Batiuk is playing some real twisted mind games with us this summer. After a agonizing prestige arc that dragged on forever, we begged for it to end. Then we got almost an entire week of Batton Thomas waterboarding us with smothering smirks topped off with a titty twister of a political strip for that final jolt of torture. All so the ‘kids these days confuse Ed’ arc feels like the tender touch of a comforting friend. There are serial killers that don’t play with their victims this much!
Without further ado, please enjoy the second week of my half-assed rewrite of Batiuk’s stupid prestige arc.
Some notes for us all to ponder. And I’d love some of your opinons on this. Because while we all complained that Batiuk’s story dragged on and on, I feel like the week I just wrote moves even slower.
Punchlines are hard. And mushing the plot around to squeeze them in means each of my strips has to convey less information than one of Batiuk’s exposition dump strips.
At this point in Batiuk’s story Harry has already conveyed quite a bit of information about his dad, but IMO that was to the detriment of the story. Information about Larry is conveyed again and again and again throughout the tale with no clear progression of one tidbit to another, which makes the story feel like it’s not progressing no matter how many times they change locations. It’s just a bunch of factoids.
Harry also has no obvious change throughout the story in his feelings toward his father. For five weeks he talks about him with the same tone. And for someone who claims he felt distant from his father, he spews a lot of insight into how his father thought and felt even before he finds the convenient journal. The showing is not matching with the telling.
In true Batiuk fashion, ITNOTF is full of objects that are held up and explained. Trumpets and journals and pictures and sheet music and albums. But that leaves no space for characters to feel and react and say something funny. So a lot of detail might get left on the cutting room floor in ‘Sentimental Journey’. I’ll let you decide if that’s a mistake or not.
Most important for this week, I wanted Crankshaft to have a classic-Crankshaft reason to tag along with Lil and Dink’s stupid trip down memory lane.
Son of Stuck Funky 
It isn’t actually any of her business how Dinkle got along with his dad. That’s the crux of it.
7/30: Way to be stupid, Thing One and Thing Two. You need to be escorted of his property.