Licorice Pizza

OK, I’ll start positive today. Here’s something I like about today’s strip, Ayers uses bubble panel borders correctly, to denote a memory of dream sequence. Yeah, that doesn’t sound like much, but coming from TB’s pencil for decades it meant “present day in-strip setting change”, a maddening misinterpretation of longstanding comic art language.

And now, for everything else…

A pizza spinning on your turntable used to be a sort of shorthand for “cool”, in that it signified you were someone cool enough to have just a had a party wild and “crazy” enough that some nut tried to play a pizza and everyone was having too much “fun” to notice (see this well-known scene from Sixteen Candles, for example). However, a pizza spinning on your turntable when you are alone in your own room with your headphones on is not “cool”. Silly, whimsical, weird, crazy? Sure… but not cool. One could even describe Crazy’s memory as rather sad, given the contrast between him listening to his pizza alone in his room compared to the sight of a pizza on a turntable signifying a really good time shared by friends.

Furthermore, was the music produced by the pits of a pizza ever “cool”? Since every Youtube video of someone “playing” a pizza on a turntable is just a gag to dub in “That’s Amore”, I am forced to assume that it actually sounds like an EP for a British New Wave band. In that case, yes, it actually was cool.

Hip to be square

I’m sure Epicus Doomus is happy to not be blogging about old men having boring conversations for the first time in months weeks (tip of the Funky felt-tip to you for your endurance), but neither I (billytheskink, hello there) nor the readers are going to be so lucky. Nope, today’s strip offers a change of venue but not of subject, old men just won’t stop blandly contemplating the decline of themselves and their worlds… and our venue may well shift back to last week’s graveyard by the end of the week if Crazy can’t name that tune in 12 notes.

Yep, Crazy’s a goner. Dang, and I had Frd Fairgood in the death pool.

Cheaper By The Gram

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Bernie is already graduating? Alas, we hardly knew him. This generation of Act III WHS students made even less of an impact than Owen and Cody did. At least they, you know, did stuff sometimes.

Why would Bernie need actual photos for his Instagram page? I mean I’m no Insta-whiz or anything, but it’s not like you have to mail your photos in. Thus the gag makes no sense and fails on every possible level. Which sounds about right.

And on that note, I’m passing off to Billytheskink, our Senior Funkstorian. No spoilers, but man, 2022 just keeps getting weirder. At this rate, it’ll devolve into total surrealism by September at the latest.

Heart To Heart Failure

Link To Today’s Strip

It wasn’t enough for Dick Facey to merrily prance and frolic on Mary Sue Sweetwater’s grave. Now, as sort of a coup de grâce to mark another triumph over another old high school foil, he takes a shot at his “best friend”, reminding him that he might keel over and die at any given moment. I have to admit, I kind of like Funky’s “what a dick” semi-smirk in panel three, as it’s actually an appropriate facial expression there. I imagine it’s similar to the face Ayers makes when BatHam tells him what he’s putting in the word balloons.

A Smug Bearded Dick With Ears Walks Into A Bar

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I studied this one for a while, trying to figure out what the smug bearded jerk’s massive word balloons were supposed to mean. “Suspend his disbelief” in what? Life? Death? Funerals? Roulette? The continued existence of Bob Dylan? Then, after some really annoying pondering, it started to make sense, sort of, in a roundabout and stupid way. I believe that what Les means here is that he refuses to acknowledge that he’s getting old and will die relatively soon, choosing instead to willfully ignore this harsh reality. Which is really out of character for Les when you think about it, as the guy’s entire identity is based around death. Unfortunately though, not his.

Anyhow, this is what happens when BatYam tries to out-clever himself. Everything devolves into a weird, half-assed mess where you end up wasting valuable minutes trying to figure out what the hell is going on. He could have simply said “I try not to think about it” and saved all kinds of word balloon space, but he’d have just wasted it anyway. God I hate Les so much, curse all you people who say “I’d even prefer a Les arc over this”. Never, ever wish for that, it’s bad mojo.