Comic Book Harriet, back in action. Ready to dig through the comic muck of this Inedible Pulp to, hopefully, stab at the heart of this horrifying nonsense.
First of all, I want to thank Spaceman Spiff for easing us through the shock and awe of the first ‘back from the dead’ soap opera moment I think we’ve had since Wally Winkerbean came home.
While some of you have been frustrated and angry at just how baffling the decision to retcon Phil Holt’s death is, I’ve actually been relishing the absolute stupidity of this arc. Unlike Batiuk’s biffing of Bull’s Suicide, the morally dubious resolution of the Adeela ICE arc, or the callous insensitivity of the LA Fires, the crazy on display here has no offensive real-world victims unless you find it libelous to Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, or Joe Simon.
And today, I finally get the answer to the most pressing question raised by Phil Holt’s ‘resurrection’: did he fake his death, or have a near death experience? Hanging on this question, was the interpretation of this strip from three years ago.
Spoiler Alert: Phil Holt wasn’t already dead.
With the retcon, and the knowledge that Phil was completely fine at the time, there is only one explanation for these ghosts. Darin was imagining Phil and Lisa’s spirits having this conversation as they looked on approvingly at the auction. It was a fantasy that he concocted for his own gratification.
Furthermore, this suggests that every time we see ‘ghosts’ in strip it’s just the daydreaming of a living character, comforting themselves with a lie, roleplaying a no longer possible conversation, or expressing an internal anxiety, sometimes all at the same time.
Like when Lillian was visited by ‘Lucy’ coming back from the grave to lead her on a guilt purging journey of taking an undelivered letter to a demolished building, where Lucy and her old boyfriend Eugene could finally spiritually be together (even though Eugene was still alive at the time.)
Les of course is the worst offender of this. Lisa constantly pops up around him, encouraging him, praising him, agreeing with him, and smiling while watching him make out with his hot new wife.
But even Les seems to realize that this is just him projecting what he imagines Lisa would say. And that Lisa only lives on inside his mind as a fractured reflection of his memory. She sleeps forever, in the oblivion of death.
If I could ask Batiuk a personal question, I would ask if he believes in an afterlife. Because I don’t think he really does. I think he wishes there was something after death, but has been convinced that the only immortality we actually get is the lingering echoes we leave in the hearts and minds of others.
And, in time, those people will pass away, and so then passes even memory. Life has meaning, but only temporarily.
And so all metaphysical experience is really just human consciousness and awareness fractured and reflected back on itself. When we try to conceive of or reach out to God, or dead loved ones, or eternity, the only thing that can reach back is a part of yourself.
Dead St. Lisa was only a part of imagination. She’s no more or less real than that heatstroke robot Funky imagined when running, or Jeff’s Inner Child avatar, or Les’ depression cat.
But, then again, apparently the depression cat is real and crazy old film producers can see it.
And Dead Lisa did call into an airport and talk to customer service, then Les, then called in a phony bomb threat…
The only evidence of life after death in Funky Winkerbean.
Yeah, that Hollywood sure is crazy all right. This arc was a perfect example. What a wacky place, like how they changed the cancer screenplay so that Lisa lived, the way they wrote an adopted son into the script, the way they go to restaurants…man, the zaniness is just overwhelming in Hollywood, just totally nutty. No wonder Thelma (who, like Mason, only gets to have a personality at the END of the story) is seeing an imaginary cat that Les talks to when he’s agonizing over writing about his dead wife. Very clever, Author Guy, very clever.
And all this time it’s been that damned cat that’s made Les the single most objectionable character in the history of ever. I see. Perhaps Batom needs to slow down with the seasonal craft beers until AFTER he finishes one of these mega-long arcs. What’s another ten minutes, right?
But seriously, if this is indeed the end of the epically annoying screenplay arc, talk about ending with a resounding thud. You can almost hear the sad trombone after panel three….”whaaaa-waaaa”. TB’s the master of the anticlimax, it’s like he wants to just get it over with as much as his readers do. What a dreary display.
After a long, insufferable summer of sitting around doing nothing, Dickface just can’t wait to get home so he can sit THERE doing nothing. The sheer ambition of the man boggles the mind, doesn’t it? Porch swings, gazebos, pizza, his overweight dimwitted pals, comic books, pizza…maybe if he’s lucky his wife will get sick and die so he’ll finally have some new material to work with. Then everything will TRULY be just like it was before!
It’s increasingly clear that Author Guy’s greatest talent is the ability to keep a straight face during those moronic puff-piece interviews of his. I’ve seen better “writing” on cereal boxes. The guy who does “Bazooka Joe” is practically Hemingway next to this joker. This was a complete shambles from top to bottom, obviously the “work” of someone who stopped giving a shit years ago.
The funniest thing about this is how everyone respects Les AFTER he gives up and quits. Welcome to the Batiukverse, where up is down, black is white and apathy is a virtue to be respected and admired.
I sometimes wonder if Author Guy sits there in Batom Inc. World HQ with felt tip in hand, poring over his little stories and occasionally leaping from his chair and yelling “No! Dammit, this still makes too much sense! I have to dumb it down again and again until it’s JUST RIGHT!!!!”. It’s just difficult for me to accept that someone…anyone…could come up with anything this stupid accidentally. The way he ignores his own continuity, the way he glosses right over plot developments that just happened mere days ago, the way he does it time after time after time with such predictable ease…it has to be a con, it just has to be. No one can be this consistently awful without trying to be.
As far as today’s strip is concerned, uh, yeah. Dumb “insider” lingo, idiotic contrivance out of nowhere, plot details at odds with things that just happened a few days before, Les behaving like a self-centered narcissistic jerk-off, that stupid cat hanging around for no reason…yup, sounds about right. Why even bother with these plodding mega-arcs if you’re just going to give up halfway through and resort to crappy filler and nonsensical garbage to finish them up? Again, it makes no sense unless it’s on purpose. It has to be.
Son of Stuck Funky 