Tag: Comic Book tribute

Lois Lame

If yesterday’s strip made you gag, you better be sure to have a barf bag close at hand before you check out today’s strip.

Batiuk takes Sunday off again, filling the space with another comic book “tribute”. Last month we had Les and Cayla as Superman and Superwoman; today they’re Supe and Lois Lane, on an Action Comics cover from 1955 (spoiler alert: the story ends with Lois awakening to find that her marriage to Superman was only a dream).

But what’s really pukeworthy here is that two minutes into his marriage to Cayla, Les has to bring up his “first wedding” to Lisa. A noted author once said “Endings have to be earned.” You know what else has to be earned? The respect and the good will of your audience, if you expect them to let you get away with “writing” sappy, facile garbage like this.

Les is "W"impressed

Bleah, another Sunday throwaway comic book tribute, and an even more lazy effort that usual; TB hasn’t even gone to the trouble of swapping Les and Cayla’s heads onto Superman and Superwoman. He’s merely dropped in a rifle-scope point of view showing our “happy” couple, putting a neat li’l bow on last week’s arc. I’m not a comix fanboy, but Batiuk famously is: aren’t there any black superheroines he could have used to represent Cayla? There must be; but I guess the rights to those characters haven’t yet passed into the public domain. Who ever heard of Superwoman? And why is she dressed in green?

Bungle in the Jungle

To those who, like yours truly, scoffed at Crazy Harry’s well-intentioned offer of his Tarzan collection to Les? Turns out Les actually read Crazy’s Tarzan comics and as a result is now trippin’ balls. James the Guide (inexplicably portrayed today by a young Geoffrey Holder) solemnly warns the climbers that due to the high altitude they “might experience some hallucinations.” This warning comes after the hallucinations have already begun. While TB uses Les’ condition as an occasion for humor, and to indulge his fondness for jungle comics, Les is actually experiencing the onset of high altitude cerebral edema (or HACE), “a severe (frequently fatal) form of altitude sickness”. He really needs to be moved to a lower altitude, stat! On second thought: keep climbing, Les, keep climbing!

The Three Faces of Crazy

In typical Westviewvian fashion, all of Les’ friends are offering unbidden and useless “help” with his Kilimanjaro conquest. First, self-styled personal trainer Bull shows up to whip Les’ pasty ass into shape. Today Crazy Harry offers to loan his precious collection of “comical books about Tarzan”. I think Crazy may have confused “Tarzan” and “Tanzania”. Look for Funky to send Les and Summer off with a shipping crate of freeze-dried Montoni’s pies to sustain them on the climb.

I’m sure you all recognize the delirious kid with the Tarzan comics swirling around his head as young Harold Klinghorn, pre-hat, pre-nickname and pre-drugs, back in those innocent times when his only “high” was Tarzan funnies. The Sunday-strip color gradients and shading do not make him any cuter. We recognize his teenage (and actually likeable) self in the little portrait in the banner. Would anyone not familiar with Funky Winkerbean see today’s comic and figure out that the boy, the kid in the hat, and the old geezer are the same person? Or that the two men talking went to high school together?