Does today’s strip really take place right after yesterday’s? Amicus and Wally left the box office window presumably just a few minutes prior to go bother the supervisor and in that short time Adeela has already been put on the 3:45 AM flight to Baghdad? I see nothing that really indicates otherwise except for Adeela’s speedy departure, so I guess we’re still in the middle of the night of Adeela’s arrest.
I suppose this was inevitable, though. Westview has seen several immigrant refugees move to town over the years, and none have wound up ultimately staying. Let’s look at their fates:
Lu Lin and Zhang Li – escaped detention in communist China for their role in student pro-democracy protests and opened The Jade Dragon, a Chinese restaurant, next to Montoni’s:
Kahn (or is it Khan?) – immigrated from war-torn Afghanistan, founded a deli, and even became a US citizen (despite having been a known Taliban-affiliated arms dealer):
Rana – orphaned by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan and the adopted by Wally and Lefty and raised in Westview by Lefty and DSH:
Bye, Adeela…
Son of Stuck Funky 
“Deported???”
“Deported!”
“What???”
“Deported.”
“Deported?”
“Deported.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
Sigh. As hard as it might be to believe right now, one day we’ll be in the middle of something so unfathomably boring we’ll look back on this arc as being action-packed in comparison. Like how right now the recent Hollywood fire arc looks briskly-paced and relatively interesting when matched up with this death slog. This had better be it for Adeela, I’ll tell you that much. Let’s wrap this up and put her in the “currently inactive” file with Cody and Owen and Summer and the rest of the Act III flotsam and jetsam.
The whole point of Burns and Schreiber was that it was quick. “Huh?’ “Yeah.” “Huh?’ “Yeah.” “Huh?’ “Yeah.””Huh?’ “Yeah, deported.”
Upvote for bringing to mind Burns & Schreiber and their great “cabdriver” routine. Also loved Avery Schreiber on “My Mother the Car.”
Wally & Amicus look like the two leads from “Revenge of the Nerds!
“Adeela’s gone? You mean . . . ”
“Yeppers, Batiuk forgot about her in mid-story. What a guy!”
*sigh* “She’s gone because–we released her on her own recognizance!”
“But–but how is that possible?”
“Don’t ask me! I’m just a cog in the machine!”
This is what happened. They released her because they verified the mistaken identity. Cue the next few days of Batiuk soapboxing about ICE.
Or praising it, in his incompetent way. His unironic audience seems to like assurances that “the world is changing, but you can ignore it.” (cf. the gay-students-at-prom arc. The two gay kids were barely present in a story about them, and a third gay character went unidentified. Or the way that women and minorities stay in the background. Or any comic-book arc where everyone wants bland Silver-Age stuff, and none of this edgy modern stuff. Or the way aging parents, CTE, PTSD and suicide are inconsequential.) (Les, meanwhile, is a hero.)
Batiuk introduces all these heavy problems, and then solves them way too easily. He trivializes everything he touches.
Being arrested by ICE is a years-long nightmare of bureaucracy, confinement, lack of due process, constant threat of deportation, and separation from loved ones. No problem for Adeela: she doesn’t have any loved ones! She gets arrested, she calls the Winkerbeans, who instantly do everything for her! All she’s done so far is mope around, for what appears to be maybe two days. And the deus ex Montoni’s arrives soon.
Sigh. If only it were that simple…
What are the odds that Other-Adeela was already at this facility, and she’s the one who’s now “gone”, because ICE is so incompetent that none of them noticed that they captured the same person twice?
I mean, it would be the stupidest possible fake-out…but if it happens, I want credit for calling it.
Wally’s face in panel 3 is really something.
Seconded, that is really spectacular.
Imitation “Scream.”
But WHERE are the delivery car and the insulated bag!?
The delivery car was impounded. As for the insulated bag, leave Rachel out of this.
And where’s the $13.50 for Funky’s Pizza ???
It becomes more and more clear that Tom Batiuk isn’t interested in “telling stories about the world we live in,” or even “the world we dread we live in.” He’s not trying to highlight some issue or bring attention to some real-world problem.
He just wants to tell stories about Stupid World, where EVERYTHING is stupid, and it all works out in the most stupid way–and the most stupidest of all, wins the most stupidest prizes!
The idea he floats that “Batiuk is trying to illuminate higher truths, that don’t always align with ‘facts'” has never been more ludicrous. Or…stupid.
I’ve tried to be nice about the Batiuk person vs the comic strip, but I have to conclude that…he’s won the stupidest prize. Congratulations!
Oh, come on. Batiuk didn’t win the stupidest prize. He was outsmarted by the actual winner.
It’s all crap. Everything he touches turns to crap…but it takes many words to make a mess!
You think we don’t live in Stupid World?
Maybe Mason drove frantically around to the back of the jail, and Les ran in and carried Adeela out. .
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRReturning home!
Wow, so much crap from Batty. Well we can see why he never got his Pulitzer. Talk about crappy stories. Such a turd factory.
I do like how the visitation window looks like a theater box office.
Amicus: We want to see Adeela Salih!
ICE guy: If you’re talking about Adeela Salam… you’re too late. We have Tenet at 10:15, though, if you want to see that.
You just said that!
It beared repeating.
Sorry. The worst part is that I don’t even know how I posted that twice.
So now Wally will go to Baghdad to find her, reliving his previous kidnapping there and overcoming his ptsd and conquering his bad memories to rescue Adeelah and bring her back to Westview. TomBat should get a few months of Iraq strips out of this
Maybe we’ll get a homage to “The Deer Hunter”?
And find Les playing Russian roulette with his old machine gun? Works for me.
Too much action for TB. Unless it all happened offstage and was discussed afterwards.
Still no word on the insulated bag. My thoughts and prayers go out …
Today’s Crankshaft reminds me of my idiot neighbor. She is an elderly lady with nothing to do and so she runs her leaf blower daily as she eagerly tries to blow that last leaf off of her driveway. Of course this idiot never picks anything up and so they just blow back. And so it goes…
https://www.comicskingdom.com/crankshaft/2020-10-17
Thanks for posting that past strip involving Khan and his deli. I had to think for a few minutes about the tin-eared, woodenly stilted dialog between panels two and three. “Have you had any inquiries about the space?” “Absolutely …
“You just did.”
WTF?
Right? How hard would it have been for Funky to say, “Has anyone inquired about the space?”
Or a simple “Any offers?” Which is how real people would talk to someone they know well.
Isn’t it amazing that given his training and supposed love of language, he cannot write better dialog?
Or exposition. Or plot. Or character. Or conflict. Or tone. Or emotion. Or anything at all, really.
“Why would you let her talk to us in the first place if you were shipping her out in the next five minutes anyway?”
“Eh, we were just yanking your chain.”
And, your Haiku of the Day:
“Must see Adeela!”
“Is there news since last you spoke?”
“No, nothing has changed.”