The War of the Time Pools

No one would have believed in the early years of the twenty-first century that Westview was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than Les’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as pizza mongers busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

Yet across the gulf of the internet, minds that are to Les’s mind as his is to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded today’s strip with beady eyes, and slowly and surely picked at nits.


Here ends my snark stint,
So off will I slink.
Coming up next:
Billy the Skink!

In which it turns out to be about Les

Oh, the plot turned out to be about how it affects Les? Huh.

The artwork today isn’t bad, and the facial expressions have been mercifully smirkless of late. We see Young Les as he discovers Lisa’s Story: The Other Shoe on the in memoriam table. He thumbs through the volume, a look of wonder and bemusement on his teenage features. And then—

Hey, wait a minute! Les never wrote this book; he read it. It is no heartbreaking work of staggering genius. No! It’s a temporal loop, a quantum fluctuation that has existed since the Big Bang itself, a flaw in the matrix, an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. Or something.

Still, it doesn’t explain how this innocent boy became an insufferable pedant. It’ll take more than quantum time paradoxes to explain that.

Smells Like Teen Idiocy

Link To Today’s Contrivance

“Wow! Banner making and hanging technology hasn’t changed at ALL!!!!”.

Uh, excuse me there Mr. Batiuk sir, but where did Holly go? And I don’t quite know how to tell you this, but Lisa is F*CKING DEAD in 2015, which may explain why she’s so cold all the time. Now I’m only speaking for myself here, but I’d probably visit a future Super Bowl or Kentucky Derby, or perhaps I’d visit Manhattan to see what real estate became the most valuable. Not these morons though, no sir. The only real surprise here is that they didn’t end up in that shitty pizza place instead.

I guess this marks the official end of Batiuk’s “1/4 inch from reality” period. Let’s take a moment to remember that glorious era…OK, done. I wonder if anyone’s going to tell Lisa, you know? Talk about awkward. When she sees the “in memoriam” board will she instantly turn to dust or something? Or are we pretending THAT whole thing never happened too?

Through The Boredom Of Future Past

Link To Today’s Thing

The artwork is just awesome today. I like how everything is just blackness, it reflects the content of the author’s mind so effectively. Is this a record for “most individual word balloons in a single-panel FW strip”? If not, please do NOT show me the current record holder.

If Harry hasn’t tried out the time pool how does he know it works? Why is Lisa all hunched over like she’s freezing cold? If I were her I’d get that checked out. Twice. Why does she want to visit 1990? Isn’t that just a tad unambitious of her? Why does Holly assume they’ll all be “long gone” by 2015? Ooops, yeah that’s right, I almost forgot. And isn’t it really 2025 in the Funkyverse? Or are we now officially ignoring the infamous “time jump”? Then there’s the biggest question of them all…are they EVER going to actually do this thing or will they spend another week talking about it instead? Talk about plodding.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Dick Face’s annoying propensity for bringing everyone and everything down. Even then he was such a dick. The guy discovers a time pool and he’s already finding ways for it to fail. He’s nothing if not consistent. Truly a dick for the ages, a timeless asshole whose annoyingness spans decades.

Past Dense

Link To Today’s Thing

Even time travel is a snore in the Funkyverse. Crazy discovers a time portal and the only thing that comes to mind is to invite his dimwitted pals to gawk at it. Then they make inane stupid “observations” in a way that suggests they’re not all that impressed. Totally Batiukian. Maybe they could travel back to 1972 or whatever and convince Batom to get himself a nice accounting degree or something.

God, is Lisa irritating or what? Why is she even there? I don’t think she even attended WHS in the first place. And I’m sorry, but retcon photo album corners go with sepia-tone, otherwise it’s totally inappropriate. And why is Crazy the only one that remembers any of this? Sigh. I hope they eventually jump into this thing, as right now it appears they’ll be talking about it for a week and a half.