Amicus continues to Amicus in today’s strip, quoting last year’s newspaper headlines almost verbatim… Big kudos to commenter Banana Jr. 6000 for uncovering Breef’s past appearance in Crankshaft back on Monday. The “Lionel Hutz of Westview” is not only less entertaining than the beloved Simpsons character (obviously), he also appears to somehow be even less competent at practicing law than the intentionally idiotic Hutz.
Writing facial recognition software in the Batiukverse has got to be the ultimate fool’s errand. While I was not able to find any source for Amicus’ 20% of the time figure here in real life internetland, in Westview I would think the figure would be well above that. WAY well above that.
Son of Stuck Funky 
What better evidence of Adeela’s true-blue Westviewian status is there than her “oh, isn’t THAT just great!” attitude? Wry her up by around 35% or so and you’d think she was Westviewian born n’ bred. Plus she looks exactly like Funky now. “Oh yeah, Aunt Adeela. Used to go by Agnes until she converted back in ’97. Ungainly-looking woman, mom’s side of the family”. I mean come on.
I’m just amazed that facial recognition technology installed at a discount fabric store would even be admissible in court. Or that, you know, there would be facial recognition technology in a discount fabric store. I wish he’d just get to the part where they rescue her already, as I am totally and completely sick to death of Adeela right now. I HATE how the point is so obvious and you just have to wait and wait forever for it to finally play out.
What court? It’s such a shoddy story: the evidence is flawed but also evidence doesn’t matter.
But WHERE are the delivery car and the insulated bag!?
What’s with the angry eyes, Wally? You have a known Rachel bias too.
You this started with Adeela’s driver’s license triggering ICE’s database.
Why? Why would ICE immediately assume that “well, that has to be Adeela One-We-Want, it can’t possibly be Adeela Real-Name”?
It might make sense if someone overhead the name “Adeela” and assumed it was the one wanted by ICE…no, it wouldn’t and it still doesn’t.
The only version that makes sense is Cory turning her in because he’s a rotten turd.
Oh boy! Leaves!
Is somebody dying? All of them, please?
Facial recognition software in the Funkyverse? FFS, who would want o recognize any of those faces?
Doesn’t the Funkyverse operate on special smirk recognition software?
Some time in December an ICE supervisor comes bounding into the scene. “Good news, everyone! We’ve cleared up the mistake!”
“Oh,, really?” Funky mopes. “You finally figured out our Adeela isn’t mirror-universe Adeela?”
“No, we identified her correctly. But we had her listed as a member of the People’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Afraqistan, a known terrorist organization. It turns out she really belongs to the Popular Front of People for the Liberation of Afraqistan, which is our good ally this week!”
SPLITTERS!
I would seriously take back maybe half the things I’ve said about Batiuk over the years if we get some flashback to Adeela spray-painting “AMERICAES EUNT DOMUS” all over her war-torn village and CPL Walter W. Winkerbean of Alpha Squad, First Platoon, Eighth Regiment, 14th Battalion, 899th Infantry Division (nicknamed “The Target Dummies”), U.S. Army Ohio National Guard is on his midnight solo recon patrol (as always) and gets captured by the enemy while trying to make sense of the graffiti…
Sorry, that’s the end of my Adeeler strips.
Wait, is she an architect, an interior designer, or a freaking electrical engineer?
And Montoni’s must have the best fucking coffee on the planet since that’s what 90% of the patrons order, even in the 100-degree summer
I can see what is going to happen– Adeela’s Westview friends will ask big movie star Mason Jarr to use his star power to publicize Adeela’s plight. Mason decides to finance and a documentary on Adeela’s story and the facial recognition issue. Directed and narrated by Cindy of course. Cindy wins the best documentary Oscar at the same ceremony that Mason wins best actor for playing Les in Lisa’s Story and Adeela accompanies them to the ceremony.
The pace of this plot is so slow that glacial is light speed by comparison.
And given the facial similarity, I’m half expecting ICE to discover that the person they want is Mort Winkerbean. Maybe he was radicalized during the Bedside Manor band’s trip to Nashville.
Two unrelated thoughts sprang to mind reading tonight’s entry:
1) The panel showing the expressionless faces of Westview residents reminds me of the masks students wear in the video for “Another Brick in the Wall, pt. 2.”
2) I still miss Phil Hartman.
Looking at those faces made me think, almost kindly, of the children in “Family Circus.” They all have the same personality (think “plague of clueless locusts”) and same basic head and body shapes, but at least Bil and Xerox Keane gave them recognizably different hair, clothes and ethnic groups.
Say what you will, but Thelma Keane is the original comics page MILF…Yes she ranks above Blondie, Alice Mitchell and Lois Flagston… Plus she’s an Aussie and I’ve always had a weakness for women with accents…
Continuing yesterday’s haiku theme:
Software’s not perfect,
That’s why law enforcement would
Check her documents
…never assume.
Well, how about this instead:
“Software’s not perfect.”
Thanks for the TED talk, law-head.
It’s a real comfort.
Um, ok but Adeela is not a person of color. Ok, perhaps her hijab conceals some of her features thus making her more susceptible to a false positive but again all this could be easily checking her documents. She obviously has them readily available since she just got her federally compliant driver’s license.
Does Batty ever leave his comics castle to see what is going on in the real world?
While the old-school comic strip artists used to try to balance their ‘takes’ and pick non-controversial targets, TB once again tries to have it both ways as he spins the wheel hard then grabs at something to say “see, i’m not being ‘political’, i’m just referencing some.. technological failures and bureaucratic goofs!”
Sure Tom, drop this bit of whimsy the month before an election, looks very moderate and middle-of-the-road. I think after this year i’m a little burnt out on whatever he’s selling here.
Check out his blog posting where he talks about the teen suicide arc—which he considers a triumph by the way—where he got the lawyers involved to make sure his strip got published. Nicely done Batty!
The only thing that died that Sunday was the comics page. It unleashed the ham fisted, awards chasing Batty we have now.
I don’t really have an issue with the subject matter, but not only is TB not the right person to properly tell it (SEE: Concussions, CTE, Climate Change, California Wildfires, Sexism and Age Discrimination in the workplace, PTSD, the horrors of social media, etc.), he’s just so freaking behind the curve of where national discourse is…
We could have used this storyline in 2017 or 2018, or in that four-year span after 9-11… If he’s trying to be timely 2020 has to be a Covid-related story…
I agree. A more capable and talented cartoonist could handle these topics.
But I can’t help but think story arcs like this do little to bring awareness of important issues to the people who need it most. They seem to be more for ego boosting and awards chasing, puff piece articles, etc.
“It’s my way of getting in touch with my ‘Y’ chromosome!”
What.
I wanted to ask about that one as well, but on second thought I’m not going anywhere near that road of conversation…
We all need to avoid the fork-up in that road.
Here’s the whole strip:
Donna responds in the next few strips about how comic books are not solely a male domain because when she was a kid she dressed androgynously and wore a helmet inspired by a comic book character and was really good at Space Invaders and everyone thought she was a boy and she didn’t correct them until the middle of Act II.
I remember that arcade girl character from the 1980s: she was awesome! And this is where she ended up. Standing around Montoni’s, waiting for her loser husband to leave the comic book store, and exhibiting her ignorance of 8th grade biology. That’s really, really sad.
WHO THE HELL IS DONNA?? I thought Holly was talking to a twin sister or some kind of ghostly doppelganger or imaginary friend…
Adeela: “HEY MISTER RON KUBY! SPARE ME THE LEGAL LECTURE ALREADY!! YOU DON’T NEED TO ARGUE YOUR ENTIRE CASE IN FRONT OF ME SINCE I’M NOT, YOU KNOW, A FREAKING JUDGE OR MAGISTRATE! AND I DON’T REALLY GIVE A FLYING FIG NEWTON ABOUT THE HOWS OR THE WHYS; JUST GET ME THE HELL OUTTA HERE ASAP YOU PENCIL NECKED NO-CLIENTS-HAVING DOUCHEBAG LAW INTERN REJECT!!!!”
Tell us what you really think.
I just find it difficult to believe that Adeela wasn’t 1. Already retaining her own attorney just to ease her resettlement into American life, and 2. Would sit back and calmly rely on the legal acumen of some nobody who a friend of a friend casually heard about from another friend at a freaking junior college…
But then I forget that’s how things work in the Funkyverse… Eavesdropping and secondhand word of mouth was how Cindye got her hooks into her current trophy husband, and how Pete and Darrin broke into Hollywood to become millionaires…
That’s one of the many, many, many things that make no sense here. Adeela is a refugee from a war zone and has been through some tough times. She’s had to deal with the American legal system before, even if it was peripherally, as a child, when her parents came here. By now she’s seen a lot of Islamophobia and xenophobia and knows her position is precarious. Yet except for calling on Wall-eye, she’s utterly passive and helpless. She doesn’t have a real plan on what to do if busted like this? I’m going to check Google Translate, and see if there’s a language where “It’s called writing” is pronounced “Batiuk.”
Google Translate does handle Martian, doesn’t it?
Or as Mr Burns once said. “ Away with you, you over glorified notary public!”
Also how was Adeela, a devout muslim, selling and delivering pizza anyway? She would be selling pork!(sausage and pepperoni) which most orthodox of her faith would consider forbidden. So they might say her arrest is punishment from Allah for selling a delivering those sinful Montonis pizzas
One of my mother’s caregivers had that non-problem. Hajara was a devout Muslim, and the only way to get mom to eat breakfast was to give her bacon with it. Hajara had no problem cooking bacon, serving it and cleaning up the skillet. (She was more concerned with what was in the hand sanitizers and soaps we had in the house–sanitizers with animal fats and ethyl alcohol are haram, given that they’re absorbed into the skin. Most labels are incomprehensible, and she avoided chances by bringing her own sanitizers.)
“Sausage and pepperoni”? Please. Sawdust is, I believe, halal.