Retch-A-Sketch

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And as the winter solstice draws nigh, The Bearded Dick With Ears shall emerge from his smug frozen tomb to wreak wordplay and sarcasm across the dormant mid-central Ohio landscape, casting his obnoxious shadow as the sun’s rays fade into anecdotes about his dead wife and the horrors of authordom.

Oh swell, just in time for the holidays. Look at him there in panel one…”what a dick” neatly summarizes THAT one. This is some book tour, apparently he’s gracing EVERY town in Ohio with his presence, those poor bastards. “Lisa’s Trilogy” must be really burning up the best-seller list in the “not real book, collection of previously-published old comic strips in book form” category.

And Boy Lisa’s bizarre trek continues unabated today as he wanders around Ohio in a haze, interacting with Lisa’s survivors, replacements and legacy books, pining away wistfully for his beloved “mom” and doing his very best to emulate her special brand of bland and quite frankly annoying saintly altruism. He’s doing a damn fine job of it too, as my desire to behead him has definitely multiplied exponentially ever since this “mom” silliness began.

Les’ hardcore fans are going to freak upon discovering that copies of “Trilogy” exist with both Les’ and Boy Lisa’s signatures. I can easily foresee Ebay bidding wars with prices skyrocketing well into the tens of dollars for that collector’s item. Seriously though, wouldn’t Boy Lisa be entitled to a cut of the sales here? He wasn’t stupid enough to illustrate those books (and come up with the whole idea for “Prelude”) for free…was he? I assume Les secretly hates him because a) he’s Frankie’s spawn and b) he makes a living in Hollywood’s immoral cesspool of Lisa’s Story-ruining fiends and his only goal here is to bleed him dry, but then again it’s entirely possible that Darin is indeed just that dumb.

My Mother The Trilogy

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That certainly escalated quickly. The insane “mom” stuff is beyond snark or parody at this point, as Batty’s endless quest to re-live and bask in the glory of his “Lisa’s Story” heyday has him turning every character in Les’ orbit into Lisa-worshiping drones who never, ever stop singing her praises and spreading The Word.  Obviously Boy Lisa has no idea what Lisa would have thought of Cayla, as he barely even knew her and not only that, “what Lisa thinks about Cayla” has already been (ahem) adequately covered.

In “real life” Darin’s friends and family would probably be growing quite concerned regarding his bizarre Lisa obsession. Wandering around Westview talking about her, giving a huge cash windfall to a Lisa charity, always referring to her as “mom” as if she raised him, it’s very peculiar behavior. What kind of father with a child Skyler’s age has time to meander around to book signings on a whim? What did he do, arrive at his parent’s or in law’s house and announce that he was going out to pay tribute to his “real” mother now? It’s deranged.

And The Signing Said Annoying Bearded Geeky People Need Not Apply

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Oh, OK, I get it now. This gag is obviously aimed at Batiuk’s fellow “authors”, or at least those who’ve participated in book signings. See, if you’re doing a book signing and it’s a busy and successful book signing, you won’t have the time to fool around with your technology device and check your email, as you’re way too busy signing books. At the book signing. Hilarious. “Les always says”…uh yeah Cayla, Les says a lot of things but Confucius he ain’t.

And just think, if you’ve written a Trilogy that’s THREE books, hence thrice the signings. Book signings, just to be clear. I know I say this a lot but goddamn, that is some of the clunkiest and downright piss-poor dialog ever written, by anyone, ever. He just has a knack for putting together sentences that simply couldn’t exist anywhere else. The artwork kind of blows too, especially Cayla in that last panel, as I’m pretty sure she still had teeth the last time we saw her. Although a toothless woman delivering a toothless punch line is pretty apt.

Speaking of crappy writing, I hate how everyone always endlessly repeats the full official title of everything every single time they mention it.

“Les isn’t here, he’s at a Lisa’s Trilogy book signing.”
“How are the Lisa’s Trilogy book signings going?”
“The Lisa’s Trilogy book signings are going well. Like Les always says, it’s a great Lisa’s Trilogy book signing if a SoSF guest host loses it and goes completely off the rails over typing the words “signing” and “Lisa’s Trilogy” over and over again!”

Maybe that’s why he does it, or maybe he just assumes his readers are total imbeciles, or maybe he’s just extremely lazy. I figure it’s all of the above plus a bunch of other stuff I don’t know (and don’t want to know) about. It’s one of his most annoying traits and whether he grasps it or not it makes his characters seem like total idiots.

The Blandening

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It’s your old pal Epicus, here to steer the Good Ship SoSF through this most joyous and happiest of all seasons. And you’d better enjoy it now, as the characters are talking about none other than Les f*cking Moore again, which is never a good omen. It’s like noticing that one of the presents under the tree is the exact shape, size and weight of the “Lisa’s Story Trilogy”…”we know you really like that stupid comic strip and it was 90% off!”.

Cayla AND Boy Lisa interacting in the same strip? Whaaaaaaat? He’s really treading on some bland territory here, one false wry remark could create a veritable cataclysm of boredom the likes of which we haven’t seen since last week. Of course one could wonder why Boy Lisa, Tech Wizard didn’t reach out to see if Les would be home before he graciously dropped by totally unannounced but hey, it’s the holidays. And by the end of the arc it’ll scarcely matter anyhow.

Les is still skittering around Ohio signing copies of his “Trilogy”, eh? Perhaps he has some sort of cult following there, with a small army of Les-heads who follow him from signing to signing dosing themselves with Prozac and selling veggie pizzas from their off-brand eastern European robin’s egg blue cars. “I’m buying TWO copies of the Trilogy! One as an investment, the other as a valuable Lisa resource to settle all those Lisa-related bar wagers!”.

Totally Unaware One Moment, Rockin’ And Rollin’ The Next

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A not-altogether un-chuckle-worthy Sunday effort, although it’d be funnier if The Author hadn’t spent YEARS on depicting Mort as a total vegetable. What was the point of that long-forgotten, completely depressing and ultimately meaningless Alzheimer’s arc? Morty is one of the strip’s more likeable characters, he could have been indulging in this sort of wackiness all along but nope, he had to “address” yet another “serious issue” instead. Just like when Cory returned home as a totally upright paragon of virtue, these FW characters don’t even notice these incredible changes in their families and friends, preferring to wryly shrug and roll their eyes over these miraculous transformations.