Author Archives: comicbookharriet

Link to Today’s Comic.

Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. What a way to end a shift of guest writing. I was all excited when the endless arc of comic book nonsense had finally sputtered out. And I would have been completely content if we didn’t see Darin or Mopey Pete again anytime soon.

Instead we get this nonsensical glurge, in a extra drawn out Sunday nonsense-fest. First Mindy practices horrible robot dialogue while preparing to show Pete some more sexy pics.

Then it takes her five plus panels to actually get her phone unlocked. And Pete is not only an annoying douche, he doesn’t even know how annoying and douchey he is.

Or he DOES know, and somehow pissing Mindy off is the hottest turn on for him. Look at that last panel. That is one horrible Charlie Brown grin lusting over a frigid block of annoyance.

Beckoning Chasm is up to bat starting tomorrow. Good luck buddy! Who wants to guess that our trip to the book fair was just a brief reprieve from the Atomik Komix Nuclear Winter?

Link to Today’s Comic.

Remember Mad Max, Fury Road? Boy that was a great movie! And now I’m never going to be able to watch the War Boys chant without thinking of Funky Winkerbean. Thanks a lot Tom!

Time to compare Crankshaft with Funky Winkerbean again. Wanted to see which strip is more unbelievable.

In Crankshaft, there is an entire gym in a small town devoted to muscly men teaching young mothers dangerous illegal ways to get mowed down by traffic. Today, a woman is able to hold on to the bumper of a 13 ton school bus as it drives away

In Funky Winkerbean, Les Moore tells us he has an editor.

Funky Winkerbean is the more unbelievable strip by a country mile.

n Link to Today’s Comic.

Although I’ve been happily tearing this strip a new one over the past couple weeks, I think it helps keep me fair and honest to make sure I leave my mind open to actually enjoying the occasional strip. And today’s strip is one of the best in a very very long time.

As I said yesterday, I don’t hate Miss Mackenzie. I know she had a story about her sister with Alzheimers that painted the poor old biddy in a very harsh light, but other than that the lady has become one of the more active characters in the current Funkyverse! She has goals that she thought up herself that she actually works to achieve. No one called her up to hand her a series of unwarranted writing jobs via the Central Ohio Nepotism Mafia. She’s not passively falling into a job at a business or school she used to frequent in her adolescence because she literally is incapable of growth.

Between Cliff Anger, Lillian, and the Bedside Manorisms, Batiuk keeps leaning on an obsession with the success of the elderly. I attribute most of this to the fact that Tom is 70 years old. 70! He writes both 50 and 90 as similarly decrepit AND capable, because he’s trying to convince himself that he’s still pretty much late middle aged, AND that old age isn’t some terrible impotent decade where nothing new can be created or enjoyed. It’s a fine enough sentiment, hardly the most toxic or offensive of his hangups.

And I’ll give it to him. Fear of aging is real, and if writing about little old ladies scoring it big in the writing world helps, then great.

Because it gets us to today’s wonderful strip! Where Les Moore is gazing in envy at Ms. Mackenzie’s line of fans, all smiling, reading, and discussing. And Ms Mackenzie not only rubs it in his face, she knows she’s Betty White levels of nonagenarian sex appeal and flaunts it. She also thinks that Les has grown flaccid enough moobs to create cleavage. And also that the only thing that could possibly generate interest in his horrible books is if he prostituted his pasty white, flabby, androgynous body to the niche of Paul Giamatti stalkers that frequent Ohio bookfairs.

Link to Today’s Comic.

Homely lady number three is here to annoy Les today. Looking quite a bit like Holly Winkerbean.

I think we’re missing something from not being able to hear the tone of voice of the lady, because Les in panel three looks terrified. She must sound overwhelmingly anxious. What kind of draconian nightmare does her book club’s by-laws outline? What would be the punishment for bringing disturbing material? Summary execution? Puts a whole new spin on trigger warnings.

Also, books less disturbing than Lisa’s Story? A handful off the top of my head.

The Grapes of Wrath.

Stephen King’s It.

Go Ask Alice.

A Clockwork Orange.

120 Days of Sodom.

The Necronomicon.

Link to Today’s Comic.

Beckoning Chasm picked Lilian out yesterday. And I have to say, I love seeing her here. I find her Crankshaft book publishing storyline kind of endearing. (Except for Rose’s death, I usually find Crankshaft leaps and bounds better than Winkerbean.) I also love the idea that 10 years plus from having Les Moore over to her bookshop, she’s become more successful and prolific than he ever will. He’s written four books, three of which are about his dead wife. This 95-year-old virgin who never left her parents house has written and an entire book series, with characters she thought up and plots from her own imagination. Sure some it is drawn from her business, but at least she didn’t have to plagiarize a dead relative’s diary for inspiration.

Les Moore has only written about things that actually happened, to people he knew. News Flash! Funkyverse already has a reporter character! And Brian Williams has more creativity than our fragile artiste.

No wonder Les is happy to humor the few crazy people who wander up to his table. A guy who took three panels to ask if his name was Legacy Trilogy, a maniac depressive buying a prequel and sequel to a book she had trouble finishing, and this poor lady with dementia. Taking bets on if she remembered to put any clothes on under the third ugly overcoat we’ve seen in two days. It’s like all these people are visiting from the flashers’ convention on the other side of the event center.

Link to Today’s Comic.

Yesterday Epicus wondered “Is this some sort of cancer trilogy-con…Is there any Lisa cosplay going on?”

We have our answer today. The lady in the purple overcoat is a pretty decent Lisa, and there appears to be another in the background of panel two. That one might be more accurate since a pre-chemo Lisa cosplay should have an coppery to strawberry blond rather than a Barbie blond.

Also, ideally, the Lisa cosplayer should try to keep her lips around half an inch below the bottom of her nose at all times, rather than having it slip to the bottom of her chin at random.

So…both Les and his fan had Lisa’s Story get hard for them. That is a very specific fetish. If Les wasn’t already married, I would suggest a love connection here. But then again, what happens at the Cuyahoga Falls’ Annual Book-fair stays at the Best Western where this tiny conference room is located.

Link to Today’s Comic.

So begins a new arc. Or rather a different arc. Because Les Moore is shilling his book again.

We’ve finally escaped from an endless arc of nonsense, to find ourselves repeating an arc we’ve been through dozens of times. Words have escaped me. So instead an excerpt from TS. Elliot’s ‘East Coker’, a beautiful poem and death, futility, writing, and the cyclical nature of the universe.

” You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again,
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.”

…

“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying.”