Tag: comic books

If You Wannabe Be My Writer

Yesterday’s discussion of exactly just how Rip Tide: Scuba Cop goes about scuba cop-ing understandably exhausted our tedious twosome, and they take a well-earned coffee break in today’s strip.

I suppose that now that they are living the life of 1950s-ish Batom Comics writers, Pete and Durwood no longer need to daydream about being 1950s-ish Batom Comics writers. Naturally, they have channeled most of their energy into finding new ways to procrastinate… though shuffling down to the struggling coffeeshop on the corner earns them no points for creativity.

Nevertheless, today’s strip is not without educational value. I, for one, learned that the key difference between Los Angeles and Northern Ohio is that no one has dreams or ambition in Northern Ohio.

Today’s Log Post

Hello SoSFers, billytheskink back for another two weeks steering this runaway bus. Lucky me, today’s strip shifts back to Pete, Durwood, and their adventures at the City of Cleveland’s newest employer. Now that Chester has acquired the remnants of Mort Winkerbean’s life savings, I guess Atomik Komix’s bankruptcy has been postponed… and that, sadly, means we have to peek at the Batty Atom Bullpen’s “creative” process.

Durwood is the star of this one for sure, offering one of the few reasonable explanations for the existence of the last decade of Funky Winkerbean. On the other hand, Pete is being Pete… that is to say, useless.

By Your Powers Combined!

Today’s strip

What powers would ‘soggy superhero comics’ give? I don’t get it.

On Friday, commentator Erdmann made the guess: “Anyone else suspect there’s a comic book cover Sunday strip headed our way?”

To which Bobanero replied: “It would be the longest lead up to a Sunday Comic Book Cover strip in history.”

Kudos for both the prediction and the comment. Indeed this entire meandering, yet linear, arc over the past three months seems to have been building to this end.

And by ‘this end’ I mean Batiuk establishing some of his protagonists in a new comics related field so he can keep getting his precious commissioned covers whenever the mood strikes. He obviously had gotten all the Starbuck Jones covers he wanted, and is preparing to branch out.

Interesting that we don’t get a tip of the Funky Feltpen directly on the strip. The name on the bottom of the line art says Fairgood. Honestly interested in who drew this.

Infinity Bore.

Today’s strip

So sorry for the late post today. Finally went to go see Infinity War, which despite juggling dozens of characters and plotlines, and having plotholes big enough to drive a Hulk truck through, was infinitely better than this because the emotions of individual characters were both believable and dynamic.

This is going for dynamic, since it can’t manage believable, but it falls right on its face at the climax. The worst comic character name since Matter Eater Lad.

My cat sometimes presents me with an inedible pulp on the rug…and it usually takes hours of elbow work to get the stink out.

Tarps for everyone.

Today’s strip reminds me of a story I once heard.

There was an old farmer, set in his ways. His son went to college and came back with all kinds of new-fangled ways to ‘maximize profits.’ He no longer wanted to hear his dad’s old advice, about snakes on the road or frogs chirping, relying instead on science or innovation.

He upgraded all their equipment, used his smart phone to run their irrigation system, bought drones to guard the sheep from wolves instead of the old donkey. But most contentious between father and son was changing the way they handled the manure from their feedlot and pig sheds. The old farmer had always dry composted it for fertilizer, but his son badgered him to build huge wet lagoons covered in plastic tarps to collect all the methane to generate electricity.

Everything went fine. Until one May, it rained and rained and rained and rained, until the lagoons were full to the brim with a fecal slurry. It was on a May day, during the heart of tornado season that a dark funnel cloud formed south of their farm. Touching down over the hog buildings and their very new, very full lagoons, and then headed straight toward the farm house.

“Dad! Dad! We gotta get to the cellar!” The son shouted over the howling wind.

“I got one thing I have to do!” The dad shouted back, as he ran out to the stock barns.

The son followed him at a sprint. His dad grabbed an dusty oil cloth and threw it over the old guard donkey in it’s stall.

“Dad! What the hell are you doing!” His son yelled!

“Son.” the old farmer said, solemnly, “Every old farmer knows, when a shitstorm is coming, you gotta cover your ass.”

Now look at that pile of ‘comic-books’ and tell me that Rusty’s store, (and us by extension) didn’t just get overwhelmed by a massive shitstorm.