Mentions: beckoningchasm

Heavy Pedal Parking Lot

Link to today’s strip

What is this, the third wordless strip in a row? I haven’t seen anything like this since Darin had to open some mail. Today Bull is carelessly putting well over $100 worth of Batiukmobiles at risk as his inexplicable tantrum continues. As usual Bantom has confounded me by going off in a direction no sane person could have possibly seen coming. The clear highlight today is that “anger squiggle” over Bull’s head in panel one, which obviously indicates “anger”. Otherwise HOW WOULD WE KNOW???

While I’m still holding some hope that maybe we’re heading for a traffic fatality here or something, the likelihood of anything remotely entertaining happening here is dwindling by the second. No one takes longer to get to the “point” (so to speak) than BanTom does, every single thing simply must be dragged out for days and days on end until no reasonable person can possibly take it anymore. I’ve been doing this for years and it still never fails to enrage me and induce uncontrollable yawning. The notion that even the simplest plot point has to take an entire week (or longer) to build (so to speak) is exactly why no one bothers to read this thing, aside from those of us who like to test their patience, that is. WE GET IT, HE’S ANGRY! Now please, for the love of God, move on.

Hand Of Plod

Link to today’s strip

Yep, the only thing this whirlwind of an arc was missing was a good old fashioned time-killing silent strip. This is almost as suspenseful as wondering when the highway department is going to pick up that deer carcass you pass every day on your morning commute. It’s all in the details today…Jeff’s steam line-free coffee mug (indicating he’s been at this for some time), his tongue sticking out as he works diligently on a puzzle based on a child’s toy (indicating his complete idiocy), the legal pad helpfully labeled “legal pad” (to avoid any confusion) and, last but not least, Jeff’s pencil-holding hand, which indicates he is writing. At least someone involved with FW is.

Codex Idiotica

Link to today’s strip

Well, MY hunch was right on the money…this arc is like a vacuum cleaner. It both sucks AND blows. This annoying old Crankshaft nimrod has (sigh) found his (sigh) Starbuck Jones (sigh) decoder ring, which as fate would have it just happened to be in his attic with the rest of his (sigh) SJ junk. Who’d a thunk it, eh? I thought that perhaps it was safely tucked away in a vault somewhere, or maybe a landfill, resting comfortably among some half-eaten fifty year old hot dogs or something.

IMO it’s time for Batiuk to start killing off a lot of these useless, unpopular and un-cared-about characters of his. Not like with Lisa either, I mean REALLY kill them off. And the beauty of it is they could be SJ-related deaths too. Like Pam and Jeff. Jeff can’t find the ring and suddenly has a childhood flashback where he remembers his demonic hellbeast of a mother forcing him to swallow the stupid ring whole. Then he develops excruciating stomach pains, is rushed to the hospital and dies during an emergency ring-ectomy. After the obligatory funeral strip we cut to Pam, who falls down the attic stairs while disposing of Jeff’s old SJ garbage and also dies. Then we cut to Crankshaft, who becomes so despondent when Pam doesn’t visit that he dies too. The big punchline would be that the secret message was from Chester The Chiseler, who was offering one million dollars for the exact issues Jeff had. The last panel would have Pam lying dead at the bottom of the stairs with SJ #165 draped over her face. See, it sticks with the SJ theme AND kills off three hated characters in one fell swoop. You’d have SJ covers, funerals, childhood traumas, medical emergencies, old people and death, all in one tidy package. And if he’s (ha) reading this, he can use that idea, no charge.

Owen to Circumstances

Link to today’s strip.

I think we have another first, folks.  I think this is the first time Les has been rendered with anything other than loving detail.  Look at that grinning death’s head in panel two.  I’m thinking his jaw is about to unhinge so he can devour that poor woman.

Panel three makes this another strip wherein I wonder what kind of audience Tom Batiuk thinks he has.  In order to get this “joke” you have to know who Owen is and you have to know that he wears that stupid chullo at all times.   That means you have to be a regular reader who enjoys the strip enough to know the cast…the very sort of reader that Tom Batiuk has driven off with pointless, boring characters like Owen.  Seems like one of those unsolvable puzzles.  Could there possibly be such a thing as an Owen fan?  It seems scarcely credible.  And since that’s the case, one would regard an episode like today’s as another example of a strip perfectly designed to appeal to no one.

Is there anyone out there who thinks it’s hilarious that a son would wear the same headgear as his father?  That’s the joke.  I guess it’s supposed to indicate that Owen is following his dad’s fashion sense?

I don’t know about you, but when I look at Owen he doesn’t strike me as the sort who has any respect for his parents…or anyone else, for that matter (except comic book characters of course).   He looks like the kind of lazy slacker who wonders why achievement isn’t handed to him, because he’s so deserving and all.  He looks like the kind of kid who smokes dope at every opportunity…and maybe that’s what Chullo Senior does, too.  The sloped neck, the half-lidded eyes…yeah, I guess dad prepped for a meeting with Les Moore in a very practical manner, by raiding his son’s stash.

Maybe I’ve got this backwards, and Chullo Senior is actually following in his son’s footsteps.  Or maybe the lesson here is that I should get totally baked.  I bet if I did, this strip would be the height of hilarity.