When a Stranger Calls.

Link to today’s strip

Comic Book Harriet back for another turn at the Train Wreck Report. Thanks to Epicus for seeing us through last week! Your hard work on this wonderful little blog deserves praise.

Caucayla sure looks haggard in panel one. Also she seems to be drying the dishes, even though she is standing nowhere near a sink. Also, if Les is rolling in the published author, tenured teacher, kill fee dough, why don’t they have an electric dishwasher? Does Les need a flesh and blood woman to dry his dishes? Is this like…a fetish for him? Is that why Cayla looks so depressed?

Cayla in panel two echoed my thoughts when reading this for the first time. Summer calls? Like the season? I guess it is nearing the middle of May…maybe Les, as a teacher, is especially attuned his students’ bipolar spring emotions of crushing ennui and building excitement. The call of summer.

Then I was all like, oh yeah, Les has a daughter named Summer…right. Wonder when the last time we heard from her is? Doesn’t Cayla have a daughter too? Weird.

Some Mil-Dew And Some Mil-Don’t

Link To Today’s Strip

Blech, what an unsightly mess this is, even by fictional Sunday comic book cover standards. A mildew gag…really? Yikes. And “Wild And Watery Pulp Fiction”??? Really? Sounds like someone’s comic books might have gotten a little soggy in the not-too-distant past, as this is sort of weirdly specific in a discomforting kind of way. A superhero who’s susceptible to mildew…truly the hero the Funkyverse needs.

Maybe the next Atomik Komix (I will NEVER not hate typing that) title could be “The Horrible Hack” and, like with mildew and newsprint, his natural enemy would be online comic strip snark blogs. “Ha ha ha, you’ll NEVER escape the deadly grip of my continuity ray, Horrible Hack! BAH ha ha ha!”.

Stayed tuned for Comic Book Harriet, who’s throwing herself on the grenade tomorrow!

The Power And The Snore-y

Link To Today’s Strip

Lacking anything of actual substance to say, strong female role model Cindy opts to brag about her salary instead, much to Dick Facey’s infernally smirking delight. What a waste of time, ink and paper. Maybe next year the “mass com” class can convert to some sort of pizza and comic books workshop, in which case they’ll have a whole host of interesting guest speakers to choose from.

The Internet Did It

Link To Today’s Idiocy

Yes, it was The Internet, the very same internet that saved Cindy’s flagging career. Everything used to be sort of almost halfway decent, then These Kids Today came along with their “world wide web” and the gizmos and such and yadda yadda yadda, it’s all mostly bullshit now. Sort of like how FW itself used to be halfway decent, then Lisa got wasted at a party and yadda yadda yadda everyone became a wry cynical asshole…if they managed to survive at all.

Everyone knows why BatBrain hates the internet so much, it’s given his dozens of critics a medium with which they can band together and mock his feeble efforts in unison as opposed to having to sit down and pen a letter to the editor of their local newspaper, a letter no one was ever going to read anyhow. Well I say “hard cheese” to that, my good sir. As long as I have some sort of functional internet access this blog isn’t going anywhere until that final Sunday strip where they FINALLY plop Les’ casket into the cold frozen leaf-strewn earth. Bank on it.

Fake It Til You Make It

Link To Today’s Thing

“My dad says your comic strip doesn’t really address the issues that young people face today and you just say that in your interviews to give the impression that FW is far more substantive than it actually is.”

“Ummmmmm, uh, yeah.”

Bernie’s dad sounds like he’s quite a character. He must be beaming with pride, what with Bernie just about ready to move up to 13th grade and all. Why is everyone pretending that Cindy is still a news anchor? Her last “big story” involved a ninety year old actor talking about the 1950s and while it may have made for a ripping good yarn, it’s hardly “news”, fake or otherwise.