careers in the military not guaranteeing future success

Unexploded Ordinance

This post. This whole arc. Wally’s return. It’s been a struggle for me to attack. For a very long time I couldn’t really figure out why. On paper, there’s a lot to work with. Maybe too much, maybe that was part of the problem.

At first I wondered if it was because I was, once again, taking this marathon half-year of a deep dive away from John Howard. Should I save some of this stuff for a potential Wally retrospective in the future? But with the literally hundreds of stupid minutiae that the Funkyverse waves around in my face, begging me to snark and dissect, would I ever get back around to it? After all, I’ve got green pitchers and Jinx Bushka waiting for me! This is a John dive, yeah. But you can’t talk about DSH without talking about Lefty, and you can’t talk about Lefty without talking about Wally. And you can’t talk about Wally without talking about…this.

*Hey, Wally, did you know that Becky is married now? I wonder how you’ll react when you learn that! Boy I can’t wait to see that gut wrenching moment.*

Wally Earns His Second Nickel.

On July 12, 2009, the front door to the Howard home opened… and Wally Winkerbean came back.

Nyuk-lehead

Wally goes full-on “Doug Funnie talking to Patty Mayonaise” in today’s strip because… that’s what this story arc requires?

Adeela is not exactly winning Miss Manners’ stamp of approval here either though. She also seems to think she has already introduced herself to Wally (or expected him to eavesdrop when she introduced herself to Professor Forehead, I guess). Is she just not a Three Stooges fan or is she one of those people who prefer Shemp to Curly?

Pair-able of the Sour

Fair or unfair, the military briefing-college class parallels continue in today’s strip. Wally and Adeela are bad at engaging others in conversation. Professor Forehead makes Ralph from Sally Forth proud by assigning a group project on day one so he doesn’t have to spend any time at all lecturing these students. Buddy may have disappeared… I’m sorry that I am just recapping the strip, but I don’t know what else to say here.

What will happen when Wally and Adeela finally speak to each other (presumably) three and a half weeks from now? The suspense is mildly irritating me.

Syllabuster

It is not really fair for me to question the comparison of a military briefing to first day of an unidentified community college class as in today’s strip. While I have my suspicions about how appropriate the comparison is, I have only experienced the latter situation.

I will, however, point out that both Colonel Crew-Cut and Professor Forehead are awkwardly stating what both their audience in the room already know and what newspaper comic strip readers could reasonably infer without such clunky exposition. It is like TB leading off each strip with a drawing of him saying:

The following is a comic strip I wrote. It carries the weight of substantial ideas. Silver Age Flash is also important literature.

Uh, maybe I shouldn’t have thrown that idea out there…