All The News That’s Fit To Sit

“Really good news” for Ruby and Flash in today’s strip! We learned the “really good news” yesterday, of course, and Ruby and Flash will have to wait to learn it until… well, hopefully sometime this week. Please let them learn it sometime this week!

“What is the point of this strip?” is a question that could be asked about Funky Winkerbean almost daily, yes, and it is a question that is never going to lead to any satisfying answers… but let’s pontificate anyway on today’s long panel of pointlessness. Is there really any reason at all to not have Durwood, Mindy, and Mopey Pete tell Ruby and Flash in this strip that they will be honored at Comic-Con in a month? Not revealing the news to them today does absolutely nothing. There is no suspense for the reader because we all learned the news yesterday. There is no suspense or anticipation for the characters because they have barely expressed the need or even want to be recognized for their work. Ruby and Flash have been glorified props in nearly every strip they have appeared in, existing almost solely to help Atomik Komix’s hard-shirking employees shirk even harder. Why wouldn’t Comic-Con and the Eisner Awards reach out to Ruby and Flash directly instead of relaying the news to Pete? Why wouldn’t these three wait for the Eisner folks to inform Ruby and Flash even if they got the news first? Why would Ruby offer her sad-sack take on the state of the comics industry as a response to the question “guess what?” posed by a coworker? Shouldn’t everyone who works at Atomik Komix be well aware of the sales of both their titles and the titles of their competitors? And what is Flash even doing here? He doesn’t work for Atomik Komix. Please tell me he’s not going to become a fixture, the Dinkle to Pete’s Lefty…

All this is doing is padding out the week worse than I padded out the preceding paragraph by asking hopeless and rhetorical questions. Oh, silly me, the point of this strip was in front of me the whole time!

#abitlame

Hey, no Batton Thomas for Mr. Theskink in today’s strip! Nope, just comic people younger than Batton talking about comic people even older than Batton. That’s… better? I’ll let you all tell me.

There is, of course, an actual Hall Of Fame class inducted at the San Diego Comic-Con every year, which is part of the Eisner Awards. Not sure why TB didn’t drop the Eisner name in there before “Hall Of Fame”, but I guess that isn’t critically germane to the plot… that age-old story of a trio of 5th rate comic book company employees getting an e-mail about the acceptance of their nomination of people far more talented than them for the Eisner Awards Hall Of Fame.

Check out that list of real life Hall Of Famers, though. That’s impressive company. Even the A and B names on the first page of inductees alone is a who’s who of comic legends (I did notice the conspicuous absence of a certain B name). It says a lot about how TB wants Ruby and Flash to viewed in the Batiukverse… we’re talking Les-level here. Wowzers!

She’s Gotta Have It

Link To The Sunday’s Strip

OK, so apparently Batiuk recently participated in some sort of archeological joke dig and found this one deep in the bowels of Henny Youngman’s crypt. “Take my wife…please! With the shopping! And the credit card bills! She just doesn’t understand the value of my hard-earned dollars! Because she’s a WOMAN, you see?”.

Yes, unlike in the relatively recent past, a guy’s wife can’t sneak off to the mall and run up a credit card tab behind his back anymore, because technology. Funky is wise to Holly’s womanly tricks (wink, wink) and now HE’S a step ahead of HER. Which is rare and noteworthy, as you know how women are, with their womanly schemes and feminine wiles and all. Sigh. You think he would have finally outgrown the “boys vs. gurls” trope by now but obviously that one is just too deeply ingrained, which is as far as I’m taking that topic this time around. Blech.

And on that note I’m heading back to the bench until my next at bat, stay tuned for billytheskink, who hopefully managed to dodge ol’ Batton Thomas this time around.

Deere, John

Link To This One

Wow, what a miserable pratfall of a gag. “Comic book store owners are shitty businessmen and total imbeciles”…that’s what I got out of this peculiar little arc. BatYam’s real-life comic book store must love it when he meanders by for a visit. Maybe they’ll tape this strip to the wall behind the cash register. You know, ironically. Get it?

Coming next week: Les’ annual cancer screening ends with Les sneering “even I could have gotten into oncology school” as his doctor inexplicably smirks.

“Remember When” Is The Lowest Form Of Conversation

Link To Today’s FW

I used to know a guy who claimed to have been on the outer fringes of the music business back in the day and he had a million and a half stories just like Batton’s.

“Yeah, Jerry and Bob sure threw some fun parties. They asked me if I wanted to join their new band, but I’d just gotten into the drill press operator’s union so I passed. So yeah, I coulda been in the Grateful Dead, but you know.”

He was pretty annoying but he was no Batton Thomas, that’s for sure. Then again, who is? Wait…do NOT answer that. Anyway, yeah, BatYam obviously saw a news story about that stupid comic book being auctioned and right after he settled down and took a brief nap he got right to work on this timely arc so he could mention it in that annoying “if only we’d known then what we know now” kind of way of his where he conveniently ignores the fact that if everyone had saved those old comic books they wouldn’t be rare or especially valuable, like with those poor souls with closets full of worthless Beanie Babies. It would have been a funnier story if Batton’s mom had thrown it out, but in BatWurst’s zeal to re-tell the story that thought must not have occurred to him. That’s why the editor’s role is (guffaw) so crucial. Hypothetically speaking, of course.