Earlier in the week, I touched on how utterly bizarre and insane it is that Boy Lisa, of all people, is Cory’s best man. Nothing could possibly explain this, as there’s just no way it could be possible, but there he is, waving goodbye to his dear ol’ chum Cory and that girl he married. Interesting how Boy Lisa, Licensed Cartoonist, made the poster all about Cory and not the bride, but given what we know about Boy Lisa’s marriage, that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Way back before he became Boy Lisa, Darin was a fairly major Act II character, more or less the WHS “new generation” male lead. Along with his girlfriend Jessica and his best pal Pete, Darin was involved in all sorts of zany WHS hi jinx and shenanigans. I can’t remember any of them now, but trust me, something happened. Then we discovered he was adopted as an infant and everyone immediately knew he’d end up being Lisa’s surrendered love baby from THAT whole thing. And sure enough, five or ten years later, Darin met Lisa, his birth mother, not long before she died. And when they met, Lisa grabbed Darin by the forehead and transferred some of her superpowers to her long-lost bio-son, including bland geniality, and, well, bland geniality. And henceforth he was known as Boy Lisa.
Right after that, Boy Lisa and Jessica got married, went to college, and became Big City MBAs. Or at least he did, as Jessica’s backstory is less important, what with her being a girl and all. So that went on for five or seven or fourteen years or thereabouts, at which point This Economy f*cked Boy Lisa over, pretty hard in fact. So he packed up his robin’s egg blue car and returned to Olde Westview Towne, where he showed up unannounced at the door of his long-lost bio-step dad and bio-half-sister (avoiding his adoptive parents for reasons unclear), asking for a place to stay.
Les agreed, then got Boy Lisa a job at (surprise) Montoni’s, where he became some sort of pizza app developer and breakfast pizza pioneer. Then he discovered he had an adoptive half-sister, did the illustrations for Les’ cancer graphic novel and knocked-up his wife, although I’m not sure in what order that all was. Then Pete offered him a cushy storyboarder gig on the “Starbuck Jones” movie and he took off for Hollywood, minus Jessica, who stayed home and attended to her various womanly duties. Then he came back and ended up riding Pete’s coattails again, this time snagging a job at Atomik Komix, where he toils to this very day.
And this brief recap of his entire character arc makes it seem WAY more eventful and interesting than it actually was. In my opinion, his number one strip highlight was when he sneezed all over Summer right before the Big Game, as the illness somehow activated her natural grit and brought home the basketball title to WHS for the very first time. Or it might have been when he threatened Frankie and Lenny that time, although that was more Jessica. Anyway, it’s a really, really bland legacy when you look at it objectively, or even if you don’t. If Boy Lisa was Halloween candy, he’d be those terrible Necco wafers no one likes.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Let’s show some respect for Boy Lisa’s artistic skills. Sally Dali is clearly shedding a tear of joy and relief when she says that Cory is married. You’re all safe from him, girls!
Given Cory’s resemblance to Popsicle Pete, I’m not sure anyone is safe from him…
Oh now don’t go reminding us of Seanbaby’s comedy when we’re neck-deep in this muck. That’s how riots start.
I thought of the crawl under John Lennon during the Beatles’s first appearance on Ed Sullivan: “Sorry, girls, he’s married…”
Seriously, do people still do the thing where they tie cans and garbage to the back of a newly-married couple’s car? I mean first of all, that was already an ancient and hackneyed old gag when I was a little kid. Second of all, it seems hard to believe that the cops would allow this, and third, cars don’t even really have bumpers to which you can tie things anymore. And having to stop your car, get out, then clean up garbage while you’re all dressed up seems like a really stupid tradition to me. I’d be kind of pissed off if some asshole tied an old shoe to the back of my car.
But it would be top-notch comedy if Batiuk was wearing the shoe when it was tied to the back of your car.
I once had the windshield of my week-old car broken by an unsecured, flying boot (true story), so this whole shoe thing is kind of triggering for me. I mean, who brought an old shoe and empty cans to a wedding?
Good point. That’s how James Bonds’ wife got killed. Harmless wedding tradition or Cold War era revenge tactic? You decide.
No hurry, because you have all the time in the world.
Wow. I don’t even like Lichtenstein and I feel vaguely insulted.
Why are Batty/Ayers so damn cavalier about other people’s intellectual property??
Considering that Liechtenstein’s “artistic” career was built by copying the works of Jack Kirby, Russ Heath, Joe Kubert, Irv Novick, and other Silver Age comic book illustrators, I doubt that his estate will be too upset over this. Still, how fitting that Batiuk finds a way to bring it back to comics.
Lastly, does this mean that we’ll never get to see which Westview gal caught Rocky’s tossed bouquet? Apparently the Bridesmaid of Mystery wasn’t the lucky recipient. My money is on Summer and Keisha snaring it simultaneously and then staring longingly and sensuously into each other’s eyes.
Lastly, does this mean that we’ll never get to see which Westview gal caught Rocky’s tossed bouquet?
I guess it’s just not important to the story.
Because Lichtenstein was?
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That’s a hard pass.
Who that girl is
That’s Kelly from Ash vs Evil Dead.
And how did things work out for her? She was brutally orphaned, later gruesomely infected, and then killed with the Kandarian Dagger so her body could be used as a vessel for some sort of otherworldly entity!
This has NEVER HAPPENED to anyone who had Tom Batiuk serve as the best man at their wedding! Plus, everyone agrees that you can send your most boring and/or obnoxious relative over to talk with Tom, and Tom’ll keep ’em out of everyone’s hair for hours on end as he d̶r̶o̶n̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶ regales them with his witty repartee and tales of almost winning a Pulitzer!
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@Y. Knott
M’wha? Kelly was still alive at the end of season 3.
Hmm, to go through Kelly’s ordeals… Or have Tom Batiuk serve as the best man at my wedding.
Both are hellish scenarios. Are those two my only options? Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto. Let’s call the whole wedding off.
Necco wafers? They were bad, but not Darin bad. I’m thinking more like Slo-Poke or Dum-Dums bad.
Dum Dums are my guilty pleasure candy! I love the cream soda ones 🍭😜
This strip isn’t a guilty pleasure so much as an endurance test.
I remember Necco wafers. The wintergreen (pink) ones were pretty good. I was never a fan of the other flavors. More like yucco wafers. Tasted like drywall.
My dad liked the black licorice Neccos. He loved black licorice whips and cough drops. I never did. Yuck. 😝
Dad: Don’t eat my candy.
Me: Not a problem, Dad. You’ve got nothing to worry about. Knock yourself out.
My grandpa always had BlackJack Gum on hand. I like black licorice-flavored things to this day, just because they remind me of him 🥲
Aw, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad. There used to be a lot of old-timey gum flavors, such as Black Jack, Clove and Teaberry. You can still buy them online.
Isn’t it interesting how we remember our relatives who have passed on by certain smells, etc.? My dad has been gone for a couple of years, but I still remember his scent. It was a unique blend of Vitalis, Brut and Right Guard. 😊
Certain other smells remind me of Dad. He never cooked much, but I remember him teaching me how to cook corned beef ‘n’ cabbage and Italian wedding soup. It’s kind of weird because he had no Irish or Italian ancestry. I still use his recipes.
Cheers
No worries 🙂
To this day, my dad loves Necco wafers and Smarties. He also used to eat those orange circus peanuts, which were OK I guess, but give me chocolate over them anytime.
I’ve been wracking (OK, maybe not “wracking”) my brain trying to figure out how, when and why Boy Lisa and Cory would have interacted to the point of becoming very close friends, but it simply doesn’t line up. They were both Westviewians from the time Boy Lisa returned in 2011 to when Cory enlisted in 2012, and I suppose it’s possible that they both worked at Montoni’s during that time, but Cory was a high school senior and Boy Lisa was a married, failed and homeless MBA, so I can’t imagine what they would have had in common other than comic books. I suppose they could have developed an “off-screen” friendship after Cory came home and Boy Lisa returned from Hollywood, but Boy Lisa’s schedule is pretty packed, what with hanging out with Pete, Chester, Phil, Flash, Ruby, Mindy and Batton all day. Not to mention his wife and son.
Maybe he should have blown everyone’s mind and picked Summer as his “best man”. That’d have been trippy. Or he could have gone big and chosen Mason Jarre and probably scored a pretty nice gift in the process. Or he could have chosen someone totally off the wall, like Wedgeman or Owen or someone like that. But he chose Boy Lisa instead, the blandest of all possible choices.
Wally would make tons more sense. They’d be some flavor of step cousins, and would have been working together for years.
It’s not just that it doesn’t make sense, it’s that it’s kind of impossible. Boy Lisa graduated and left Westview when Cory was a toddler. He wasn’t even Cory Winkerbean then. And their character arcs only overlapped at the times I mentioned above. I mean, they might know each other, but barely. It’s just so bizarre.
Oh, today’s strip is the clearest possible explanation we could have ever gotten as to why Darrin is Cory’s best man. So the wedding can be about comic books! For the third time this week. Plus being how Cory paid for the ring in a past story. How do Darrin and Cory know each other? They don’t have to! Today’s strip infers that Funky made this happen somehow, which is heartwarming compared to Holly’s behavior yesterday. It all ties together, in-universe and meta.
Why isn’t there a matching crying man saying “she’s married?” I get the Lichtenstein reference after looking it up, but it’s weird and a bit disrespectful to have an image of “girls weeping because Cory is taken” but no matching one for Rocky. If Darin wasn’t going to include the bride in his salute/knockoff/tribute, then why didn’t he just make it a bachelor party gift?
I’m guessing they decided to draw lots at Cory’s bachelor party and Boy Lisa ended up with the short straw.
This artwork. Ok, I’m two joints in, but man, this is F’d up. Batty ain’t right. In the main, I’m pretty F’d up but Batty is out there.
You know where this joke would have been funny?
Whoops! That’s haphazardly taped, all right. Yeesh.
Fungy looks like Quincy Magoo.
1. Andy Warhol pop art?! How derivative, cliche and uninspired…
2. So does this mean the 20-year, totally-not-gay bromance between Darrin and Pete is finished?
I loved Necco Wafers, The Catholic Candy.