Tag: Darin

Swing and amiss

I will give Tom Batiuk this, he rarely reuses artwork. Story arcs, dialogue, themes, comic book references, potentially fatal diseases, and whatnot, sure… but not artwork. No, he loves redrawing Act I scenes in his current “realistic” style.

Which we see in today’s strip, where he has redrawn a pair of panels to almost exactly match the strip from May 10, 1985.

FWcompare8517

Lisa appears less desperate in the 2017 panel than she did in 1985, though one could say she appeared Les desperate in 1985… On the Funky Winkerbean retcon scale this is RETCON NINETY-FIVE. Today’s strip hits RETCON ONE in panel 3, though.

Les, who alleges that he was so in love with Lisa back when this happened, actually asked three other girls to prom before he asked her: Cindy, who Les files a sex discrimination suit against after she turns him down; Allison, who Les asks via world’s worst wingman Crazy Harry; and Tracy, who Les openly insults before asking.

Oh, and he doesn’t appear to know or remember Lisa’s name until after they dance, (in some pre-prom dance in the gym that they are both attending? I can’t quite figure out what is going on.) referring to her as “that girl” in his thoughts before asking her to dance.

Oedipus Quax

Hello loyal SOSFers, noted Betamax enthusiast billytheskink here for another couple weeks at the helm. My goal today is simple, to see if I can get more writing done than Les did over the last couple months. Let’s dive in:

Here’s the link to today’s strip.

Let’s see; 1, 2, 3… 6. I wrote six words! “Once upon a time” is; 1, 2… 4. Four words. Mission accomplished!

Also, major newspapers across the country are now printing and delivering today’s strip, in which an adult son ogles a photograph of his late mother from when she was in high school while telling her widower about how attractive she became after high school. And we all called Pete the creepy one…

For reference, Lisa looked like this for much of Act II:
lisamoore

Durwood, meanwhile, looked like this before his nose went all Pinocchio/Jughead/Doonesbury in the early 2000s:
darin

Separated at birth? Why yes, actually, they were.

Off Track

Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh. today’s strip returns to the Frankie plot-line which is horrible for two reasons:

1. Whatever these two dopes are plotting, please get on with it! Talking in veiled, coded language just confuses everyone. Even if you came right out and said what your Big Plan was we’d probably still be confused because it’s going to be something really, really dumb.

2. Most of last week’s black and white rambling from Jupiter Jones ended up going absolutely nowhere. One could credit this as a slow-burn sort of plot building but there’s so many loose ends that never get returned to I’m guessing there’s a good chance the jealousy Cindy has may not even be visited again.

Tandboori Chicken

What!? After pulling the rug out from under us once with that “It was just a video game” cop-out ending to the Wally getting IED’d story arc Tomhack wastes our week with more of the same in today’s strip

How much of this is a dream!? Because Darin working on a major Hollywood movie with pretty much nil experience seems more like a far-fetched fever dream than them illegally boarding a Chinese vessel. Is this Inception or some shit I don’t have time for? Is Pete dreaming all this back in New York!?

Holy Corpses Batman

Aw, come on, Tombat! You referenced the 1960s Batman in yesterday’s strip, at least bring it home in today’s strip with a cartoony blam.

blam

I joke around about this but it’s really all rather sobering. Darin is either dead or has suffered a life-altering wound. Pete could be charged with his murder as an accomplice if Darin *is* dead, and that’s assuming Captain Boomstick doesn’t plan on unloading on Pete next.

This means Jessica is now likely either a widower who will now have to raise her child on her own or her hubby is now in prison for piracy. Pete, well, does it matter? Their careers are over. It’s done. All for some pens he couldn’t wait 8 hours for.

Was it worth it, Darin?