ComicBookHarriet

The Very Model of A Modern Major Millennial.

At least we now have some kind of in universe excuse for why Summer has been at Kent State for so long. Apparently she calls her father every year at the same time to change her major. And he seems smug as a snake about the whole thing. Is he paying for her college, or has she taken on student loan debt?

I decided to do an archive deep dive and found that Summer and Keisha last showed up on October 7 for a one-off Sunday strip.

If I could ask Tom Batiuk one question, honestly, it would be why he doesn’t write people interacting with their kids. The children of main characters are an afterthought if they are remembered at all, and parenting and concern for offspring are rare topics. It sometimes shows up. Rarely. Holly was worried about Corey being in the military, and had a snit fit when he wouldn’t text her back about things.

But if we were to compare the number of strips involving couples and their relationships to the number of strips about parents and kids, there would be no contest. Despite the bond between a parent and a child being the more inalienable, demanding relationship. You can’t amicably divorce your kids, and see them socially on occasion.

It makes me want to sit down with Tom and a shrink and ask him about his relationship with his parents, and then his own kids, to see if those relationships were as bland and benignly distant as the ones he portrays. I would like to see if he resents the idea that his kids should affect his life and dreams, or have a claim on him for time or emotional support.

I don’t have kids, but I have parents, aunts, uncles, coworkers…and it doesn’t matter how old you or your children become, your bond with your children is primal. It will take up a chunk of your emotional and relationship capital. You can’t have casual children. But Tom has never wanted to present children as obstacles in that way. People just show up together, without their kids, and no mention of babysitters.

Darrin apparently has dumped Skyler off at his parents’ and forgot about him and Jess is content to live in California forever. Wally didn’t know Rana had gone back to college, and we haven’t seen him interact with Wally Jr in years. Jinx didn’t show up to her father’s retirement. We never get to see how Bull’s CTE affected his kids. Jinx could still be in college, but that didn’t come up when Linda was talking about finances. Crazy Harry’s Maddie has slipped into the memory hole, along with her other two siblings.

Maybe Batiuk would fob this off by saying there are already so many comic strips about parents and kids, so he chooses not to show the moments of parenting. They take place off panel. But in a strip that’s become about less than nothing, maybe some parent-child dynamic could bring a bit of heart. Shoving hordes of kids into the attic like an army of Chuck Cunninghams only makes your characters seem shallow and self-centered. Every couple a codependent, un-nurturing, dead end.

Pointless precognition.

Link to today’s strip

You didn’t sit down before answering! You sat down after answering! At most you sat down WHILE answering. And do you always narrate everything you plan to do? And then do you immediately fail to do the thing you plan?

Cayla is confirmed as baked out of her mind, only able to repeat what she heard last. No judgement here, whatever gets her through the day.

Epicus pointed out yesterday that Summer has been in college for seven years of real time. Even if we accept a ‘comic book time’ that allows for a year of Funkyverse to take more time than a calendar year in the real world…It’s baffling that Tom Batiuk would drop her character like that.

What do you figure Summer’s big bombshell is? I still have a longstanding bet that she the secret student from behind the Big Gay Castle. But maybe I’m unfairly stereotyping female basketball players with pixie cuts. It was probably Chullo head.

When a Stranger Calls.

Link to today’s strip

Comic Book Harriet back for another turn at the Train Wreck Report. Thanks to Epicus for seeing us through last week! Your hard work on this wonderful little blog deserves praise.

Caucayla sure looks haggard in panel one. Also she seems to be drying the dishes, even though she is standing nowhere near a sink. Also, if Les is rolling in the published author, tenured teacher, kill fee dough, why don’t they have an electric dishwasher? Does Les need a flesh and blood woman to dry his dishes? Is this like…a fetish for him? Is that why Cayla looks so depressed?

Cayla in panel two echoed my thoughts when reading this for the first time. Summer calls? Like the season? I guess it is nearing the middle of May…maybe Les, as a teacher, is especially attuned his students’ bipolar spring emotions of crushing ennui and building excitement. The call of summer.

Then I was all like, oh yeah, Les has a daughter named Summer…right. Wonder when the last time we heard from her is? Doesn’t Cayla have a daughter too? Weird.

She Who Must Not Be Named

Link to today’s strip

How exactly is Funky looking at Holly in panel 2? His shriveled left eye seems to be staring right at the bridge of his own nose. But his cosplay is on fleek. A near dead ringer for Joe Pesci’s Harry from Home Alone. True the hat is the wrong color, but the vacant yet angry expression is exactly the same.

Of course Holly is probably referring to Hurricane Irma. But that’s not the only option.

She could mean Irma, Wisconsin, USA, an unincorporated community that Mrs. Budd wants to live closer to so she can attend St Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Or she could be frustrated that Irma, a Danish supermarket chain, has stopped shipping internationally so she wants to move somewhere with a larger Danish expat population in hopes of finding a store carrying her favorite brand of Spegesild.

Maybe she wants to be closer because she has IRMA Intraretinal microvascular abnormalities, a component of diabetic eye disease.

Maybe she’s upset because she heard rumors that Irma Records, an Italian record label, was about to drop Michael Buble’s friend, Matteo Brancaleoni, and needs emotional support.

On the subject of emotional support, maybe her past is coming back to haunt her. She could be suffering from PTSD from participating in Operation Irma, a series of airlifts of civilians during the Siege of Sarajevo.

She’s even old enough to have survived the sinking of the SS Irma, a Norwegian merchant ship sunk in controversial circumstances in 1944 by the Royal Norwegian Navy.

Since we’ve already had one storyline on swinging seniors and protection, maybe Holly’s mad at IRMA, the International Rectal Microbicide Advocates, an international non-profit organization which promotes awareness of rectal microbicides and reviews and encourages research into the safety of personal lubricants for anal sex, especially as pertaining to preventing AIDS. Maybe Funky’s Mom gave Funky’s Dad HIV after living it up with the senior crowd at the Miami Bum Boat Club.

But if I could pick one myself, I hope Holly means 177 Irma, a 43 mile wide asteroid currently located in the asteroid belt. I would choose this in the hopes that Mrs. Budd is only moving in so she can spend her last few weeks tormenting her son-in-law before a wayward 177 Irma careens into Earth driving the human race extinct.

Timeworn Warning

Link to today’s strip

So an unpleasant elderly woman demands to move in with her middle aged child? A plot line so timeless that Tom Batiuk has used it already. Did he miss Rose from Crankshaft so much that he decided to move a surrogate Rose to the flagship? How long until the elder Mrs. Budd is stabbing comic books and reminiscing on spatula spankings?

This strip is really about 50% recycled Crankshaft at this point. Elder antics abound, and the majority of the cast is aged 50-90 and drawn as an even 75. And it only highlights how much better Crankshaft is. I’m not saying Crankshaft is good but it is usually tolerable and occasionally amusing. Some of that has to do with residual ‘zany’ ideas being allowed there, like Crankshaft scaling a massive icicle with hatchets.

I think the real difference is the titular protagonist. When your main character’s explicit stock state is a grumpy, ignorant, sour old man, then it’s in character when he’s stupid or mean. But it hints at hidden depths when he’s thoughtful or kind. Like washed out, discount, diet Archie Bunker.

But when your main character is supposed to be a relatively intelligent, socially conscious, everyman, then he’s bland when he’s acting like himself, and just infuriating when he’s an asshole so dense and full of shit Miralax couldn’t clear him out.