, you only have one hope: GET CANCER! Then maybe Les will give you more respect.
When a character in FW says “This can’t be good,” does that count as breaking the fourth wall?
If Cayla shaved her head and maybe lost some weight I guarantee Les would be all over her.
@billytheskink: thanks very much for those historic strips. I haven’t been reading FW that long — can someone explain what the bride’s referring to when she says “Listen, with what I’ve been through the past few months, I’m just happy to be seen!”? Was she being held as a POW somewhere? Had she already suffered her first bout with cancer? I’ve come to realize that nothing is too morbidly extreme in TB’s world, so I can’t help but be curious.
Apauled: Cancer, cancer again, blown up in a terror bombing…Act II was something else, man.
The cancer was all after the wedding, though. So I’m curious what she’s talking about here too.
The post office bombing that injured Lisa was in early August 1996, so that is most likely what Lisa is referring to having “been through”.
She may also be referring to the drama of Les’ attempt to get a marriage license in time for their October 31st wedding date (despite the ceremony’s depicted completion on the 29th). Being the schmuck he is, Les did not realize that there was a 10 day waiting period for a marriage license and, for reasons beyond me, believed he and Lisa would have to cancel their pizza-parlor Halloween costume party wedding ceremony because they could not be considered legally married by the state of Ohio until a few days after it was to occur. Luckily, Susan Smith’s father was the judge in charge of issuing marriage certificates and waived the waiting period because silly plot lines need convenient solutions.
To accurately list everything Lisa “went through” in this comic strip would require more bandwidth than the internet currently has available. Act II was all about contrivances, contrivances and more contrivances. Any character that escaped Act II alive or intact was one of the lucky ones.
Well, Lisa seems to be on a crutch in the first two strips. Not sure what that’s from…football in the park, maybe? But it definitely speaks of something she’s “been through.”
I do want to offer props to Batiuk for a genuine self-aware joke, though, when Lisa says Darrin has Ann’s eyes. Of course he does…they’ve ALL got those little beady eyes.
BC: If you never read the post office bombing arc, I recommend it highly as it’s absolutely hilarious. Act II was as overwrought as Act III is glacially-paced.
Excellent inclusion, Billy.
Gotta love how terrible and negligent Cayla and Les are as parents. Their kids come home from college and tell them that it’s killing them, using the rhetorical flourish of “Don’t ask”. Rather than being concerned about it, they take that invitation to talk about themselves some more. But their decision happens off panel, so whatever cruel-ass joke could have been made about it was thrown away by a guy who shouldn’t be wasting his opportunities.
“College sucks, don’t even ask.”
“Okay!”
or
“College is absolutely killing us now. Don’t ask.”
“I wasn’t going to.” With Les’ patented look of smug disdain.
It’s also a sad marriage when you need your kids’ presence in order to remember to celebrate it. I would think having your kids there would make the celebration awkward.
This is unrelated to today’s strip, but you know who the absolute worst character in FW is? Comic Book John. After dating Becky for a month in real world time, which was probably a week or so FW time, he sold half of his store to buy her an engagement ring, only to get all tragically mopey when Wally came back. Then when Wally got sent to Iraq, he started hanging around married Becky and Rana all the time, taking them out to movies. And when Wally finally came back, so much of the story is about poor John, Wally’s alive and might want his wife back. Ugh.