And Jessica’s fears grow deeper and wider. Perhaps, as I suggested yesterday, Dullard’s beginning to wonder why he married her.
Ha, just kidding. We all know it’s not going to be anything that threatens their relationship (such as it is).
A man having an affair wouldn’t say he “hasn’t said a thing” to his wife. Of course he hasn’t told his wife he’s cheating on her!
Banana Jr. 6000 on March 8, 2021.
Not to mention that a man having an affair probably wouldn’t talk about it with anyone, much less his co-worker. Seems like the kind of thing you’d want to keep private. Especially since Pete is well-known to just blurt things out if he thinks it makes him look clever. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t, Pete.)
Also as mentioned yesterday (hey, if Batiuk can do it, so can I) this seems to be the only scenario he can come up with featuring Dullard and Jessica. Person A overhears conversation involving Person B, and immediately takes the worst possible interpretation.
Again it begs the question: why are these two together? What kind of relationship do they have if, on overhearing any dialogue (not between themselves), they immediately assume they’re on the outs with each other? I seriously wonder why they haven’t murdered each other until–SNAP!–I remember that this is Funky Winkerbean, where interesting developments are NOT allowed.
Batiuk has to keep it all stable so the Pulitzer committee can re-think their mistake.
Son of Stuck Funky 
“–so after giving our bathroom a long, hard look, I called Funky Winkerbean who sells pizzas and asked him if he knew a contractor who could do us a reno!”
Finally. We’ve all been anxiously awaiting the “Boy Lisa comes out” arc for many, many years and at long last, here we are. All I can say is “about time”, as Pete and Boy Lisa have long been the strip’s “perfect couple” in oh-so-many different ways. Now they won’t be all distracted by crazy icky women at all anymore! Of course that spells curtains for Jessica and Mindy but seriously, who’s gonna notice? I for one applaud this new direction and I quite frankly yearn for the day where he finally just throws in the towel and stops using the female characters once and for all. He’s already achieved the comic strip embodiment of the perfect woman, he really should have just quit while he was ahead.
With any luck Mopey and Dullard’s story will mimic “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” after Etta Place walked out of the story: they’ll do something incredibly stupid and get gunned down by the Bolivian army.
“Things just didn’t seem right…”
Jessica, you live in the Batiukverse. You should know as well as anyone that this statement could apply to practically ANYTHING.
Even if this were a story leading to the breakup of D & J (which we can be almost certain that it isn’t), there are so many ways that it could be told better. But even this is another example of TomBa’s penchant for “tell, don’t show.”
5 bucks says this is about Durwood needing glasses.
Yeah, I can see that…
Darrin talking about glasses/contact lenses with his bromance life partner instead of his freaking wife sounds totally like a Batuikian setup…
However I do wish this storyline was updated to 2021, where Darrin would be talking about discovering his gender fluidity….
Friday strip if there was just the two clods taking to each other:
“And get this, Pete, get this! When he put all those crazy gizmos on my face, I told him “Beam me up, Scotty!” You should have seen the look on his face! Because I couldn’t! Get the reference?!”
Brilliant, brilliant…
Gotta be something facial the way his back is to the reader. I was thinking either a monocle or a mustache. The question, of course, is why Jessica wouldn’t be aware of any such thing, since one assumes they live in the same house.
“I’m not having an affair. I just decided to hide my personal medical issues from you and confide in Pete instead.”
“Well that’s a relief! For a second, I thought something was wrong with our marriage.”
The fact that you are seeing him from behind, and his hair covers where they would be over his ears, makes me believe he is already wearing them, and the “big reveal” will be on Friday, with her response on Saturday
Yes this. Which will make the final reveal a moment of bleak soul crushing depression.
The Springhead of this Country…
Wound Up As Tight As It Is…
Just how one Montoni’s panel in 100 shows customers, one Atomikkk Kommixxx panel in 100 shows Pete and Darren actually working…
Just your daily reminder that Chester made them the *highest* paid in the industry, which means they’re probably making 350k a year
And the weird thing is that absolutely nobody else in the business is trying to get hired by Chester Polyester. Not one professional artist or writer is saying “I can outdo anything the ‘Bullpen’ is doing and give AK some material that will really sell.”
Or that Chester, being who he is, doesn’t have his ear to the scene and on the lookout for hot talent.
Chester can’t be getting much of an ROI here. He rents this huge work space, offers total creative freedom: and what does he getin return? Rip Tide: Scuba Cop. Wayback Wendy. The Inedible Pulp. Don’t tell me those titles are flying out of stores. He would start demanding results at some point.
Atomik Komix is just more wish fulfillment for Tom Batiuk anyway. It’s his idea of how comic book companies should be run: huge salaries, large offices, complete creative freedom, no financial concerns, no performance standards, no management or administration of any kind. And Atomik Komix is exactly what you’d get: constantly-changing random crap made by arrogant mediocrities.
It was always going to be just a vanity project for Chester anyway, who choose a freaking nine-story warehouse in the Cleveland’s old (but in the process of gentrification) industrial district to house five(?) employees for the sole purpose of bringing “tradition” or whatever back to the comics industry because some comics label back in 1930-something got started in the same way, or something…
Chester doesn’t give a shit about ROI since he has dozens of other business interests and the stock market making money for him…
And the wish Batty wanted fulfilled is that there’s a huge, unironic market for retro comic books, with plots, characters, writing and art that went out of style generations ago.
-ring-
“Hello, Chester Hagglemore speaking.”
“Yes, I understand you’re looking to hire comic book artists for over $100,000 a year? And offer complete creative freedom?”
“Absolutely! We’re a small comic book publisher, we’re based in Westview, Ohio, and–”
-click-
And I’m still trying to figure out how “complete creative freedom” = “no editors on staff”
Come on, man. Who’s going to beat Aqualung Detective or The Living Pile of Garbage?
The odd part is you’d think other artists and writers in the industry would be leaving Marvel/DC in droves to work for this successful startup newcomer paying top salaries for industry talent… PLUS flexible hours, PLUS 100% creative autonomy with zero oversight…
I guess people *really* don’t wants to live in Cleveland, no matter how sweet the job offer is?
Just how one Montoni’s panel in 100 shows customers, one Atomikkk Kommixxx panel in 100 shows Pete and Darren actually working…
…meanwhile 100 out of 100 book signings for Lisa’s Story show a packed house.
Now THIS is what two men talking about an affair really sounds like.
My shiny nickel goes to either “needs new glasses” or “laser eye surgery,” but that might be too soon after the cataract “story?”
Does Crankshaft qualify for the Batiuktionary?
Then I nominate “Wireless Passcode”.
I think the word “passcode” is actually OK here. I’ve heard it used to mean a long, random, impenetrable text string, as opposed to a “password” which is shorter and intended to be memorized. I’ve also heard “passcode” used as a synonym for “PIN”.
The real problem in today’s Crankshaft is the word “my.” You don’t publicly display YOUR passcode, Lillian! Or tell people what it is! That’s what you do with the store’s public wi-fi password. Those are meant to be shared with the public, and businesses often display them in whimsical ways. In fact, that tiny word change would have made this strip work: “It’s the store’s wi-fi password.” Bam. Winner.
This is a great example of how Tom Batiuk’s “quarter inch from reality” is still 100% wrong. Tomorrow’s strip should be Lillian’s bank account being emptied. But if that did happen, she’d write a book about it on Thursday and be on Oprah’s Book Club by Sunday.
All this for Durwin to get glasses? Gah, such a stupid waste of time.