Crossover Parma

Well, at least the math is correct in today’s strip. Atomik Komix does indeed have only four titles (The Inedible Pulp, Rip Tide: Scuba Cop, Atomic Ape, and The Girl Scorch), all of which TB has lovingly rendered in big splashy Sunday strips… via guest artists.

What doesn’t add up is this need for more than four titles to do a crossover. TB does it with three comic strips, one of which hasn’t been printed in nearly 30 years. Even a non-crossover strip like this one has crossover elements – Pete is the child of John Darling character Reed Roberts. I suppose none of this is “Mega-Mind-Blowing-Everything-Will-Change”, but nothing that Pete and Durwood could come up with would be either.

Twenty-Four-get This Dreck

Oh hello Mr. Stock Male Nerd Cartoon #27 from 10,000 Clip Art Images ’98 CD-ROM (OS/2 Edition), glad you could make it to today’s strip. If you hadn’t shown up, Pete and Durwood might have had to twiddle their thumbs, and we all know how much they hate slacking off…

Y’know what’s really nerdy? Math! Let’s do some math. Lessee, it’s early May, so we’ll say Atomik Komix most recent issues were published in April. Here’s their titles that we know of and when we first see them “published”.

The Inedible PulpMay 2018
Rip Tide: Scuba CopJuly 2018
Atomic ApeSeptember 2018
The ScorchJanuary 2019

Assuming one issue per month for each title, there would be 33 issues. Assuming a once every two months schedule there would be 17 issues.

The Inedible Pulp – 12 issues/6 issues
Rip Tide: Scuba Cop – 10 issues/5 issues
Atomic Ape – 8 issues/4 issues
The Scorch – 3 issues/2 issues

No math involving this strip or story arc equals entertainment.

Out of Commission

The overestimation of Pete and Durwood’s market value we saw yesterday continues in today’s strip, though now it is Durwood and Pete who are doing the overestimating.

$10 to draw Thatsnought Hewmore into a Sophomoric Sightings panel?! That’s piracy! Durwood draws a couple of unknown titles for a startup comics publisher and is exhibiting at a Free Comic Book Day event, nobody is there to spend money at all, much less on his limited artistic skills. Durwood should be glad-handing customers as much as possible in hopes that they’ll even consider thumbing through next month’s issue of The Inedible Pulp.

Pete’s offer is a bit better, partially because he’s charging less but mostly because he’s sitting next to Les. In contrast to Pete’s attempted $5 grift, Les is trying to unload copies of Lisa’s Story at (presumably) the suggested retail price of: HA! No.

Legends of the Fall

Back in the fall“?!? No, Les, it was Christmastime, for cryin’ out loud, when your non-bio non-stepson took time off from his “work” (oh, please) to hang out with you. And as far as we know, he appeared at the signing only because you were not home at the Taj Moore-hal when Boy Lisa showed up there unexpectedly. “Legs of the book tour” my ass. You wanna talk about legs? Check out Les’ pins in panel one. It’s a wonder they can support the weight of his body plus two tennis rackets!