The thing finally happened, on a Sunday no less, which of course means it’ll happen again tomorrow. Perhaps they could deport Adeela to a city in dire need of architects, as the idea that this self-made immigrant is somehow supporting herself by being fifth in command at a failing local pizzeria gets dumber every time I ponder it, which is rarely.
I think the arc should just end right here. Adeela just disappears and is never heard from or mentioned by name again. Then in a few years Wally could do something stupid and quote her out of context with that annoying snide-yet-dunderheaded look on his dumb face.
“My old Muslim friend whose name escapes me always used to say that mozzarella is the saffron of the common folk.”
“Wow, your Muslim friend must have really been quite a character!”
“She was, Rachel, she was!”
I mean who would even care? Maybe forty people in the world even know who the hell Adeela is and if you were to poll those forty people and ask them they would unanimously not give a shit. She’d be like the Russian in “The Sopranos” or Becky’s mom, an enduring mystery for die-hard fans (chortle) to forever ponder.
Son of Stuck Funky 
So ICE hasn’t mastered the technology of “replace the screen?”
Yeah, Batty is a bloody imbecile. You cannot brick your phone by dropping it, and even if you did, they can still extract the data from it.
And if she did violate a deportation order or overstayed her visa, then she deserves to be arrested and shipped out.
Don’t worry, they’ve got the wrong person! Today’s forced dialog has blatantly spelled that out for us. Once again, Batiuk takes weeks to do nothing, then gives away the ending as fast as possible.
I mean, what award-seeking writer wants to leave open possibilities like “Adeela was secretly hostile to America”, or “Adeela was here illegally the whole time”, or “Funky was knowingly violating the law” or “heavy-handed immigration enforcement destroys innocent lives” or “why did Adeela disappear that night”? So stressful. Now we can relax, not worry about Adeela, and enjoy the next two weeks of watching these *wonderful* characters figuring out what we already know. With plenty of asides about pizza dates, comic book characters, and Les getting involved somehow.
I think it’d be great if ICE uncovered that she was part of a sleeper cell in Westview, with plans to blow up the Post Office (USA! USA!), Montoni’s, and Les Moore’s house.
“We don’t have enough evidence to prove they plan to blow up Westview! Let’s wait until we have more evidence, like, a big mushroom cloud over Westview!”
““We don’t have enough evidence to prove they plan to blow up Westview! Let’s wait until we have more evidence…………!”
That Montoni’s pizza will do more damage than any fission device!
I think if she blew up Les Moore, she’s qualify for a Presidential Medal of Freedom
Tom Batiuk: When the details are wrong, just change the details!
Speaking of details, look at the little lines radiating from the “bricked” phone. Do they represent smoke or some sort of fumes? Or are they just sort of like angry broken lines that merely denote brokenness? It’s like the phone is mad at itself for being broken.
And now after a second look I’m noticing all KINDS of lines in today’s strip. Motion lines, broken lines, everything but steam.
– Saturday: Adeela’s left hand is empty. Sunday panels 1-2, left hand on pizza box. Panel 3, holding phone. Did she pull it out of her pocket? She’s lucky she wasn’t shot. Except…
– The agents have no weapons. Yeah, right.
– What is that white shard the guy is holding in panel 5?
– Wow, the face in panel 6 is ridiculously cartoonish. I’m not sure how old Adeela is supposed to be, but she looks like a 70 year old man.
– She “bricked her phone” by dropping it? I’m not sure if TB thinks that’s how it works, or the character.
She looks like the result of an unholy union between Funky and a “Scream” mask. She gets frumpier by the day. The whole strip is turning into a Don Martin cartoon without the jokes.
Can someone please pull up Adeela as she looked when she was first introduced. Because I swear she’s aged 20 years. She’s also put on 40 pounds, but if she’s been eating Montoni’s that’s to be expected. It’s the coke bloat of Westview.
Earliest I can find under the “adeela” tag.
Wow, definitely much younger and prettier. Wonder why they changed that. Then again, they’ve also made what is supposed to be an in-demand actress look homely.
@SeaCountry The same reason every other character changes: because Funky Winkerbean is a world of soul-crushing conformity. Whether you’re an immigrant from a vastly different culture, or one of the most beautiful, powerful actors in Hollywood, you will eventually turn into just another Westview schlub. You’ll quickly adopt the same childish tastes, low self-esteem, maturity issues, aesthetic flaws, and inexplicable reverence for Dead Lisa as everyone else. Any character different who doesn’t fit that mold is there only to be wrong.
I’m guessing the white shard is a second zip-tie, ready for use in case Adeela sprouts a second pair of arms. Which is a distinct possibility in this strip.
She looks like a flummoxed Loweezy Smif!
She “bricked” her phone? Is this real-world talk, or something Batiuk made up? (No, I don’t have an iPhone.) If this is a way of saying “she broke it when I grabbed her arm and made her drop it,” well, it figures a Batiukian blonde would be responsible for doing and saying something stupid.
Add it to the Batiuktionary?
Over at the BattyBlog he just slipped in the word “iconicalness” for iconicness so he’s on quite a roll.
The way I’ve always understood it, a phone is “bricked” when some sort of internal glitch renders it totally useless. Where I come from, if you drop your phone and break it you “broke” it. I have to assume that BatHam heard the term and was just itching to use it, as he is often want to do.
Here‘s the right way to use it.
Meanwhile, why is it nefarious? Are they implying that she destroyed evidence?
If they wanted to retrieve the contents of Adeela’s phone, they could have asked her to put that down instead of the stupid pizza box. Or, any of the three agents could have taken it from her.
Maybe they got confused on who does what. That guy with the zip tie in panel 5 has an expression like “wait, the suspect is already zip-tied. Was I supposed to take the phone?”
“The way I’ve always understood it, a phone is “bricked” when some sort of internal glitch renders it totally useless. ”
No, actually Bathack was trying to draw the phone as well as he draws bricks………
Per “Grandpa GOOGLE” –
Bricking is when an electronic device becomes unusable, often from a failed software or firmware update. If an update error causes system-level damage, the device may not start up or function at all. In other words, the electronic device becomes a paperweight or a “brick.”
So another example of something TomBa doesn’t understand.
No, it’s a real expression meaning essentially that one’s phone is now as useless as a brick. It just isn’t nearly as easy to do as Batiuk implies here.
Grandpa Google says it’s when you can’t open your android. It’s as useful as a brick I didn’t go very deep, but Gramps suggests some solutions.
The earliest celll phones were called brick phones.
So have we been underestimating TomBa this whole time? Is there some secret understanding that he has with his devoted (non-snarky variety) readers? How else to explain the transformation of this strip into a modern version of “How Many Wrong Things Can You Spot In This Picture?”
Just noticed another one: the female agent is wearing sunglasses, at night, in an unlit room.
The glasses represent the cold unfeeling soulless nature of The System, always looming over us with their computers and dead-eyed drones who cannot be reasoned with. Or maybe Ayers just thought it looked cool. Either way it’s pretty funny.
Lisa in disguise–
With glasses.
I didn’t notice it until you pointed it out. The stupidity of this strip is like a Japanese rock garden: you can’t see it all at one glance.
This… THIS… is a masterpiece of stupidity. It is on a level of stupidity that I did not think was possible to reach until this moment. There is a lot to pick apart here, a lot to debunk and to mock, but for now… I can only just stand in awe, completely entranced by the most magnificently stupid thing that I have ever laid eyes on.
The entire story thus far could have been told in six panels and even then it would have been leisurely-paced.
1. “Hey everybody, we just got back from the BMV! Adeela got her DL!”
2. “That’s great, Adeela! Where will you go first!”
3. “I will purchase some real food, then maybe visit the discount fabric store”
Next day.
1. “Is there an Adeela here?”
2. “Why yes, Mr. Federal Agent sir, I am Adeela.”
3. “You’re under arrest, foreign scum!”
And there you go. Now the arrest will take all week, followed by a week devoted to the reaction to her arrest, then the jailhouse visit, then the discussion at Montoni’s re: what to do, then telling Adeela what they’ll do, then the thing, then the release, then the Thanksgiving party. Eight more weeks, chock full of silent strips and dramatic Sunday spectaculars.
At this point i’m wondering if we’ll see the inside of the infamous ICE detention center, with well-publicized “kids in cages”
TB’s been watching a certain amount of cable news
I am NOT looking forward to the re-enactment of the visiting room scene from Midnight Express.
I had the same reaction.
To quote the late, great Dorothy Parker, “This wasn’t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.”
And this is a strip with a talking murder chimp.
NEVER FORGET.
Christ, I’ve seen porno movies that have more realistic police dialog than this.
You know what this all looks like? Montoni’s is filming a local TV commercial, and Adeela’s not in on the joke. “Put down that box, Adeela, you are under arrest…. (klieg lighting comes on, officer turns to camera and smiles) … for having great pizza at affordable prices! (opens box, shows contents to camera) Come to Montoni’s, conveniently located next to the comic book store, on Lisa Moore Street!”
Can’t you just imagine the other characters setting up this prank? It fits in perfectly with the unfunny mean-spiritedness of this world.
By the way, dropping a phone does not brick it.
LOL “Lisa Moore Street”. With the hand-lettered street sign and the little benches and gazebos everywhere. Take the Les Moore Expressway to exit 13, then at the light make a right on to Mozzarella Way, which takes you through the heart of the Montoni’s District. Make a left at the big gazebo on to Legacy Drive and hang a quick right at the beam of sunshine and you’re on Lisa Moore St.
And be sure to wear your crash helmet if you take a wrong turn and wind up on Nobottom Rd.
I always assumed that, much like the lives of its residents, all of Westview’s thoroughfares are dead end streets.
The problem with Lisa Moore Street is that it wouldn’t be enough. Directions to anything in Westview would take you past at least three Lisa memorials. “Drive to the Lisa bench, turn left on Lisa Street and look for the Lisa gazebo. Oh wait, there are five Lisa benches and three Lisa gazebos. You want the one she and Les sat on when she found out she had cancer the first time.” It’d be like trying to find an address in Pyongyang.
Aw man! Legacy Drive is closed again for another stupid 5K run!
Add “how information on cell phones works” to the list of things Batiuk is proving he doesn’t know about here.
Tom Batiuk stays up late to learn new things to not understand.
Yeah, Batty has no clue. As long as the memory chips are not damaged, they can just wire into the phone and extract the data. Likewise, her phone may have already been monitored by her service provider. It’s called CALEA and if a warrant is obtained, they just tap your line and collect tons of info quickly and easily. And a vpn won’t protect you from all the network overhead data that shows your location and who you are calling and texting.
Tomorrow’s Strip: Panel One — Funky is seen at the Montoni’s counter, writing with a magic marker on a piece of cardboard. Panel Two — Funky walks over to the front window and places his freshly crafted sign in it. Panel Three — From outside the “restaurant,” we can see that the sign reads “HELP WANTED–Assistant Manager. Must have driver’s license and vehicle to deliver orders. See inside.”
“Hello, Pulitzer Prize Board? Tom Batiuk, here. Hello? Hello?”
The box isn’t level. The cheese and pepperoni will slide!
Adeela’s expression is close, but doesn’t match “Fungy misses the last second layup while making cocoa.”
Is that Lisa cuffing Adeela?
ED is right – Adeela should just disappear and never be heard from again. Because that’s what happens when ICE arrests you. They send you to jail hundreds of miles away, where you have no due process rights. Even if Adeela is the wrong person, it would take a year and an expensive lawyer to clear up.
Exploring the horrors of the deportation machine should be the story here. But Batiuk will make everything stupidly easy for Adeela, so the Montoni’s idiots and Les (because he’s certainly getting involved) can prove her innocence. And ICE will just let her walk, because they’re easily convinced of their own errors and not in any way fanatical.
This is the CTE story again: so shallow and poorly researched that it’s actually insulting. And Batiuk expects an award for this crap.
You are right about that nightmare. Hopefully, it will change after this November.
I think the phone being “bricked” was so that she can’t call anyone. But I don’t think you can damage a phone by dropping it four feet or so.
Maybe Adeela’s terrorist cell gave her a specially equipped phone that bricks itself when dropped, so if she gets detained she’ll just toss the phone on the ground and it will automatically destroy all the sensitive information.
Funky isn’t that clever. That’s why he disguised himself as Adeela.
The only way this works is if Corey was in on it. “They think that they can just pass me over for the assistant manager position?” “Well I’ll show them. I’ll show them all!”
Observations ….
ICE = Villians for protecting our borders & going after lawbreakers
Adeela = Nope that’s Flunky wearing a Hajib. He missed the last second shot again.
Questions…..
Is the blonde a man or woman?
Is the other Ice officer Sgt. Slaughter from WWE?
How does one “Brick” a phone ????
More observations …
Adeela’s weight varies between 50 and 75 pounds each strip.
Adeela being at this location was solely her own choice … how would ICE know ?????
I wonder how Wally and Rachel are doing on their date.
I think Les is a co-conspirator and needs to be waterboarded
Les is too egotistical to be a co-anything, but, better safe than sorry.