Epicus Doomus

Imaginationbland

“You know how little kids sometimes have imaginary friends? Well, I thought it’d be very funny if a small child’s imaginary friend ditched him…ON CHRISTMAS! Imagine him there, sitting under the tree all upset…tee hee hee!”

“Tom, I told you you’ve gotta crack the window when you’re working with airplane glue!”

As much as I’ve grown to dislike little baby Skyler I can’t help but feel sorry for the little dolt after this one. His moronic parents played fast and loose with his early development as they ran around filming and drawing things and now the chickens have come home to roost, as they say. In his desperate attempt to shoehorn in a woefully awful wordplay-based gag, BatYuck has inadvertently painted a heartbreaking story about a sad, troubled little boy who’s obviously confused and baffled by this sudden burst of attention from his previously disinterested parents.

But man, what a shitty woefully awful wordplay-based gag it is, huh? “Ghosted” by his “imaginary friend”…duh. I wonder how long he’s had that one boinging around in that modestly sincere head of his. And what compelled him to use THIS as a Christmas strip? This little Skyler mini-arc is downright dismal and not in a hilarious “For Better Or For Worse” way but an Act III FW way, which is much worse.

Wordplay Begins In The Home

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Awww, little baby Skyler is engaging in stupid wordplay just like his dad! Before you know it he’ll be all wryed up and totally powerless against the inexorable miseries of the universe, just like his dad. Although to be fair, this is BARELY wordplay and more like a really bad gag BatYap used to kill day 359, but nevertheless.

That Godzilla doll is really freaking me out, as is Jessica’s malevolent smirk, which in my opinion seems like a very strange and ill-suited reaction. No wonder Skyler is so troubled. His mom abandoning him to film Cliff Anger talking must have really scarred the kid. Although in fairness that would probably scar anyone, even those of us who didn’t grow up over a pizzeria.

Merry Christmas From SoSF!

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Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holiday Greetings Of Choice from your pals at SoSF! Your hilarious comments are the blood that oils the gears of snark! It’d all be nothing without you.

Special thanks to Team SoSF, your talents and witticisms are the engine that turns those aforementioned bloody snarking gears. Without you it’d just be two increasingly desperate souls trying to tell the world about the daily atrocities taking place in the funny pages. Here’s hoping that 2020 spares you those annoying “unavailable” weeks and those even more annoying ten week “Lisa’s Story” arcs as well. It’d all be nothing without you.

Leave it to BatWrite to turn little baby Skyler into a temperamental churlish little jerk on Christmas morning. No happiness, no joy, no basking in Santa’s bounty, just anger and greed. So typical of These Kids Today. I mean OK, deciding to not write jokes every day anymore and taking the strip in a new serialized dramatic direction is one thing but geez, can’t this guy just stop wallowing in this wry irony-based human misery for even one day?

Skyler holding a dripping slice of pizza and saying “pizza isn’t a present” would have been way, way funnier. BatHam seems to have a real problem with younger male characters. Cory was a surly hoodlum, Owen was a sleazy dirtbag, Cody was a weird pervert, Bernie is all gross and weird, Rachel’s kid was a cube-headed dolt and now little baby Skyler is an obnoxious little snot too. It’s like it’s a pattern of sorts. It’s almost as if he wants someone to leave his lawn or something.

Post Offal

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I don’t know what happened to him at his mid-central Ohio post office of choice but judging by his unrelenting hate for the USPS I’d be willing to wager that it was quite unpleasant and inconvenient. But putting his terrible trauma and lifelong grudge aside for a moment, it IS the post office, not the Make Tom’s Day office. You go in, you do your mail business and you leave. Sometimes there’s a line and sometimes the employee you deal with is a real dick. We’ve all been there and we all stew over it during the walk back to the car, but then we (meaning normal people) forget about it almost immediately. In other words, he really needs to get the f*ck over it already. It’s Christmas for God’s sake.

Chop Fooey

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Sigh. I have to assume that this is a play on musicians “busting out” their musical “chops” or possibly an attempted malaprop or maybe even both. I’ve been pondering it for ten seconds now and it’s another ten seconds I’ll never get back. Thanks, Tom. Nothing’s ever easy in this daffy Funkyverse of his, you know? It’s either a tedious, grueling plod to a barely-perceptible resolution or it’s a really dumb sort of ambiguous gag that takes a half an hour to get. This one-time Pulitzer nominee (fluke thing) can’t just tell a story or crack a joke, you have to wade through layer after layer of nothingness to get nowhere instead. Bah, humbug.