Tag: Cayla

Ghosts of Strips Prescient.

Link to Today’s Comic.

And BOOM we’re there! Like TommyBats had suddenly remembered he didn’t have a Comic Con angle this year and so last-minute pulled this out of his self-aggrandizing ass.

As some of you may know, the Stuck Funky writer’s bullpen have no ability to preview Sunday strips. So, may I say, that I predicted today’s strip on Thursday nearly perfectly, and many commenters also guessed the Women-Be-Shopping angle.

And what kind of nonsense is that last panel? Long boxes? People buying and selling comic books? SDCC is dominated by the synergistic interests of megaconglomerates like Disney/Marvel/Fox/Lucasfilm and AT&T/Warner Bros/DC Comics. It’s a pop culture trade show, with booth after corporate booth, trying to generate buzz on the newest Netflix TV Show, Marvel Movie, Video Game, or Cartoon in order to increase stock prices based on predicted reception of a new release. It’s the nerd equivalent of wandering through the Varied Industries building at the State Fair, while people try to sell you hot tubs, massage chairs, and seamless gutters.

You want a folksy but crowded ‘farmer’s market’ of genuine nerds pursuing private enterprise? Don’t go to San Diego.

Two is Agony so Three’s a Clown.

Link to Today’s Comic.

Cayla seems to think that during their trip to Sandy Eggo they will actually get to ‘see the sights.’ Eat sushi in Little Tokyo, dance to mariachi music in Old Town, maybe go to the zoo to make interracial jokes about the pandas. (All things I made time to do during my Botcon San Diego trip.)

Obviously Les is planning the vacation will take place entirely within the confines of the San Diego Convention Center. Cayla will be lucky to drag him across Harbor Drive for a single sitdown meal that isn’t convention concessions food.

I’m guessing that she’ll spend most of the convention pressed against the glass in the Sails Pavilion, staring out the window wistfully at the Gaslamp Quarter; surrounded by things she neither understands nor cares for.

No wonder Les wants to bring Crazy Harry along. He wants a solid tie breaking vote in favor of skipping supper again to wait in the endless Hall H line for another seven hours.

Eisnerian Gothic

Link to Today’s Comic.

I would make some kind of comment on Caucayla not knowing the location of the awards because Wimmin Amirite? But apparently Les previously didn’t even know the award existed.

I’ve been to San Diego for a Botcon once in the summer. It was really nice coastal climate, and not any hotter or muggier than Midwestern summer can get. And since when has CauCayla been heat intolerant?

The second panel is pretty great though, with Darin fleeing from a conversation still taking place while Les and Cayla do their best impersonations of Queen Elizabeth, with a wave goodbye more wooden than Cigar Store Indians. Cayla has a halo around her head…perhaps a first miracle on her own path to sainthood?

This art is really starting to annoy me though. Everyone’s face has become interchangeable. You remember when Cayla had a broad nose and Darin had a beak? The artist sure doesn’t. He has two noses to use, C-shaped or L shaped, and he barely remembers which character gets which. Batiuk can’t be bothered to push Burchett for consistency of character design in a strip worshiping comics as an art form next to opera in importance.

Compare with yesterday’s Crankshaft with art by Davis. Look at that detail! He carefully drew the wedding picture on the wall as a totem of the romantic creature in Ralph that the drive-in waitress has reawakened in him.

All Les and Cayla get on their wall is the avant garde, “Grey Rectangle Against Grey Background.”

Don’t be yellow

Today’s strip shows the extremely jaundiced Linda speaking to Cayla in the main office about this week’s storyline. Even though yesterday’s strip said that Les was the faculty advisor of The Bleat, Linda today suggests that she’s the faculty advisor, even though unlike Les, we’ve never in fact seen her in that position. Guess Linda’s just one of those  busybody teachers who has her hand in literally everything at the school.

Anyway, you have to love the claim that what’s happened this week is an example of those kids “thinking independently”. It just so happens that their “thinking independently” constitutes bullying the principal on behalf of their loathsome faculty advisor over a subject that none of those kids could actually care about. Yes, Batiuk, I’m sure that all these kids, upon seeing Les’ tantrum, would be persuaded that publicly supporting him would be the proper thing to do, potentially slandering the principal in the process.

And it’s not surprising. If you were to view Batiuk’s work in total, his idea of a child thinking independently and admirably would be one who agrees with everything he, or his author avatar, believes. Otherwise they’re just foolish and intellectually vapid. (Seriously, he had Owen not knowing what glass is) Batiuk may think that Cayla’s comment is a joke, but his entire oeuvre shows that she ought to be completely serious.

Anyway, Linda really ought to get to a doctor to deal with her jaundice. Jesus.

My Mother The Trilogy

Link To Today’s Strip

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.