Epicus Doomus

Leaves Of Ass

Link To The Always-Amusing Sunday Strip

Unless this is some kind of Sunday fake-out, it would appear that the John Darling handgun arc is finally, mercifully, over. That was weird. So anyhow, today BatYam aims his always insightful and cutting wit at leaf blowers, and how much they suck. Real topical there, Pulitzer (nominee) Boy. I could point out that Funky obviously hired the landscaping crew because he didn’t feel like raking the leaves himself, thus making him quite the hypocrite, but whatever. It’d totally kill the melancholy, depressing vibe he was going for here, and Lord knows I wouldn’t want to do that.

I assume that’s a young Cory there in panel four, which means that scene/memory probably took place during the time skip, which definitively proves it did in fact happen. Or maybe not, I don’t know.

Forging New Memories One Gun At A Time

Link Link Link

Look at that thing. They haven’t made cast iron toys like that since the fifties, so naturally Batiuk remembers them very fondly. It seems pretty clear that this thing is finally, mercifully over, but then again, as Joaquín Andújar once said, “youneverknow”. One day we’ll all look back on this and have a hearty laugh, and newer SoSF commenters will think we’re making it all up.

Misty Gun Metal-Colored Memories, Of The Way The Gun Was

Linkster

Yes, a heavy, pointy toy made of gun steel…this will surely end well.

“What’s this, dad?”

“It’s a spaceship forged from the steel from the gun used to MURDER YOUR GRANDPA!”

“WHEEEE! The spaceship is flying, daddy! It’s flying! It’s flying…OWWWWW! MY EYE!”

One day, sometime in the future, a new SoSF commenter will read a comment about the time Jessica had the gun used to kill her father (John Darling) melted down and cast into a toy rocket ship based on a Phil Holt sketch, and they’ll think “LOL yeah right, like THAT happened”. Like the time Les started climbing Kilimanjaro, stopped, came home, helped Funky name a car, then went back and finished the climb, AND rescued a wayward cat. Or the time he spent an entire week on squirrels. Truth is way stranger than fiction in the Funkyverse.

Rubber City Meltdown

Link To This One

“Hmmm. Maybe I’ll do a crossover story where Jessica sees what’s going on with Channel One and becomes nostalgic over her father, John Darling. Then they’ll visit Atomik Komix, where Phil will draw Skyler a spaceship. Chester will tell her about a freaked-out collector weirdo, who will be Mitchell Knox, the old Batom Comics child prodigy. Then Mitchell will give her the gun used to kill John Darling. Then she’ll take the gun home, and have it melted down into the very same spaceship Phil drew!” (begins writing furiously).

The thought process at work here is unique, you just won’t find it anywhere else. This is why I’m increasingly inclined to believe* that this BatYam nut is actually a national treasure. He’s not just responsible for a whole slew of terrible comic strips, despite the bevy of evidence to the contrary. He’s actually more like an avant-garde free-form musician no one likes, who’s taking the art of writing itself into strange, abstract directions that totally defy all known conventions and standards. These stories cannot exist, yet they do.

Just re-read my description of the story above, and marvel over how that’s pretty much exactly what happened. He needed to quickly pull a story out of his ass, and THIS is what came to mind first. I mean, wow.

*(not really)

Play D’oh

Link To The Strip In Question

Finally. It all makes perfect sense now! Boy Lisa is turning Phil Holt’s terrible spaceship drawing into a skeet target, which they will then shoot with Mitchell’s unwanted handgun. It was just so obvious all along. I’m quite frankly embarrassed and ashamed that we didn’t see this coming. Focus, people. Gotta start staying on freaking topic around here, dammit.

The biggest mystery? Why does Boy Lisa have modeling clay just lying around? He’s an illustrator/storyboarder, not a sculptor or a, uh, clay-molderer. Right now, I have to believe that SoSF commenter J.J. O’Malley might have been on to something yesterday, as this whole thing is veering off in a seriously queasy direction.