Flying Fickle Finger of Fat

Link to today’s strip.

I wasn’t around, in Funky Winkerbean terms, when “Darrin Opens A Letter” famously played.  As such, I’ve only seen it in the archives here–everything at one go, rather than stretched out over days.

The pacing there seems positively riveting and action-packed compared with what we’re presented with now.  Yes–Funky is going to take an entire week to send a text message.

In fairness, unlike the Darrin story, this one at least doesn’t involve Les or Lisa in any way.  That puts it about 50 points ahead.   Just like the Darrin story, though, this one lacks anything resembling a punchline, or humor of any kind.  Par for the course these days.

 

Spot Six Differences!

Wow! Bob Weber of Slylock Fox would be proud of today’s offering.

At first I thought there was something wrong, and they simply hadn’t updated the strips. Because today is a reprint of yesterday’s strip. But upon further inspection there do seem to be tiny, subtle differences between yesterday and today. See if you can find all six!

It took me hours and hours, but I finally found one: The cosmic treadmill that Pete and Darin bought on their second honeymoon is in the background of panel two! How many can you find?

What a fun and interactive game Batiuk has given us. It may not progress the plot, deepen the characters, or be even in the least bit interesting or funny, but at least it fills a Friday shaped hole in our week. One more box checked off as we all coast inevitably to an obscure retirement, and an unlauded death.

So Fun!

Bloop Bloop.

There is less than nothing going on today.

This is like when horrible one note authors attempt to pad out their paychecks by writing the same story again, but gender flipped or from the guy’s perspective this time! We have reached Life and Death or Grey levels of storytelling here people.

So because there is no plot to speak of. I’ll just point out some tidbits I noticed in each panel.

Panel 1.) Boy Lisa’s table seems positioned in the middle of the room, instead of up against a wall, and his overhead light seems to be behind his head AND pointed away from his workstation. He asks if the text is ‘more script changes’ which means that they regularly get TEXTS of script changes in a major motion picture sequel. Pete has a tiny phone.

Panel 2.) You know that this is California because of the medical marijuana growing right outside the window. Pete’s hands are the size of his head and the bags under his eyes have drifted so far down his cheek they might as well be Tony Montana scars. Pete’s phone has grown in size.

Panel 3.) Boy Lisa’s desk light is now in front of him. His face is a horrifying mask with terrible pencil eyebrows drawn all the way up on his forehead. He is apparently wearing a black v-neck t-shirt like a total tool. We can see that Pete’s now minuscule cell phone isn’t even a touchscreen smart phone, but rather some knockoff blackberry-lite. I link a picture of my phone, for reference. Sad, cheap, pathetic reference.

The Hair-ried Author

Oh no, Les is back in today’s strip. And along with ol’ smirk n’ shirk we get three would-be nominees for This Week In Milford’s pantheon of hair. Let’s see… we’ve got a phone camera operator sporting a Dave Coulier mullet, a proud Lisa book-buyer wearing the Luke Skywalker, and someone so enthralled with the many justifications for John Darling’s murder in Fallen Star that they are morphing into Albert Einstein. Fantastic.

Well, that took my mind off of yet another strip where Les shows contempt for the people who want to give him money for his work, for a few minutes at least.

Thanks, SOSFers, for putting up with me and TB (mostly TB… I hope) for another two weeks. The unenviable task of covering a crazed bald man palming two imaginary grapefruits (and whatever else next week brings) falls to someone significantly more well-known to the average comic strip reader than Phil the Forecaster, our own Comic Book Harriet. Good luck.

Hai-Code

Today’s strip contains
A couple of near-haiku
Shall we take a look?

“This text may be the
Answer you are looking for
It’s just gibberish”

“That is because it’s
Written in the Starbuck Jones
Junior Spaceman’s code”
_________________________

Jeff has just put on
That stupid decoder ring
Why does he have it?

Came from his pocket?
Does he carry it around
Annoying others?

He just got a text?
But it was a Tweet he sent
To Director Guy

I guess that Durwood
Has uncle Jeff’s phone number
As if he’s used it

Nice car on the curb
Puts Batiukmobile® to shame
Who would park it here?