Keisha – Son of Stuck Funky

All Apologies

Last time, we saw Summer’s on-the-court play take a step up only to run into a wall when she and her team got trounced. She’d also gotten caught up in the ongoing love triangle between her father and two women with rather poor taste. Despite Les and Cayla officially being a thing, TB saw need to throw doubt on the relationship as Susan Smith — that sinister suicidal succubus — proceeded to butt her way into things, a process made all the easier because Les is an oblivious moron and Cayla is a character with absolutely no spine. Summer’s importance after the first few months took a backseat as Batty began diving into fiction’s most laughably unbelievable love triangle and unfortunately for her, 2011 is going to go much the same way as 2010 for a while.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel as Batty will finally put this interminable storyline to rest. But not before he goes in guns blazing, pushing Summer out of the way in the process. Right from the jump, 2010 ends with Cayla and Susan at Les’ New Year’s party. As the clock ticks closer and closer to midnight, they both anxiously look around for their dickheaded dreamboat, each hoping to be the one that he rings in 2011 with.

But alas, the bespectacled beefcake is already claimed as they find him instead making out with the ghost of his dead wife who, need I remind you, called in a bomb threat just a week or so earlier.

*“It was romantic,” he later thought to himself. “Her ghostly lips tasted of Ecto Cooler.”*

Summer and Keisha, meanwhile, decide to ring in the new year with a little one-on-one.

But Keisha either intended this whole game as a ruse to talk about important issues or she simply resorted to dirty tricks once she started losing to Summer. Both are equally plausible.

Dissatisfied with Summer’s inability to know what her dad is thinking at all times, Keisha then decides to switch it up.

*“She’s a whore, Summer, that’s what i mean. Anyone who stands against my mother and that handsome stud muffin is.”*

Keisha says that maybe the two of them should try nudging their parents closer together and Batty decides to end the week with a fancy (for him) narrative transition to show Les being an absolute prick under the guise of him just being a little frazzled. Of course, we know better.

After some “hilarious” Dinkle and the Band shenanigans, it’s another of Les’ endless book tours with some never before seen college friend of Les, since Batty never ever shows his characters actually attending college 99% of the time. He spends the entire trip back from the airport muttering to himself like a complete lunatic about Summer’s chances in the tournament but it seems fate had different plans.

We’re then regaled with the tale of the destruction of Summer’s knee along with the death Les’ dreams of not having to shell out money for his daughter’s higher education.

Having watched five too many inspirational sports movies and conflating them with real life, Batty decides to have the Lady ‘Goats do the logical thing and forefeit the friggin’ game to “be with their co-captain.” Because that’s something real teams do all the time of course and not just a cheap attempt at trying to wring sentimental pathos out of this wet rag of a story.

*And then the ghost of Brian Piccolo showed up and said “If you build it, you can win one for the Gipper,”* while Rudy stood in the doorway and nodded.

In a show of good sportsmanship, the other team refused the forfeit meaning the game was going to be replayed (does this actually happen?) much to Summer’s delight.

Summer will, of course, need surgery but not quite yet which she’s also happy about because it means she gets to inspirationally cheer her teammates on.

But alas, this strip is a quarter-inch from reality and thus unlike an inspirational sports movie or an anime where good vibes and the power of friendship can will even the smallest minnow to victory, Summer’s encouragement doesn’t prevent the team from losing and ending their season. Which kind of makes it seem like Central Catholic was so offended by the whole forfeit thing that they refused it simply so they could kick the asses of the She-Goats once more for good measure. Just to show them who’s boss.

With the tournament done, Summer now has to get her knee surgery and Cayla’s there to support Les in what’s obviously his hour of need. But oh no, that horrible harlot has decided to make her presence known here too!

But that’s not all! With Summer’s surgery a success, Bull shows up at Chateau Moore to offer his services and help Summer rehab her knee.

This is but one of the many acts of kindness that Bull has paid and will pay to his former victim that will go unappreciated by Les. Instead, Les and Cayla will opine about how awkward it is that his former bully is now helping his daughter as if he and Bull hadn’t been friends since before Summer was even born. To cap things off, the vile vixen also stops by to bring Summer’s homework and of course Les has to get in a snide little remark.

*At least Linda didn’t come by to kill the mood and tell Summer that trying to rehab her knee would be pointless.*

After a month or so of Dinkle, Owen and Cody’s nonsense, it’s back to Summer’s knee but not before TB decides to off the long-retired Coach Stropp.

Summer talks to Bull a bit about he and her dad knowing one another. This is the infamous week where it’s revealed that Bull’s bullying of Les was actually a ruse the whole time cooked up to protect Les from even worse bullies. A revelation that is utterly pointless as like so many other things with Bull and Les after Act I, it’s promptly ignored.

Summer, who’d been largely positive about her rehab, is now starting to feel the effects of inactivity which has made her cranky. But she’s about to get cheered up by a certain Saint’s Son.

*She will always be the only person in existence, both in reality and probably in-universe, excited to ever see him.*

After about 3 and a half years, Darin and his bride creep their way back into the comic to take their rightful place amongst the main cast. Well Darin does anyway as he and his funny books crew will come to increasingly dominate the strip; Jessica just kind of hangs around. We learn that he accepted a buy out from wherever he was working for unspecified reasons (they went under? who knows) and is effectively a jobless, homeless bum. Except not really because Les immediately gets him a job at, where else, Montoni’s and allows Darin to move in with them.

Summer’s excited but Cayla isn’t because god forbid she ever be proactive about anything in her life.

*“Oh, I did nothing and got nowhere because of it! Woe is me!”*

After the requisite month’s worth of strips is spent on reintroducing Darin to the strip’s dozens of readers, we move on to the next part of this grand tapestry that Tom Batiuk so skillfully weaves. Ann Apple, the homeless schizoid-turned-literary agent, calls to tell Les that someone wants to option Lisa’s Story into an actual movie. And not just anyone, but Hollywood! Yes, the entirety of the film industry is apparently just some monolithic entity and it needs to feed itself on the self-pitying misery literature produced by a mediocre and delusionally self-important high school English teacher.

Summer, being slightly more proactive than either her father or his milksop girlfriend, decides to take matters into her own hands when Les begins to falter.

Well that should be the end of it but Les himself has to agree which means a week of him sitting on a bench and talking to Ghost Lisa about all the ways in which Hollywood will ruin it. Personally I feel like all they’d need to do is give it a more accurate title; Tuesdays with Boring should work.

In the end, the spectral Lisa is able to set Les straight and get him to agree to it.

*Why experience the awfulness in just one format?*

With everything coming up Les, he and Cayla sit on the Sacred Throne aka the porch swing and Cayla decides to tell Les “I love you.” Les can only fumble around like an idiot and not say the words back which upsets Cayla who decides they should put the brakes on things for the moment. This is mostly a test to try and get Les to stop being an idiot and Les, predictably, fails it.

But Cayla has made a mistake and the terrible temptress decides to make her move and fill the newly opened up woman-shaped hole in Les’ life. Alone in a classroom, Susan locks lips with the hunky man of her dreams.

Les now, finally, realizes that he has two women in love with him and decides to tell Funky and Crazy Harry about his dilemma. Funky and Crazy do what any reasonable people would do when confronted with the idea of Les the Lothario and proceed to laugh in his face. This pisses him off and causes him to storm out of Montoni’s like a baby.

We then get what is an all-timer in terms of Les’ unwarranted self-importance where Funky is forced to apologize to him and he snidely tells Funky “yes you did” to Funky’s admission that he went too far.

And it’s not just Funky as Cayla comes by to also apologize to Les for getting upset at him being an emotionally stunted dunce.

Keisha decides to send her mother a little image she just so happened to have.

Les explains the whole deal of what happened with Susan to Cayla who accepts it with little hesitation but worries about the reaction of others as the picture gets passed around. Summer, embarassed over the whole thing, decides to cosplay as the Unabomber to hide her identity.

*Check out her forgotten first book: Infunkstrial Society and Its Future.*

The photo has quickly spread around school so Nate calls Les and Susan in so they can explain what it’s about. Any blowback Les could have received is immediately dealt with by Susan sacrificing herself and taking all the blame instead.

Susan decides to resign from her position and tells Les that she’s making a clean break from Westview entirely. Les makes a bunch of pithy and somewhat insulting remarks over the whole thing like the giant tool that he is.

And then decides to bid goodye to Susan with what might be one of the most eyerollingly stupid and infuriating things he says in the entire 50 year run of the strip.

“Heck of a kiss,” are you fucking kidding me? What a Grade-A turbo douche.

Susan gets one final sad and lonely trip down the halls of Westview High, reminiscing over her life there before exiting the school and thus the strip entirely.

Perhaps because people might have thought that Susan went off to try and kill herself once more, in the waning days of the strip Batty will randomly follow up this story with the immediate aftermath. Susan stops at a bridge, gets out and looks over the side but gets a pep talk by the conveniently passing by Ed Crankshaft.

But, and this is a real knee slapper, it turns out that Susan’s car merely ran out of gas. Ha ha, you thought she was going to toss herself off of the bridge because she’d tried to commit suicide before! Isn’t that hilarious!? Suicide Suzy, that’s what they call her!

Thus ends the dumbest love triangle in history and all I really got out of it, besides Les being insufferable and Cayla being Cayla, is that for whatever reason TB really seemed to develop a strong dislike for Susan. Why that is, I can’t really say. I’m sure if you asked him he would say he was just adding some drama and didn’t mean anything by it but come on, I don’t think it’s possible to read that love triangle storyline and Susan’s role in it as an antagonist and roadblock for Cayla, who Keisha actively dislikes and who Summer doesn’t seem overly fond of either, and then get that week in October 2022 clearly playing off of her long ago suicide attempt and think that Batty has anything other than disdain for Susan. It’s one of the most baffling things about the entire strip, there’s no real reason for it but it’s there, clear as day.

Speaking of, while the identity of who took and spread around that photo is unknown I’m 100% convinced it was Keisha. I don’t really have any reason not to think otherwise and completely ruining another person’s life would be an easy way to get that person out of her mother’s way. I’d wonder why she cares so much about making sure that Cayla gets with Les, of all people, but I think in reality it’s not like Cayla could do much better. She’s such a nonentity as a person that I think it would drive most people insane but Les loves someone like that who exists to feed his own ego. Also, if we’re going off the idea that Keisha was behind the photo then that makes her easily one of the most rotten characters in the entire strip.

You’ll notice that once again, Summer pretty quickly disappeared from this little recap because as I’ve said before Batty obviously lost interest in her pretty quickly. After she blows out her knee she mostly exists as scene filler for the first half of the year. But that will change at least a little bit because next time will cover the rest of Summer’s time in high school.

Fadeaway

2009 saw a decent amount of stuff for Summer, largely with her rivalry-turned-friendship with Big Walnut Tech transfer “Breakfast Cereal” Keisha Williams. It was a story that weaved its way into a larger one involving Les, Keisha’s mother Cayla and the beginnings of the love triangle that involved the both of them and Les’ former student Susan Smith. Lisa continued to haunt the strip both figuratively and literally in the forms of Les beginning to write Lisa’s Story — the Holy Bible of the Batiukverse — and the real ectoplasmic form of Dead Lisa, creepily watching her husband make out with his new gal pal.

The underage Summer also had to deal with getting sexually harassed by the much older and very creepy Pete as the year ended… and we’ve reached the point where things are going to start going downhill for Westview’s Messiah. Not in the sense of bad things happening to her but rather as we enter into 2010 we’re now about halfway through Summer’s time in high school and we’ve about hit the point where Batty is beginning to grow bored of her.

In a broader context, the end of 2009 and start of 2010 revolved around Les traveling to, where else, New York City to meet high-powered literary agent Ann Apple and Batty pulls the oh so hilarious (not really) trope where the reader knows that Ann is really Apple Annie, the homeless woman who’d found the manuscript for Les’ book about John Darling (whose murder would leave Jessica Darling fatherless), but Les is too much of an ignorant buffoon to put 2 and 2 together to make 4.

Summer gets that small cameo there but does get a more important role the next week in a series dedicated to Les and Cayla watching her play, with Les fretting over her driving because he’s worried she’s going to end up like Becky.

I get the intent is to show Les being overly worried as parents tend to do and in a sense I can even see where he’s coming from because I’m also the type of person whose brain goes to absurd worst case scenarios. To this day I’ve never been on a roller coaster because I’m completely convinced I’m going to get the one that gets stuck upside down in a loop for two hours or flies off the track or something. But most people would rightly see that as just ridiculous anxiety and so it is here. Although I suppose the prevelance of conveniently placed cliffs along the equally convenient narrow mountain roads that surround Westview makes this a slightly more understandable concern.

There’s also some ironic comparisons between Les the uber-geek and Summer the uber-jock.

*As the kids say, she got that dawg in her.*

I’ll give Batty some credit in that typically he does a good enough job of showing Summer as being confident, driven to succeed and enjoying finding herself in high pressure situations. She is definitely the type of person who would attempt hero ball stuff. At least her athletic prowess is something we get to see repeatedly so we understand why people would praise her unlike with things like Les’ writing talent or Funky’s ability to make a pizza or Pete’s… everything.

Summer ends up sinking the game winning shot and Les relents on his driving fears.

The next week is some nonsense about Montoni’s and karma that I’m only bringing up as it contains one very important debut.

Anyway, Summer does at least get the Sunday comic that week which is more gushing over her being the greatest white basketball player since Larry Bird.

Apparently the Lady Scapegoats have done well enough this season to make the state tournament or I guess this is to determine the conference champion who would represent the conference in the state tournament? I think Batty is confused about state and conference because Bull gives a pep talk to his team before the game against Big Walnut Tech saying they’d be champions after this but it’s also a tournament game somehow.

And naturally Summer gets to play hero again.

But in reality Summer and her on-court success is secondary to what the actual story of this arc is about which is Wally’s PTSD.

After having twice been shot down and captured, after losing a decade of his life to it the second time, after having his family stolen from him by a skunk-haired comic book shop owner, after having the love of his life cruelly cast him aside, Rana — the only person who seems to remotely care about him — invites him to come out to the game because it may be the last time he can watch her cheer. Why, I have no clue. Summer’s generation isn’t close to graduating yet so Rana isn’t going to stop being a cheerleader any time soon. All the excitement of the game causes Wally to freak out which leads to him getting chased down by Funky and Becky who drive him back to his apartment and find out he sleeps with a gun under his pillow. Funky then gets Wally set up with counseling.

All of this plays out over about a month and a half so Summer and her team’s (conference?) championship is really little more than window dressing.

But hey, they still did win which put them in the state championship game. Les goes back to playing the overly worried parent and acts as if Columbus is like Baltimore or 1980s NYC or something. My impression of Columbus is that it’s basically Blandville, USA based entirely on it being used as the ideal test market for stuff but maybe there’s lots of crime to worry about.

Westview’s opponent is a school called Our Lady of the Cedars which I guess is supposed to be Batty’s way of telling the reader that they’re big and bad and that’s why the She-Goats are so scared of them.

Their fear turns out to be justified because Cedars pretty much stomps them into the dirt. Not even Summer’s main character boost are enough to put a dent in them.

There was, then, no joy in Westview because the Lady Scapegoats got their asses kicked.

But like the savior figure she is, Summer vows to rise from the dead. Figuratively but you never know.

The team in fact are a bunch of masochists as the beating laid down on them has only fired them up. Summer and Keisha are named co-captains in an “unusual move” so the team is ready to go next season.

*Even more unusual, Bull is talking like a sideline reporter.*

Summer subsequently decides to get an early start on training.

And that’s basically it for Summer’s relevance for the rest of the year. What I said earlier about what Summer’s stuff being mostly window dressing for Wally’s story? It’s basically going to be that on overdrive for the rest of 2010 because with Summer’s sporto BS over and done with, Batty can now move forward with what the readers really yearn for: Lisa’s Story and Les’ love life.

Most of the next month and change of strips is dedicated to Les and Funky going to New York to close down Montoni’s. But of course the actual meat of the story is Les meeting with Ann who’s set him up with a deal for Kent State Press to publish Lisa’s Story just like in real life because this is the point where Les has really morphed into Tom Batiuk’s avatar more than he already was. From this point on it’s book signings, shilling collected editions and collared shirts under sweaters for Les.

This actually gets into another irritating problem Batiuk has that I suspect Funky’s expansion of Montoni’s was a victim of. That being that things are only as important as they in service to the immediate plot needs of Les or some other pet character. That’s clunkily worded I’m sure so let me explain.

At the beginning of Act III, Funky has turned Montoni’s into a chain and expanded into New York City. Because Funky is busy all over Ohio and now New York, Les takes a second job at the original Montoni’s to help him out. He’s now a Montoni’s employee in addition to being Funky’s best friend which means that he now has a reason to travel to the NYC location. The first time is when Funky sends him to “put out some fires” there but do we ever actually see him doing any of this? No, he wanders around NYC, reminisces over Lisa, meets with Cindy and then has a revelation about his writing. The needing to constantly go to New York means that Les is able to keep in touch with Cindy who in turn connects him with Ann Apple which then gives Les further reason to go and meet with her. With Les’ book deal for Lisa’s Story secured, he no longer needs a plot excuse to keep going to New York and thus Montoni’s closes down because its only purpose for existing was as a plot device to facilitate Les coming and going from NYC to advance his writing career.

It’s quite sad when you think about it. Funky’s business success is pretty much a giant farce, existing only to prop up the second biggest loser in the entire strip.

With his book deal in hand and NYC Montoni’s consigned to the dust bin, Les finally returns to Westview. He’s met not by Cayla or his daughter or friends but by Susan who’s just over the moon. Summer, arriving back from something to do with softball, doesn’t seem overly happy to see her.

Les continues paying more attention to Susan than Cayla as Susan is, you know, actually helping him do work on his manuscript as opposed to sulking around like Cayla. Summer continues to be nonplussed about the whole thing.

Now you’d think that this would lead to a story where Summer confronts her dad about ignoring his girlfriend by paying attention to this horrible homewrecking harlot. But of course Batty is the master of going nowhere as slowly as possible so nothing ever comes of this aside from Summers’ disapproving looks. Who needs her having a talk with her dad about all of this when there are far more important stories to tell?

The next two months are taken up by the tragicomedy (unintended of course) of Funky having to move his dementia-addled father to a nursing home and then getting into a car wreck. The collision rockets him through time, transporting him back to the days of Act I where he wanders around town and tells his younger self to buy a Starbuck Jones comic because it’ll be worth a lot one day and that’s really it. It’s a story that meanders as aimlessly as the title character does and then eventually ends with Funky waking up in the hospital to discover it was all a dream… or was it!? Because at the start of the story Funky gave DSH a rare Starbuck Jones comic so he’d have the money to cover the Komix Korner’s rent claiming that “some old guy” told him to buy it when he was younger. The implication of course is that the old guy was in fact Funky himself per the events of the “dream” that we had witnessed and the whole thing was some kind of time loop.

Time travel stories and them being dismissed as mere dreams? I’m sure glad that will never come up again in this series.

That’s followed up with more Winkerbean wackiness when perennial scene filler Rachel starts dating the highly traumatized Wally beginning her journey to become what every Batiukian woman aspires to be: a mommy-wife who exists to solve her man’s problems. It’s not until the end of August, a full three months since her last appearance, when Summer pops in to remind the readers she still exists.

Around just long enough to tell her dad that it’s cool to start his literary career inside the sad remains of a once proud pizza empire, Summer disappears as quickly as she’d appeared so ~~Batty~~ Funky can say goodbye to his beloved PT Cruiser and Les can have a sitdown with Cayla and Susan to… help him choose the cover of his book. Because this farce of a story needs to be stretched out in increasingly inane ways. Cayla’s spent the last few months feeling left out in the cold by all the attention Les is paying to that little tramp and decides to do something about it. Does she confront Les and tell him how she feels about all of this directly? Does she maybe get into a catfight with the younger but far less athletic Susan?

No, of course not. She just changes her hair as some kind of weird passive-aggressive power move intended to one-up Susan which works, for now, because of course it does. Cayla: 1, Susan: 0, Readers: -500.

Summer makes her customary monthly appearance to go “WOW CAYLA, COOL HAIR!” and slink back into increasing irrelevancy.

And I do mean monthly because it’s about 1 month on the dot when she next shows up during the book launch to talk about Ann, inadvertantly creating jealousy in both Cayla and Susan.

Unfortunately this does not lead to an absurd story of the two love rivals teaming up to deal with a schizophrenic homeless woman masquerading as a literary agent. Missed opportunities, I say. Again, it’s another month before Summer shows up, throwing it down like she was Shawn Kemp.

Since October, Les has been on a book tour because at this point while he’s still technically a teacher, his appearances actually teaching classes are largely over and done with. His real career of flying around to engage in book signings where he wryly mocks all the people taking time out of their day and money out of their wallets to support him has begun. Why Batty even continues with the charade of Les being a teacher is beyond me, he even calls attention to it by having Nate handwave it away.

*Maybe Nate’s just glad he’s not around.*

Summer gets slightly more to do for once with Les checking in on her…

…and having to deal with the dreaded task of talking someone through using technology over the phone, presumably because she’s considered tech savvy for knowing how to turn on and off a computer.

By the middle of December, the first of an unending parade of book tours is finished and Les is ready to head home but a mysterious voice from beyond the grave pleads with him not to get on the plane.

Les believes he’s being pranked and angrily walks — with anger — onto his seemingly doomed flight. Summer is supposed to pick him up from the airport but has yet to hear from him.

Tension builds as Batty ends the week with a cliffhanger.

But Batty does his best R.L. Stine impression and the cliffhanger turns out to be nothing as Les, unfortunately, shows up at the Taj Moore-hal fine and dandy.

Les explains to Summer and Cayla that it’s “a long story” of which we only catch the tail end of.

But oho! That’s not quite the end of it because TB has one final curveball to throw at us.

Yes, that’s right, Lisa used her ghostly powers to call in a bomb threat and commit (fake) terrorism in order to save the life of her still living husband either out of genuine concern for his wellbeing or simply so he doesn’t bother her for eternity in the afterlife considering he keeps summoning her to Earth for inane crap as is.

With Les’ life saved from another ValuJet incident, the family is able to celebrate Christmas together.

So 2010 turned out to be a pretty down year for Summer on the whole. Aside from the basketball stuff in the earlier part of the year she was mostly relegated to one-off appearances for the majority of the year… when TB could be bothered to actually have her show up at all. Even then, a good chunk of that basketball story is really just there to provide background noise in service to Wally’s PTSD story or to Les’ parental worries. It’s really only when the Scapegoats are getting destroyed in the championship game that it’s kind of about her and the team specifically.

Which really gets into the heart of the problem with Summer’s use while she’s in high school. As I’d mentioned earlier, Batty typically does fine (by his standards) in showing that Summer’s supposed to be a talented athlete as opposed to simply telling us she is and then leaving us to actually believe that it’s true as he does with so many other “talented” characters. The problem though is that’s all that she does. Think about it, since Act III has started how many stories has she had that were about anything other than her playing basketball? I don’t mean her being involved in a story, like where she’s the one who convinces Les to write Lisa’s Story, I mean stories that are about her specifically.

All I can really think of is the 16th birthday at the NICU for premature births, her wanting to drive and her being pissy over not having a date to the winter dance. Everything else is basketball and if she’s not playing basketball she’s playing softball. Otherwise she’s basically just there to hang around Les and encourage him or gush over Cayla, basically acting like a shipper.

For a character who was supposed to be so important to Act III she’s pretty quickly relegated to the sidelines and in a couple of years it’s only going to get worse.

Rival Fools

It’s been another overly hot summer and where I am, we just got out of a heatwave. I’m sure plenty of readers know how muggy summers in the Southeast tend to be so compound that with even higher temperatures and a poor A/C that’s already not much of anything and the last week or so has been rather brutal.

And yet while summer is entering its end stage (come on, we all know that once the calendar switches over to September, it’s fall no matter what The Man says), Summer continues to roll on. When last we left her, she was spying on dear ol’ dad to see if he was putting the moves on that hot new secretary that replaced boring cat lady Betty. For the start of 2009 we pick up with her hanging out with Jinx in a strip which sets up a story where Rana spends a week freaking out over the fact that guys are going to be added to the cheerleading squad.

Yeah, it’s obvious Batty never had a clue what to actually do with Rana.

The next week starts the story arc that will be Summer’s big focus for the first quarter of the year.

Summer gets Dikembe Mutombo’d and is all out of sorts as she wonders just who could have done that to her. She’s surprised to see that it’s none other than her new teammate Keisha.

Summer seems kind of surprised by this and quite frankly so am I because look at that previous comic; that shot blocker was whiter than the audience of a Dave Matthews Band concert. If I found out that my teammate was a shapeshifter or racebender I would be pretty shocked too. Naturally this whole thing leaves Summer completely out of wack and she complains to Les about how Keisha made her look like a joke.

At the game the next night (?) Les and Cayla talk about how Keisha was the star which presumably has left Summer in a bad mood. Les decides to take Cayla out to eat at Westview’s fanciest restaurant. Not Olive Garden fancy, mind you, but close!

*Rachel then contemplated slugging Les for making her recite such a stupid motto.*

Les, by the way, is still doing this stupid song and dance of “Oh, uh, we’re totally not dating,” even though they went to the Winterfest together and he’s now taking Cayla to the holiest of Westview’s temples. We’ve seen this crap, we know how it goes. By bringing her to Montoni’s Les is practically proposing to her. But no, we’ve still got the world’s stupidest love triangle to deal with.

Back to the main, Keisha’s presence on the team has completely sapped Summer of her confidence and led to the team playing badly. So far, the Williamses are a complete net negative on things both in and out of universe.

At this point, Summer is a complete disaster and winds up being benched while Keisha continues to get all the praise.

Which then leads to this complete nonsequiter.

Now suddenly bringing up Dead St. Lisa could just be a sign of Summer’s depression, like she’s going to off herself over basketball or something. But no, it’s simply an excuse to then transition into yet another example of Les insisting that he and Cayla are NOT DATING SO BACK OFF AND SHUT UP SUMMER, GOOOOOD YOU’RE NOT MY MOM YOU HAVEN’T EVEN THROWN AWAY MY COMIC BOOKS!

Summer’s on-the-court woes continue and even at home she’s bricking shot after shot when she’s greeted with a surprise that’s pleasant to her but not to the readers.

Darin, unfortunately, makes another appearance to dazzle the readers with his sparkling personality and memorable traits like… uh…

Summer takes the opportunity to vent about how things have been going for her since Keisha transferred over and gives us a nice little Batiukism in the process.

Darin naturally does what any loving brother would do in this situation and gives his baby sister some advice on how to fix her shooting woes.

It’s a nice little moment, I guess, except for one tiny little insignificant nitpick: why is Darin giving Summer basketball advice!?

Darin, as established throughout basically all of Act II, is a grade A geek. He was a low-on-the-totem-pole loser and the closest he ever got to any athlete was whenever Jessica would throw herself at him. He was never hinted at having anything in the way of athletic ability so why, WHY, is he telling a basketball star who is light years beyond where he ever was what to do? And why is Summer even listening to him? I mean sure, okay, in real life you don’t necessarily have to play a sport or be an elite athlete to have some knowledge of things but typically those coaches who weren’t athletes were at least around the game all the time in other capacities, that’s why they’re good at what they do. Darin never been any closer to athletic competition than mocking it in his and Pete’s dumb comic strips.

Well whatever, I guess in the end it doesn’t matter because aside from showing up at her next game that’s really about all we see out of Darin. For as important as he was in Act II and as much as he’ll take over the strip in the 2010s, in the first few years of Act III Darin barely exists.

Anyway, it’s the final game of the season which of course is against Big Walnut Tech and Keisha’s former teammates are showing her how they deal with traitors while Cayla also shows the reader that she has her daughter’s raceswapping properties in what retroactively turns out to be a genius bit of foreshadowing of Cayla’s eventual visual evolution. Bravo Tom!

Summer decides she’s had enough and pretty much inserts herself into the game.

And then swoops in when Keisha’s in trouble.

Westview loses but Summer’s back to her old self and her and Keisha are now on the same page and bonding over their dads. Well, one of them has a dad anyway.

Which of course transitions into more Les insisting he’s not dating Cayla nonsense.

Which I think gets into the core of what Batty was actually doing with this storyline. It wasn’t about Summer per se and lord knows it wasn’t about Keisha who doesn’t have much of a character to speak of. It was mostly just flavor, giving Summer something to do, in service of the real story which was Les, Cayla, and the world’s lamest love triangle. That said, it at least is a story about Summer that’s based on something she’s into and that’s important to her and doesn’t end with her becoming the trophy for a lame nerdy male character like so many other female characters in this comic. So she’s got that going for her.

That love triangle is also where we’ll be detouring to for a little bit as well. After a month of shenanigans focused on Dinkle, Cory, and Funky’s suicide inducingly bad day, Dinkle’s comic opera (because it’s laughably bad you see) The Magic Flutophone is set to open and Susan decides that this will be a great date for her and the hunky English teacher of her dreams. Unfortunately, Cayla’s snapped him up first.

Summer teases Les over the fact he’s still insisting that going to a concert with Cayla is not a date and that he and Cayla aren’t dating.

Cayla comes by to pick up Les, because if nothing else Les is consistent in being a lazy jackass and making his girlfriend drive him around everywhere, and proceeds to have a little schizo break.

Cayla apparently doesn’t mind dating a lunatic who talks to the ghost of his dead wife and the two go to Dinkle’s undoubtedly awful concert and somehow enjoy themselves. At this point Les finally stops dancing around things and acknowledges that he and Cayla are indeed dating. The two lovebirds share a kiss in what is surely one of the most infamous and unintentionally hilarious strips in the history of Funky Winkerbean.

With Lisa the Ghostly Cuckquean’s approval, Les and Cayla are official.

As for the main subject of this series, Summer shows up for the requisite random installment of the Dead Lisa Tapes and also makes an appearance during Cindy Summers’ (who insists she’s going by Cynthia now but that doesn’t last long) return to Westview.

She also shows up for an insipid story where Cory attempts to cheat by writing his answers on his water bottle. Now that I think of it, I feel like the only times in Act III where Les is shown actually teaching his class is for these stupid “a student has cheated and Les puts them in their place” stories.

We then get another summer story of Summer and Jinx’s softball shenanigans.

But this was all light fare to relax the reader for most of the rest of the summer after this is taken up by what is undoubtedly the most infuriating story in the entire strip. Wally comes marching home to find DSH John has cuckoo birded his way into his nest, beady-eyed nitpickers complain, Wally walks off into depression. It’s called writing.

Batty bookeneds that story with another Montoni’s Softball one.

He seems to have quickly grown bored of this setup though for this is the last we’ll see of the softball team and poor Jinx’s relevance to the strip disappears with it. Her spot as Summer’s best friend (I guess? She sure seemed to be) has by now been usurped by Keisha and eventually Jinx will disappear so thoroughly from the strip that she won’t even make it to the St. Spires Christmas concert which features damn near every other Act III character.

By this point Summer has just turned 16 and drops the news to her dad that she wants to get her license and that Bull is teaching driver’s ed.

Les spends the next week fretting over this showing that everything Bull has done for him since high school has been for naught. And with school starting up again, Batty also begins seeding the post-Summer class with the first appearances of Funky and Les IV: Owen and Cody.

In October, Keisha learns the benefits of being “part of the family” when it comes to the Moores: acting as free labor for Les’ ego stroking charity event.

Summer also engages in some practice driving and Les acquiesces to her desire to stunt all over Maddie.

Summer also wants to be able to get a car once she has her license and Keisha pushes her to get a job. Oh no. Summer and Keisha are female. They are young. They want jobs. You know what that means…

Say hello to the newest residents of Westivew’s Home for Wayward Young Women. Because Pete sure as hell is about to.

Just in case he wasn’t clear enough…

Yes, here is Pete trying, like the creepy little dweeb he is, to flirt with Les’ daughter and the half-sister of his best friend. Let’s ignore how awkward and nonsensical his flirting is and focus on what’s important. He knows, he fucking knows how old Summer is and still he’s trying to put the moves on her. Let me reiterate this: Pete Roberts is a man of around 30 trying to flirt with an teenage girl roughly half his age. A girl that he undoubtedly knows is underage because she’s the half-sister of his best friend.

What the hell was even Batty’s intention with these two strips? Was he trying to make Pete come off as cool and confident? Because he not only failed, he backfired in spectacular fashion. Pete looks like a giant tool. He looks like a creep. He looks like someone who buys a lot of Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

I hate Pete. I really, really detest him. Darin is the world’s most boring person to be sure. Les is a punchable smug douchebag. Dinkle is an unbearable egomaniac. But Pete is something else entirely. He’s an annoying gnome who gets constantly rewarded for no real reason. At twentysomething he was the top writer in the comics industry. He bounces around from publisher to publisher, being given opportunity after opportunity and when he inevitably fails out of this or that one — because he’s a talentless hack — he fails upwards into better jobs. And it’s not just jobs. By the end of Act II he has Chien interested in him though thankfully Batty jettisoned her before he could shackle Pete to her.

Later on he’ll have poor Mindy enamored with him because… well, I don’t know. And how does he treat Mindy? He whines and berates her for daring to create a character he doesn’t like for his stupid comic book. He quits his well-paying and seemingly dependable screenwriting gig to force her to help him run a pizza restaurant and live in the shitty small apartment above it. There’s a strip later on in Act III where it’s heavily implied that Mindy is sending him erotic photos of herself and what does Pete do? Like the giant irredeemable asshole that he is, he shows them off to Darin as some kind of flex.

But it’s okay because Pete is a wish fulfillment self-insert for Batty in a way that not even Les is. He can never fail even when he objectively does and he can never, ever face a negative consequence for any action he undertakes. He can do stupid and despicable things, he can be the shittiest writer of comics this side of Chuck Austen and for some reason will be rewarded for it. He can be a giant creep and still get women way out of his league and everyone treat him like he’s just such a lovable cool guy.

Calling him a tool would be understating what a rotten ugly little troll man Pete is. I hate him. I loathe him. And I can only hope the end of Crankshaft is a nuclear missile striking Montoni’s after Mindy has finally wised up, grown a spine and locked him and his precious comic books inside.

Moving on to actual matters, we close out the for Summer with a family gathering.

That will likewise close out this entry. But while 2009 may have been a down year for our budding little savior, 2010 will be a year that’s looking much brighter. Probably because I won’t have any more reason to rant about how much I hate Pete.

But You Don’t Really Care for Music, Do Ya?

The Duck of Death
December 19, 2022 at 8:22 am
Guys. Guys, is he gonna have the whole freakin’ cast from both comics in this church and pan over the crowd while the ensemble sings the Hallelujah Chorus?

Is this how it’s all gonna end?

baeraad
December 22, 2022 at 1:52 am
I… think Batiuk thinks he’s going for a heartwarming all-the-lovable-goofballs-come-together-in-a-church-on-a-snowy-Christmas-night sort of thing for his ending…

Sourbelly
December 22, 2022 at 10:56 pm
Batdick has spent days establishing the fact that every Westview citizen who matters is driving to the Jazz Messiah Nonsense in dangerous weather. He has spent zero seconds explaining why.

As confounding and confusing as this strip has been over these final months…you can’t say that a lot of effort wasn’t put into today’s strip, the last-ever Sunday panel of Funky Winkerbean. Nearly seventy people (and one cat) are packed into St. Spires. I was even able to recognize most of them…but there are a couple head-scratchers. Continue reading “But You Don’t Really Care for Music, Do Ya?”

To The Bore-a-torium! And Step On It!

today

Real impressive snowplow there, Pulitzer (nominated once fifteen years ago, did not win) Boy. That thing looks like a death trap. Given the five months of total whiteout blizzard conditions in that town, you’d think they’d have a few real trucks. And why is Cayla screaming? Les is going to totally ruin his $1500 car by plowing through that snowbank. And for what? Christmas jazz played by elderly dementia patients? Bah, humbug, I say. Cayla’s reaction is all out of proportion to what’s actually happening here, which is a whole lot of nothing.

Great Moments In FW Arc Recap History

March 1-7, 2020
Dinkle shares with Becky that he has been reading a book about squirrels.

The instantly forgotten, one week, totally random arcs, now those were the real challenge. Anyone can snark on Bull dying or Marianne getting cancer while playing Lisa in a movie, but the arcs like these, those were the ones that put you to the test. By Wednesday you’re totally out of squirrel and/or nut puns, but there’s a post to do, and you gotta come up with something. And it’s tough, because Becky and Dinkle are still talking about squirrels. Every SoSF guest host, and the regular commenters too, know exactly what I mean. Sometimes it was like he was daring us to just give up and stop reading the strip altogether.