And as many predicted, here comes Dinkle to be rewarded. To be honest, my impression of the character is that he’s something of a tyrant, so I don’t know how suited he would be to work in a church. But Batiuk’s gonna Batiuk, and it’s time to praise Dinkle to the skies.
I forgot to mention the joke yesterday, but that’s okay as it reappears here as…I think…”Newspapers, am I right?”
I don’t know if Batiuk is making fun of newspapers or making fun of people who’ve abandoned them. It might be that even he doesn’t know. He seems to be wary of online things and prefers the old fashioned stuff. But who really knows?
All I can tell you is that this week has been a slog. Uninteresting characters discussing dull trivia. Admittedly, that’s every week, but this one seems especially devoid of even the tiniest bit of substance to grab on to.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Dinkle in church? Is he able to set foot on consecrated ground? Will he cry out in pain if the priest says “Bless you!” Or will he settle for correcting the minister during his sermon?
We could try throwing holy water on him.
Whenever I see Harriet I always wonder why Holly is there until I remember that Harriet exists. Doing “newspaper still exist?” gags in 2021 is like doing jokes about setting the clock on the VCR in 1999. Easy, cheap and played the f*ck out years ago.
It took him four days to reach this point, which mildly surprises me as I assumed this would be Monday’s strip. So by FW standards this thing is moving at a glacial pace, as opposed to a continental drift-y one. I’ll tell you this: that treble clef on his garage door just completely enrages me for some irrational reason. It’s kind of interesting how in Westview “music” is a niche interest that’s totally monopolized and associated with just one person…an ancient marching band director who likes John Phillip Sousa music. No local bands, no home-bred pop singers, no DJs, no rappers, just musty old Harry Dinkle and his musty old marching band music. Westview is less a cultural wasteland and more of a cultural black hole where nothing but pizza and comic books can escape.
For some reason Batty just loves to kiss up to band directors. Maybe because of all of the money he made from Dinkle band shoes?
that treble clef on his garage door
Lots of fictional characters suffer from flanderization. But few announce it so proudly.
There’s something off about Harriet’s face in panel 2. Particularly the mouth. You all see it, right?
Oh yes, definitely. It’s as if the left side of her face went numb.
Also notice how the stand with the mug on it seems to be somehow within her seat in panel 2 and then moves to being between the two seats in panel 3.
And her expression is odd too. She gets to deliver the punch line (which is very rare) but she’s way too sardonic about it, like it’s not a joke at all. I mean what, are we to believe that Dinkle doesn’t read the classifieds every single day? They’ve been married for seven hundred years, you’d think she’d be aware of his habits and routines by now. Then again he’s never home, so who knows.
Is she recovering from Bell’s Palsy? Or has Harriet gotten Legionnaire’s Disease from their HVAC system and is showing the facial nerve palsy associated with it?
She always has the face of a smug snapping turtle.
She has the Innsmouth Look.
“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
Typical quote from a Westview citizen
Harriet looks like she’s trying to swallow a stroke.
Harriet’s cashing those Disney checks on Amphibia now, she only slums it in FW as a courtesy.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/amphibiapedia/images/a/a3/FB5FD5FC-3974-43B1-8079-6F5B7BDE8F3E.jpeg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/386?cb=20200105204825
I was wondering why she wasn’t off in a swamp somewhere, eating flies and croaking for a mate.
Dear Tom Batiuk: this is not how you do a “Ironic Echo” gag.
No, they don’t. The only newspapers that still print classified ads in 2021 are tiny neighborhood newssheets or maybe small-town ones. And why on Earth would a Centerville church run an ad in Westview’s paper? Aren’t the towns a couple of hours apart, at least?
Battyuk seems to think the world is made up of only three generations of people: the under-40 crowd who don’t even know what a newspaper is, the 65-plus bracket who look for the classifieds next to “Li’l Abner” and “Terry and the Pirates” on the funny pages, and his central demographic audience who can’t be bothered with such newfangled nonsense as cell phones and the Interweb.
FW’s target demographic is composed of people who still call movies “talkies” and who still drive their 1964 Ford Falcon with 21,000 miles on the odometer.
I always assumed that Centerville was the local “big town”, surrounded by smaller hamlets like Westview, Eastview, Northview and, of course, Southview. It’s where a Westviewian would go if they needed a new set of rabbit ears for the Philco or wanted to get their shoes cobbled.
“Get my good clothes ready, dear, Ol’ Doc Cornpone says I might have broken a rib and I gotta go into Centerville for an X-ray”. I imagine there’s one lone dirt road out of Westview, or maybe a trolley line. Centerville…where the stores stay open past seven!
Dinkle ain’t got nothing on good old Florian Krebsbach and his 66 Chev. Bought her in 66, only got 47,000 miles on her.
Really, Batiuk’s world is a cold pale and featureless imitation of the depth Keillor put into Lake Wobegone. Like that whole sweet little town was buried in 6 feet of snow. And the snow was made of comics and puns.
“And that’s the news from Westview: where all the women are shallow, all the men are obnoxious, and all the children…I’m not sure where the children are.”
My local big city paper still has classifieds on Sundays, but they are almost entirely made up of listings for used cars by used car dealerships pretending to be individuals.
I think they should have stopped after panel two. Harriet’s sarcastic reaction is the punchline. “Gee, you found another music job? THAT’S a surprise.” Ans there’s no wry smirk, because one would actually be appropriate here. It’s not even a “cover up what you said” joke, as in “Gee, that’s a surprise… er, I mean, um, it’s a surprise they still have classified ads.” It’s not a “mock what the person in the last scene said” joke either. Another wordy, directionless gag that’s trying to be too many things at once.
I was going to say … it seems bizarre to spend this much time explaining the idea “Dinkle has another place to music at people”. Like, if he just jumped in to Dinkle playing the organ would there be readers unable to accept this? I believe I would have assumed it was something Dinkle had always been doing and I just forgot or didn’t notice.
If Batiuk wanted to make a fuss of this being a new thing, all right and fair enough. But is there any question which wouldn’t have been answered by one panel of Dinkle thinking, “It’s my first day today as the organist at St Spires in Centerville, where that high school bus driver who kept getting my high school band lost and said things all weird went!”?
Well we got another BattyBlog post to clarify things. Why can’t you appreciate all the effort he puts in to tell a story?
Top quote:
“Having a full understanding of the settings, somehow makes the telling of the stories richer and adds a certain verisimilitude. In short, they work better.”
Nah, all this nonsense is just another cheap excuse to keep Dinkle in the spotlight.
“In short, they work better.” He is so far up his own ass he’s starting to see daylight coming in from his earholes.
It reminds me of Dennis Hopper’s journalist character in Apocalypse Now. He’s going around taking pictures of things, and he’s long since forgotten why.
I always wondered if he ever published his portfolio, or if there was even any film in the camera…
If Dinkle’s going to be an organ grinder, I want to see him paired up with a certain talking murder chimp.
“Having a full understanding of the settings, somehow makes the telling of the stories richer and adds a certain verisimilitude.” Lord of Language?! More like Baron of Bullshit!
Oh no everybody, what if Dinkle gets the job and he has to move away from Westview forever?!
Westview and Centerville are however close or far apart they need to be for the needs of the current story. In miles and in years.
So why is an 80-year-old retiree on a state employee pension even reading the goddamned help wanted ads in the first place?
Because they’re under the obituaries.
Because Batiuk wanted to praise Dinkle some more, and this required him to read the want ads.