I had one last post I wanted out on this year’s Pizza Box Monster arc. One last thing to explore before we leave the joys of spooky season (and the horrors of non-stop political ads as hamfisted and braindead as a Snuggie infomercial trying to convince you that your duvet worships Satan,) and enter into the two month long season of frantic shopping and guilty gluttony we annually use to distract ourselves from noticing the world slowly, day by day, growing darker, colder, and more full awful pop music.
So take a break from your doom scrolling! And join me on an exploration of a more innocent time!
A couple weeks ago, before we were inundated with neck achingly awful sideways strips, we got this little introduction to the concept. A conceit that would let Batiuk and Davis copy pasta some nonsense together.
And my immediate reply upon seeing this was.
But then, I got to thinking. And the more I thought about it, the more weird parallels between 2024’s Pizza Monster Covers at Montoni’s and 1816’s Ghost Stories at the Villa Diodati I started seeing. Like picking out horrific faces in wood grain printed contact paper.
The gloomy, volcanically overcast, June in 1816 that a couple literary degenerates and their teenaged mistresses spent swapping ghost stories and saliva in Geneva has been dramatized, drawn, fictionalized, and even musicalized by numerous artists and writers since. It’s been made into numerous movies, a Dr. Who mystery, and not one but TWO episodes of Drunk History.
And now it’s been co-opted into a dumb Crankerbean arc.
Five young romantics, two couples, the women being related, the men being poets, joined by one single man.
Five adults of indeterminate Batmanlike agelessness, two couples, the women being related, the men being comic book creators, and one single, male pro-nouned, Pizza Box Monster.
But who in the Funkyverse corresponds to whom in the Geneva Convention?
I am matching Darin ‘Boy Lisa’ Fairgood up with Lord George Byron.
For one thing, Byron was the product of a shortlived and ill fated marriage of convenience between a shiftless gambler and a histrionic heiress. Kind of like how Darin was conceived under dubious circumstances in a loveless and abusive relationship, and raised by a couple who paired up due to proximity rather than passion.
Both were spoiled and coddled, raised as only children apart from their half-siblings. Both seem to have attended college only out of societal expectation and to please their parents. Both would travel long distances for crazy ventures in order to make themselves feel important. And both alternated between inexplicably quick and easy success, followed by ill-planned for penury that forced them to leech off of the people around them. (This will be a trend for characters in this post.) Both would callously abandon children or dump their children with others whenever they were inconvenient.
Both had half sisters they became close to.
The similarities mostly end there.
For, as far as we know, Darin Fairgood has been staunchly faithful to his wife, Jess Darling, (The Daughter of John Darling Who Was Murdered.) And Lord Byron of 1816 wasn’t capable of maintaining a monogamous relationship with a mayfly.
The man was a Regency Era Bryan Singer. A skilled and popular storyteller with all the high society connections in the world, and an absolute sex pest. Heck, his bed hopping depravity, rumored to escalate at times to predation, would probably make ol’ Byran ‘Age is Just A Number’ Singer blush.
When the 28-year-old Byron was hiding out in Geneva with his teenage groupie and her friends, he’d left behind in England a sting of unstable lovers, male and female, an estranged wife, at least one baby daughter, and more. (Warning for Language)
If Boy Lisa is Byron, then that means that Mopey Pete is Percy Shelley.
Darin ‘As Boring as Breaded Toast’ Fairgood was only a slant rhyme for Lord ‘Sliding Into Your DM’s With Anti-Heroic Couplets’ Byron.
But Mopey Pete is just a few groomed teenagers away from being Percy ‘My Middle Name Sounds Like Bitch’ Shelley. Just like Pete, Shelley was a bullied nerd in school, and grew into a histrionic, inconstant, little twerp, depressingly self obsessed with his own depression.
Shelley fell into trendy radical political cliques, atheism, vegetarianism, and free love polyamory with gusto. Adopting the counter culture views of his mentors with all the blind faith of a essential oils saleswoman preaching the gospel of her MLM to her book club. Writing big brained treatises on why he was a soft-hearted little birb who should be allowed to do whatever, or whoever, he wanted because he had such a beautiful and artistic soul and if his inconstant love and wild emotions hurt other people it was because they were insufficiently enlightened. It certainly wasn’t his fault.
Once again, Batiuk’s almost invariable default to writing lifelong stable monogamy, (even outside of civil marriage), has kept Pete from being like Percy romantic pursuits.
Many dramatic retellings of the 1816 Summer at the Villa Diodati call Mary Shelley (then Godwin) his fiancee. She wasn’t. Because his wife, Harriet, wouldn’t kill herself for another six months. She was still back in England along with two of his children.
When Shelley was 19 he had eloped with the then 16-year-old, Harriet, who was attending the same boarding school as his sisters. Three years later, in 1814, Shelley abandoned his pregnant wife and one-year-old daughter to run away with a new 16-year-old, Mary Godwin, (along with her 16-year-old stepsister as a side piece.) He’d almost immediately impregnated his teenaged mistress, and though that baby had sadly passed away at a few weeks old, Mary had a six-month-old baby boy, William, in tow with her in Geneva.
The 24-year-old Mopey Percy was producing heartbreak and pregnancies faster than poetry. While sometimes I doubt that Mopey Pete really knows how the sausage is made.
With Mopey Pete as Percy Shelley; the perpetually engaged, yet never married, Mindy Murdoch makes a decent enough stand in for Mary Godwin Shelley.
Both Mary and Mindy were seduced into relationships with emotionally needy, mopey little artists. And were often dragged along or cajoled into schemes, or situations they weren’t quite comfortable with by boyfriends who seemed to willfully misunderstand their feelings. The nicest thing you can say about how Pete and Percy treated Mindy and Mary is that they encouraged their lover’s artistic endeavors. Percy was enthusiastic about Frankenstein, and Mary’s other novels and works. And Pete liked having his girlfriend in the office.
Heck, give Percy a win over Pete here. Percy never forgot his woman was an artist and made her quit her writing in order to reopen a defunct greasy pizza pie shop. And he certainly never had a petulant nerdsplaining hissy fit to his wife for coming up with a cute sidekick.
For all his emotional manipulation, wild mood swings, under-negotiated infidelity disguised as polyamory, and financial ineptitude, at least Percy had the decency to die in a boating accident, leaving the intelligent and talented Mary alone at last to focus on her child and her career. We can only hope for such fate to befall poor, long suffering, Mindy.
For a while I had considered matching Mindy’s cousin, Jess ‘My Dad was John Darling’ Fairgood up with Mary ‘My Mom Was Mary Wollstonecraft” Shelley. Both, after all, had a part of their lives overshadowed by a famous, tragically murdered, parent they were too young to remember. Mary Godwin Shelley’s famous feminist mother had been slain by a doctor wielding unwashed hands. And Jessica Darling Fairgood’s famous chauvinist father had been shot by a doughboy in a fern costume. Mary Godwin had been seduced by a man reading her dead mother’s works while sitting by her mother’s grave. Jess Darling had seduced a young man by using her dead father to pressure him into finding his dying mother.
But, ultimately, I decided to match Jess Fairgood up with Mary Godwin’s stepsister, Percy Shelley’s side loli, and Lord Byron’s obsessed pregnant groupie, Clara Mary Jane ‘Claire’ Clairmont.
Like Jess, Claire never knew her birth father. Though for Claire it wasn’t due to murder by a shrubbery cosplayer. Rather her mother claimed to be a widow to hide her affair with a married man and Claire’s subsequent illegitimacy. When Claire (called Jane in childhood) was three her mother married Mary Godwin’s father. The future Mary Shelley was only eight months older than her stepsister. The two were close like only sisters could be. Meaning they were constantly in each other’s business, constantly annoying each other, constantly emotionally dumping on each other.
Claire tagged along when her stepsister eloped with Percy in 1814, and probably sponged away a bit of Percy’s romantic attentions while Mary was miserably sick with her first pregnancy. She longed to be the center of attention. By 1816 she was determined to be either a writer or an actress, and so threw herself at the trendy, and handsome, Lord Byron like a rockstar groupie sneaking backstage at a concert. They had a brief fling in England before he ran away from the scandal of his failed marriage and incest. It was this prior connection and her continuing obsession that had her convincing Mary and Percy and their baby William to vacation in Geneva in June 1816.
As Byron confessed to his sister lover, “What could I do? – a foolish girl – in spite of all I could say or do – would come after me – or rather went before me – for I found her here…. I could not exactly play the Stoic with a woman – who had scrambled eight hundred miles to unphilosophize me”
And who else threw herself wantonly and embarrassingly at the man she was infatuated with?
Luckily for Darin and Jess, it would take them more than sixteen years of steadfast love to get from hot tub to bun in the oven.
Byron had knocked up the teenager he neither respected, nor really liked, in a matter of weeks.
“You know – & I believe saw once that odd-headed girl – who introduced herself to me shortly before I left England – but you do not know – that I found her with Shelley and her sister at Geneva – I never loved her nor pretended to love her – but a man is a man – & if a girl of eighteen comes prancing to you at all hours of the night – there is but one way – the suite of all this is that she was with child – & returned to England to assist in peopling that desolate island… This comes of “putting it about” (as Jackson calls it) & be dammed to it – and thus people come into the world.”
Back in England and again the third wheel in the Shelley household, Claire gave birth to a daughter she called Alba, but Byron later renamed Allegra. And poor little Allegra Byron lived a very Skyler Fairgood like existence for her five years of life, alternatively passed over to virtual strangers and fussed over and later fought over. She spent her first years with the Shelley household, before travelling with them to Italy to be handed over to Byron and his Italian mistress, who sometimes spoiled her but often passed her off to friends. Byron later put her in a convent school which infuriated the atheist Shelleys. Byron never visited her there, though Percy did. She died of either malaria or typhus in 1822, and Claire Clairmont never forgave her onetime lover for the neglect.
Like Jess, she was burnt out creatively as well, and eventually gave up her artistic pursuits preferring a more quiet existence in her later years. Like when Jess gave up the chance to be a Hollywood cinematographer in a blockbuster action movie to move back to Ohio and so she could do nothing but smile benignly in the background of a half dozen strips a year for the rest of the Funkyverse.
In a way, Claire Clairmont had the last laugh. After a lifetime of being a music teacher, a ladies companion, a governess, living all over Europe, she died in 1879 at the age of 80, having outlived by decades everyone else who stayed at the Villa Diodati in 1816.
And that leaves us with only one character and historical figure left.
John William Polidori, the 20 year old physician Byron’s publisher had asked him to bring along with him in exile. And The Pizza Box Monster, a monster made of pizza boxes and part owner of Montoni’s.
Like the Pizza Box Monster, Polidori desperately wanted to be involved in all the artistic shenanigans going on that summer, and just like the Pizza Box Monster everyone at the Villa Diodati saw him as barely more than a hanger on. The PBM was just flat out told to STFU. Polidori was respected in discussions for his newly acquired medical knowledge, not his art.
But Polidori was an aspiring writer himself. He had only been pushed into medicine by his father, and had actually been given an advance by Byron’s publishers to write an account of their travels together. When Polidori gave his employer a rough draft of a play he’d been working on, Byron mockingly read it to a group of his friends so they all could laugh at it.
I’ve seen that some of the adaptations of The Geneva Party give Polidori a healthy dose of Gayngst, and feelings, unrequited or otherwise, for the canonically bisexual Byron. But the reality seems to be a nerdy and kindly rebuffed obsession with Mary Shelley. Byron teased him about it. Shelley resented him for his attraction to Mary. They both constantly tore him down until he was nearly suicidal. And by September he’d been fired and was wandering alone across the Alps to Italy.
According to Mary, his ghost story offering at Geneva was “something about a keyhole and a woman with a skull for a head.” But in the following years he reworked bits of Byron’s tale, as well as his own experiences, into his book, published in 1819 as “The Vampyre.” In it, a young gentleman is enticed to travel around Europe with a suave and almost hypnotically seductive nobleman and he gradually realizes the man is a life sucking monster who murders his sister and destroys his life. Write what you know, I guess.
Dr. Polidori died in 1821, at the age of 25, after drinking prussic acid. This columnist I found ascribes his fate, Bull Bushka style, partially to lingering after effects from a traumatic brain injury in 1817.
In other news, Byron Sucks, Percy Shelly Sucks, Coleridge Rocks. Kubla Khan FTW!!!!
Son of Stuck Funky 
“Coleridge Rocks.”
So the old opium-eater has no Cancerdeathville counterpart, then. I mean, he struggled his whole life and had misunderstanding friends, and Funky goes to AA meetings to practice his stand-up and no one complains. Plus, no poetry.
Meanwhile, we get a cameo from Ed about buses.
Well done CBH. In my teens, I was obsessed with the second generation of the Romantics. Richard Holmes–still one of my favorite writers–taught me I could read doorstops with his “Shelley: The Pursuit” which got me through the start of 11th grade. While I don’t stumble across Byron, Mary and Percy, Keats, Claire, Hunt and the gang too much these days, they were the spark that ignited my career in research, writing, and, higher ed.
This is kinda a good comparison between the Geneva Convention and Darin, Pete, Jess and PBM
Harriet, what would be Chien, Mooch and Matt Miller’s Geneva Convention’s counterparts? (if they had any)
LAKE Geneva, not the Geneva Convention. And since none of those characters were in the Exciting PBM Story, or the strip for like 10-20 years, invisible.
YALTA CONFERENCE: Chien is FDR. Mooch is Churchill. That makes Mike Miller Stalin by default (he’s really Frankie wearing a Spirit Halloween clearance mustache). Pizza Box Monster is…?
HIJINKS ENSUE!
LOL! Well I called it the Geneva Convention in my post. Because it was a convening of people in Geneva.
If we throw gender out the window. I’d say Chien is a Byron, where deep insecurity coupled with intelligence makes her cruel, sarcastic, yet clever.
Mooch would be a Claire Clairmont, desperate and self destructive for attention. Least talented in her circle.
Matt Miller is far far far too stupid to have any close counterpart in Geneva. Closest would probably just be another Byron. An egomaniac with a streak for domestic abuse.
Pete is the kind of man who would get arrested for “attempted grooming.”
I stand in line, CBH!
Also, make that one fewer than “a few”.
Ewwwww…
and yet, completely in character.
Ewwwwwww…
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Looks like The Centerville Bus District is getting so desperate for bus drivers that they’re hiring people who don’t know jack shit on how to drive a bus
I hated this strip. It’s:
Baffling: Is the joke supposed to be that he really just got out of jail? Because “get out of jail free” cards don’t work outside the game of Monopoly. And how is it “close enough” to a CDL? A Monopoly card isn’t a certification of anything, not even in its own context. Handing Lena the property card for the B&O Railroad, or trying to bribe her with those yellow and pink dollar bills, would make more a lot more sense.
Judgmental: The man’s dress and appearance suggest he’s some kind of criminal or biker thug. But lots of ordinary people dress like that.
Inconsistent with worldbuilding: If this guy really is a murderous thug, he’d fit perfectly on this team! This is a group of people who straight-up murdered one of their colleagues, to get a better score in a game about not doing their jobs. And they all thought that was hilarious. You could make a funny story out of *him* being terrified of *them*, but we all know that’s not happening.
I don’t hate it. This is what CS is supposed to be–lame, not really funny jokes linked in a vague arc. Joke a day, like the first 20 years of FW. Or, you know, the last 95 years of Blondie. You read it, don’t laugh, and instantly forget what it was.
Do you hate it because it isn’t the pompous Funkinvasion strips? Those are fun to make fun of. There’s really nothing to snark about the old CS pablum.
See Joshua K.’s comment below: it’s too much at odds with continuity, to the point that it undermines its own premise. A bus driver shortage should be a real problem that affects the characters of this world. But it isn’t; it’s just the new “what are you doing, dad” as a setup to today’s barely-a-punchline.
That’s on top of the usual tone problems. None of these bus drivers are doing their jobs anyway, and actively avoid doing them to entertain themselves. So it’s a struggle to understand why a shortage of them is even a problem. In a realistic world, parents would have long ago abandoned the school bus system as unreliable. Just like word would get around not to join Dinkle’s band. This is supposed to be a realistic world, but it’s full of things realistic people would complain about, or at least react to.
To say nothing of how stupid it is that two suburban elementary school children could scare off a Hells Angel.
ComicBookHarriet,
“Coleridge rocks!”
That brings to mind, Douglas Adams *Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency*. His first in a series of 3. What Dali was to Art, so Adams was to science fiction literature. In that first book, if you thought it didn’t have enough, just turn the page, more and better will be added.
I found this book description in 2 different places:
[Adams] “…once again boggles the mind with a completely unbelievable story of ghosts, time travel, eccentric computer geniuses, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the end of the world, and–of course–missing cats.” So true…and more!
This book created in me such a curiosity regarding Coleridge, I had to read him. I taught a School Group for teenagers in my Adolescent Mental Health Acute Hospital. Once every month I included Coleridge. Besides being THE poet, he was quite forthright in describing his drug addiction and its effects on his efforts to empty his impacted bowels. Some kids were scared straight!
So thanks to your post, I must read Douglas Adams again. I sure it will also lead to a rewatching of the 2016 BBC Series.
We saw Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency on BBC America. A truly underrated show. It’s a shame it only lasted two seasons. My favorite character was Bart Curlish (Fiona Dourif), a “holistic” assassin. She could wipe out a room of people without even trying. Without even wanting to. Oops.😆
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
I loved BBC America Dirk Gently. Season 1 particularly was a gift from the heavens. That episode where Bart meets Dirk for the first time is comedy at its best. Like you, I was bummed when it got cancelled. There were so many hints in Season 2 about what was being picked up in Season 3. Oh, what might have been! Especially if Max Landis had treated women with respect. But we will never know.
Carry on Wayward Son!
SP
I named my first male cat Byron, after the poet. My second DJ, after Lord B’s masterpiece “Don Juan.”
The names were perfect! DJ is a loverboy. Byron was certainly the Byronic Man of Action. His nicknames were The Cat Without Fear and Houdini. Put those two attributes together and leave a door not fully shut–he was also a polydactyl with functioning thumbs. Yeah, he could open doors. And escape into a neighborhood that was quite peaceful, but also 1/4 mile from the busiest road in town, and 1/8 from a strip of woods with coyotes. And he was deaf. I saw a photo of myself from 20 years ago. I thought “My beard wasn’t white then!” And I realized that it was taken a few months after I adopted Byron. Did you know house cats can run faster than Usain Bolt? I do.
You know, if Tom weren’t so adverse to criticism, he would actually like this piece CBH. Nicely done!
Very interesting. I’ve read and heard about the Lake Geneva ghost party, but I never knew the participants were so young (or so fertile).
We’ve seen that Doctor Who episode The Haunting of Villa Diodati where the apparition turns out to be a ***NO SPOILERS!!!***.
I’ve seen the ads for Drunk History on Comedy Central, but was never really that interested. If I wanted to see drunk people making fools of themselves, I’d go to the pub in town or invite relatives to a holiday dinner. The reality is, those clips were pretty funny, and the lip-synching is impressive. Even Seth Rogen.
Mathew Baynton, the actor who plays Lord Byron in the Drunk History UK clips, appears to be typecast. In Ghosts UK, he also plays Thomas Thorne, a 19th century Romantic poet.
It’s Friday evening. I will now make history by getting d̸r̸u̸n̸k̸ buzzed. Cheers 🍷
The lip synching actors in costume on sets is what makes Drunk History. The juxtaposition of drunken rambling coming from what looks like a legit historical reenactment.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
This week ended with a weak pun/malproper
Just as I thought
If you’re my age (old), you may remember those 60’s comic book ads advertising “your own POLARIS NUCLEAR SUBMARINE!” So what did kids actually get, after they saved every penny of their allowance for 6 months? About what you think they’d get. Junk. The sub’s mortal enemy: Water.
https://boingboing.net/2024/11/08/what-you-actually-got-from-those-comic-book-ads.html
I wonder if the Teacup Monkey inspired Zanzibar. The fact these adorable lil’ rapscallions frequently tried to kill their new owners tells me Yes.
Tom: “Gosh, Mom! I haven’t seen Phantom Chimpire all day! Where did he go?”
Mom: “Eat your dinner. It’ll taste like chicken.”
CS, 11/10:
And KA-SPLAM!! It’s another of Tom’s “prestige arcs” that will sure get him a Pulitzer this time! (We’ll find out somebody’s cat batted the pills under the fridge, oh how Ha Ha shall we laugh at this O. Henry ending on Saturday 11/16!) (Yeah I know Ed’s just having a REALLY BAD TRIP, MAN! It’s from the PILLS, MAN!)
I think we’re gonna a fun week here, people!
my version of today’s Crankshaft strip
It’s strange that Krankenschaaften would be having nightmares about being busted by the DEA for stray pills under the fridge and not being being busted by the FBI for being a serial arsonist (which he actually is)
Ed has a guilty conscience about all the wrong things.
So it seems that this storyline is going to go something like “If we entrusted taking children to school to a major corporation — instead of folksy local people like the protagonist of this strip — the major corporation would do a much better job.”
Considering that our protagonist does, in fact, do a lousy job at taking children to school, I’m not going to disagree. But it certainly seems like an unexpected message for this strip to promote.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
This week is gonna be dumb
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
I still don’t think Amazon is able to use it’s buses for school transportation
Happy veterans day and to all the U.S. soldiers of the Batiukverse (Ed Crankshaft, Danny Madison, Eugene Roberts, Beetle Bailey, Sgt. Snorkel, Nate Green, Timmy Meckler, Wally Winkerbean, Cory Winkerbean and Roxanne Rhodes)
Kudos to CBH on a great post!
As for today’s Crankshaft: we should have seen it coming. Tom has produced exactly one (1) decent strip in the last few months, that being last Wednesday’s entry with the Amazon punchline. Now he’s going to beat that one idea to death, with a series of lazy, repetitive recapitulations of that strip. Sigh….
And yet, this would actually result in better-than-average output.
“Now he’s going to beat that one idea to death, with a series of lazy, repetitive recapitulations of that strip. Sigh….”
Fine avec moi. FW2.0 strips I feel obligated to read as soon as they’re published. CS tripe? Who cares? Now I don’t have to stay up until 115AM to read them! (Remember those halcyon days of 1030PM FW strips?)
I don’t use Amazon enough to predict the upcoming joke-adjacent objects. But I’ll bet there’ll be one about same-day delivery, or how they can’t bus the kids because they’re waiting for Prime Day. And at least one slam against “fleaBay.”
“I’ll bet there’ll be one about same-day delivery”…If I send you tomorrow’s races from Hilaleah, could you please mark off the winners for me?
It’ll be Nobody to win, Nobody to place, and Nobody to Show. Hialeah hasn’t held races in years.
Dude, my predicting that is like betting on whether you’re going to get the middle square on a Bingo card! And I use Amazon maybe once a year. We’ll start betting if we get a “fleaBay sux!” joke.
Wait, I used Amazon twice this year. Once for a space heater, and to watch “Barbie.” So, uh, I predict that there will be a joke where Mitch will only be able to be watched for 48 hours, and will come with nearly-incomprehensible Chinese instructions.
It’s not like you can’t do a turn of tone. Tom did it with the Teen Pregnancy arc. My local paper had Letters to the Editor about it, both for against. It was republished as a pamphlet–free of charge–to local teachers.
An author CAN do this. But one needs skill to do it. I’m not going to say which strips these arcs were from, but I bet the words “Farley’s Sacrifice” and “The Baby Raccoon” just made some of us a bit verklempt. Both from goofy, gag-a-day strips.
Now, let us all imagine a week of Marvin talking about colon cancer.
Well..it IS on brand. But would you want to read those strips besides “O MI GOD!”
Peanuts was really good at this. The characters were so well-defined that they could exceed their usual limits. And it was awesome when they did. Even wishy-washy Charlie Brown could kick some ass if he was pushed too far.
Batiuk can never do a turn of tone because he never establishes a tone in the first place. The characters and the overall tone are so mushy and indeterminate.
my version of today’s Crankshaft
“We joined Prime so our child would be delivered to and picked up from school on the saame day!” Well, that’s probably hella better than Crankshaft does.
The unofficial be ware of eve hill mascot makes a guest appearance on Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
EᴠIʟ!!!
For a moment I wondered if this scribbly senior high school easy A art class effort was the new Mark Trail.
I wondered, I hoped, and then I was disappointed.
Yeah, the latest artist of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! isn’t as good as his predecessor, the late great John Graziano. To be fair, I imagine the image of the Evil Kitty was reproduced from a middle age tapestry or woodcut.
The other WordPress blog I subscribe to is The Daily Trail by @georgekatkins, a daily look at the current Mark Trail comic strip. George’s blogging style is somewhat similar to yours. He’s critical but can be fair when Jules Rivera exceeds his lowered expectations. His blogs often feature a paragraph or two where he comments on Jules’s artwork. He criticizes, as well as makes suggestions where the artwork could be improved. Mark Trail is one of about a dozen Comics Kingdom titles I still read.
Jules Rivera was a poor choice to take over the art for Mark Trail. The strip’s old-timey woodenness was part of its charm, and her attempts to make it more hip threw that away. Replacing sincerity with snark worked against the strip’s strengths.
I wish Jules Rivera had gotten to take over Funky Winkerbean instead. Her willingness to re-examine the world, and give it the ability to laugh at itself, is exactly what the Funkyverse has needed for decades.
I tried reading Rivera’s run on Mark Trail from the beginning, and even when the art was trying harder the writing was bothering me.
Very early on Mark Trail punches his father in the face and steals and then blows up his father’s speedboat because speedboats kill manatees, at the same time Cherry was getting in a fistfight with her sister over their mentally unwell mother, and then both of them are laughing about it with massive bruises later. For a strip that seemed to be trying to tackle mental illness in a ‘serious’ way that’s a pretty tone deaf take on unwarranted assault.
You shouldn’t punch your dad for having a speedboat MARK.
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
BilltheSplut,
Both of you hit homers today. I enjoyed both entries. That’s why I read SOSF. Diversity!!!
We find the source of Eve’s EViL, and find the Splut in a comic from the 2000’s written about the 80’s. I sneezed, so I guess I voted, yes.
Currently, I am listening to Dolly Parton sing *Joy to the World*. It is so hard to be negative while listening to her.
I must say I give kudos to Tom Batiuk. He amazes me with his Amazon arc. He is trying something different that so far is not comics related or Les related, and is not Dinkle related. Good job, Tom.
Carry on Wayward Son!
The evil cat from the Middle Ages reminds me of when I lived in Pleasant Valley. One of the neighbors accidentally let their cat out and could never get it back inside the house. The cat must have been a frustrated hunter. There were no reports of it having been rabid, but dead birds and small rodents were found scattered all over the neighborhood. Jack the Ripper reincarnated as a cat. One time, after coming home and exiting my car, I spotted the creepy little bastard stalking me. I quickly got inside the house and closed the door. When my son came home from school on the bus, I met him at the end of our driveway while wielding a softball bat lest the cat from hell attack him. Eventually, someone in the neighborhood had enough of the vile creature and called animal control. Animal control was able to subdue the beast, but the man paid a price. Before being carted away, the cat from hell had its claws sunk into the man’s khakis and sunk its fangs into his inner thigh. Ouch! It was quite a show. 😬
Batiuk’s efforts since The Burnings© have not inspired me to snark. The level of suckitude of Batiuk’s prestige arc has not been matched. It has been 24 days since my last GoComics snarky comment was posted on Crankshaft.
Would you believe until recently I thought the title of that KANSAS song was Carry On M̲Y̲ Wayward Son?
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
*Would you believe until recently I thought the title of that KANSAS song was Carry On M̲Y̲ Wayward Son?*
I will explain in a moment, but Eve, you have egg on your face.
1. I didn’t even know it was a song 🎶 🎵
2. I sure didn’t know it was by one of my favorite groups: Kansas.
3. You liked the line, so I just kept repeating it.
4. I looked the song up on Apple Music, or whatever they call it nowadays.
5. I found it, plus with the added: ‘my’.
6. Carry on my wayward son is the opening line to the song.
7. Here is a 🧽 & 🧼 to remove said egg!
The perfect video for your “all too true” cat story is “Pinky the Cat”. He’s a very loving cat.
Carry on Wayward Son!
Wait? It’s not?
I’ve played that song a hundred times on Guitar Hero…and am just learning this now!?
ComicBookHarriet,
If you hang around Be Ware of Eve Hill long enough, amazing stories begin to happen.
I’ve never heard of “Pinky the Cat” until today.😕
In the history of cat and human relationships, there have been billions of cats and millions upon millions of people attacked by cats. So let me get this straight. You think this “Pinky the Cat” has an exclusive on using his teeth and claws when attacking a person’s leg? Really? If you believe that, I suggest you only know two things about cats. That would be “Jack” and “Shit”. 😂
Plus, the cat terrorizing our neighborhood, ‘Domino,’ had a collar but wasn’t on a leash. As I said, the animal control person was wearing khakis, not jeans. I don’t recall anyone ever referring to Domino as “a very loving cat”. Domino was nicknamed “Psycho”, “The Grim Purr Reaper”, and “Domino the Destroyer”, among others.
You have failed. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
Take a wild guess where I’d like you to stick your 🧽&🧼. 😉😏😜
Tall, Dark and Eve Hill
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
Wow! Someone needs to finish her Cheerios. Maybe do a marathon of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
1. You did not watch Pinkie the Cat 🐱
2. If you did, you would be regaling me with your famous jocularity.
3. Any conversation with BWOEH is the hilite of anyone’s day.
4. I did read between your lines. Mrs. SP agrees with you: He is so darn witty. I bow to your greater judgment. Who am I to disagree with you and Mrs. SP?
Tall, Dark and Eve Hill
meet
Carry on Wayward Son
SorialPromise:
You are an …
I’m Sorial Promise,
And I approved this message.
❤️🧡🩷❤️🩹❤️🔥💞💖💘❣️
But were you ever personally in a comic?
(Back story: It’s “As IF!” a webcomic from 2000 or so, but set in the 80s, and YES that’s what I looked like then. I did HAVE a mustache, it was just an awful blond one. Yes, P2 features my cat Kill Kill. Also, if you see Funko Pops about Disney Princesses, there’s a good chance the artist Mimi designed them; she’s quite successful. She regretted not making the last panel sound effect “SPLUT!”)
I’ve studied that comic backwards and forwards, and, OKAY, it’s because me and my cat are in it. But I think it’s a master class in comics writing.
Just 4 panels of people you knew nothing about. But did you already get the character dynamics? Okay, the backstory here is that Hunter and Angela showered to get the saltwater off their swimsuits (the strip was set in the USA, but 2 Aussies made it, based on what they saw from US movies/sitcoms). The 2 teenaged boy idiots get turned on by this because…Well, they’re IDIOTS and TEENAGED BOYS, you’re not supposed to see girls in a shower, even if they’re wearing what they were wearing in public all day.
But did I need to say that? This is economy in storytelling. You know who everyone is, relative to each other. Who are the jerks? Who are the victims? Who’s sick of dealing with this camp shit, even if he’s a character you’ll see once and never again, despite his adorable cat?
Looks like Hunter is ANGRY, but you don’t know that’s basically Hunter. Angela is also mad, which is unusual for her. But–Mr Young’s cat has jumped in her lap, and is purring her head off. Kill Kill Kitty knows Angie. “Don’t be mad, Angie!”
Panel 3: Who thinks he’s the brains of this outfit? Who’s just the dope who goes along with it? Oh. You got that? From two panels of characters you’ve never seen before?
P4: Yeah, we’re getting a little Inside Baseball here, but back then I’d drop 5 F-bombs in a row, then say something like “illicit peepery” so as not to offend any random Edwardian gentleman who came across my blog. And then go “Hmm.” Some jokes you only get when you know them.
Sorry, Aussies. MONKEY WRENCH is 1000 times funnier than CRESCENT WRENCH, science has proven this. Science has also proven that I do indeed have hairy pipe-cleaner arms, SO WHAT?
Ever go to a place, and they say “My cat doesn’t like anybo–HEY!” and there’s this fluffy cat who snogs on your lap the whole time? Or the opposite, a big dumb dog’s place where you’re told “Don’t put your drink down! His tail will wag it over!” And the dog is huge, but also a tongue-lolling goofy doofus, and then someone’s walking to the door, and the Happy Boy’s muscles go all tight, right to the tail, and he’s just glaring at the door. The door opens, and the giant dog’s happy grin turns into a lip-curled snarl, growling and never breaking eye contact, and the new guests decide to immediately leave? And the dog just barks so loud, then watches their car leave from the window while also barking, and every other guest gets welcomed with enthusiastic Alpo-scented licks, but the massive dog always pushes past them, checks for THAT ONE CAR, then makes a happy “SNURF!” sound when he sees those people aren’t there? And then you and your friends agree to not party at that place anymore?
Maybe that’s just me.
WAIT! “THE’S caught you”?! Only took me 20 years to catch that.
Hmm.
“The’s”? No, “they”. Probably should get my eyes checked while we all still have health insurance.
As to my story about “Yeah, some people SHOULD Beware of the Dog”: We were me, Kev, and his rich and clueless GF Mel. (How rich? I dunno, did your parents buy a farm to keep their daughters’ horses?) First me, then Kev, just wanted to leave that party early. Mel didn’t, because rich people live in weird bubbles where they think Bad Things only happen to Other People. “Good thing we left!” said Kev, 2 weekends later when that house had a drive-by shooting.
Hope the dog was okay.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Day Three of Amazon Delivery With Grade Schoolers
Grandma Johnson: I ain’t lettin’ Amazon bring my granddaughter to school!
Amy: I’ll drive her to school myself.