Six days of Ruby telling of her struggle as a woman in the male-dominated golden/silver age of comics. Then Mindy shares some hurtful online comments that she’s received, and even Ruby, who’s seen it all, is taken aback. The plot is just starting to move into “contemporary issues affecting young adults in a thought-provoking and sensitive manner” territory. But hey, it’s the Sunday following a Mindy and Ruby week, which means we get a Wayback Wendy Sideways Sunday Comic Cover.
Tag: cellphone
Comment Allez-vous
It’s Memorial Day, and I’m gonna invoke my privilege here and just throw out today’s link for you all to pick apart. Thanks for reading and have a safe and enjoyable Saturday.
This is the farmer sowing his corn
Good grief, look at that word zeppelin in panel one.
This the dolt who made the call
To schedule the audition
To fill the position
To be the organist
Down at the church that Tom built.
Presumably Harriet was right there the whole time and knows what was going on; of course, given the writing in this strip I’m surprised she didn’t repeat his words verbatim in her panel five frog-face. After all, she outlined all his other accomplishments and (of course) concluded that he was the best thing evar. In probably the fastest 180 I’ve ever seen.
The reason being, this entire episode is Tom Batiuk publicly patting himself on the back. “Look at this terrific character I created! Is this award-winning or what?”
As mentioned yesterday, unless this church has a single Sunday service, Dinkle will be spending a lot of time there. Most churches I’m familiar with have several Sunday services, a couple on Saturday and at least one every weekday. Let’s not even bring up holidays. That’s going to cut into a lot of Dinkle’s other activities. (Come to think, how does Lillian manage to run her bookstore? Answer: it’s magic. Dark magic.)
All of which promises what could be could be an interesting twist: what if Dinkle failed the audition? I think it would be the first time in the strip when he didn’t get everything he wanted. It might humble him and make for a rounder character.
And of course it will never happen. The strip is now total wish-fulfillment and trivial observations. Where every “hero” character is Superman.
And with that, I am out of here. Please welcome the always erudite and entertaining Epicus Doomus who will be your host for the next couple of weeks. Exit, stage left!
I Wish He’d DisAPPear
I’m going to ignore the “haha, apps are confusing mystical objects that nobody can understand” “humor” here and just focus on Becky. What in the world is her expression about? The raised eyebrows and smirk look more seductive/romantic than anything else (although in the second panel she looks eerily like Pete and Summer, because for some reason only three or four face types exist in this strip). And honestly, if it was revealed that Dinkle and Becky were actually having an affair, it would vastly improve the logic of this strip. Because “deaf band director who retired decades ago is constantly shadowing the current band director for no real reason” is stupid. It was the same thing with Linda and Buck. I think it’s a sign of bad writing when totally unintended subtexts actually make more sense than the actual plot.
Always Enjoyable?
Oh goodie! I get a Dinkle arc. Having to scrape together some kind of humor or commentary for Dinkel arcs is ‘always enjoyable.’ But it gets tedious trying to remember everything that has happened to Dinkle in Act III that has slowly morphed him from a unique and bombastic caricature of a passionate band director into just another bland, smug, Westview Pod Person.
Please note, while Dinkle claims that teaching piano is ‘always enjoyable’ he doesn’t look like he’s enjoying it today, and…spoilers…he doesn’t seem to enjoy it all week long. Maybe in Westview the words ‘always’ or ‘enjoyable’ mean something very different than what’s listed in the dictonary?
Son of Stuck Funky 
