Tag: hoodie

Now the First of December Was Covered with Snow

Many, many thanks to David O for handling author duties over the last fortnight!

Epicus Doomus
November 28, 2013 at 11:11 pm
…I like how Summer just decided to keep wearing the hoodie straight through the year until it was weather-appropriate again. I assume she has an entire closet full of them and not just one…at least I hope she does.

Reckon she’s not only got a closet full of KSU hoodies, but she’s got ’em in blue and gold! Weather-appropriate? Guess so, since it’s all Summer needs to protect her against snowflakes the size of Montoni’s meatballs.

You’d think, though, that a young woman who could shell out $54 for a sweatshirt would spend a little more on a baby gift for her nephew. Instead, Auntie Summer comes bearing “Small Bear”, a cherished toy from her own kid-hood. “Here, “bro”: give this moldy, raggedy old thing to your newborn to play with!”

And Mr. Batiuk, please do a little research into what an infant carrier looks like: that little cameo in panel one looks like nothing so much as a baby reposing in a propped-up coffin!

Babybabybabybabybaby

There’s a scene in the holiday classic movie “Gremlins” where the Gremlins all break into a bar and start smoking, drinking, cussing, gambling and swinging on ceiling fans. It’s great fun for the first minute but the bit goes on for about three minutes longer than it should and you’re left thinking: “Can we get back to the plot now?”

Today’s strip is a lot like that. Okay, you had a baby. It’s cute, apparently, we’ll just have to take your word for it, Westviewites, because it looks like a Mr. Potato Head toy from here. But can we get on with the strip!?

Summer Blue Times

Today’s strip

Les: Was [Lisa’s journal] hard to read?

Summer: No… It’s funny, insightful…

This strip… It’s sad, pathetic…

I’m puzzled, snarky…

That is I’m skeptical, confused…

Summer: The only sad part was getting to the end and realizing that Mom wasn’t going to be writing in it anymore.

Really‽ That was the only sad part‽

Snarkers! Let’s help Summer remember the other sad parts!

Lisa’s Legacy ’Lash

Today’s strip

Ouch! I just got narrative whiplash! For a strip that usually proceeds with the pace of a slow IV drip, it’s really unexpected to go from zombie prom, back to football for a day, and the very next day to Lisa’s Legacy Run. Has our favorite auteur suddenly decided to add cinematic flash cuts and literary techniques like simultaneous parallel subplots? Or is he just doing something incomprehensible like the time he teleported Les off of Kilimanjaro for a day to name Funky’s car?

Ah, Westview! Think of the tropes we’ll see today!

  • ¼-inch from reality.

    Check! Lisa’s Legacy Run, an event that briefly leaked out into reality, exists no more in Real Ohio, but persists like sciatica in Funky Ohio.

  • Being a “reality-based comic strip that depicts contemporary issues affecting young adults in a thought-provoking and sensitive manner.”

    Check! Cayla’s daughter and Lisa’s daughter are back from college, to help organize the race. In October. During midterms, I’d guess. Of course, we don’t know what’s been going on in these young women’s college lives, because all we’ve seen of that is them moving into a dorm room. You know: the most interesting, most sensitive thing young people do in college—move their stuff into a small room.

  • Cayla’s existence subordinated to Lisa.

    Check! She’s literally holding Lisa’s name before her.

  • A falling leaf.

    Check! Can you find it? Panel 2, center of window pane. It’s tricky, because the auteur and the colorist couldn’t be bothered to discuss how the falling leaf should be red or yellow, not green.

Hi! As the great Steve Martin once said (approximately): “I know it sounds insincere to say, ‘Hey! It’s really great to be here!’ But hey! It’s really great to be here.” I hope I shall snark entertainingly during my guest stint!

Threat Level Lisa

Link to today’s strip

YouTube (registered trademark, BTW) better upgrade their servers, pronto, before Boy Lisa follows through on his “threat” and crashes them with the tens of hits that video would certainly generate. Some arch-villian Frankie turned out to be. Ditto for his doughy henchman White Lenny, who is a real wuss compared to Black Lenny, who at least knew how to lean menacingly. Derin would have probably gotten the same results by simply throwing “Lisa’s secret journal” at them. Those corners do hurt, you know.

OK, so who had “they make a video of Summer reading random pages from her dead mother’s thirty-something year old journal that just happened to be discovered exactly when it fit into the story which forces Frankie and Lenny to give up when they threaten to air it on YouTube” in the “how does this arc end?” pool? Once again TheMaster finds the least-interesting, most random, nonsensical and totally balls-out stupid way of “crafting” a story that took what seems like a hundred weeks to tell. No one can predict what he’ll do and quite frankly I don’t think he even knows until he pens it. This whole story reads like he jotted it all down on a napkin while heading to the bathroom at 5am after a big craft beer, Seroquel and Nyquil bender. Like every other FW story does. It’s amazing, uncanny and totally inexplicable.