Tag: Cayla

It’s Grrrr-Ate!!!

Link To Today’s Strip

Special thanks to Charles for a fantastic debut and the rest of Team SoSF for just being you!

If only Les could find a way to do his book tour DURING the annual cancer fun run, then EVERYTHING would FINALLY be going his way! That way he could still Lisa his Lisa while simultaneously Lisa-ing. While there’s nothing really wrong with BatNom using FW to promote himself like this it might be a little more…uh…”interesting” if he wasn’t so obvious and ham-fisted about it. “These new Lisa’s Legacy shirts are GREAT! Machine-washable and no more nipple-chafing either!”.

It’s sort of tough to really viciously snark on a charity cancer fun run, but every time I read the words “Lisa’s Legacy” I can’t help but think to myself that “Lisa’s Legacy” is really just a bunch of totally insufferable comic strips, as she wasn’t even a real person. A few years of Lisa sitting under a tree and calling Les “Spanky” followed by a decade of strips featuring Les talking about it is not exactly a “legacy”, unless you happen to be one of those people who assigns vast importance to obscure mundane things. You know who I mean.

Still though, I really want one of those “Lisa’s Legacy” T-shirts, as IMO not enough people look at me quizzically these days. My ultimate SoSF dream is to attend a Batiuk book signing, ask him a bunch of questions about obscure FW characters (“whatever happened to Mooch?”) then hand him a FBOFW collection to autograph.

I’ve got nothing

Today’s strip

I don’t know quite what to make of this. Usually I can tell what the punchline’s supposed to mean so I can ascertain how unsuccessful Batiuk is, but this leaves me baffled. Are the Rotary Mentors called “Angels” or something? That must be it.

And no doubt that made Cayla think for a moment that Les had lost his mind before he explained his odd comment. I wonder if she was supposed to (like me) think that Les has gone around the bend and meant that Lisa was going to make sure everything worked by offering spiritual support for the Run.

The Run… God, it’s this dumb thing again. Even worse as they have decided to have printed t-shirts with Lisa sitting on that damn bench, as if that would mean anything to anyone.

Other annoying things: The fact that it’s always called “The Lisa’s Legacy Run” no matter what. That Cayla is apparently packing Les’s suitcase. That Les’s smug smirk appears in every panel where he’s facing us. That Cayla calls Les “The World Famous Author” despite the fact that his signing at the Columbus Museum of Art apparently is a bigger deal than anything he’s done before. And finally, that damn pink shirt she wears.

Anyway, this is it for me. Have fun with Epicus Doomus as he takes over starting tomorrow!

I don’t think he knows how YouTube works, you guys

Today’s strip

So Les is overnighting at Columbus because of course he is. And I bet the museum is footing his hotel bill, although it doesn’t quite look like what Les is accustomed to when it comes to his Lisa travels. No wonder he’s miserable all the damn time.

And there’s Cayla, who spent her Les-free time constantly searching and watching YouTube updates so she could catch yesterday’s lady putting up that video of Les, because of course that woman looked exactly like someone with an active YouTube channel, and Cayla has nothing else to do. Watch as it goes viral, because of course it will, getting more views than any YouTube segment of any network and cable channel in America.

Who are these people?

Link to today’s strip

Today’s strip shows two new characters to the strip talking over…

Oh, it’s Summer, with her first dialogue since 2015! And she’s talking to Cayla, and of course, they’re talking about Les, since that’s the only thing these two are ever shown doing anymore.

As it turns out, this is one of Batiuk’s annoying introductions. I suppose it’s no spoiler to reveal that this week’s going to be about Les at a book signing, which also means that today’s strip is a useless one to introduce the subject. He could have easily introduced this sequence by actually starting with Les at his book signing, but that would mean that he couldn’t repeat the premise and effectively skip a day.

But I guess the larger point that this strip makes is that it establishes that Les’s signing is taking place at the Columbus Museum of Art for some damn reason. This only reminds me of how Batiuk has insisted that true art such as his belongs in a museum, rather than being in a more commercial venue. We can only hope that’s this is the last time he flogs that particular conceit in this sequence.

But hey! Marvel at Batiuk remembering that Summer exists and giving her a line. It might be Fall, 2019 before we see this again! Admire her awkwardly angled dorm mirror and try not to think too hard about what exactly that odd bottle of I-don’t-know-what is on her dresser, which Burchett decided to include for some reason.

Shooting Gallery

Today’s strip

Greetings, folks, BChasm temporarily in the captain’s chair for the next little while.  What’s this?!  The viewscreen shows a sea of hostiles–ready photon torpedoes!   We must annihilate this threat before it spreads across the galaxy!

I’m going to skip over Mason’s “movie we filmed here,” comment, because while I don’t think any of the film was shot in Centerville, I honestly don’t remember the “school bus drives into shot” bit well enough, and–Tales to Astonish–I have no desire to look and see.  So I’ll give him that.

What else?  Well, we’ve got a crowd shot of almost everyone, including Les–which sets our Les Watch back to zero, damn it.  At least he’s not saying anything, and is both poorly drawn and partly covered by a word balloon.  Funny, though, I’d have expected both Comic Book John and Imbecilic Harry to be there, but I guess they got their exposure in at Comic Con, so no need to feature them any longer.  But who is that between Jim KibblesNBits and Marianne?  It looks like they flew Marianne’s mother out there after all!  I guess?

The fact that so many of the cast and crew are in the audience–and sitting right up front, too–makes me wonder if Tom Batiuk believes that the first time anyone involved with a movie actually gets to see the finished film is at the premier.  In the real world, the director would have seen the film dozens of times by now, and there’s almost always a screening for the cast and crew.  So all these people would be backstage, or at the back of the hall, gauging audience reaction–pacing, room for laughs, people getting bored at certain parts, and so on–and looking for “oohs” and “aahs” for the cast members.

But not in the fantasy land that is the Funkyverse.  Here, everything happens the way a five year old imagines that it happens–it’s all just magic, and friendship, and comic books and pizza, and it works every time!  In a way, that sounds like an attractive world…for a few minutes.  But after those few minutes, I’d want something of substance, something that would stir the imagination rather than just “be” everything forever.

Poorly thought-out as the Lisa stuff is, it’s at least an attempt to address adult concerns–something that a comic strip aimed at “contemporary problems of young people” should attempt more often.  Because I’m pretty sure the contemporary problems of young people aren’t that they wish there were more comic-book movies.