Happy Thanksgiving from your pals at SoSF!
I don’t know how many of you watched “Twin Peaks: The Return”, but during the final episode (spoiler alert for five year old show) there is a rather long scene near the end where literally nothing happens. And while tension did indeed build, a quick glance at the clock revealed that there was no freaking way the show would explain everything (or anything) in the amount of running time it had left. And then it really got confusing and weird.
I mention this because after today there are like only forty FW strips to go, and knowing BatYam as I do, it seems incredibly hard to believe he’ll be able to bring whatever this is supposed to be home in that amount of time. The strip is winding down for good, and it’s squarely focused on a character who’s been absent for most of the last ten years, and a guy who isn’t really a character at all. He’s obviously setting up some sort of insane time travel thing here, which only makes me wonder where all this imagination was hiding for the last fifteen freaking years.
Obviously the fear here is that he’s going to somehow reunite Les and Summer with Lisa in some way, shape or form, and the strip will end with the three of them hugging. Cayla will presumably be conveniently retconned away or shipped off to “Crankshaft” or something. We all know he (BatHam) never really cared for Cayla anyway, given how little she factored into the strip after she married Les. In my opinion, the whole strip noticeably slowed down (no, seriously) after that.
Great Moments In SoSF Arc Recap History
June 14-June 20, 2010
Funky checks his dad into a nursing home. Afterwards, he orders a “vodka and orange” at a bar, but changes his mind and leaves.
Which led to his collision with Cell Phone Girl (RIP?) and “the black panel”, the greatest individual panel in Act III history. This is FW we’re talking about, so there was some speculation that Funky had died, but he just went into a coma instead. He then traveled back in time, met his teenage self, and advised himself to buy a copy of “Starbuck Jones #1″…the very same comic book that had saved Montoni’s in a prior arc. Then he recovered and PTSD and blah blah blah who cares, but that was where the Starbuck Jones legend truly began, which spawned a sequence of events that directly led to Ruby Lith retiring just last week. Who’d have thunk it?
Son of Stuck Funky 
Kudos to Tom Batiuk for ensuring that none of his readers will be sorry when his strip ends, or miss it when it’s gone.
I know this is supposed to intrigue me, but I can feel the creeping grey ennui paralyzing my brain as I read it.
I have the feeling that maybe he’s trying too hard here, and I don’t think he’ll be able to pull it off in any kind of coherent manner. A strip like FW might call for more of a “life goes on” kind of ending, given the tone of the strip for the last million years. But he’s going for something else here, and it’s already just weird, annoying and confusing.
“I don’t think he’ll be able to pull it off in any kind of coherent manner” is Batiuk’s motto.
A Batiuk specialty — a completely bonkers idea, rendered in a numbingly boring way. Spike Jones as arranged for Muzak. The Goon Show performed in Morse code. Lewis Carroll as read by Ben Stein.
“He’s fallen in the water!”
Never thought I’d hear Batiuk and “The Goon Show” mentioned in the same reference. “The Gong Show,” yes.
“As I swam ashore, I dried myself to save time.” Neddie Seagoon.
“What are all these men lying on the floor for?”
“We can’t afford carpets.”
Goon Show fans unite!
Have you read Spike Milligan’s *Puckoon*? I recommend it highly if you haven’t, if only because of gem like sentences like “one man was taller than the other, as is often the case in Ireland.”
@Anonymous_Sparrow – yes, I have 😀
“Who wrote these legs?”
He is salting the earth with this garbage. A sideways strip that is difficult to read electronically, loads of nonsense text that fails to advance the story in any way.
Talk about running out the clock. Pulitzer Boy once again shows us why he didn’t win.
At the same time, it advances the story way too much. How the hell did we get from “a pattern started to emerge” to “the school janitor is a time traveler” in one day, without anyone even saying it? Every line in this exchange is a complete non sequitir, but it steers the story where Batiuk wants it, which is all he cares about.
This is an Act I-style story. It’s absurd, but there’s a realistic center to it. Every high school has that laconic employee who seems to have been there forever, and nobody knows when they arrived, or anything about them. Dilbert did a joke like this once:
https://assets.amuniversal.com/e0186b509d31012f2fe500163e41dd5b
Wouldn’t it fit perfectly in Act I for Crazy Harry to find some 1909 yearbook with a picture of Harley in it, looking the same as he does today? Can’t you see him showing old yearbooks to Funky and the principal, and nobody believing him anyway because it’s Crazy Harry? Then the two of them have basically this conversation, except it’s written coherently. Harry would somehow know exactly what a temporal phase distorter is, and that it’s the same thing that makes his pizza record player work.
The problem is the execution. Batiuk claims he’s not a gag writer, but he writes what’s basically a gag. But it’s not to get a laugh: it’s to create yet another writing star, and push yet another goddam Lisa book on this world. After he spent 10 of his final 50 days on Ruby Lith’s last two comic book covers.
I’ll bet we never even see Dinkle. Or Cayla. Or Montoni’s. Or the high school. Or anything at all, except this final act of self-indulgence. This is shaping up into the perfect ending for Funky Winkerbean: a bitter, selfish, idiotic finale that doesn’t resolve anything. Except illustrate why FW it should have cancelled years ago.
My apologies to Andrew, billytheskink, and Smirks R’ Us who made similar comments. I really need to read the whole page before commenting.
“Wouldn’t it fit perfectly in Act I for Crazy Harry to find some 1909 yearbook with a picture of Harley in it, looking the same as he does today?”
Yes, and it should be played for horror like it was in The Shining. Retconning the entire thing into psychological horror would be about the only thing that would make it all make sense.
The yearbook thing should probably be more like Phantasm. Because if anyone deserves to be crushed into dwarves and sent into slavery on a desert planet, it’s the Funky Winkerbean cast.
“Julius Caesar” on an Aldis Lamp!
Got the reference!
“creeping grey ennui” is another one for the SoSF gift shop. I see it on a tote bag with the face Funky wears when he’s Eeyoring at the AA meetings about things like almost breaking his CD Walkman.
TB’s trying to be too clever-by-half, again, when he can never manage simply to be clever.
E.D. I fear you’re right- It’s all going to end with a Lisa-Les reunion. Dawn of Time will preside over their second wedding.
While I’m glad the strip has decided to go out bonkers, I’ve left feeling for Time Agent Harley here. Just which Time Admiral’s grandfather did he punch out as a baby to pull the “sweep hallways for Westview High School for fifty years” detail?
That’s my question as well… Why watch Blessed St. Lisa all these years like she’s the linchpin of the future survival of humanity?!
And then why would he continue to stay at the school twenty years after St. Lisa’s death? And don’t give me some bullshit about him staying at Westview because he knew the exact day and time St. Lisa’s crotch-fruit would come calling?
Cripes. I’m sorry he’s not handing the strip over to a competent writer!
Of course Batiuk found a way to drag a comic-book universe into this mess. What would the follow-up sound like? “The comic-book-movie explanation would be too oversimplified! For a proper understanding you would need to read the original, unedited comic book!”
So will Harley Davidson prove to be something like Boothby from Star Trek?
Boothby? “Star Trek”? Please, Batiuk wouldn’t sully his fine imported writing implements with such prosaic sci-fi fare.
No, he’s clearing positioning Harley the mop-jockey to be Westview’s own Mopee, the bespectacled “Heavenly Help-Mate, 10th Level” who claimed to be responsible for the accident that gave Barry Allen his super-speed in a 1967 “Flash” story that was subsequently laughed out of DC continuity. Leave it to TB to come up with his own version on one of the most derided retcons in Silver Age comics history.
The Jay-Flash didn’t have a Mopee, but he did have a trio of comic sidekicks in the Three Dimwits, Winky, Blinky and Noddy (Eugene Field must have been popular in the 1940s: DC also had a character called Little Boy Blue in *Sensation Comics.*)
Perhaps Harley would work better as a revamped Stretch Skinner (a genuine dee-teca-tif!) than as a Mopee manque. He’s not cute enough to be Bat-Mite or Zook (there’s no denying that! Me agree with you, Martian Manhunter!!)
Stretch Skinner? Wasn’t he Wildcat’s sidekick?
Yes, he was. Amaze your trivialist friends by knowing that his actual first name is “Hiram.” (Doiby Dickles’s first name is “Charles.”)
Excuse me while I check into what happened with Etta Candy (Woo Woo!) in later years…
Funny you should mention Mopee. I was thinking of another Flash story.
By 1984, Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash, was running out of steam. Years earlier, his wife, Iris, was killed by his nemesis, the Reverse Flash. Then, Barry avenged Iris when he killed the villain while stopping him from murdering his new fiancé the same way.
During his murder trial (long story, don’t ask), it was revealed that the body of one of the jurors was inhabited by the spirit of a time traveler who had been sent back to undo the damage to the timeline the Reverse Flash’s death had caused (kind of like “Quantum Leap,” only a few years earlier). In the end, Barry was cleared and traveled to the future where he learned the time traveler was actually Iris, who was alive and well in a new body provided by her real parents (even longer story). The series was canceled with issue #350 with Barry and Iris ready to live happy ever after… or at least until he died in “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”
If it turns out that Harley is really Lisa, who is alive in a new cancer-free body in the 30th century, I’m going to bang my head against a well-drawn brick wall many, many times.
If it turns out that Harley is really Lisa, who is alive in a new cancer-free body in the 30th century
Oh, that could be fantastic. “Guess what, Les! Lisa’s alive! But she’s a fat, dumpy 58-year old janitor who…. um… doesn’t have a playground anymore.” He would dump Harley in a nanosecond and go straight back to smooching imaginary Lisa by the window.
It would be like the Fry-and-Leela plot from “Prisoner of Benda.” Except that was funny as hell.
“No playground? So what does she have?” Les thinks it over. “So I can still play! It will be just like all those times I successfully climbed the gym rope!”
Ah, I get it. The suddenly non-existent difference in time between Funky and Crankshaft, the sudden changes in the graduation year, the characters still being in high school either eight years after or eight years before they graduated… it’s not sloppy continuity from Batiuk, it’s all part of a time travel plot! Clearly, he’s planned this for years, and everything we’ve been nitpicking has actually been carefully-laid seeds to hint at this! He’s a genius, a genius I tells ya!
Or it’s a sign that he’s just throwing whatever random crap he happens to think of as he was writing the strips. Either way.
(Wait, I’ve got it! In the dark apocalyptic future, the only thing that can save humanity is Montoni’s pizza, so the future rulers used their time machine to send an agent back in time to retrieve that vital resource. But to keep his existence a secret, he had to disguise himself with pizza boxes, becoming known only as… THE PIZZA MONSTER!) (It’s no stupider than this story is already proving itself to be…)
“Time travel plot” would cover every bit of idiocy in the strip without explaining any of it. Zanzibar the murder chimp? A chronosynclastic infibulation caused him to cross over from a timeline where bonobos evolved intelligence, speech and opposable thumbs. Climate damage and vendos? The Funkyverse exists in a parallel timestream a quarter of a time-inch from ours, with slightly different neologisms–and where “Radio Ranch/Hidden Empire” won the Oscar and Pulitzer for best writing, making it the most popular movie ever.
It definitely won’t be Gully Foyle time-jaunting through “The Stars My Destination.”
But it will leave a lot of men and women demolished and ready to murder Mohammed.
While, no doubt, reciting the oath Alfred Bester created for Green Lantern about the brightest day and the blackest night.
That was Bester’s work? Cool! I love that oath. I’m trying to remember if any other superheroes had oaths that rhymed…
There was the Space Canine Patrol Agents?
“Big dog! Big dog! Bow wow wow!
We’ll crush evil… Now now now!”
(Silver Age Superman comics. Just… Silver Age Superman comics.)
Nyahh, the only thing that an save humanity is Funky’s copy of STARBUCK JONES #1.
I’d feel safer with Al Bundy’s socks.
Epicus Doomu, thank you for the post. Everyone, thank you so much for such rich background and so many parody strips this week. These are works of art.
Best wishes to you all for a happy, healthy, and, where FW is concerned, snarky Thanksgiving. Thank you, again. It’s such a pleasure to read SoSF.
Ok, if we’re legit going to go with the Janitor being Space Jesus or Q or something all along, I’ll give Bautik credit for going out with one last bit of Act 1 insanity, but years of still holding himself back with “It was a dream… or was it?” conclusions to the weirder bits still make me skeptical.
In my own retrospective sense, some readers may remember me posting in the early 2010s during my later high school/early college years, when Act 1 records online were still sparse from lack of uploads/the collection, I kinda hoped that the old WHS computer would return in some form and just have the strip embrace it’s Act 1 weirdness again (inspired by how Dick Tracy’s writers went ahead and brought back Moon Maid and the Lunarians, which a Bautik blog post shared earlier this week indicates he doesn’t think highly of). Well, of course, I got my wish when The Computer That Would Be Holtron was retrieved from the school to be in the Starbucks Jones movie, but of course it never really reached the same heights of its old behavior, even when it did talk again. It was a very neutered bit of throwback, and it made the return not feel as interesting as it could’ve been to me.
It’s been said that with a big picture, the tonal shift of the strip after Act 1 did lose some of the magic that made the strip appealing as a lampoon, and trying to be a soap opera type deal with a focus on familiar characters aging and a pinch of Funky weirdness never quite clicked the same way for everyone. While I wouldn’t say it doesn’t discount some of the serious stories from being good, I think there is something to say about a balance that could’ve been kept, and the strip really fell out of that balance deeper into Act 2 and into 3, as the Very Special Arcs piled up and we kept focusing on the senior cast and their aging misfortunes to the detriment to the more fresh blood characters. There was a weirdness to Funky that could’ve been kept, the actual “quarter inch from reality” that helped the strip, not just used as a handwave for how military incompetence can fuck Wally over or how a pizza restaurant that does delivery crashes and burns rather than thrives in a pandemic.
The strip is winding down for good
Oh, don’t worry, don’t worry about it. All of your favorite characters in FW will now move over to Crankshaft. There are a whole slew of Crankshaft characters who are about to learn how Les suffered and what a sensitive soul he is and maybe he should be given some awards.
If BayYam had a better sense of humor, he’d scrap everything about “Crankshaft” except the title, then just resume FW in its place like nothing had happened. Now THAT would be funny.
Coincidence that today’s Great Moments In SoSF Arc Recap History is the events that preceded Funky’s car wreck and time travel coma? I used to half-jokingly suggest that this strip would end with Funky actually waking up from that coma (or passing away while still in it), everything depicted in the strip since being revealed as taking place in his mind.
“It was all a dream” has been done to death, of course, but I thought it would actually fit here, and not just because it would be a dumb way to end a dumb strip. This strip dove headlong into wish fulfillment after Funky’s car wreck in a way it never had before, it makes some level of sense for Starbuck Jones, for example, become a massive pop culture franchise in Funky’s dreamland shortly after he sold a rare SJ comic to pay his (and Komix Korner’s) bills in his reality.
It appears the actual ending of this strip will be even more ridiculous, more blandly-executed (good grief today’s wordy mess!), and pretty much just as rote as my dumb idea. Just off the top of my head, the Ben Schwartz catchphrase generator that was Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja had the same “random background high school employee is magic” bit, except it committed to it from the get go and din’t dwell on it as it had actual stories to tell when Schwartz wasn’t shouting “smoke bomb!”.
It really jumped out as being perhaps the most significant Act III time travel arc, as it led to the spawning of the “Starbuck Jones” sub-universe, which led to the creation of a shitload of characters…Chester, Rocky, Rocky’s mom, Cliff, Vera, Marianne Winters, Phil, Flash, Ruby, Brady Wentworth and probably more I’m forgetting. It was kind of when comic books went from being a part of the Funkyverse to the fulcrum of the Funkyverse, and if you really think about it, led directly to whatever this is supposed to be.
I guess Rocky and Rocky’s mom are debatable, but they were introduced during the SJ collection arc (which was one long-ass arc), so I counted them. BatHam went comic book-happy after that, and he’s never looked back.
Happy Thanksgiving!
A little bit of Adeela in my life
Adeela and Rana are some of my most hated characters. I have Muslim friends and they would be appalled by this strip.
More of Batty creating dog poo characters (South Park reference) just so he can be topical. But the effort fails miserably.
To the rare person who may actually be interested, the Comics Kingdom appears to have added about a half dozen titles over the past month or so. I am impressed with absolutely none of them.
Several months ago, when I subscribed to the Comics Kingdom, they promised a newsletter. Shouldn’t a newsletter mention when new titles are added to get people to read them? The only CK newsletters I’ve received thus far have been to promote their accursed online store. I’d rather wear a scarlet “A” on my chest than a Crankshaft truckers cap on my head.
The decision to change the commenting platform from Disqus pisses me off, no end. I’d cancel my Comics Kingdom subscription if I thought I would receive a refund.
In addition, the fact that I’m paying the same subscription price for the Comics Kingdom as GoComics is an absolute frelling joke. Recent cyberattack aside, GoComics is by far the better value. More titles, useful newsletters, etc.
https://v7.comicskingdom.net/comics/mara-llave-keeper-of-time/2022-11-15/?widgetId=570
This new comic, MARA LLAVE: KEEPER OF TIME, looks interesting.
Hmmm, a serious strip telling a story? According to Batty’s rules, publishers only want funny comics. How did this strip pass muster?
The comments disappearing is pretty funny to me though. I was amazed at Mallard Fillmore‘s comments a good decade ago and whenever i would look to see if they’d gotten tired of trolling each other–nope, still going
Still, better than reading Mallard Fillmore itself
We get sideways nonsense about how the pretentiously named (and, in my opinion, not absolutely necessary) Phase II is about to be retconned out of existence so that Tom Hypertime can just will away the corner he painted himself into. Everyone who invested in the story (if there are such people) is about to be flipped off by a hack who did something he shouldn’t have done in the first place.
After all the garbage BatHack has heaped upon us, particularly in Act III, after seeing Harley’s “revelation” all I can say is BatHack, you have got to be kidding me.
I don’t even care what it means. I now know we are headed towards an ending so stupid that it will make my head explode.
Sigh. See you all tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving.
Probably. Be prepared to hold both sides of your head in disbelief/fury/somber resignation. Happy Thanksgiving to all SOSF bloggers, posters, lurkers-may your day with loved ones be filled with warmth. Thankful for all of you!
Try to imagine how insane a regular person would think Summer is if said person asked her how her book was going and she said “I discovered the janitor who’s been at Westview High for 50 years is a member of the Illuminati.”
Now I’m absolutely sure the “pattern” Summer mentioned yesterday is never going to be explained, because it’s just so damn goofy.
I thought Batiuk had considered Summer to be a sensible, down-to-earth lady, not this Bong Warrior-type who wouldn’t recognize this as completely ridiculous.
“Harley the Janitor is a Time Warrior from the planet Fluor who astral projected himself into Westview to ensure that my parents went to the prom together.”
“That’s nice…. Security!”
And of course this athlete must also be a writer, we can’t show her becoming a professional sporto.
First (and likely last) post after enjoying this site for many years.
This Thanksgiving I am thankful for SOSF, particularly our longsuffering hosts, the guest bloggers, and the commenting community who never cease to amaze me with your ability to spin gold from the pile of soiled straw that is Funky Winkerbean.
I first encountered Funky in 2008 when I moved to the East Coast, bought a house, and subscribed to the local paper. It was nice to read the newspaper comics again, like I had as a kid in the heyday of Calvin & Hobbes, etc.
But there were some strips here that I didn’t grow up with. Some too lame to bother with — but one so cringeworthy-yet-earnest that I couldn’t look away. Within a week of starting a newspaper subscription, I had Googled “What the hell is wrong with Funky Winkerbean?”, and discovered the Comics Curmudgeon. I found SOSF not long after that.
I’ve never been able to keep up with the comments on CC, but I have tried to check in on SOSF and its commenters every day for the last several years. Your commentary — in the posts and in the comments — teaches me something new almost every day. More importantly, your understanding of just why the strip sucks and how it doesn’t need to has made me a better writer and a better observer of the human condition. Your ultimately redemptive outlook, whether intentional or not, is what I will miss most.
My local paper has already dropped FW except for Sundays, so I imagine its disappearance will be mourned by no one I know. But this Thanksgiving, and as we head into Christmas and reflect on the Light shining into darkness, I’m grateful for your efforts to keep the light on here.
God bless you all,
NotThatJessica
Thanks NotThatJessica. I can’t tell you what it means that even lurkers get something from this place.
The posts on CC are like watching open mic night at a very skilled comedy club. People there are trying out some wonderful and sophisticated jokes, and also a lot of toilet humor.
But the kind of discussions we get here and dissections we do here would be ignored there, and digressions and heartfelt essays would be openly mocked other places.
This place welcomes all three. That’s why you get links to amazing things like Paul Jones’ post below.
Oh, and none of that should be taken as a knock against the amazing stuff over at CC. I owe that blog for leading me to this one. Or any kind of slight against the kind people who posted their hilarity both here and on CK.
Somewhere along the line, this place became a glorious TLSR (Too Long Still Read) in the comments section. Everyone in the waxing eloquent with 500 word essays on comics as an artform.
In observance of the holiday, I’m dragging these chestnuts out of the media library one more time. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
(link to the real version of the above strip)
(R.I.P., Wally Jr.)
Not just Wally Jr, why isn’t Wally Sr ever part of his ex-wife’s life? She may’ve built a new family but they had a legacy that she thought was robbed from her for years until it turned out he was alive all along? Obviously it wouldn’t have been right for her to dump John, but I still put it on her for just giving Wally his old trombone, showing him his grave and then patting him on the back with best of luck hopes. If Bautik was following the end of “Castaway” a tad too much, he should’ve remembered that Wally and Becky actually tied the knot and did shit, whereas Tom Hanks didn’t even formally propose to his girl.
I need a neck brace for the whiplash induced by these sudden tonal shifts.
He doesn’t get it at all. Tonal shifts are annoying even in a comic book universe, but readers already know the books are inherently not about our world, because in our world there are no “superpowers.” So the writers of superhero comics get more leeway.
Mister “1/4 inch from reality,” who wanted a Pulitzer for his supposedly groundbreaking, supposedly realistic handling of a character’s breast cancer, doesn’t get that leeway.
These wild swings in plot and tone are an FU to anyone who unironically followed the strip and cared about its characters.
But the biggest FU these cutesy diversions deliver is to Batiuk himself, by making a mockery of his entire body of work. It’s sad that he doesn’t realize it.
It’s as if he read Twain’s “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses” and saw it as a how-to guide.
https://gutenberg.org/files/3172/3172-h/3172-h.htm
Wow. That is spot-on.
“A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are—oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language.”
“Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.”
That should probably have a permanent place of worship on this site; it really does read like it could have been written about Funky Winkerbean.
I wonder whether he thinks he’s salting the earth, a la “John Darling,” so no one can continue the strip after his death. He’s just deluded enough to think that FW is so valuable and beloved that some “suit from New York” would try it.
He’s actually going to close this out with time-travel! Are we going to find out that Harry and Donna (Donald) are time travelers as well? (In addition to The Eliminator’s helmet there was the time travel reunion accessed by the Time Pool in Harry’s locker.) Was the “Way-Back Wendy” cover a foreshadowing?
Could he be preparing to troll Lynne Johnston and FBOFW?
Maybe I shouldn’t get my hopes up only to be disappointed, but there are interesting possibilities.
What, no “It’s the Great Turkey Funky Winkerbean!” Thanksgiving special today? I feel cheated.
Not buying this “time-traveling janitor” thing. Everybody knows school janitors are spiky-haired triathletes who are independently wealthy thanks to a side hustle writing hit pop songs.
Thanksgiving is always a special time for me and this blog, since it roughly coincides with the anniversary of my very first guest host shift in 2017, where I did a week ranting over the great Phil Holt Comix Cover Auction for Lisa’s Legacy.
Thanks Epicus and TFH. For five years of occasionally tossing me the keys and letting me drive this crazy bus.
In honor of the day, a rare gem. An Act III band turkey joke that I actually really really like. While we watch Batiuk absolutely botch his ending with some of the weirdest most self-aggrandizing metafiction I’ve seen since my latest Neil Breen binge, I think it’s good to remember the moments where the man turned in solid A- material.
Good old Chullo Boy, FW’s resident sleazebag. I guess we’ve seen the last of him. It’s easy to forget what a major player he was there for a while.
Thanks for sharing this, CBH. It’s frustrating that he does have talent and can produce clever and funny stuff.
It’s funny because Chullo Kid was high as fuck that day…
The janitor is the terminator. He was sent back in time to kill les before he gave rise to skynet (which comes online when he tries to bring lisa back to life as an AI simulation).
Summer tends to comes on too strongly. She always has; we all know it. But that’s no reason for this Batman-as-a-villain guy to act like this. Come on, man. -_-
Look, I don’t care if St. Lisa/Summer is a space alien, a dimensional traveler, Sarah Connor, Steven Universe, a Jedi Master, in a coma, if she’s living in that universe the movie “Inception” takes place in, or if she’s the literal second coming of Jesus H. Christ…
Whatever meta stunt TomBa is trying to pull here, it’s been done already…
It’s so cute that Batominc thinks he can write time-travel stories. Someone get him a Pullet Surprise “Participant” ribbon.
By the way, in (um) balloon seven, shouldn’t that be “you’re being”? Unless she’s talking about a different creature elsewhere. Maybe I’m being a pedantic schoolmarm from a bitter hollow, though.
Rot Lop Fan of the Green Lantern Corps had a rhyming oath:
“In loudest din or hush profound,
My ears catch evil’s slightest sound.
Let those who toll out evil’s knell
Beware my power, the F-Sharp Bell!”
That’s the work of Alan Moore.
A fun fact about Alfred Bester: he created the immortal Vandal Savage for DC and created a similar eternal character for “The Shadow” radio series. (His name was Cain.)
Loplop was Max Ernst’s alter ego in some of his works. He didn’t have an oath, though.