Murder In The Burnings: The Major Suspects

61 thoughts on “Murder In The Burnings: The Major Suspects”

1. Today’s Funky Crankerbean

   Day 43 of The Byrnings

   Here come the Legion of Dumb

2. The only interesting thing about this dreary damp squib of an arc is the comments on other sites.

   There is a contingent of folks who are praising this arc to the skies because they think it is a devastating rebuke to their most hated politician/political party, whatever that happens to be.

   Of course, this story scores no actual points against any politician, party, or philosophy ever, because it makes no sense and is a hodgepodge of pompous gibberish.

   That means everyone from Communists to Nazis to Democrats to Republicans to Know-Nothings to Whigs can claim this arc as a resounding triumph for “their side.”

   Turns out TB’s lack of coherence might be the thing his fans most love about him.

   1. Yeah I find it funny that the other commenters on that other site are having such a fit that anyone would dare criticize Batty. Today they finally got called out for being hypocritical.

      I was actually excited when I first glanced at today’s strip, I thought Dinkle was actually one of the protesters! Then I was disappointed to see that no, he received the “bat signal”. Sigh.

      1. Oh, Gosh no. None of the crowd of protestors will have a name or will they give an rticulate reason for anything they have done, whether they are responsible for the fires or not. After all, who were the anti-Wit crowd? What were their names? This is Batiuk at his most gutless.

   2. Make a joke about Crankshaft, and you’re a HATER whose family hates you and you vote for whoever I dont want to win but not Hitler, I dont wanna vote for him, YOU DO, you utter moron WHY YOU WANT BURN BOOKS?! PROVE ME RONG! People today is so rudes!

      They never give a reason as to what’s so great about the story, just leap into personal invective when they realize they can’t defend their point.

      And then say LOL.

3. I’ve let out most of my bewilderment and frustration over the path of the storyline out over the weekend, so with my anger wilted away to mere sighing, all I can say is this:

   Why? Why is this entire four weeks of climax happening in a single night? Why were protesters gearing up at this hour of the night to demonstrate when nobody in their right mind would be awake enough to care for whatever scene they would make, and was this always their plan with no awareness of the attempted arson or just a Plan B when they forgot the fire department had this neighborhood under lock and key? Why did not only the Crankshafts all get dressed for the fire while Lillian stayed in her pajamas with a coat over them like a reasonable late-night wake up? Why was Mindy across the street or a whole block away from her house when she finally spotted the protest? And just how in the heck are we seeing within a short-feeling timeframe that residents from both this town and Westview have arrived in a coordinated, fully dressed and signed counter-protest group, yet the night sky has barely changed and nothing has significantly changed in the standoff? WHAT TIME IS IT!??!

   You know what, here! With this adamant insistent this all takes place in the dead of night, I got a whole new suspect candidate for the Burnings right here! Sorry that I can’t properly fill out the suspect form Banana Jr., I refuse to actually learn anything about the guy to do that, but I think this self-evident clickbait should tell us all we need to know:

   

   1. My thought about these prestige arcs, and especially this one which he came up with the concept for nearly three years ago, is that he thinks about writing something big, significant and incisive about an important issue, but when the time comes for him to actually write the story, he peters out. He doesn’t have the creativity or the drive to actually write the story. It doesn’t make sense or it doesn’t work, and he doesn’t want to do the work necessary to make it work. So he establishes the premise, sets the sides and then resolves it pathetically.

      The question I have is why this happens. I think it’s possible that this happens because he can’t conceive of why someone would feel differently about an issue than he does, so he can’t get past establishing the premise. He’s intellectually incapable of understanding the conflict he’s trying to present. Or it could be that he’s just lazy or tired and what seemed like a good idea doesn’t appeal to him anymore once he had to get around to it.

      It occurred to me that he’s always trying to chase what he’s giving Summer in his strip(s). He wants to write something that changes the world, that changes how people interact with one another. He thinks his gay prom storyline will resolve homophobia. He thinks Lisa’s Story will get people to take comic strips seriously as works of art around the level of the Great Masters. And now he thinks The Burnings will get people to, I guess, feel the same way he does about books or something.

      His problem, of course, is that he thinks that solving all these problems is a matter of getting everyone to think just like him. If we were all just like him, with his hangups and concerns and thoughts, all the world’s problems would just go away.

      1. He can’t understand why people don’t agree with him so we get a big old whiff of his mommy issues. This is why Roberta existed: to express discontent about a mother who baffled and ‘bullied’ him by trying to get him to be less infantile and self-absorbed.

      2. His premises themselves are usually fine. “Wally goes back to school, battles anxiety”…”Lisa gets cancer”…”Pete and Boy Lisa find and old 1940s movie star living in squalor”. They COULD all be fine, entertaining stories. But they never are, because like you said, they never advance beyond premises. He sputters, rehashes, goes off on bizarre tangents, repeats himself, wastes time, then resolves them quickly and unsatisfyingly. It’s like he loses interest as soon as it’s time to, you know, write the f*cking thing. I have to believe it’s an attention span problem, or maybe laziness. Or maybe it’s arrogance. Maybe he believes dreaming up the premise is the tough part, and once he does that, the stories essentially write themselves. Whatever the reason, he’s done it consistently for decades on end.

         1. And there’s nothing human in any of his stories. Becky loses her arm and her Julliard scholarship because of someone else’s carelessness, then just throws up her hand and says “oh well, i guess i’ll be the new Dinkle.”

            This group of protestors maliciously lit a fire at the home of a 105-year-old woman, and everybody comes out in the middle of the night to stand up for Fahrenheit 451, because somehow that’s the important issue here. Because it’s the hill Les chose for other people to die on.

            Even Les and Lisa barely show any interest in their child or each other, despite being billed as the most tragic doomed couple in human history. Lisa speaks to Les from beyond the grave so he can ignore her.

            These people are all vile.

         2. I don’t think it’s laziness. It may be an attention span problem. But I think most fundamentally, Tom Batiuk simply does not and can not grasp the concept of “story”. He simply can’t understand, on even the most basic of levels, that ‘premise’ is not the same thing as story. When Tom Batiuk reads a story (well, a comic book), he grasps the premise — but lacks the tools and the ability to process the story. Or to even recognize the story. Or that there even is a story. In fact, his failure is so complete and all-encompassing in this area, he doesn’t even understand that he doesn’t understand what a “story” is.

            Tom Batiuk genuinely believes that when he comes up with a premise, he has created a story. No amount of explanation of ‘story’ to him has changed, can change, or will change this.

            His story-blindness is complete, absolute and unalterable. You may as well try to get a dead wallaby to smell the opposite of the color ecru with his hooves.

            1. I agree absolutely and I think you expressed the crux of the issue brilliantly.

               If you’ve ever listened to a toddler struggling to tell a story or recount the plot of a movie, you’ve had a glimpse into the mental function of Tom Batiuk.

               I’ve always found it significant that when he describes the plot of a comic book, he can’t summarize or get to the main point. Nor can he explain any aspect of why he finds that particular comic compelling.

               Instead, he always dryly relates the plot, point by laborious point, including subplots. Why? A comic’s plot is rarely interesting by itself. A normal person would just give a brief overview of the plot, then note anything unusual or outstanding about the art or writing. But Tom is not a normal person.

               This same inability to grasp overarching themes or ideas renders him incapable of fleshing out his vague concepts. He just isn’t capable of getting the point of storytelling.

               I maintain that he once had the ability, but lost it. Unironically, I wonder whether he’s had some kind of cerebral injury or cerebrovascular damage. How do you forget how to tell a story?

            2. I agree with this as well, with no greater example than the time jumps. The first time jump kind of worked (well, for a while at least) because the bones of a story are inherent in the premise of moving characters from high school to adulthood. The second one flopped and flopped hard because moving adults into later adulthood has far fewer obvious story avenues and we know how good TB is at finding something interesting even in the obvious.

            3. I’d say the biggest failure of the Act III time skip was that he did it specifically to avoid having to tell a story, which was the very story he set himself up to NEED to tell. How Les reacts to Lisa dying SHOULD HAVE BEEN the story. It was THE most important plot he had set up. And he just… decided it wasn’t worth telling. How does Les react to his wife’s death? Sadness, to be sure, but also… relief, maybe? It wasn’t exactly a quick and painless death. Was there a part of him that could take comfort in knowing her suffering was finally over? (And that’s not even a dig at how callous Les usually seems; a sense of relief in that situation would actually be completely normal, even as one deals with the grief of the loss.) How does Les cope with having to raise a five-year-old all by himself? Was Summer old enough to understand just what death means at the time? Did Les have to help her through her own grief as the realization of what she lost sets in? And how does he balance helping Summer cope while having to cope himself? Does he hide his own grief from Summer?

               But… nope. The one time the story well and truly SHOULD have been all about Les, and Batiuk decides it’s just not worth telling. While at the same time having Les still wallowing in his grief a decade later. Even as he gets remarried, he’s obviously still not over Lisa. To the point that, when the strip ends some 32 years (comic strip time, not real time) after Lisa’s death, he’s STILL not over it.

               Of course, in Westview, they’ll hold an intervention because you’re making crap pizza, but not because you’re unhealthily obsessed with your dead wife. That place ain’t right.

            4. Batiuk’s ambition far outweighs his talent. He gets complex story ideas, but then when it’s time to write them, he can’t actually do it. So he cuts around what should be the heart of the story.

               He struggles to make ordinary, single-issue tragedies like “my young partner died” or “I’m an alcoholic” feel human, much less the multi-layered plots he sets up.

               His stories are all buildup, and then cut to the denouement – they’re never actually resolved.

            5. Green Luthor: exactly how I (and lots of other people) felt re: the second time skip. How Les survived as a single father after Lisa died WAS the story, the obvious story, but Batiuk chose to skip over that entirely. Instead, he delivered a fully-formed Summer, who was pretty much a grittier Lisa with athletic talent, which was just an “ironic” dig at nerdish Les. It all seemed so cowardly, and pointless.

            6. Yes, and Summer, to my knowledge, never once said she missed her mom; never got depressed on Mother’s Day; never felt an aching emptiness when she won a basketball game and saw other people’s mothers (like Keisha’s) cheering for them; never felt horribly embarrassed and weird when she hit puberty and had no one but Les to help her deal with the physical and emotional changes — and on and on.

               She just didn’t seem to care at all that she’d had a mother she barely remembered.

               How realistic is that, given that she lived with the all-time grieving champ?

               The best possible interpretation is that she is “slow,” as they used to say — just not intelligent enough to really notice that she’s missing a mother. Either that, or she’s some kind of oblivious sociopath. Perhaps both.

            7. I found Summer’s indifference to Lisa pretty believable, since Lisa never gave a shit about Summer. Lisa was too busy making VHS bootlegs for her I Have Cancer Tour 2007 to show any interest in her child’s future.

               Les’ refusal to let Summer throw out the VHS tapes that had no meaning to her should have been a major conflict point. But, you know, Tom Batiuk.

            8. Agree about Lisa’s total indifference to Summer, but Summer was too young to realize or understand that, and wouldn’t remember much, if anything, about her time with Lisa.

               When parents are pathologically indifferent to their kids and busy acting out their own drama, it generally doesn’t make their kids blithely uncaring about their family. It’s much more likely to result in angry children who grow into resentful adults.

               A real-life Summer would likely be either too dumb to notice or care, or a pathologically avoidant or clingy nut job. Either way, a mess. But a potentially very interesting mess.

               Instead, she’s a cipher whose character has been drained of even the precious little personality she had back in her jock years.

            9. <b>The Drake of Life</b> wrote: <i>I maintain that he once had the ability, but lost it. Unironically, I wonder whether he’s had some kind of cerebral injury or cerebrovascular damage. How do you forget how to tell a story?</i>

               An alternate theory is that Batiuk <i>never</i> had story ability, but that he DID once have an editor who actively gave notes and was able to compensate for this deficiency. The story-telling in Batiuk’s work then gets worse and worse as his editors become less and less involved in the process.

      3. Tom Batiuk has no theory of mind. He lacks the ability to imagine any point of view other than his own. Anyone who doesn’t see the world the same way he does is simply incorrect.

         And because Batiuk’s views are so narrow and self-centered, almost everyone in the world is wrong about everything. It’s why there are so many where the characters simply lecture everyone on how to do things “correctly.” Even though they can’t explain what makes something correct or even wrong.

         1. He’s also incapable of applying his “principles” broadly.

            Is it really true that parents should have no input into what schools teach their children?

            What if they are teaching something the community finds racist, or antisemitic, or sexist, or otherwise offensive to the values they want taught to their children? What if the community is not majority Christian and thinks that the books selected push Christianity while denigrating other religions?

            Or… What if the school board, reflecting the values of the community, removes a book from the curriculum because it is anti-LGBT, but one rogue teacher decides that this book teaches lessons that all kids must learn?

            Is that brave and good? Does the principle still hold?

            Or is it only valid when parents object to something TB personally likes?

            I know — that’s a silly question, because there is no “principle.” TB heard something on NPR about book bannings, changed it in his mind to book burnings (’cause Nazis! amirite?), and then decided it would be “ironic” if a book about book burnings got burned.

            This is Important Work that surely deserves a Pulitzer.

            1. Batiuk seems to have problems with scope in general. He can’t apply his principles broadly, as you put it, but he also doesn’t seem to know the difference between important locations in the Funkyverse and important locations in his own life. Like this first apartment, which will also Pam and Jeff’s first apartment, but that wasn’t very relevant in the Funkyverse.

4. So are “The Burnings” over or are they going to start because of counter protestor-on-protestor violence? I hope the latter, if this story isn’t going to be any good it might as well at least be audacious (AKA: the Brooke McEldowney philosophy).

   1. Isn’t it obvious? Les is going to show up, and lecture these still-unidentified protestors about how wrong they are,. Then they’ll quietly slink away and give Les the arbitrary thing he wants Because Lisa Died. All praise Les, the greatest person who ever lived. The end.

5. This is the best we could expect: flash mob warfare.

6. My prediction is this is all we will see of The Burnings. Ever. There will be no explanation as to why there are so few bookstores in the future and if it’s because of basically arson.

   1. my version of the story will address this.

      1. You will certainly be forgiven if you can’t explain how this leads to a Tom-topia with robot librarians, but only 1 bookstore. With 3 books.

         Dude couldn’t have ended the Snowstorm Concert with a week of characters saying goodbye. No, all the World must end. This Tom is a froot loop.

         1. It’s kind of an “alternate universe” look at the facts of the story. But it does explain how The Burnings, as described by future Lisa at the end of FW, happened in a way that is consistent with the story we’ve seen here.

            1. So you mean it will be coherent, logical, and makes sense? That doesn’t fit with FW/Crankshaft at all.

            2. I’ll make it not work. 😉

   2. I wonder if it’s because of the intervention of the Dork Avengers, Lillian’s bookstore is the only one spared from the rampaging hordes of “I guess it’s bad or it wouldn’t be on the list probably” protestors. None of the other bookstores had a defense quite like that, especially since the police apparently do nothing as arson runs rampant in their communities.

7. Today’s Crankershaft:

   This is the best argument he can come up with: ‘we don’t want to know what we’re talking about.’

8. You ever just forget that Funky Winkerbean originally ended with a newly-introduced time-traveling janitor telling poorly-drawn Summer Moore that her stupid book would cause someone else to invent “Isaac Asimov’s psychohistory, but real”?

   I sure wish I could!

   1. I wouldn’t! That’s like asking me to forget Plan Nine! I expect to remember Tom’s goofy oeuvre until my death bed!

      (Citizen Splut, dying, drops a snow globe with a chimp in it and whispers “Where’s…Father?”)

   2. Maybe the Big Reveal will be that Summer’s wordless stroll down old Lorain County houses and TimeMop and all of history changing just because she wrote a world-wide best-selling book about literally THE MOST WRITTEN ABOUT TOWN IN TOM-WORLD was…she took TOOK MANY ACID?!

      “Severe hallucinations while being strapped to a gurney,” followed by the End of the World, meaning the End of Her mind…Kinda tracks, I think.

      All of the last 2 years has happened. Just in her head, staring at the ceiling, not anywhere else.

9. Lillian with her supporters reminded me of Susan Smith with the protested production of W;t.

   Maybe now is the time for all good folk of Westview and Centerville to come together and stage that nice performance of Spamalot.

   “FREE PEOPLE READ FREELY” ranks up there as a battle cry with Walter Eberhart’s suggested jab at the women-excluding “Men’s Association” in Ira Levin’s Stepford Wives:

   “SEX, YES, SEXISM, NO.”

   Wife Joanna suggested something better:

   “STEPFORD IS OUT OF STEP.”

   “I been there before,” says the narrator of a book subject to banning (why, it’s even the subject of a two-part episode of “Family Ties”), and we were there much better than we are here.

   But then you’re free and easy on a raft and you’re at an old man’s mercy (or lack of mercy) with *Crankshaft.*

10. I assume that’s Donna next to Crazy, with her head cut off by DSH’s “No Book Bans” sign. I don’t really know why that is, though. Ayers left plenty of panels of Donna to swipe… er, reference.

    Also, not sure “words have power” is a convincing argument against book bans to a book banner, but kudos to Pete for running down to Spirit Halloween real quick to get some crime scene tape in a vain attempt to sell the effect. B+ for effort!

    1. Yeah, because there certainly wasn’t any crime tape nearby, one hour after an attempted arson.

11. Today’s Funky Crankerbean

    Day Forty Four of The Byrnings

    I wish that this storyline was the slightest bit interesting and had stakes (like Lillian dying or Les dying)

12. How far is Centerville from Westview? The Batmob showed up pretty quickly unless the other mob stood there for a half hour as Lillian read outloud. That is one polite mob.

    Lillian’s store was described in the last days of Funky as “one of the last to survive the Burnings.” So TB set the stage for bookstores from sea to shining sea going up in flames–but instead we get this lame storyline which is a battle royale of strawmen. Even as TB kind of, sort of tries to say something he thinks is important, he gets tangled up in his usual problems.

    Time to put CS and TB out of all our misery.

    1. KMD:

       Just about every Sherlock Holmes story contains a reference to another exploit or exploits whose facts we won’t learn. (Save that “it was Adams” in the manor house case Mycroft mentions in “The Greek Interpreter.”)

       In “The Yellow Face,” Watson refers to “the affair of the second stain,” a case in which Holmes erred, but the truth was eventually discovered. In “The Naval Treaty,” the penultimate story in Memoirs, we learn again of the adventure of the second stain, and here it seems that it was a much larger case, one in which Holmes has an interview with two eminent detectives on how they pursued side issues which had nothing to do with the problem at hand.

       The final story in The Return of Sherlock Holmes is “The Adventure of the Second Stain.”

       It bears no resemblance to “The Yellow Face” (Holmes does not err) or to “The Naval Treaty” (no side issues or other detectives).

       So maybe these “burnings” are not the ones from the final week of Funky Winkerbean, which means that they’re still to come.

       Given the Bat-emblem on the phones of Lillian’s supporters, I offer as comfort this conversation from “Flop Goes the Joker”:

       • [Alfred and the Joker are engaged in a swordfight]
       • Aunt Harriet Cooper: Alfred, be careful! The Joker’s an arch-criminal!
       • Alfred Pennyworth: I know, madam, but a very poor fencer.
       • The Joker: You anglo-fink! I’ll smash you to smidgens!
       • Alfred Pennyworth: May I point out that smidgens is a childish effusion which should have no place even in so poor a vocabulary as yours, sir.

       “Smidgens” means “a small amount of something.” It begins with “s,” as do “solo car date” and “sportos.”

       1. As long as we are not talking about the “giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.”

          1. KMD:

             The Firesign Theatre disagreed and released The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra in 1974.

             I’ve heard it only once and it didn’t knock me out, but when you’re used to Schlock Homes and Dr. Watney, there’s not much you can take away from Hemlock Stones and Dr. Flotsam.

    2. The final week of Funky Winkerbean heavily suggested that ‘The Burnings’ were a widespread cultural purge, positioning Lillian’s bookstore as the last refuge of ‘true literature’ in a world seemingly almost reduced to ashes.

       Recent developments in his craptacular prestige arc make it clear that Batty’s ‘world’ is more limited in scope, essentially equating ‘the world’ with the small towns of Westview and Centerville.

13. As BJr6K has noted, there’s been no sign of any police investigation into either of the bookstore arsons. Clearly, in the Westview-Centerville metroplex, arson is considered a civil matter, not a crime.

    Which leads me to ask: Anyone seen Amicus Breef around lately? When there aren’t enough ambulances to chase or mistaken-identity potato people to save from deportation, he might be tempted to scare up a bit of business with a match and gas can.

    1. I don’t see how Amicus Breef could contribute. There’s no table he can sit at while straining to offer no help whatsoever.

       1. Well, someone call Bill Clinton! That pizzeria he visited in 1992 changed his life so completely that he’ll do anything to help the new owner. He’d be more than happy to jump out of bed, put on a suit, and charter a private jet to the nearest airport, just to lend a hand to Pete. And as you know, what Bill Clinton says, goes. He’s pretty much the boss of everything.

          Of course, he’ll expect a pizza as payment.

14. Ray Bradbury’s grave marker identifies him as the “Author of Fahrenheit 451.” If he could return from the Great Beyond and saw this storyline, he would immediately have that changed to “Author of that short story that was the inspiration for the song Rocket Man. Yeah, even the Shatner version.”

15. RE: Wed. 10/9’s ‘Shaft:

    So, Lizard Lil is against the book banning of Fahrenheit 451, but to the omnipresent surveillance of 1984? Good to know.

    “Don’t forget to smile for my new surveillance camera. It’s taken crystal clear shots of the top of your heads as you…stand around outside my garage and chant. It’s a slam dunk case.”

    Umm, Lillian, every one of your counter-protesters was summoned by Mopey Pete and Min-dull on their smartphones…which means every one of your counter-protesters has a camera on them so that they can take nice, up-close, ground-level pics and videos of the book banning mob. I know you’re not exactly tech-savvy, but one of the Grady Twins could explain the concept to you if you like. Add “surveillance” to the list of things Batiuk doesn’t understand.

    Also…“We’ve made our point.”Which was what, exactly? You don’t want banned books in schools, so you criticized a non-approved—not banned—title which was being distributed by a small-town bookstore owner—not the school—who has every legal right to sell said book. Logically, your complaints should be with the teacher who’s trying to give your kids the book, but you don’t protest at the school, at any school board meetings, or at said teacher’s house because…why, exactly? He’s a widower and Westview’s only Oscar winner? And remember, folks, this is supposed to be the start of a movement that will sweep the globe and change Mankind.

    1. Also…“We’ve made our point.” Which was what, exactly?

       Also: to who? There’s nobody else there because it’s the middle of the night!

16. “Our job here is done,” says the protesters, who showed up in the middle of the night to an audience of only people against their message. To give them credit, even they realized that a protest-off at this hour wasn’t going to do much. Also, given how some mobilized efforts go, I’m sure they’d be proud to be on film.

    Following up on the timey-wimey talks though, a fair few of the more receptive commenters elsewhere seem to be willing to explain the reveal of Lillian’s security camera as “Oh, she just set that up after the fire! She’s being smart!” Because the fact this is the same damn night as the fire itself, despite being intentionally indicated by all the drawn details, are still subtle enough for people to hand wave them away with the logical notion that these events wouldn’t be all happening on one night. I wish i shared their blissful innocence.

    1. “Blissful innocence” is such a beautiful euphemism for “obdurate idiocy.”

17. Today’s Funky Crankerbean

    Day Forty Six of the Byrnings (make it stop)

    Thats it? that’s the brynings?

    What a bunch of shit (though it’s expected from Batiuk)

18. Well, I guess we can surmise the identity of at least one of the protesters. Yes, Lillian has been terrorized by… MAMORU CHIBA!

    

    (Yes, I do make these jokes for myself sometimes. Heck, if Batiuk can do it, so can I.)

    1. The bald guy reminds me of Terry Bradshaw, but that just might be my anti-Pittsburgh Steelers bias talking.

    2. Does this site need more meme refs?

       (cartoon pirate) “Well, Yes, but also No.”

       Oddly accurately-drawn stick figure raises a finger to say “Yes, BUT–“, then thinks “Oh, wait…”

       Happy Cat: “CAN TOM HAS CHEEZBURGER?”

       Screamy Blond lady: “NO HE CAN’T!” Baffled Cat looks baffled. Pokemon is startled. Toddler realizes a fistful of sand tastes bad.

       1. Hey, I made a meme ref in the OP. In the process, I learned that the little girl in the “firestarter” meme just graduated college. Also, “success kid” used his viral fame to raise donations for medical treatment that saved his dad’s life.

19. So it’s all over apart from several days of praising one another.

    We never learned the identity of any of the crowd at Lillian’s house. We never learned who set either fire. We never learned if the fires were set by the same people. We never learned why anyone was opposed to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, apart from a vague statement that someone in the crowd made about not liking the message it was teaching kids. What was the message, according to the crowdmember? We never learned that. We never learned why creepy Les Moore insisted on a box full of paperbacks when a mass-market novel like this has readily available e-book editions. We never learned why creepy Les wanted this book even in wan defiance of school policy. We never learned why Principal Ned didn’t shut creepy Les down immediately.

    Altogether, the most intriguing character in the story is the mysterious crowd, which joins the anti-Wit crowd as the unnamed, faceless characters that ham-fisted Batiuk creates to push his thesis that he is right and never has to explain himself. And we’re never going to hear from them again.

    1. I still want to see a huge <i>Blazing Saddles</i>-style fight break out between Les, Lillian, and the “flash mob” as they all try to claim credit for themselves.

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