by | May 22, 2021 · 11:38 pm

Sunday, May 23

35 Comments

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35 responses to “Sunday, May 23”

  1. Epicus Doomus
    May 22, 2021 at 11:46 pm

    And out of nowhere it’s (sigh) Ruby Lith with another (sigh) history lesson on women in comics…sigh. BatYam + women about ANYTHING is a recipe for lots of annoying reductive tripe and ancient obsolete cliches, for example “good-natured doormat takes decades of oppression and misogyny in stoic stride”. Like with Cayla…hi-oooooooooooo!

    “Well, that’s just the way it was, I suppose. I’m just glad everything is finally changing for the better now that I’m in my mid-nineties”…uh yeah Ruby, sure. Note how the female FW characters are never, ever allowed to be bitter about anything. The guys can be as cynical as all get-out but the women are always pleasantly resigned to their fates. Like with Lisa….hi-ooooooooo!

    • ComicBookHarriet
      May 23, 2021 at 12:54 am

      I think Ruby is VERY bitter, or she wouldn’t keep bringing all these stupid sexist tropes up. She’s just one of those passive aggressive types who smiles while she spews bitterness hidden in ironic japes.

      • Banana Jr. 6000
        May 23, 2021 at 10:02 am

        Also, Batiuk seems to have forgotten that just last February, Chester gifted Ruby a bunch of her old art and gave it to her. That would tend to change one’s opinion on past injustices.

  2. Mr. A
    May 22, 2021 at 11:47 pm

    “The traditional Comic-Con in-person event in San Diego, normally held in July, has been postponed until summer 2022. However, Comic-Con@Home will return as an online event on July 23-25, 2021.”

    https://www.comic-con.org/cci/attending-show

    • J.J. O'Malley
      May 23, 2021 at 12:18 am

      This is what happens when you prepare your strips up to a year in advance (Battyuk’s “pandemic” stories in FW and Cranky should bear that out). To be fair, there will be “virtual panels” this year, but still…

  3. William Thompson
    May 22, 2021 at 11:58 pm

    That is clearly not a red star on Rubella’s hat. It is a laser targeting light, and it’s a damned shame because it is so spread-out that the sniper has no chance of taking proper aim,

  4. J.J. O'Malley
    May 23, 2021 at 12:15 am

    When I suggested yesterday that, to mark the presumed petering-out of the audience fave “Funky’s House Has a Reno” arc, Battyuk would today totally ignore showing his readers the remodeled kitchen that has been teased for a couple of months and instead do a one-off set in the world of comic books…er, graphic novels, I thought I was being sarcastic. I just had the setting and characters wrong. Silly me.

    Also, to bring attention to women who worked in the Golden/Silver Age of Comics, today’s title panel artwork features a publishing company’s all-male bullpen? Makes perfect sense.

    “Comic Con has a lot of panels this year featuring female creators”? And yet, somehow, they seem to have have ignored the gals of Atomix Comix. Where, oh, where is the “Wayback Wendy” panel?

    Lastly, at what point will it be revealed that Ruby is actually a man named Rudy Lith who’s been posing as a woman since the ’50s?

    • batgirl
      May 23, 2021 at 9:04 am

      Speaking of that ‘bullpen’ (and without getting into the gender-specificity of the very name) wasn’t it revealed some years back – April 2018, I just checked – that there never was a bullpen as shown here? That almost all the writers and artists worked from home and submitted their work to a small office that maybe had 3 or 4 staff total? There was a whole arc about Chester discovering that comic artists didn’t work in a huge sweatshop type factory and being terribly disillusioned.

      • erdmann
        May 23, 2021 at 12:47 pm

        While some creators would do some work at the office, it seems that even in the Golden Age most preferred to work in their own studios, which often were in their homes. The legendary “Marvel Bullpen” of the 1960s was mostly a myth created by Stan Lee to foster the idea that the company — and by extension, its fans — was one big happy. In truth, months would pass between face-to-face meetings between Stan and Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko, who would plan his visits to the Marvel offices when he knew Stan was unlikely to be around. He would happily chat with others who were there, but hightail it before The Man showed up.

    • batgirl
      May 23, 2021 at 9:07 am

      I just tried to imagine TB attempting a trans story and I had to sit down and put my head between my knees to recover. Can you imagine the pious clueless lecturing? The wordplay about pronouns alone is terrifying to contemplate.

    • Sourbelly
      May 23, 2021 at 11:26 am

      That’s just Tom balancing out his universe. Since Church Gospel Choirs ABSOLUTELY have to be all girls, Comics Bullpens have to be all boys. Period!

  5. Banana Jr. 6000
    May 23, 2021 at 1:00 am

  6. ComicBookHarriet
    May 23, 2021 at 1:01 am

    That is a much better strip TFH.

    Also, there have been multiple ‘women in comics’ panels at Comic Con every year I looked, going all the way back to 2013 (the first year I could find records for)

    Silver Age comics artist Marie Severin spoke at a ‘women in comics’ panel at the New York Comic Art Convention.

    In 1974.

    Batiuk can f**k right off.

    • Rusty Shackleford
      May 23, 2021 at 6:28 am

      Thanks CBH for the history lesson! I’m happy his butt kissing female artists instead of male band directors past their time.

  7. The Dreamer
    May 23, 2021 at 1:07 am

    Somebody tell TomBat that Comic Con didn’t take place last year due to the pandemic!

    • Hitorque
      May 23, 2021 at 9:40 am

      Somebody tell Batiuk there isn’t a ComiCon this year because he burned down half of southern California last year in the greatest natural disaster on record, displacing millions of residents, burning down businesses and homes with a death toll in the tens of thousands…

  8. Banana Jr. 6000
    May 23, 2021 at 1:07 am

    Important lore note: the 1950’s cartoonist, to the right of the word “Winkerbean”, is wearing the traveling green shirt! Apparently it goes back a lot further than we thought.

  9. The Duck of Death
    May 23, 2021 at 9:18 am

    Try this with other civil rights issues, Tom. “Do you ever wish that, when you first came out, gay bars hadn’t been illegal and subject to constant raids, and you hadn’t been arrested multiple times just for being in one?” [goofy smile, happy shrug] “Oh, I’m just glad gay liberation finally happened. We took the scenic route!”

    “Do you ever wish that, when you were young, you’d been able to drink from any water fountain you wanted, or sit in any bus seat, or go to any restaurant or school or club, instead of confining yourself to spaces that were ‘colored-only’?” [goofy smile, happy shrug] “Oh, I’m just glad Jim Crow laws were finally repealed. We took the scenic route!”

    It doesn’t work so well, does it, Tommy boy? Not for nothin’ did John Lennon sing, “Woman is the N**ger of the World.” Women, I guess, were supposed to take it with good grace, and then, when their hobbled career grinds to an ignominious end, smile with a good-natured shrug.

    • Banana Jr. 6000
      May 23, 2021 at 11:20 am

      “Do you ever wish that, when you arranged a home renovation, your husband or the renovators treated your choices with any respect whatsoever?”

      “Do you ever wish that your husband would spend any time with you in retirement rather than taking a fifth band director job? Where he manages a bunch of other women?”

      “Do you ever wish that, when you first married Les, you could divorce him later if he turned out to be a brooding, arrogant shithead who’d rather make out with his dead wife’s ghost than acknowledge your existence?”

      “Do you ever wish that, when your longtime husband gave you a bottle of salad dressing for a wedding present, you didn’t have to pretend to love it? And you didn’t have to go a fancy restaurant and make a big show out of using it, like you’re a Jeff Foxworthy joke?”

      “Do you ever wish that, when you helped your boyfriend invent yet another comic book franchise, he wanted to share the credit with you instead of Hoagy Carmichael?”

      “Do you ever wish that, when the same boyfriend proposed to you with a stuffed animal because he blew all his money failing to win ball toss, you could leave him and find a man who can do at least one of those three things competently?”

      “Do you ever wish that the man you succeeded in a professional role ten years would let you do your job, instead of showing up constantly to micromanage you, and talk about stupid shit like squirrel books?”

      “Do you ever wish that, when your church group has an unexpected fundraising success, your leader could be happy for you instead of pouting that you didn’t do things his way?”

      “Do you ever wish that, when you ended up with serious cancer after a wrong diagnosis, your husband had told you he wanted you to live?”

      • ComicBookHarriet
        May 23, 2021 at 3:01 pm

        All of these questions are great! But with:
        “Do you ever wish that your husband would spend any time with you in retirement rather than taking a fifth band director job? Where he manages a bunch of other women?”
        I’m going to guess the answer is no. Harriet would be perfectly content if Dinkle was the equivalent of a modern day Music Man, travelling from town to town selling music ensembles to the elderly, and sending her home the checks.

  10. Hitorque
    May 23, 2021 at 9:28 am

    Last four days in Cleveland: 86 degrees, 86 degrees, 83 degrees and 84 degrees — Just lose the sweater and scarf already…

    It’s funny because I don’t even know what Mindy’s job is at Atomikkk Komixxx, nor her qualifications besides “Fucking the head writer”… I’m sure a shrewd big-time player in the world of finance and accounting like Chester Hagglemore is perfectly ok with someone useless being on his payroll, because comics…

    Oh God, it’s Chester and his bottomless Caribbean bank accounts who are going to bail out the Valentine Theatre, isn’t it?

    • Banana Jr. 6000
      May 23, 2021 at 9:49 am

      She’s either colorist or inker. But she didn’t even know what Doc Martins were:

      As you point out, Mindiot’s only qualification is being Pete’s girlfriend. And what’s this pioneering woman in comic books doing now? Screwing around on the Internet. Personally, I think Batiuk gave her the job just so she could never leave Pete.

      • Hitorque
        May 23, 2021 at 12:27 pm

        I was today years old when I discovered Dr. Martins was a brand of watercolor paints… How many non-artsy folks like me completely missed that punchline? Nice of Mindy to play up that moldy blonde ditz stereotype, though.

        And what the hell is a multi-millionaire, aka Mr. “I pay for a butler just to bring me banana sundaes every hour on the hour” doing delivering supplies to the office in the first place??

        • batgirl
          May 23, 2021 at 4:29 pm

          If I remember (because my life is a barren wasteland…) Chester (the Chiseler) had found boxes of ancient art supplies from the previous Batom Comics inventory, and was bringing this crap in for his own little bullpen. I was trying to find this arc a while back, because I was sure that liths of some sort had been described then, which made it weirder that no one commented on Ruby’s name.

      • Hitorque
        May 23, 2021 at 12:32 pm

        And I completely missed Pete’s douchebaggy money joke directed at the person who literally made him the highest paid comics content creator in the industry

      • Hitorque
        May 23, 2021 at 12:56 pm

        I’d noted at the time that Mindy was just a friend of a friend of a cousin or whatever who had zero interest in Pete until he became a big famous Hollywood player after writing the script to the highest grossing movie of the decade… Then when he comes back to the old hometown she’s practically trying to tear his flannel shirt off and wrap her legs around his head.

        And let’s be honest… Mindy only came into Pete’s life to prevent Pete from ever having to come out of the closet.

  11. Gerard Plourde
    May 23, 2021 at 12:23 pm

    All of the previous comments have covered the issues associated with today’s mess, so I hope you’ll excuse my going off to rant on TomBa’s treatment of Dinkle and Crankshaft as simultaneously infamous and unrecognized.

    Somehow the “World’s Greatest Band Director” whose high school band was good enough to participate in the Rose Bowl parade some years ago was completely unknown to the St. Spires choir, despite the fact that he lives in next town over. Either he’s world-renowned or he’s not. He’s not a super hero with a secret identity.

    And there’s a similar disconnect with Crankshaft in the FW crossovers. Admittedly a school bus driver he wouldn’t normally stand out but between his minor-league career with the Toledo Mud Hens, his perpetual barbecue conflagrations, and his constant destruction of Kiesterman’s mailbox, he should be a regular item in the Akron Beacon Journal or the Medina Gazette (or whatever fictional local paper serves Westview and Centerville). Further, there is the fact that, if memory serves, he originally drove for the Westview school district. His path has crossed the FW crew enough times that he should be more than “that bus driver”.

    Sorry to go off topic but it’s another example of TomBa trying to be clever that’s just annoying.

  12. Doghouse Reilly (Minneapolis)
    May 23, 2021 at 9:31 pm

    It’s always a treat to see our favorite Communist Martyr.