Okay, so Harry has apparently gone back in the past. And the first thing he does is leave behind the helmet that enabled him to travel through time. For such an avowed nerd he’s doing one of the silliest things possible in a time travel story. If there was any chance of this being actual time travel and not an imaginary story, I would really be rooting for Harry to get stuck in the past forever.
I’m sure it won’t be explained at all, but I am a little amused by Harry also travelling in space for some reason, I guess because the Westview Town Square is a beloved landmark that every reader would immediately recognize, and Harry’s attic isn’t? Although it would be far more amusing for Harry to randomly appear in someone else’s attic in the past.
Author: spacemanspiff85
Weird is Relative
Um, Harry, shoehorning “Lisa’s Story” wherever you possibly can is the absolute least weird thing in this strip. It happens constantly. It should’ve seemed inevitable that Donna reminiscing about her glory days would lead to the Lisa Bench.
So I guess Harry has travelled back in time (again). Which makes this all even less weird, since this is now the second time that Harry has “travelled back in time”. Or, since he’s seeing the Dead St. Lisa Cancer Death Memorial Bench, it’s possible he just died. Which would make Donna’s insistence that he wear the helmet instead of her very interesting. Really, the only weird thing today is that a helmet his wife wore as a young teen fits old man Harry perfectly.
Less Hairy Harry
As always, it’s extremely intimidating following up the amazing ComicBookHarriet, but I’ll do my best. And so, the latest retelling of “a girl used to play arcade games” is continuing on. It still stretches any credibility that Maddie (who has to be over thirty at this point) never once heard about this before. Or that she never wondered what the weird helmet that was apparently just sitting around in the attic for decades was. It’s also kind of funny that Donna doesn’t have it on display or in a shrine, given that “used to be the Eliminator” is literally her only character trait.
It’s extremely sad how the younger generation of Summer and Maddie only exist now so the older generation has someone to recount the Act I strips to. Maddie wanted to see Donna wear it because it was her helmet, that she used to wear and has a history with. There’s no point in Harry wearing it. Apart from it just being kind of hilarious that after weeks of “girls can do everything guys can”, we have “actually, we can’t wear this helmet, so a guy needs to wear it for some reason”.
This Strip Should Be Under Review
Well, at least there’s no more Dinkle in today’s strip. We do have seven panels of a guy watching TV, which isn’t the most engaging thing for a comic to depict. And we have a gag that could’ve been told in just one or two panels, or even in Crankshaft, for that matter. And it’s a complaint that probably gets made repeatedly on every sports radio station in the country on Mondays. But hey, no Dinkle, so things are looking up.
Speaking of looking up, we all have ComicBookHarriet’s return tomorrow to look forward to! For her sake, I hope this “no Dinkle” trend continues.
Don’t Worry, One of You Will Surely Die Soon
Dinkle’s garage door is like bricks, falling leaves, and Becky’s pinned-up sleeve-they all have to be featured as prominently and as often as possible. “This guy has a treble clef painted on his door, isn’t that wacky?”.
I find it really, really hard to believe anyone from Westview could ever receive that many awards.
This strip is just another example of how Batiuk can’t seem to decide if Dinkle is supposed to be an egotistical maniac or actually great. And I wonder if Dinkle’s name legally includes “World’s Greatest Band Director”, or if that’s the award he won (which you think someone would have mentioned it at some point). I guess all those other band directors were wrong when they referred to themselves that way. If Dinkle calling himself WGBD is supposed to be humorous, you shouldn’t have him literally receiving awards referring to himself that way.
Son of Stuck Funky 