Epicus Doomus

No Formats Left Behind

It really IS a videotape! Someone actually brought a VHS camcorder to Bull’s last game? Or is this some ancient tape Dinkle unearthed while he was endlessly roaming around WHS for no sensible reason? These people and the videotapes, that was a technological advancement Westviewians oddly embraced for some reason instead of shunning it like they always do.

“What? Movies with sound? Kids today are so spoiled. I’ll stick to my silent films, this is just a fad.”

“Ahhh, the color, the tint…just two more silly knobs to have to fiddle with. I’ll stick to my old black & white TV, thank you very much.”

“Video games? On the TV? Where do you put the comic book? Kids today are so weird.”

“WOW! A camcorder! I can make my own video tapes! I’m gonna record everything and save all the tapes even if the format eventually dies out!”

One of these is not like the others. Imagine it, you’re at a WHS football game, filming with your phone. Then you look up and notice the angry faces of the locals, all of them with huge old-fashioned VHS camcorders hoisted on their aching sagging shoulders. You begin to hear the murmurs…”fancy technology wiz thinks he’s so cool”…”yeah, let’s see him dub copies with that thing”…”damn kids today”. The crowd begins passing around hand-written little notes mocking you. And when you innocently ask whether that horrible wooden trough thing is really supposed to be the men’s room the fed-up mob attacks, running you out of the bleachers and back to your futuristic dream world. And it’s all on videotape.

Meeting Of The Mindless

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Woe, woe, woe…Merry Funkmas!!! Everything is inexplicably back in living color today as Dinkle bravely forges ahead through typical Westviewian blizzard conditions to visit his old pal…Bull? Sure, why not? I don’t recall ever seeing those two interact, this oughta be really…(zzzzzzzz). I’ll tell you this right now: if Bull is angrily sitting there next to some overturned water cups I’m outta here for the week. Ditto if Dinkle starts with the music-based puns…”passing his baton” and such. This has “dismal and lifeless” written all over it as it is, there’s just no need to pile on.

Fail Punner Tom

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Cliff Anger is a defiant and bitter commie. Jessica is back behind the camera after the unfortunate “Barbie” debacle. (I somehow totally missed that development this week, which says plenty about the Jessica character in general). TomBat was once the ringleader of some shoplifting-endorsing comic book liberation movement. It’s like the whole Funkyverse is all topsy-turvy, nothing makes SENSE anymore!!!

Fortunately though, at least one aspect of FW remains constant, the rock-solid pillar and foundation the entire Funkyverse is based upon. Of course I’m referring to abysmal, stupid, sub-moronic wordplay…what else? Apparently Cliff’s career wasn’t quite as important to him as the opportunity to make a really dumb and inane joke was and Cliff seized that opportunity, Tailgunner Joe and his own nascent movie career be damned. It’s a profile in courage all right. Life, liberty and the pursuit of idiotic gags that would make a third-grader roll his or her eyes… it’s in the Constitution. Give me punnery or give me death!

What a debacle. And on that note I’m passing the SoSF baton to the one, the only…TF Hackett, who’s all set to tackle the next two weeks of wry banter, painfully bad wordplay, adorable ninety-year old coots and sinister bio-dads, along with whatever other weird curveballs Batiuk yanks out of his musty little bag of contrivances. Why, it might be a retconned sixty year old congressional hearing or a broken pizzeria bandbox or a brain-damaged man comically spilling human remains all over himself…you just never really know until Monday rolls around and even then it’s sometimes unclear.

In Soviet Russia YOU call ComGovOp

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Contemporary issues come roaring to the fore today as FW courageously takes a swipe at Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Cold War-fueled “Red Scare”. Of the 1950s. “Contemporary” in this case meaning “within the last century”. Not a lot of comic strips out there are willing to tackle the events that rocked our culture six decades ago and for that I sincerely believe FW and TB deserve a lot of credit sixty years from now. Perhaps in 2076 some obscure comic strip writer will name drop BanTom and his heroic fight against entertainment. Maybe some future generation will see FW differently than we have and it’ll gain a cult following and those “Lisa’s Story” books will be worth a fortune. But probably not.

Look at Cliff today, just oozing titly-headed sincerity all over the f*cking page, tilting this way then that way to get his point across. Along with their mystery-writing guru, Cliff and Vera were all set to “change the world” in some vague, weakly-defined way until it all fell apart thanks to the vicious hand of various artist-martyring forces who ruined their careers and made them sit there doing nothing for sixty years until an opportunity to suck at the teat of the modern-day mass media Hollywood machine came along at which point Cliff couldn’t get off the couch fast enough. And Vera sure seems to be enjoying the attention and the opportunity to live it up on CME’s apparently massive bankroll too. I guess that gave up on all that youthful idealism when they became reclusive hermits. Glad to see them finally getting the opportunity to complain about it now, too, right as everyone who vividly remembers that era prepares to die.

Sentences Batom Rarely Hears For $100, Alex

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haha

BOOM! Look at Cliff, trying not to crack up. Sometimes NomBat makes this way too easy.

“Yeah, the feds got wise to us while we were filming “Starbuck Jones Leads The Righteous Lunar Proletariat In A Galactic Revolt Against The Decadent Capitalist Space Bourgeois” and long story short, I spent the next thirty-two years working a floor buffer at Leavenworth. Even worse, my cell was in the Right Wing so all day long I had to watch my back in case someone wanted to trade currency for goods or services. It was hell on earth. Really good grilled cheese sandwiches though, it’s all in the quality of the paper you’re using when you heat them on the radiator.”

“Oh how I waited and waited for my dearest Clifford to call after his parole. So many years spent watching my neck waste away, hoping to hear from my beloved Starbuck. Then I learned he had a computer and could have looked up my number in like two seconds. I began to see things in a different light after that. But still, this is too good to pass up, the studio pays for everything no questions asked and the food is fantastic.”

“When Dashiell told me to meet him at on Marx St at the old Lenin building over on the communist side of town I was a little apprehensive and when he asked me to wear all red I thought “hmmm, this guy could be involved in some far-out stuff here”. But he was very engaging and persuasive so I eventually agreed to obtain the blasting caps for him in spite of my misgivings. But I wasn’t anywhere near the bald eagle sanctuary on the evening in question and you can put that on the record.”

“I tried to tell him “Cliff, darling, this Hammett guy is a pinko, he associates with more Reds than Ted Kluszewski, he’s a goddamned f*cking commie to the core. But that’s my Clifford, a dear man but quite frankly dumber than a pillowcase full of broken toasters.”