Tag: Dinkle

That Was The Week That Wasn’t

Look at last Sunday’s strip, and then look at today’s strip.

It follows almost perfectly, doesn’t it? The story could have skipped this entire week. When it wasn’t redundant, it was confusing. Yesterday’s auction scenario now seems like a bizarre non-sequitir as we flip back to Summer’s insipid story. And next week apparently won’t be about either of these things.

I have to give today’s strip credit for moving the story along. The strip could have easily spent a month unpacking all the repetitive backstory Summer is hearing about today. Maybe her author arc won’t take as long as I thought. Batiuk probably just wants to get Summer her book tour, movie deal, and Nobel Peace Prize for Literature faster. But I’ll take the positive side effects where I can.

There’s still a lot to complain about, though. The intellectual bankruptcy of Summer’s stupid “oral history” is on full display. She asks her father’s friends about things that aren’t remotely history-worthy, and which she should already know anyway. Harley the janitor, a character so irrelevant that Linda and Kablichnik talk about him like he’s not there, gets his second mention in three days. Dinkle and the Eliminator get two panels each, even though the strip rehashes both stories constantly. No doubt this dross will be enough to make Summer the greatest historian since Pliny the Elder.

Is she interviewing people during the auction? I know I asked why she and Harry weren’t at this event, but isn’t this kind of rude? And how are you going to have a conversation while this is going on the background?

And with that, my guest hosting shift is up! This was one confusing fortnight in the Funkyverse. Though I had a blast, as always. My esteemed colleague BillyTheSkink is on deck.

A Cat, a Pat, a B flat, and an old bat

Oh boy, more unwelcome guests in today’s strip… and also Bingo. Bingo can stay, he’s cool.

He’s also old and decrepit… because of course he is. What tremendous misfortune, to exist in the Batiukverse. Even the cats have to be old and sad and subject to awful wordplay about hips.

Hopefully Bingo will take his claws to the new choir robes in the back after these yutzes leave.

March Badness

Link To This One

Everyone hates it when BatHack tries to do Act I humor in Act III. Dinkle being a megalomaniac was hilarious way back in Act I, when the strip was a cynical, satirical look at a fictional suburban high school. But it isn’t anymore, thus Harry and his irritating pal just come across as selfish, vindictive jerks who browbeat the entire school district to suit their own needs. But you already knew that. Now let us never, ever speak of Dinkle or this Andy clown again.

Hey! Art Teacher! Leave Them Kids Alone!

Link To Today’s

Ha, ha ha! He’s screwing with the students’ educations and undermining his fellow faculty members! Just to suit his own needs! Isn’t that HILARIOUS? Comedy f*cking gold right there, folks! What a guy! No wonder eleven or twelve Ohioian band directors love Dinkle and tape these Dinkle strips to the side of their office filing cabinets! Haphazardly, too, no doubt. Then, after they inevitably retire, those same strips are scraped away with a razor knife and become more floor sweepings, quickly forgotten floor sweepings. It’s kind of sad, really.

I’d give just about anything if this arc would just abruptly stop and suddenly go into, I don’t know, a few strips where Funky works out or Holly uses the credit card or something. Anything. Dinkle being felled by a massive coronary would be good too, but then there’d be a flashback-packed funeral arc that’d drag on for weeks, and no one wants that. And as we all know, it wouldn’t necessarily mean he was really, permanently dead, as people return from the dead all the time in the Funkyverse. So really there’s just no practical way to get rid of him, ever. BatHam likes him and he’s going to feature him twelve weeks every year whether we like it or not.

Just Holtron To What We’ve Got

Link To The Thing

Why, back when I first started here at SoSF it was really tough to defend my turf, I’ll tell you what. That was back before the internet, when SoSF was still hand-drawn on notebook paper and passed around via the comic strip underground scene. I knew what levers to pull, though, as right after I gave TF Hackett that $20 Wawa gift card, I was in. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Yeah, yeah, Dinkle rigged the school computer to “fix” the students’ schedule to his benefit and so forth. He really was quite a character fifty years ago. Unfortunately, though, everyone hates Act III Dinkle, and everyone grew tired of his ancient marching band gags by 1983 or thereabouts. So where does that leave us? Sigh…right here.