ComicBookHarriet

Like No One Ever Was.

Happy Friday Everyone!

You all can dissect this reveal at your leisure. The Cookie Monster bought all the cookies at the Sesame Street Bake Sale and we’re supposed to be surprised. I have no other comment on it.

Mostly I have questions for any artists we have out there.

When do you think was the last time Jess ate? Darrin’s huge sausage fingers are about to crush her rail thin spine.

Darrin’s nose has gotten flatter and flatter as the auction has progressed, almost as if the underlying bone was eroding away. Is the artist trying to indicate he has syphilis?

How long was that auction? Darrin has some pretty serious bags under his eyes.

Are Ghost Lisa and Ghost Phil gonna ghost bang or what?

What is that weird black thing in the bottom right corner of the second panel? Is it a speaker? Is it a top hat? Is it a weird failed perspective shot of the seat of the chair he’s just leapt up from? Whatever it is, why does it appear to be joining Maniac Grabby Hands Dr. Phil in shouting at the ceiling?

Why is Chester’s shadow red, when the floor is beige? Did the colorist think it was a red carpet that The Chiseler rolls out behind him wherever he goes like in Guardians of the Galaxy 2? Or is it a pool of blood from the victims he viciously clawed to death to keep them from bidding up the covers? And if that’s the case, why doesn’t he have gore all over his hands? Censorship?

And finally, please please please, for the love of Dead St. Lisa, can someone Photoshop some Pokéballs into Chester the Chiseler’s hands?

Pokémon League Expo hat is optional.

Life’s a Beach.

Link to today’s strip

Lisa’s Legacy Fund must really be running on empty if Jess is about to burst into tears over… (checking the actual auction prices,) seven hundred dollars. Though I suppose since there’s a couple days left, the Busty Beauties ‘Jupiter Moon’ cover by Neal Adams could go for more.

Oh Lisa, that look she’s giving Darrin isn’t exactly a doting mother. I’ve seen people give that look to their pets when they start hacking up something inedible on the rug. We know why Jess and Darrin are sitting in the back now, because they planned on shouting vapid observations at each other the entire auction.

Poor Phil. He can hardly keep his jaw from dropping to the floor like Jacob Marley’s ghost in ‘A Christmas Carol.’ All those hours and hours of scribbling out caricatures with increasingly arthritic hands for snot nosed Hollywood brats to cover the rent on a one room studio in LA, his entire penurious old age that could have been spent in comfort and accolades, all of it will haunt his ghost for eternity. His purgatory has just become Hell.

His only recourse is to pop over to Rex Morgan MD, where he can haunt Horrible Hank, who not only had a successful career after comic books that included marriage and children, but later DID get discovered again, DIDN’T immediately die, and now gets to cruise around comic conventions soaking up admiration and sweet sweet commission money. Haunt him Phil Holt, terrify him with your misshapen jowls and droopy uneven eyes! You’ve earned it.

Masone and Cindy sure care a lot about this auction; seeing as they couldn’t be bothered to get up off their beach chairs and drive a couple blocks down the street to go bid in person. How much time do they spend on the beach anyway? They’re always there! Did Masone lose their house after he blew the paychecks from his two movies on private jet rides to Westview, and now they’re living in a tent on Venice Beach?

And who wears sunglasses AND baseball caps while sunbathing?

Nice to see Cindy is enjoying her book though, “A Single Shade of Grey.” It’s what passes for kinky in Funkyverse.

Hypermortality.

Link to today’s strip

All Hail! Here is the beloved Holy Ghost of Dead St. Lisa! Once again haunting a charity function in her honor. But this time she has company. Their horrible dialogue in the first two panels is supernaturally banal. The only interesting thing about what they’re saying is that the lines seem all out of order. SEEM.

Until you consider what we’ve seen of Funkyverse’s afterlife. Masky McDeath comes and reaps you, sure; separating spirit from body. But the multiple ghost appearances, by multiple characters, in the strip suggest a soul remains on Earth. Drifting through the physical world, fully conscious of what is going on around it, and tied to objects and family it was close to in life: Dance hall railings, benches, comic covers, bio-sons. It only makes sense that the spirits beyond would introduce themselves to each other by explaining what in the physical world is their current tether. What goes on in the real world has the power to please or distress them. Like ancient pagan ancestor worship, the memory offerings of their progeny please their departed souls.

Which is why it is HILARIOUS when Phil learns that the precious comic covers he kept framed on his dinky apartment wall all those years, and then willed to someone he thought would treasure them and his memory forever after his death, were instantly liquidated to enrich the memorial of a woman who didn’t give two shits about stupid disposable funny pages. Silly man, you thought you had a LEGACY? The Death Cult of St. Lisa devours all offerings!!!!

Specimen Collection

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Oh Goodie! Just my luck, a strip so banal that the entire thing, both in words and artwork, progresses the story in an almost negative direction!

In panel one, a lobed-headed monstrosity announces from the inky black crowd mass that the auction is about to start. We know this can’t be Darin or Jess since it’s shown in the next panel that they’re jockeying for position in in the back row like this is church or something. The unseen person doesn’t say ‘The auction is about to start,’ like a normal person might, but mentions again the full title of the auction. This gives him a chance to utter the name of The Blessed Dead St. Lisa aloud, which knocks off a few hours of future Masky McDeath Purgatory. No one in Funkyverse ever passes up a chance to mention St. Lisa’s name.

In the second panel, the vaguely Asian woman is either chewing tobacco, or has a severe case of lump jaw. But the greatest miscreation of this scene blooms between Darin and Jess like a horrifying, fleshy flower. Four hands. THERE ARE FOUR HANDS! Gripping and grasping each other in a sweaty mass. And creeping out of Lockjaw’s hair are the slender fingers of Jess’s right hand. Meaning… DARIN HAS THREE HANDS!

Luckily in the last panel, we learn that jogging lightly for less than three miles sends Darin’s pulse rate skyrocketing. Congestive heart failure will soon end his multi-appendaged misery. And I for one look forward to Darin’s Legacy Fund for Congenital Defects.

Also, are we sure that Darin hasn’t gotten a nose job? He looks uncannily like Masone Jarre. I’m predicting a ‘Talented Mr. Ripley’ scenario coming soon. And Jess can join in! All she has to get is a bob cut and she would look just like Cindy!

Charity Case for Second Base

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Hello Funkysnark Fans! Comic Book Harriet here. And I am soooo honored to be with you this week! This is my first time driving the bus! But as long as I don’t go careening off any cliffs like a drunk on prom night, I think we should be okay.

And for my first strip we have an almost ‘Mark Trail’ set up, with a building cheerfully spouting expository dialogue. I do have to applaud the scene setting in the first panel. We know we’re in Beverly Hills because a vapid looking, overly skinny, socialite, in a back-exposing top has wandered into traffic and is about to get mowed down by a blue Porsche. It could use some topical Hollywood harassment, but these strips are written months in advance.

Boy Lisa, and the person who exists so Boy Lisa has someone to talk to when Droopy Eyes McSadWriter isn’t around, are gearing up for the only thing that really matters in Funkyverse: Comic Book Cancer (Charity Action).

I am totally baffled by Mrs. Flowers in The Attic saying the title of the auction as ‘Covers for the Cure.’ It seems to be followed by BoyLisa suddenly realizing they forgot to promote this event. Or maybe that ‘Covers for the Cure’ would be a better promotion than whatever they chose. Which is probably something like’ Starbuck Saves Second Base!’ But why would the young Miss Darling say it in the first place if it wasn’t the title of the event?

Are you excited for a week of fictional strips that serve as cheap advertising for a real life auction for a real life charity that honors the tragic death of a fictional character? Because I sure as heck am!