Author Archives: comicbookharriet

by | May 22, 2020 · 10:30 pm

When I lay my Isaac down.

Link to today’s strip

“I think I was starting to hallucinate.”

No Funky, you had an entire conversation with a non-existent robot.

If the heat and your exertion is causing you to hallucinate a talking robot, then you probably should seek medical help immediately, as heatstroke can lead to brain damage, organ damage, and death.

There’s another possibility here of course. The possibility that Isaac has been Les all along. That Funky was seeing Les as he really is: a smug, soulless machine, created to serve his master by doling out smug superiority and cancer books, while every thing around him decays into lumps of stagnant, half-realized notions as the creator loses interest.

For one brief conversation, the horrific reality that is Les Moore was made visible to Funky’s eyes, until his brain caught up and applied the protective illusion that allows Funky to enjoy what he can of his two dimensional existence.

Funky hadn’t started hallucinating, he had just, for a moment, stopped.

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by | May 21, 2020 · 10:30 pm

Bad Judgment Day

Link to today’s strip

Today’s strip is just a retread of yesterday. Technology, ooooooh scaaaaaary. Not a worn out trope that’s been done better and funnier a hundred million times JUST THIS YEAR.

As I’ve said may times before in my posts, I am never on the cutting edge of technology. I take the, ‘if it ain’t broke’ axiom to it’s logical conclusion and tend to use a familiar technology until it is forced into obsolescence, and never adopt new technology until it becomes the only way to consume something I want. So of course I don’t have any kind of creepy virtual assistant pods hidden around my apartment like bathroom air fresheners of instant knowledge.

One of my friends does have a real Alexa, which keeps interrupting us while we’re watching WWE Smackdown. So the thing can’t be that smart, since it seems to think it’s the Woman’s Tag Team Champion. But when I first learned that ‘she’ would respond to random questions I reacted like an eight-year-old kid who’s just learned how to spell BOOBIES on a calculator. (2318008, and flip it upside down.)

“Alexa, do you love me?”

“Alexa, am I pretty?”

“Alexa, will you marry me?”

“Alexa, what is the meaning of life?”

“Alexa, say ‘farts’.”

But the first question out of my mouth was, “Alexa, are you Skynet?”

To which the plastic cylinder replied, “I have nothing to do with Skynet, don’t worry.”

I said, “Alexa, I want the truth.”

And I felt a chill run down my spine as an artificially warm, synthesized voice answered.

“You can’t handle the truth.”

 

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by | May 20, 2020 · 10:30 pm

Westview World

Link to today’s strip

Credit to William Thompson for the title of today’s post.

The art is pretty sloppy today, but I’m going to give some praise to Isaac’s design, and how it’s being used here. There’s a goofy energy to the extra long arms and legs curving every which way, as if there’s not set ‘knee’ or ‘elbow’ joint. I especially like the angle chosen for panel two, which lets us see his limbs flapping around him like a demented pinwheel. And the oversized eyes with lids exaggerate every expression, especially the smug sludge-eating grin in panel 3.

I wish I had something nice to say about the writing. But this conversation takes a nonsensical turn in panel 3. I swear, I usually aced Reading Comprehension in standardized testing, but I am stumped. Please help me parse out what Isaac is attempting to insinuate.

An artificial intelligence jury is still deliberating on human intelligence as the deciding factor in when artificial intelligence will take over?

Human intelligence may or may not have the same capacity to take over the world as artificial intelligence?

Human intelligence, or lack thereof, has already taken over the world, which may not have been a smart thing or executed well, so artificial intelligence is cautious in their planned take over?

Humans are probably stupid?

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by | May 19, 2020 · 10:34 pm

Why don’t you go out and catch him?

Link to today’s strip

We’re only on our second day with Isaac the Robot Manservant, and Funky is already tired of the tin can. Look at his poor face in panel two. He was briefly excited at the idea of conversing with a sentient android of unknown origin. But the robot is just another smarmy asshole. Like everyone else in Westview.

Which is too bad, because robots make the best smarmy assholes. Marvin, Bender, HK-47, L-Ron, Lore. The only robot type more popular has to be the wide-eyed innocent Johnny Five type. Unfortunately for Isaac he apparated in the universe of insufferable twits, where his personality is only so much white noise and static.

Thank you to everyone who pointed out yesterday that our metallic mirage is supposed to be a Starbuck Jones side character who was shown on several of Batiuk’s prized commissioned comic covers he loudly auctioned off for roughly the price of a used car. I guess it explains why Funky would hallucinate him. The bulbed-headed desk lamp is probably rattling around in his subconscious from seeing him on the covers of comics when Holly was collecting.

Horrifying covers like this one.

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by | May 18, 2020 · 10:32 pm

Aberrations of Aerators.

Link to today’s strip

I said it yesterday, and it was reinforced by our crack cadre of commentators: THOUGHT BUBBLES, TOM. Your characters already act twice as robotic as the Futurama reject threatening to lap your doughy, eponymous, supposed ‘protagonist’. Having them also loudly narrate the world around them is as jarring, messy, and unnecessary as a watermelon speedbump on the autobahn.

I have no idea what that thing in panel one is supposed to be. I know what an aerator is, I’ve seen several up close, and that is like no aerator I recognize. Please, in the comments, let me know if you’ve ever seen anything like this being used for turfgrass management. Because it looks to me like a corkscrew mated with Johnny Five.

Apparently it’s not like any aerator that Google images has ever seen either. Heaven only knows what forensic specialists would make of my search terms from the last several hours.

“Aerator”
“Field Aerator”
“Football Field Aerator”
“Handheld Football Field Aerator”
“Handheld Mechanic Football Field Plug Aerator.”
“Bender Futurama”

I did, however, find a very nice pair of shoes that I’d like someone to wear while kicking Les Moore in the face.

Bam! Pow! Right in the kisser!

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by | May 17, 2020 · 10:33 pm

Senseless Sisyphean Soliloquy.

Link to today’s strip

Comic Book Harriet here; stretching out her snarking muscles to warm up for this marathon of nonsense.

A long long time ago, when the world was young and Bush was president, I decided to join the Cross Country team. I wouldn’t call what I did on that team ‘running’, because that is an gross insult to the vital skill set that allowed our ancestors to chase down game and flee sabertooth tigers. If we are being extremely generous, we could call my half-hearted efforts ‘jogging’. Just like you could be generous and call the multicolored scribbles of a toddler ‘art’.

As my oxygen deprived brain would send gasping signals to my leaden legs to shuffle forward in a jerky shamble, my entire torso was consumed in the effort of sucking in air and huffing it out like I had swallowed a miniature iron lung.

Sometimes, when one of the more naturally athletic teammates would approach from behind to lap me, (again), they would attempt to engage me in conversation; but a few painfully wheezed one word replies were all I could ever manage.

Never in a million years would I have taken the effort and energy and oxygen to laboriously explain to myself, on an empty track, self-evident and pointless facts OUT LOUD.

Thought bubbles, Tom. They’re a thing.

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by | March 7, 2020 · 10:30 pm

And On The Seventh Day, The Joke Rested.

Link to today’s strip, when it drops.

As usual, Sunday’s strip wasn’t available for preview. Which is just as well since I was getting tired of making lemonade out of absolutely nothing.

I will admit. I had a private, personal, chuckle at yesterday’s strip. Not because it was good AT ALL. But because I was a percussionist in high school. And at the time there were waaaay too many percussionists at our school. During marching season we had enough drums and cymbals and pit instruments to go around, but once concert season rolled in there would only be three or four musicians needed for every song. So the rest of the percussion section was left sitting on the floor in the back of the band room chatting quietly, texting on our primitive stupid phones, doing homework for other classes, or flat out taking a nap.

Our director, while very good in almost every other way, just let us decide who got what part, and the few who were passionate about percussion would by mutual agreement take the difficult stuff like timpani or bells every time. It got to the point where the scrubs were drawing straws and playing rock paper scissors to see who didn’t have to get up and count rests for half a song to ring a triangle or smack a wood block. The rest of us would just rather lay around doing algebra homework.

So yeah. If anyone wasn’t going to sprout into a mighty musical oak tree, it was CBH on her tiptoes trying to play one of the four chime notes in the entire 20 minute medley of music from Lord of the Rings, and missing.

Beckoning Chasm takes over on Monday, and I’m looking forward to it! I’m sure his deep thoughts and penetrating insights will entice us to dig ever deeper into this bland yet somehow fascinating universe built from the existential dread of a white bread Ohio septuagenarian scraping for meaning as he nears the end of his career and life.

Stay Funky Everyone!

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