Tag Archives: death

by billytheskink | November 10, 2022 · 10:30 pm

Batiuklysm

Yesterday these climage damate comics had too much testosterone… but in today’s strip Ruby is arguing that they aren’t optimistic enough. For who? For sales? For readers? For her, personally? How do you even conflate testosterone with pessimism? Is that what she’s even doing? What’s going on in her mind? What’s her motivation? Annnnnnnnnnnd, why should I care?

Flash is pretty smug about dying before the coming damate climage cataclysm occurs. I wouldn’t be if I was him. STILL drawing comic books at his age? It’s a safer bet to assume he’s immortal until proven otherwise. No one dies in the Batiukverse unless three things are satisfied:

1 – Their death is in the service of an award~~-winning~~-seeking important issue. (Okay, we can check this one, though I’m going to doubt TB has the writing chops to figure out how to kill Flash with climage damate)

2 – They are not involved in or devoted to comic books. (No check here… recall how comic book and movie serial uberschmuck Jff Murdoch survived the damate climage fire that ate Los Angeles)

3 – Their death enables Les to feel even more superior to others. (No check, again)

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Tagged as age discrimination, Atomik, Atomik Komix, Batton, Batton Thomas, boredom personified, character death, climate change, climate damage, comic books, comics, curmudgeonly oldsters, death, depression, Flash, Flash Fairfield, Flash Freeman, glasses, hope, insufferability, insufferable assholes, Life is a dismal horror from which you can never escape, melting faces, Old dying people, paper, Ruby, Ruby Lith, Ruby Lith's tiny neck-hand, seldom-seen characters wearing hats, smug poses, the inevitability of death, the inevitable death of the universe, the inevitable ravages of age, the ravages of age, unbearable smugness, unnatural hand gestures, welcoming death, why?

by billytheskink | August 20, 2022 · 10:30 pm

Jumping’ Jack Flashback

Today’s strip was shot in Kodachrome… despite being set even further back in time than this past week’s sepia-toned historical revision. Really sets the mood for imagined fiery death, doesn’t it?

You would (not) be surprised at how often TB goes to the well for Holly’s Act I flaming baton trick. It wouldn’t shock me if it has appeared as a gag in Act III more often than it ever actually did in Act I. But hey, after this past week, I’ll take some Sunday Funky-Holly filler, even if it involves flaming batons.

And with that, I cede the podium to Comic Book Harriet, a master of both Batiukverse history and the entertaining anecdote. I expect we will enjoy a good bit of both from her in the coming weeks.

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Tagged as abuse of WHS property, Act I, Act I call-backs, Anon-O-Character, batons, beds, character death, curmudgeonly oldsters, death, dream, dream sequence, dreams, explosions, Fire, fire hazards, Flaming batons, flashback, flashback thought bubbles, Funky, Funky Winkerbean, Funky's house, high school, Holly, Jerome T. Bushka A&L Automotive Stadium, marching band, marching bands, Now Funky, Old dying people, onomatopoeia, pencil-neck geek, pointless Sunday strips, Sunday, Westview High School, WHS, WHS band, WHS Scapegoats

by billytheskink | August 19, 2022 · 10:30 pm

Credit Fraud

Today’s strip concludes (we hope and pray and hope and wish) this latest visit from the Ghost of Distress Past. Her Royal Wryness. The VHSaint herself.

Special thanks go out to Summer for being a prop with no impact on the story whatsoever, she has already collected her prize of appearing in a full 3 panel strip this week (panels will not necessarily be consecutive).
Special thanks also go out to Les for having such an insatiable ego and such milquetoast friends and family that he will continue to receive the unearned praise he has been given for decades now.
And extra special thanks go out to Crazy Harry, who demanded nothing but 18 panels of our precious time in return for his brilliant idea of pretending Isaac Asimov invented the concept of recording video using already obsolete technology.

On the subject of 18 panels (well, 16, thanks to a couple of 2 panel strips), this new Lisa tapes origin story actually takes up more column inches than the entire original origin story AND depiction of the recording of the tapes! That took just 16 panels in four strips. For all its faults, Act II got to the point…

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Tagged as Act II, Act II tragedies, cancer, cancer films, character death, collectible garbage, Crazy, Crazy Harry, death, enraging hair strands, flashback, flashback thought bubbles, ghost Lisa, hair horn, Harry, hatchet face, helmet hair, horrible ideas, ideas, idiocy, insufferable assholes, iPad, knowing smirks, leaves, Les, Les being a giant smug douche, Lisa, Not Summer, Now Crazy Harry, obsolete video technologies, porch swing, running ideas into the ground, seldom-seen characters wearing hats, sepia-tone, sepia-toned flashback, sheer idiocy, smirk, smirks, Summer, tablet, Taj Moore-hal, tapes, technology, terrible ideas, the lisa, the Lisa tapes, those stupid tapes, Tom doesn't get women, unwarranted wry sarcasm, welcoming death, wry banter, wry weary snideness, wryness

by billytheskink | August 18, 2022 · 10:30 pm

The Les He Knows, The Better

More word zeppelins in today’s strip… Not as bad as yesterday, but still, get your bookmarks out, folks!

You know, this is actually one of TB’s tidiest retcons, probably because it is one of the very few intentional ones he’s ever undertaken. It takes the original scene and changes its context (slightly) by depicting a previously unseen scene. Tidy. The pieces actually fit together. There are no loose ends, deleted original context, or unresolved conflict with the originals scene. See? That’s not so hard.

Heck, as a bonus it even (unnecessarily but adeptly) explains a silly detail from the original scene, why Les has a camcorder and this Hari Seldon story readily at hand as if he was waiting for Lisa to lament about all the things ~~Summer~~ she will never get to experience. Turns out, he pretty much was just waiting on the chance to whip that camera on out.

Tidy as it is, this retcon was no more entertaining or less irritating because of it. In fact, it makes the origin story of the Lisa tapes tremendously off-putting. The focus shifts away from the impending reality of Summer growing up without a mother seen in the original scene to the needs of Summer’s nogoodnik parents… First, Lisa wants to record the tapes so she can live vicariously through Summer’s adolescence in her imagination. Then, Crazy and Lisa hatch this cockamamie plan to let Les take credit for the idea to record the infamous tapes, which only soothes his ego and bolsters his hero complex. These people are awful and I hope I never wind up sitting next to any of them on an airplane.

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Tagged as Act II, Act II tragedies, bad ideas, cancer, cancer films, character death, Crazy, Crazy Harry, death, enraging facial expressions, flashback, flashback thought bubbles, hatchet face, horrible ideas, ideas, impending doom, Isaac Asimov, Les, Lisa, non-pizza foodstuffs, obsolete video technologies, pop-culture references, porch swing, raging egoism, references no one gets, retcon, retcons of retcons, seldom-seen characters wearing hats, sepia-tone, sepia-toned flashback, Star Trek, Taj Moore-hal, terrible ideas, the lisa, the Lisa tapes, tiny hands, tiny trees, trees, unnatural hand gestures, welcoming death, word zeppelins, wry banter, wry self-deprecation, wry weary snideness, wryness

by billytheskink | August 17, 2022 · 10:30 pm

Hari Don’t Care-i

I’m surprised it took until today’s strip for the word zeppelins to arrive… but one has docked right at Crazy’s mouth and is unloading such a tremendous volume of technobabble that it threatens to lift the roof right off the porch of the Taj Moore-hal! In explaining the concept of recording Lisa’s advice on video, Crazy somehow spits out 60% more words than Les did in the original take on this story back in 2007. It is almost enough to make you pity Lisa, who apparently had to listen to this verbal assault twice.

Hey, I said almost…

I’m not a big Isaac Asimov guy or a sci-fi reader in general, I’ve always been very much a non-fiction reader when it comes to things that aren’t comics, so I cannot tell you how accurate or apt or idiotic or unnecessary Crazy’s rambling is (I can tell you it makes for miserable comic strip reading, but that should go without saying). I suspect we have some folks much better suited to that than me in our comments section, so I will now turn this over to my fellow SOSFers.

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Tagged as Act II, Act II tragedies, awful dialog, awful wordplay, bad wordplay, book, bug-eyes, cancer, cancer films, carousel of death, character death, Crazy, Crazy Harry, death, excessive word ballooning, false modesty, flashback, flashback thought bubbles, hatchet face, Isaac Asimov, lame wordplay, Lisa, NERDS!, porch swing, seldom-seen characters wearing hats, sepia-tone, sepia-toned flashback, sub-moronic wordplay, Taj Moore-hal, terrible wordplay, the inevitable death of the universe, the lisa, the Lisa tapes, unnatural hand gestures, wall of text, welcoming death, word zeppelins, wordplay

by billytheskink | August 15, 2022 · 10:30 pm

Porch Wry-rates

Cue the laugh track for today’s strip… because otherwise there’s just this long, awkward pause between non-jokes. It’s like a newsprint manifestation of those “sitcom without the laugh track” videos, only more more cringe-inducing. Why are these two ostensible friends (one of whom is terminally ill) being insufferable to each other? This kind of thing works when you establish that the two characters have some type of relationship and that unbearable wryness is their M.O. As far as I know, Crazy and Lisa never had much of a relationship of any kind (he was Les’ weirdo buddy), much less a whole Gilmore Girls thing going on.

Lisa really let Harry slide on that face after saying she didn’t feel as bad as she looked? Sure, she’s dressed like Crankshaft, but she’s also sick and at her own home. He’s the one who went out in public dressed like Gallagher wearing a Paul Simon Halloween costume.

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Tagged as cancer, Crazy, Crazy Harry, dead characters, death, enraging facial expressions, flashback, flashback thought bubbles, Harry, impending doom, Lisa, ponytail, porch swing, seldom-seen characters wearing hats, sepia-tone, sepia-toned flashback, slowly dying inside, Taj Moore-hal, the lisa, things to do in Westview when you're dead, wry banter, wry self-deprecation, wry weary snideness, wryness

by Epicus Doomus | May 13, 2022 · 10:28 pm

Heart To Heart Failure

Link To Today’s Strip

It wasn’t enough for Dick Facey to merrily prance and frolic on Mary Sue Sweetwater’s grave. Now, as sort of a coup de grâce to mark another triumph over another old high school foil, he takes a shot at his “best friend”, reminding him that he might keel over and die at any given moment. I have to admit, I kind of like Funky’s “what a dick” semi-smirk in panel three, as it’s actually an appropriate facial expression there. I imagine it’s similar to the face Ayers makes when BatHam tells him what he’s putting in the word balloons.

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Tagged as coronary issues, death, funeral, Funky, general dickishness, Les, Mary Sue Sweetwater (RIP), rain, why people despise Les so much

by Epicus Doomus | May 12, 2022 · 10:28 pm

A Smug Bearded Dick With Ears Walks Into A Bar

Link

I studied this one for a while, trying to figure out what the smug bearded jerk’s massive word balloons were supposed to mean. “Suspend his disbelief” in what? Life? Death? Funerals? Roulette? The continued existence of Bob Dylan? Then, after some really annoying pondering, it started to make sense, sort of, in a roundabout and stupid way. I believe that what Les means here is that he refuses to acknowledge that he’s getting old and will die relatively soon, choosing instead to willfully ignore this harsh reality. Which is really out of character for Les when you think about it, as the guy’s entire identity is based around death. Unfortunately though, not his.

Anyhow, this is what happens when BatYam tries to out-clever himself. Everything devolves into a weird, half-assed mess where you end up wasting valuable minutes trying to figure out what the hell is going on. He could have simply said “I try not to think about it” and saved all kinds of word balloon space, but he’d have just wasted it anyway. God I hate Les so much, curse all you people who say “I’d even prefer a Les arc over this”. Never, ever wish for that, it’s bad mojo.

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Tagged as death, Funky, Les, Mary Sue Sweetwater, nonsensical jabbering, obituaries, rain, tedium, windswept graves

by Epicus Doomus | May 11, 2022 · 10:30 pm

Rainy Day Assholes #1 And #2

Link To The Strip

Well, they’ll bore you when you’re trying to be so good
They’ll bore you just like they said they would
They’ll bore you when you’re trying to eat a slice
And when you’re at The Korner haggling over price
Why do I read this anymore?
Everybody must get bored

If I was Bob Dylan I’d be genuinely terrified right now. I do know how Funky feels, though, as I do the same thing, but with Handsome Dick Manitoba. It’s pretty funny how Funky is already a jaded obituary-reading expert, because of course he is. Just two dear old pals, shooting the shit at a burial service in the rain, caring a little, but not too much…that’s the FW experience in a nutshell.

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Tagged as Bob Dylan, cemeteries, death, Funky, Les, Mary Sue Sweetwater, obituaries, windswept graves

by Epicus Doomus | May 10, 2022 · 10:28 pm

Celebrity Death Fool

Link To Today’s Drollery

It comes as no surprise to me that Les enjoys seeing celebrities die, as he’s always been a spiteful scumbag and all. The clumsy dialog in panel two baffled me at first, until I realized it was merely BatYam’s typically oafish way of explaining that Les was more of a beginning obituaries reader, as opposed to being a sad old coot scanning the obits to see which friend, colleague or associate died on any given day. Which is a premise just dripping with comedic potential…all of it unrealized, of course.

43 Comments

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Tagged as cemetery, death, Funky, Les, Mary Sue Sweetwater, obituaries, windswept graves

Tag Archives: death

Batiuklysm

Jumping’ Jack Flashback

Credit Fraud

The Les He Knows, The Better

Hari Don’t Care-i

Porch Wry-rates

Heart To Heart Failure

A Smug Bearded Dick With Ears Walks Into A Bar

Rainy Day Assholes #1 And #2

Celebrity Death Fool

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