Ascent of a Woman

TB is a master of “tell, don’t show”, a story-telling characteristic that seems like it might be a nearly serviceable way to set up a murder-mystery, as ill-suited as it is for comic strips. In today’s strip, however, he is employing the unusual technique of “show and tell explicitly in an unengaging way”. As I said yesterday, subtlety is dead in the Batiukverse. Now we’re just playing out the week(s) to find out if these filmstrip-bordered panels are Cindy’s in-production documentary, a documentary that Cindy and Jessica are watching, or a procrastinating fever dream that even Pete and Durwood would “stand in line” for.

I must admit, though, I do like Hagar The Horrible there in panel 3 and his Petri dish stemware. Looks like it holds nearly one whole ounce!

Sneers of a Clown

Panel 1 in today’s strip is brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

A remarkable number of partygoers, including Brinkel himself, apparently failed to understand the “masque” part of masquerade… and how embarrassing, two other heavyset guys showed up not only dressed as the same character, but in the exact same costume as Brinkel. Brinkel and two other schlubs dressing as Pagliacci, the clown in an opera about a comic actor who murders an actress, to a masquerade ball costume party where a comic actor allegedly murders an actress was rumored to be more than a coincidence because subtlety’s funeral was last week and TB was a pallbearer.

Doc-whodunnit?

Hello, I’m billytheskink and you’re not. Be thankful for that, too, as I’m doing two weeks time writing blog posts about Funky Winkerbean and the endless Butter Brinkel Battle (and you’re not).

Back to the… are we watching the documentary in today’s strip? Is that what these filmstrip borders mean?

The very late Valerie Pond was about to leave the studio that employed Brinkel when she met her untimely death. Is this factoid a red herring or a critical bit of evidence in this pointlessly re-opening case?

All good questions… with answers that I do not actually care about one bit. What I do want answered, though, is how you check guests against an invite list at a masquerade ball.

How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at All?

Welcome to the Baldo crossover you never asked for. Behold the Fairgoods’ thought-provoking and sensitive  solution to the contemporary issue of being separated by work: why should Jessica work remotely on Cindy’s documentary, living with her husband and her preschooler, when she can parent remotely, thanks to a telepresence robot? Oh, those wacky fortysomething millennials!

The Unbearable Heaviness of Brinkel

So we began and ended the week with a fat joke. Yep, this is how Emmy winning content gets made, folks….

Along with the flagrant retconning, jaw-dropping anachronisms, and slapdash draughtsmanship, the very sequencing of this week’s strips annoyed me so effin’ much that I’ve gone and rearranged them in logical order on their own page: sonofstuckfunky.com/the-butter-brinkel-story-corrected-for-continuity.

As Monday is the first of a new month (jeeze, it’s already July?) , your genial hosts here at SoSF don’t have the so-called luxury of being able to peep next week’s strips in advance. And Sunday’s strips are never available ahead of time, so don’t bother checking in around here until midnight Eastern (hopefully you’ve got better things to do on a Saturday night…I haven’t…) And heads up: stepping to the plate on Monday is none other than billytheskink! Billy has perhaps the broadest knowledge of Act I and Act II, and the ability to resurrect vintage strips, and shows a better grasp of continuity in the Funkivers than Thomas Martin Batiuk himself, and is handy with haiku. I salute him, along with @epicusdoomus, who manages the bullpen, and every guest author, past and present, over nine years of this blog, and most of all, you, the reader.