While we’re waiting for today’s strip to drop, I’d like to add my kudos to the many kudos directed at comicbookharriet for taking Batiuk to the woodshed on a daily basis for the last three (!) weeks, and in the process, educating all of us about some real-life women heroes of the comics.
Tag: Darin
Seasoned Storytelling.
Mindy’s been so dumb the last week, I’m half surprised panel two didn’t go like this:
Mindy: “You drew this on my shirt!? You live in Sri Lanka? Because that’s where it says the shirt came from! I knew it was ‘custom’ but wow,and it only cost me 30 bucks! Does it get tiring drawing on shirts all day?”
And sure you’re seasoned. I bet you’ve got a lovely Blue Emu rub all over your arthritic hands, combined with peppermint essential oils. Embalmed is not the same as seasoned.
As many pointed out yesterday, how many famous old artists and actors does Batiuk intend to shove into the twilight years of his strip? At this point we’re up to five or six random octogenarians wandering in the strip so younger characters can show their comics cred by squeebleing all over them.
That vaguely Maoist hat, combined with a granola munching quirky appearance, makes me suspicious of this plotline though. Like we’re about to get a ‘serious’ story about how a woman was idealistic about America in the old days of institutionalized racism, sexism, and South Asian proxy wars, but now that Trump is in office she’s realized the error of her ways now supports Bolshevism.
There She Is…Miss American
Many apologies for the late post.
An odd plot related strip for a Sunday. Batiuk seems to prefer to keep Sundays self-contained and make sure there’s a joke, in order to placate the Sunday only papers and readers. This strip must seem absolutely nonsensical to people who only read the Sunday funnies.
But we learned something today. This elderly gallery owner was also involved in comics. Because everyone everywhere in the Batiukverse was involved with producing comic book related material at some point in their life.
You Don’t Know Jack
My understanding of the slang word “jack” is that it means “nothing,” or perhaps “a small amount.” Like the title of this entry, for example. “You don’t know jack” means “You know nothing about this subject.” “You get jack” means “You get nothing.”
Now, it’s been established that Batiuk has created his own world with its own idiots idioms. The thing is, your own private slang only really works when there isn’t a real-world version. He’s usually safe in this regard, as no human being has ever uttered things like “solo car date,” “vendo,” or “bio-dad,” but people use “jack” in the context I mentioned all the time.
Here, it seems to mean “money,” at least as far as I can fathom Pete’s meaning. “Jack,” used here, is such a square-peg forced into a round-hole (forced with a hammer, while the peg is screaming) that I’m thinking it might get added to the Batiukionary.
Normally, in most strips with a *cough* joke like this, the drawing in panel three would be a slight variation of panel two, with the two halves of the *cough* joke implying a character’s single bit of dialogue in a single moment. But I like to think that Pete said his dumb first line, then silently struggled to shoe-horn “jack” into his next sentence while everyone else ordered, paid, picked up their coffees and headed toward a table.
C Minus
I’m not a comics fan, but I looked at today’s deposit and thought “That can’t be right.” Two seconds of dreaded research confirmed my suspicion.
Tom Batiuk claims to hold comics creators in high regard, but you know, when he can’t even spell Joe Shuster’s name correctly….
No doubt Batiuk will call his syndicate and post a corrected version, but jeez louise–this is the kind of error that should have leapt from the page and smacked him.
Of course, given the evidence of “Bantom,” and Pete’s Wandering Last Name, and, well, the strip itself, maybe he just doesn’t care.
Son of Stuck Funky 