billytheskink

Pair-able of the Sour

Fair or unfair, the military briefing-college class parallels continue in today’s strip. Wally and Adeela are bad at engaging others in conversation. Professor Forehead makes Ralph from Sally Forth proud by assigning a group project on day one so he doesn’t have to spend any time at all lecturing these students. Buddy may have disappeared… I’m sorry that I am just recapping the strip, but I don’t know what else to say here.

What will happen when Wally and Adeela finally speak to each other (presumably) three and a half weeks from now? The suspense is mildly irritating me.

Syllabuster

It is not really fair for me to question the comparison of a military briefing to first day of an unidentified community college class as in today’s strip. While I have my suspicions about how appropriate the comparison is, I have only experienced the latter situation.

I will, however, point out that both Colonel Crew-Cut and Professor Forehead are awkwardly stating what both their audience in the room already know and what newspaper comic strip readers could reasonably infer without such clunky exposition. It is like TB leading off each strip with a drawing of him saying:

The following is a comic strip I wrote. It carries the weight of substantial ideas. Silver Age Flash is also important literature.

Uh, maybe I shouldn’t have thrown that idea out there…

Tardee-la

Nice as that introduction is, Epicus, I don’t know if my return is triumphant. Even so, billytheskink is here for a couple of weeks of wading through the marsh that is TB’s latest “substantial idea”.

Last week’s slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow build up continues in today’s strip. I guess this is supposed to build suspense while we wait for Wally to become uncomfortable enough around Adeela to win an award or at least generate a Tuesday Arts & Entertainment section quarter-page story about how Funky Winkerbean is more serious than Sherman’s Lagoon.

But there is no suspense in this strip. There is only Dilbert’s brother, the Human Bowling Pin:
FunkyDilbert

Momenade

Today’s strip is the kind of maudlin slop that TB believes makes his comic strip stand out from the strips that people actually enjoy. Why is Holly telling Funky this now? Was this supposed to run before Funky and Holly left on their ridiculous road trip? Why wasn’t this a week long set of flashback strips instead of one of TB’s unloved trademark walls o’ text? Did Holly’s mom really go to prom with her daughter? Do I really care about any of this?

No.

Edit post script:
I had to write this on a telephone in a car and neglected to thank you all for putting with me for two weeks. Our fearless leader TFH takes the helm tomorrow. Have a safe and happy Labor Day weekend SOSFers.

Batteredday, September 1

Today’s strip was not available for preview. I would apologize, but I’m not sure I’m sorry I did not have to see it in advance.

Is it simply more of Dinkle’s megalomania? Yeah, probably. Dinkle, of course, has always been a megalomaniac, but his megalomania has gone from cartoonish and over-the-top to appalling and monstrous. Some of that is due to the fact that this strip’s tone has become so self-serious that attempts at humor seem either discordant or simply illustratitive of terrible behavior.

As much as that, though, Dinkle has changed too. In Acts I and II, his constant appearance in full dress uniform with his eyes always hidden under the bill of his cap gave him a cartoonish appearance to match his portrayal as obsessive perfectionist for whom marching bands are the pinnacle of human existence. Since his “retirement”, however, he has taken on the appearance of post-2010 Chevy Chase, and has come to behave much like Chase is said to off-camera.

To visualize, he went from this:

To this: