Mentions: charlesnotinwestview

Take a Pass Too, Batiuk

“Wine with DeWine“. I had no idea what this was supposed to mean until I searched and realized that’s the name of the governor of Ohio. I’m not sure if Batiuk thinks that everyone reading this strip will both remember that it takes place in Ohio and immediately recognize the Ohio governor’s name, or maybe he realizes that nobody outside the state (or his house) pays attention to the strip anymore.
I still have no idea what this is supposed to mean, actually. I’m guessing he’s talking about drinking wine while watching the governor’s press conferences (I have a strong suspicion that this entire “Funky gripes at an AA meeting” storyline was created just because Batiuk thinks it’s funny that “DeWine” sounds like “wine”), but I’d like to think that mister “Not to do” was just hanging out with the governor on a regular basis at his shuttered restaurant.
Also, what work was Funky doing alone in an empty restaurant that was closed for months that he couldn’t do from home?

Does This Spell The End?

Having been informed in today’s strip that the name of his newfound comic book company is already trademarked, Chester decides to employ the strategy of phonetic misspelling that made the TurboGrafx-16 the number one name in video games.

I find this strip to be fairly discordant because of the use of “Grandpa Google” combined with the revelation that an Atomic Comics already once existed. First, “Grandpa Google”… please stop trying to either make this a thing people say or pretend that it already is a thing people say. It is not and it never will be. However, stupid as it is, I can allow that it is some kind of in-universe slang. But that brings in the second point of discord. If this is a fictional universe in which people say “Grandpa Google” without being blackmailed then why does “Atomic Comics” have to be an unusable trademark? Skirting a real-life trademark is a spectacularly uninteresting story arc, not to mention that “Atomik Komix” isn’t likely to stave off a lawsuit that “Atomic Comics” would invite anyways. This makes the set up of The Phantom Menace look like Macbeth.