Epicus Doomus

Luckily, The Other 1% Are Already Dead!

No one can go from maudlin to goofy quite like the BatTom can. In this week’s installment of “The Most Annoying Man In The World”, it seems that Les (who up to this point has done nothing but mope and complain) has forgotten to book a venue for the thirty-seventh-and-a-half (or whatever) class reunion, which means the entire class will despise him EVEN MORE, as unlikely as that seems. Nice work there, dingus. What a dick.

Now longtime FW readers already know what this means. When there’s an event in need of a venue, it usually means it’s Montoni’s to the rescue. After all, what other local venue even exists? So let’s take a look at the tote board and examine the “where will the WHS reunion be held?” odds, shall we?

Montoni’s – even. By far the most likely outcome, plus Funky and Holly won’t have to walk too far. And pizza!

WHS – 5-1. Les (Cayla too) does, after all, work there. He could probably finagle some sort of deal with Principal Nate and hold the reunion at WHS itself, which would be pretty weird, but definitely plausible. And sepia-toned gym rope flashbacks!

Les’ house – 10-1. Seems sort of implausible, but not totally out of the question. And it could rain!

Gazebo Park – 50-1. I suppose it’s possible and there’s the possibility of rain and maybe even lightning (aka “hilarity”), but still. I just don’t see it.

Komix Korner – 200-1. Lord knows there’s enough room, as all John would have to do is kick Owen and Alex out for a few hours. But it’s pretty unlikely, unless they go for some sort of comic book-themed reunion. Which is never totally out of the question. But I just can’t see that thundering herd making it up that staircase, not even single-file.

Off The Deep End

Link To Today’s Strip

I believe he’s used “shallow end of the gene pool” before, although I don’t remember where or when. It’s too Batiukian, there’s no way that’s new. Maybe during one of those Owen arcs with Wedgeman or something.

So let me get this straight. Pete decided to write a balls-out crazy “Mister Sponge” story to attract attention even though he knew it’d annoy and alienate some long-time readers. Then he became angry over the online whackadoodles who told him they were annoyed and alienated. I see. Perhaps his next step might be a series of puff-piece interviews where he could blithely dismiss his critics, followed by a hardbound set of “TAMS: The Other Clone” comics and maybe a book tour or two. Then art would REALLY be imitating life, eh?

What a strange and really boring story. Everything that Pete and his editors said would happen did happen…the end. I assume the guy who wrote it also realized this, so at the last minute he has Pete yell at his editors (who were nothing less than 100% supportive of the whole idea from day one) to create some “conflict” then has him feign surprise upon learning that the plan worked as predicted to give the story a “twist” at the end. And it fails miserably, as is to be expected when you’re filling that precious word balloon space with a bunch of unhinged anti-internet rants instead of, you know, stories and stuff. Nice try though.

Goop Rage

Link To Today’s Strip

“Never seen such vitriolic memes before”…obviously not a SoSF regular, eh Pete? Well here’s a little vitriol for ya, pal…you suck, your comic book sucks, you’re a big mopey whiner, you talk to yourself out loud and everyone hates you. Feel better now? I sure do.

Man, does this one really take me back (sniff). Some of you fellow snarkers of a certain age know exactly what I’m talking about here. Back “in the day”, we didn’t have all these wifi doohickeys and high def plasma phones with the MP-whatevers. No, when we wanted to go online we’d all gather around the monitor and watch the black & white hand-drawn webpages flicker by together, as a family. There was just something about it all being on paper that made it so much better, you know? Paper that YOU drew on and that YOU decided was good enough…yep. Those were the days.

This one is amazing because he actually self-sabotages two separate jokes here. First he kills the crash dummy gag by drawing the most insane rendering of a web page ever. Then he craters gag two by choosing Gwyneth Paltrow as the least likely person to leave a hate comment on an online comic book nerd forum. I mean sure, she’s an unlikely candidate to do such a thing, there’s no doubt about that. But it just seems like such an odd and random choice, doesn’t it?

He should have used “Tom Batiuk” in that joke instead. That would have been pretty goddamned funny IMO. I mean come on, that would just blow everyone’s mind, right? “Hey, I got a tweet from Buddy The Dog…”i will bite you on sight you suck”!”. “You will never amount to anything you fraud – Le Chat Bleu”. “Finally, a writer the public hates more than me, love Mr. Moore”. “Thanks Pete I am now ruined – Chester The Chiseler”. You get the idea.

For A Good Time Call Anyone But These Two Guys

Link To Today’s Strip

So, what’s the “modern day equivalent” of a FW comic strip? Overdosing on muscle relaxers? Too much turkey and wine? Going to jury duty? Melatonin? Ambien?

So who’s more annoying today? The ever-mopey Pete, who acts like his dream job is nothing but pure torture? Or Boy Lisa sitting around in his socks making obnoxious snide faces as he uses the internet to complain about the internet? It’s a toss-up IMO, although Boy Lisa definitely has punch-ability to spare today. He’s almost as insufferable as that mother of his used to be. And if he’s so smart, why is he still working at Montoni’s? What a bio-step dick.

All of this nonsense might be slightly less incoherent if the whole thing wasn’t Pete’s idea in the first place. But Ban Tom got all caught up in breaking The Internet’s balls, so things like continuity and events that actually occurred in the story were pushed aside so he could take more shots at…well, us, I guess. The funniest thing about this one is that after blowing his wad in panel two, he tries to take a shot at “editors” just for the hell of it, which of course falls completely flat because readers with actual functional memories will recall that his editors were all 100% behind the idea. Again, he ignores facts in favor of taking a jab at something, then fails at that too. What a sad and pathetic debacle.

The Clone Bores

Link To Today’s Strip

Well, there isn’t much to say about this one as it’s just a continuation of yesterday’s Owen reaction scene featuring the “geek rage” that Tom Ban finds so very amusing. At least someone does, I guess. I mean sure, “teenager wildly overreacts to relatively trivial development” has been a standard FW trope since day one so bagging on today’s strip for that is like complaining about the way Ban Tom draws noses, it’s more or less a constant.

The only real question is where is he going (if anywhere) with this? My guess is he’ll do five days of this then have Owen say he’ll definitely keep buying Mister Sponge anyway as an astonished John looks on like he’s never seen an irrational comic book dork before. It’s the simplest and thus most likely outcome. I guess he could segue into Owen going online and acting like one of the whackadoos and twit tots he was mocking a few weeks ago, but that seems like an awful lot of activity and plot momentum for FW. He could also cut back to Pete and his reaction to the reaction to his comic book, but again, that’s a lot of activity for a weekly FW arc.

What I don’t get is what he’s trying to say about “comic book fans” with this stuff. Are we supposed to laugh along with them for being the lovable little comic book-obsessed scamps they are? Are we supposed to be laughing AT them for being such moronic gullible losers? It’s all very unclear sometimes.