Darin – Page 31 – Son of Stuck Funky

Toy Suprise

Comic Book Harriet back again for another whirlwind adventure through the funny page’s most wry adventure. Thanks to Billy The Skink for easing us through another dull comic arc, this time compounded with sickening romance, subtle sexism, and the good old Westview Nepotism Mafia. (Kudos to whichever StuckFunkian coined that phrase.)

Now I get to enjoy some Les and Darin action, which always has a creepy vibe to it. Like at any second I could start hearing some ominous yet sensual music playing in the background.

One thing I’ve noted over the last couple weeks. Our ‘skilled’ artist has sunk to new levels of phoning it in by drawing eyes as nothing more than tiny dots with eyebrows in several panels, with none of the hint of upper eyelid seen in the usual ‘house style.’ I expect the strip is going to gradually morph into Sally Forth.

Clotting with faint praise

Rip Tide Scuba Cop has never looked better than he has in today’s strip, which would be high praise for Mindy’s coloring skills if this wasn’t issue #2 of the title.

That’s more than can be said of Pete’s writing… Why Rip Tide did not assume that antibodies would be apt to attack him, as they do to germs and other foreign substances in the bloodstream seems like a rather foolish call on his part. It also seems like this will be an expensive cover to print, requiring a special cut for the thought bubble that hangs off of the side. Chester may have to sell some more of his collection.

And with that, I leave this gilded site and the mucky comic strip that it covers in the extra-capable hands of comicbookharriet. Best of luck, hope you don’t get any Les strips.

Colors of the Chinned

Oh no. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no. No. Just no. Please no.

*Sigh*

Our greatest fears have been realized in today’s strip. Atomik Komix has become what the Starbuck Jones movie and Montoni’s were before it, a nepotistic cesspool that doles out jobs to whoever walks in the door. No interviews, no resumes, no HR departments, just a brief conversation and YAGOTTHAJOB!

Also, like Montoni’s, Atomik Komix has had to be kept solvent by the owner selling his own personal property. Not sure this would be an owner-approved hire in real life… but this isn’t real life, this is one quarter inch from it, so the joke’s on us I guess.

Color Me Impressed

Pete had his go two days back, now it is Durwood’s turn, in today’s strip, to patronize Mindy, the woman who DARED to know things about comic book writing and artwork.

Whoa, hold up there Darin! You have your own woman to patronize, so back off of Pete’s! Yeah, she’s 3 time zones away right now, but that is what phones are for.

Maybe tomorrow Mindy will lecture Pete and Durwood on locking their computers while away from them so that visitors don’t use their hard work (I did not type this with a straight face…) as their own personal coloring book. We have established that she is allowed to know stuff, after all.

Encyclopedia Clown

Whodunnit? Who could have colored Durwood’s Rip Tide cover in today’s strip? Lessee, these three are the only people in the Eaton Building (a whole building that Chester bought to employ two people, as we now know), and, given its location in Cleveland, probably the only people in a 2-3 mile radius. Hmmmmm, this is a puzzler…

One thing we do know is that Mindy didn’t have a summer job or friends that one summer as she pored over her father’s musty comic book collection. And we KNOW for a fact that Jeff Murdock was an obsessive comic book collector.