Retch-A-Sketch

Link To Today’s Strip

And as the winter solstice draws nigh, The Bearded Dick With Ears shall emerge from his smug frozen tomb to wreak wordplay and sarcasm across the dormant mid-central Ohio landscape, casting his obnoxious shadow as the sun’s rays fade into anecdotes about his dead wife and the horrors of authordom.

Oh swell, just in time for the holidays. Look at him there in panel one…”what a dick” neatly summarizes THAT one. This is some book tour, apparently he’s gracing EVERY town in Ohio with his presence, those poor bastards. “Lisa’s Trilogy” must be really burning up the best-seller list in the “not real book, collection of previously-published old comic strips in book form” category.

And Boy Lisa’s bizarre trek continues unabated today as he wanders around Ohio in a haze, interacting with Lisa’s survivors, replacements and legacy books, pining away wistfully for his beloved “mom” and doing his very best to emulate her special brand of bland and quite frankly annoying saintly altruism. He’s doing a damn fine job of it too, as my desire to behead him has definitely multiplied exponentially ever since this “mom” silliness began.

Les’ hardcore fans are going to freak upon discovering that copies of “Trilogy” exist with both Les’ and Boy Lisa’s signatures. I can easily foresee Ebay bidding wars with prices skyrocketing well into the tens of dollars for that collector’s item. Seriously though, wouldn’t Boy Lisa be entitled to a cut of the sales here? He wasn’t stupid enough to illustrate those books (and come up with the whole idea for “Prelude”) for free…was he? I assume Les secretly hates him because a) he’s Frankie’s spawn and b) he makes a living in Hollywood’s immoral cesspool of Lisa’s Story-ruining fiends and his only goal here is to bleed him dry, but then again it’s entirely possible that Darin is indeed just that dumb.

My Mother The Trilogy

Link To Today’s Strip

That certainly escalated quickly. The insane “mom” stuff is beyond snark or parody at this point, as Batty’s endless quest to re-live and bask in the glory of his “Lisa’s Story” heyday has him turning every character in Les’ orbit into Lisa-worshiping drones who never, ever stop singing her praises and spreading The Word.  Obviously Boy Lisa has no idea what Lisa would have thought of Cayla, as he barely even knew her and not only that, “what Lisa thinks about Cayla” has already been (ahem) adequately covered.

In “real life” Darin’s friends and family would probably be growing quite concerned regarding his bizarre Lisa obsession. Wandering around Westview talking about her, giving a huge cash windfall to a Lisa charity, always referring to her as “mom” as if she raised him, it’s very peculiar behavior. What kind of father with a child Skyler’s age has time to meander around to book signings on a whim? What did he do, arrive at his parent’s or in law’s house and announce that he was going out to pay tribute to his “real” mother now? It’s deranged.

The Hair-ried Author

Oh no, Les is back in today’s strip. And along with ol’ smirk n’ shirk we get three would-be nominees for This Week In Milford’s pantheon of hair. Let’s see… we’ve got a phone camera operator sporting a Dave Coulier mullet, a proud Lisa book-buyer wearing the Luke Skywalker, and someone so enthralled with the many justifications for John Darling’s murder in Fallen Star that they are morphing into Albert Einstein. Fantastic.

Well, that took my mind off of yet another strip where Les shows contempt for the people who want to give him money for his work, for a few minutes at least.

Thanks, SOSFers, for putting up with me and TB (mostly TB… I hope) for another two weeks. The unenviable task of covering a crazed bald man palming two imaginary grapefruits (and whatever else next week brings) falls to someone significantly more well-known to the average comic strip reader than Phil the Forecaster, our own Comic Book Harriet. Good luck.

Les Cafards

I’m beginning to suspect TB is taking payola from the chiropractic industry when he submits sideways Batom comic book covers like in today’s strip. Let’s make that money go to waste…

FW11-5-2017

This is one of the wackier Batom covers and, frankly, one of the better ones I think. Such whimsy, however, falls a bit flat when juxtaposed with Les whining about having to actually work to promote his books. Work? Oh the horror!

One Nation Under A Groove

Les finally remembers his creepy Centerville contemporary in today’s strip, something he lied about just two strips ago.

While this comic would like you to believe that Les’ memory was jogged by this girl’s foolish belief that she was going to meet George Clinton and Co. on a school-arranged trip to Washington DC, let’s be honest here. Les really remembers her because she looked like a proto-Lisa back then.