All is Vanity

Link to today’s strip

Yes. Please Mason. Go back to clogging up traffic, making things more difficult for fire and rescue, just so you can have all your friends together for your fun bonfire boat party. Mindy and Pete presumably know about the fire, call them to let them know they’re welcome to your BYOB yacht club and let them evacuate themselves.

Of course, this is Pete, he’s probably been evacuating all over himself for the last couple hours.

Nice vanity plate on Masone’s circa 2004 SUV. I guess it really would be the best way to go incognito around LA if you’re a mega famous Hollywood heartthrob. No one would believe that the star of the mega blockbuster Rise of the Zeton Warriors would be both that cheap AND that egotistical.

Who do you guys figure might die in this arc? Cindy? Jff? Masone? Or will Marianne attempt to drown herself after being stuck for hours alone on a boat with Les? Even if she tries, I’m sure a life affirming quote from Kurt Cobain or Sylvia Plath could put her back on track.

How the Other Half Burns.

Link to today’s strip

First of all, YOU CRAZY COMMENTERS! I haven’t seen our comments section this lively since Bull pulled an Aldo Kelrast off Nobottom Road. You make it incredibly difficult for me to find something to say that hasn’t been said, but I bear that cross gladly.

Second, when I saw yesterday’s strip I knew that our personal Winkerpedia, BillyTheSkink, would be able to provide the deets, and he did. Thanks Billy! He gave a great breakdown of The Great Montoni’s fire of ’97 yesterday, so if you didn’t read his comments, go back and take a look. The most important details seem to be:

1.) Wally Winkerbean saved both Lisa and Les from the fire when he crawled through the smoke to wake them up.

2.) The fire was arson and was probably started by a guy called Plantman who was attempting to destroy evidence of the murder of Jess’ father, John Darling, who was murdered.

3.)Les ran back into the apartment to retrieve a floppy disk containing his research and draft for ‘Fallen Star,’ a book about Jess’ father, John Darling, who was murdered.

4.) Les did not save Lisa.

5.) Crazy Harry committed mail fraud for insurance purposes.

6.) Les is a selfish prick who has forgotten that he didn’t save Lisa.

Yesterday’s juxtaposition of past and present made sense; young Les ‘saving’ Lisa versus old Les extra bonus saving pretend Lisa. Today’s series of panels make it a little more difficult to parse out the symbolism.

But today seems to show that while Les and Lisa were poor newlyweds devastated by losing their crappy apartment along with nearly everything except each other, Masone and Cindy are rich and so don’t really care about one of their houses getting torched. They’re gonna go to their fancy boat, sail out into the bay, and sit on the deck sipping wine. It’ll be a fun date night to watch the plebs flailing and drowning in the shallows, trapped between waves and flames, like the peasants of Pompeii.

Mad Masone: Beyond Blunderdome

Link to today’s strip

Sorry for the late post, today’s strip was not available for preview, but I
was already up late bingeing cartoons, so decided to wait around for the exciting next installment of Twin Boobs: Fire Drive Through Me. But the darn strip refused to drop. And when it finally did, it’s just two panels of ridiculous action. DOES ANYONE EVEN CARE ABOUT THE LAWS OF CONVECTION? The reason cars can drive through fire in the movies is that the type of incendiaries they use are meant to burn up quickly.

But it’s just another strip of MEN BEING MANLY, BY SAVING THEIR HELPLESS WIMMENFOLK, FROM FIRE BAAAAAAAD.

A single story, or even two, of a brave Les running down the street screaming, “USA! USA!” would be fine, if it was balanced out by some feminine heroics. Can anyone think of an instance? Because all I’m thinking of is Lisa giving Les a ghostly phone call from beyond the grave to warn him not to get on a plane that didn’t end up crashing anyway. So basically she saved him a couple hours sitting on a plane that refuses to leave the gate. HEROIC.

Through the Fire and the Flames We Carry On

Link to today’s strip

I know it makes me look like a slacker to keep using other people’s comments. But you people keep predicting the plot before it even happens. Case in point, our resident Batuikstorian BillyTheSkink has downloaded so much Funky Winkerbean trivia directly into his prodigious brain that he can see the future before it happens.

You know, except for the glaring flaws of this fire somehow being viewable from a defunct watchtower, and Point Dume being an impossible origin point for a fire of this magnitude, this thing is playing out pretty much identical to the Woolsey Fire of 2018. It burning the similar places, and seems of a similar size.

That fire burned 1600 homes in Malibu and the surrounding hills, including the homes of stars like Gerard Butler and Miley Cyrus’, but miraculously only three people died. One was an old man who was trapped in his home and didn’t get the warning to evacuate.

And the other two people BURNED TO DEATH IN THEIR CAR.

A second source said Anthony Baklayan and his elderly mother, both disoriented by thick smoke and approaching flames, tried to follow a fire truck they believed was headed to safety but was instead on its way to try and save a home. The pair realized their mistake and tried to turn around in the driveway of the canyon residence, where their car became engulfed in flames, the source said. Their bodies were discovered hours later.

Batiuk has been following the Woolsey fire so closely up to this point. Is it too much to hope that he’s going to copy this little detail too?

In The Hot Seat.

Link to today’s strip whenever it appears

Comic Book Harriet reporting from the scene of the missing previews. Literally sweating bullets over trying to come up with something that hasn’t been said already by the hordes of commenters, or, as Batiuk likes to call us, ‘Beady-Eyed Nitpickers’.

Seeing a bunch of fresh names in the comments section lately brings a smile to my heart. Hate reading crappy comics is one of life’s greatest pleasures, like music, or fine wine, meant to be shared with like-minded connoisseurs. I don’t know if you people are coming back to watch the world burn, or have just found the place, but the you’re stoking the fire with some pretty hot fuel for thought.

Such as.

I hope everyone will give SpacemanSpiff85 a massive round of internet points for putting up with almost an entire shift of no previews. He was able to transmogrify something out of nothing, which is the exact opposite of what Tom usually accomplishes.