Tag: Boy Lisa

Hello Mister Kettle Black, My Name Is Pot

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“Gratuitous deaths”…LOL! Act III was built on gratuitous deaths…well, in fairness it was only one. But still, it was REALLY gratuitous. Sigh, they don’t kill ’em off like that anymore, no siree they don’t.

Well, for starters this strip marks the exact moment Batom lost interest in the premise. Chester is already cynically compromising his principles regarding his lifelong passion, which means BatNom has run out of dialog already, which means we’re probably in for a week’s worth of premise rehashing followed by a panel of tentative pondering followed by a ten month hiatus before this story reappears out of nowhere like a persistent rash. The nonsense about the comic books of yore was the entire point of this five week trudge, now that he’s there he’s all out of ideas and I guarantee there aren’t any in the forecast either.

Speaking of comic books of yore, what era of comic book history is BatChest babbling about here? Is he talking about the comic books of the 1950s specifically here or is this era of comic book history just a hypothetical fantasy thing that never actually existed? Maybe if he wasn’t so f*cking lazy he could have fleshed out the 1950s style comic book title he already created instead of wasting a month and a half on a pointless boring rant about how comic books were so much better in the 1950s but those who can do and those who can’t complain, I suppose.

We Can Be Zeroes Just For One Day

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Yes, because these NEWFANGLED COMIC BOOKS TODAY always insist on blurring the lines between heroes and villains with their complicated dark, grim and gritty characters and (zzzzzzzzzzz). Five full weeks to introduce the premise and he’s already repeating it…some things never change. That look Pete & Boy Lisa are exchanging seems to represent “skepticism”, although it could just be shitty artwork. There’s just no way of knowing until next Tuesday when he (most likely) finally stops rehashing the premise.

I mean hey, if Chester wants to squander his fortune on comic book nostalgia that’s his business but honestly this entire “plan” seems quite squirrely to me. But hey, sure, go against the grain and sell comic books no one likes because if Starbuck Jones is any indication these “Atomic Comics” will be worth a mint thirty or fifty or seventy years from now, pretty much exactly when Skyler will be awash in his own comic book nostalgia, yearning for the days when he’d hide in the attic with his phablet reading digital copies of his favorite Atomic Comic titles, like “Meek Moon Mile” or “Space Penis” with a few fat-free granola cookies and a glass of almond milk on the side. If he’s really lucky he’ll find his old SJ decoder SD card too, but one thing at a time for now please.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tom

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So, after five weeks of plodding ponderous dialog and endless time-wasting the premise is at long last revealed and…believe it or not…it involves comic (sigh) books…again. Chester wants to resurrect the “spirit” of those wonderful old Batom Comics of yesteryear. Bored listless employees, a fabled comic book artist working children’s birthday parties to make ends meet, an annoying cigar-chomping boss…yep, when Batom Comics folded it left a huge gaping void in the industry all right, a void only Pete and his faithful sidekick Boy Lisa can fill. If he’s looking for two boring nerds who daydream and skip work a lot, he totally nailed it.

“Batom”…”atom”…”ic”…sure Chester, makes sense to me. I suppose it’s better than “Bamto Comics” or “Tobam Occmis”…albeit not by a whole lot though. I can see the headlines now…

“Atomic Bomb – Hagglemore Bankrupted By Idiotic Dream, Drinking Heavily”

“Atomic Waste – Unsold Comic Books Worthless As Pulp & Do Not Degrade, Placing Strain On Local Landfills”

“Atomic Pile – Atomic Comics Creditors At Critical Mass As Hagglemore Sighted In Caymans”

“Atomic Fallout – Starbuck Sequels On Hiatus After Creative Team Leaves For Stupid New Gig, Hundreds Left Unemployed, Future Of Franchise In Doubt”

Yes siree, it’s a can’t-miss proposition. Everywhere you go these days all you hear are “these kids today” sighing to themselves over the comic book racks, sadly lamenting how today’s comic books are totally worthless when compared to the old-timey Golden Age comic books they can’t possibly remember. If you don’t believe me just visit your local megaplex and see the throngs of kids ignoring the latest superhero flicks, there’s all the proof you need. Kids today aren’t that much different than their parents were, they just want to sit in the attic with their vape pens and energy drinks and bags of flakka and read some good old fashioned comic books just like dear old dad used to do before the comic book industry sold them out and destroyed their dreams back in 1940 or 1960 or 1980 or thereabouts. By golly, Chester just wants to bring that “spirit” back and judging by the reaction from “young” Pete and Darin he’s really on to something here. “Cool”…”sweet”…he really captures the way the kids speak nowadays, doesn’t he?

Grim And Bear It

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Ha ha ha ha. TOM BATIUK, of all people, is doing an arc about how Chester dislikes “grim and gritty” comic book titles. What balls. After turning his once-lighthearted and humor-based comic strip into a litany of death, cancer, amputation and an endless cavalcade of human misery, he’s doing a “story” centering around how “dark” modern comic books are. Two words…”f*ck” and “you”, Tom. I’ve never seen a comic book where the lead character’s parents roundly reject her as she agonizingly dies of cancer, nor have I ever seen one where a trombone prodigy loses her arm in a car accident or one where the once-happy-go-lucky titular character drinks himself into thoughts of suicide either. Leave it to Tombat to inadvertently insult himself in his own strip. What a maroon.

So why did this require a cross-country trip? They couldn’t have had this discussion over the phone? So basically BatNard wasted five entire weeks on this just so he could work a few fictional Batom Comics “props” into the artwork for his own amusement. The self-indulgence is off the scale here and nearly approaches “Lisa’s Story” degrees of head-up-own-assed-ness.

We’re Jambing…I Hope You Like Jambing Too

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“Door jamb”??? That’s not a “door jamb”. Sigh. What can you even say about such a stupid and blatant piece of time-killing tripe like this? Maybe BatTrudge has a secret fantasy about an extremely wealthy FW fan who got rich after selling his paperback FW collection and now lives in a FW-themed mansion full of FW-related trinkets, like the soda machine from King Features main office or the label from the bottle of prescription cough syrup Batom slammed before he dreamed up this steaming pile of hogwash. It’s about as plausible as this stupid premise is. I’d be willing to wager that this strip represents the very first time the words “door jamb” have ever been used in a comic strip, unless Crankshaft or Mary Worth had some home remodeling done recently.

Whenever he does one of these idiotic vertical strips I always picture the guy trying to fit it into that day’s comics page, banging his head on his desk and shaking his fist skyward while screaming “BAAATIIIIUK!!!!!”. That’s two of them in just a few weeks, which is two too many IMO. If you really need to kill all this time perhaps a (ahem) “re-assessment” of your “writing” abilities needs to happen (fat chance).

“Holy door jamb”…sigh again. It’s not even a joke. Pete whispers to Boy Lisa…”this guy has Batom in the belfry”…yes it’s a terrible, terrible pun but still 1000% better than…this. Coming tomorrow: Pete gets to use the same urinal Phil Holt used back in the day and Boy Lisa helps himself to a few rolls of official Batom Inc. toilet paper that Chester swiped when he was looting the Batom offices. This segues neatly into a three week long discussion about how the old timey hand-cranked pencil sharpeners were just SO MUCH BETTER than these modern electric ones they force us to use nowadays.