Epicus Doomus

Brother Popcorn

At least we weren’t forced to endure watching these two imbeciles interacting with the ticket person, as he’s thoughtfully skipped ahead to the popcorn purchase. Who on God’s green earth would dare to eat ANYTHING from that crappy old movie house? I remember when “The Valentine” was a “last chance” dump that only showed films no one in their right mind would pay to see, but now suddenly it’s a bustling local theater with a functioning snack bar and everything. Good for the f*cking Valentine. I have never yearned to see a building leveled by falling space junk more than I do right now.

Pete “thoughtfully” remembered how she likes her popcorn…whoop-dee-damn-do. It’d be one thing if she always ordered it with saffron and shaved truffles, but it’s salt and butter…as if there’s any other kind. Pete gives off an air of sexual desperation that’s palpable, unless of course you reside in this bizarre soul-deadening part of Ohio, that is.

Cross Purposes

You’ve Been Warned

This is as bad as FW gets. Wry “flirtatious” banter, uncontrollable smirking AND that shitty old broken down movie house, all seemingly designed and engineered to disrupt and irritate the human digestive system in a whole host of nauseating ways. It’s just repugnant. The jerk drives to Ohio all the way from Hollywood and the best “date” idea he can muster is to drag her off to that stinky old movie house…where she works, no less. Let me tell you this: if they go to see some decrepit old 1950s serial comic book flick I WILL burn mid-central Ohio to the ground.

I really hate how all FW “flirting” ALWAYS involves this sort of cynical disingenuous banter, like they’re locked into some deranged “battle of the sexes” contest to see who can be the most wry. Everyone’s a sarcastic smirking dick and apparently it’s supposed to be cute and adorable but all it ever does is enrage me. “Free passes”…come on, what could it possibly cost to see a movie in that dilapidated old dump, four or five bucks max? Pete just wrote a gigantic Hollywood summer blockbuster and he can’t break a twenty taking his dream girl to the movies…and she LIKES IT! In my opinion BatNom really needs to get out more…or maybe stay in more, I don’t know.

Schlock And Roll

Link To Today’s Strip

Vomit, barf, retch, yuck. The single most nauseating FW strip of ~~all time~~ this arc. Not only do we STILL not know whether they’re accepting the Atomic Comics gig, but now, EIGHT WEEKS into this thing, we’re suddenly forced to endure this idiotic “romance” and Pete’s bizarre (and extremely disturbing) facial contortions too. I mean seriously, what the hell is he supposed to be doing there in panel three, impressing her with his terrific Bell’s Palsy impersonation?

It’s almost difficult to believe how he’s suddenly turned the entire strip over to these two horrid, boring and loathsome characters. Pete and Boy Lisa don’t merit eight weeks a decade, much less eight weeks in a row. It’s tough to remember an arc this long where so little has happened. I mean of course there are probably several thousand arcs that fit that description but I can’t remember any of them right now.

Critical Mess

Link To Today’s Strip

Pete meeting up with a girl seems “serious” to Jessica? Again, it’s difficult to imagine how her standards could be much lower, unless she started dating Les or something. Boy Lisa didn’t even remotely indicate that anything “serious” was happening but doormats are gonna doormat, I suppose.

“Critical mass” normally means something entirely different in the Funkyverse. Don’t take my word for it, just go ask Lisa, as she’s due to pop up again at pretty much any time now. So this marks the end of week ~~six~~ (correction: seven) and we STILL have no idea whether they accepted the offer or not. Excluding Sundays there have been 78 FW strips so far this year and this arc has accounted for 42 of them. That’s right, he’s spent more than half of 2018 thus far on a job interview and we still don’t know how it turned out. Unbelievable. The last non Atomic Comics week was that Claude Barlow Dinkle nonsense back in early February, which seems like many lifetimes ago.

Sex, Lies And Pizza Mis-shaped

Link To Today’s Strip

Sorry about the title. It’s late. For a strip that features as much pizza-eating as FW does it never seems to really get it right. I realize that’s supposed to be Montoni’s famous indigestible cheese-like substance that’s all stretched out like that but really it just looks like alien goo. And he’d better pay attention there in panel three, as that blob of glop at the end of his slice is about go plop.

“Bleep”??? Man, what I wouldn’t give to have a ringtone that spells words right out in the air like that. This sitcom-like bro-banter is a crime against the language arts all on its own but on top of that is the fact that I have absolutely no idea what these cretins are jabbering about today. What did Boy Lisa assume he knew? Is he talking about this week’s insipid dialog or something else? Is Pete lying about this week’s insipid dialog or something else? Because if Pete is implying that everything he said about his communication issues regarding Mindy was a lie, it means Batiuk wasted an entire week of a six week long and counting mega arc on day after day of absolutely worthless dialog.

And a Pulitzer (nominated) word balloon filler would never do that. Seriously though, if there’s a worse storyteller anywhere on the planet please post a link as I refuse to believe it before I see it for myself. They could have heard Chhester’s offer, taken the job, said goodbye to Mason, Cindy, Cliff, Vera and Marianne, packed up Derwin’s special pens, lugged everything back to Ohio, settled in and ordered a pizza by now with plenty of time left over for wordplay. Yet here they are in week six, making a mess in Montoni’s and sharing cell phone images we can’t see with one another.