Tag: Mindy

A Veritable Smorgasbord…of Horror.

c

Comic Book Harriet back again. And I want to thank Beckoning Chasm for taking one for the team. The last slot was an absolute void of material, even when the strips were available, and he filled it up with snark like only an inviting ravine extending into nothingness knows how.

And what a treat for me! We have Mopey and Mindy! A sad sack of a man only defined by comic books, and a carbon copy of every other blonde in the strip, only defined by the men around her.

I mean, seriously, can you be more of a non-character? Not to get nerdy, but we are dealing with some serious replicative fading. Each Cindy clone gets less and less viable. Cindy at least has a detailed history of independent action. And she used to have an actual personality before the Westview blandification virus infected her and turned her into the same neurotic depressive as everyone else, like an insidious hive-mind of wryness.

Jessica is less interesting, has never had a personality, and also is partially defined by her father, John Darling, who was murdered. But at least she attempted a career for a while separate from her husband. She also occasionally has conversations with other women that pass the Bechdel test.

But Mindy is like a box of expired No-Doz. Perky, yes. But completely flavorless and kind of nauseating. She wandered into her boyfriend’s office one day and he gave her a job because she was good at coloring in the lines. What did she do before other than work at the Valentine? What does she like? Did she ever have any kind of dream that wasn’t being handed a job by a man she knew? The only things we know about her inner life is that Cranky is her grandpa. Pete is literally dating the memory of an elderly man.

Still we’ve got a real buffet of monsters in the background here! From left to right. We have man presumably unironically wearing a Cincinnati Reds shirt. With a projected 7.9% chance to make the playoffs this year, and an average home game attendance of 20,000, nearly filling up half their ballpark, their future is definitely so bright they’re gonna need shades. His landwhale wife in her pointy sunglasses looks like she could have walked to the fair straight from the Far Side. And her terrifying tiny wig may have been stolen from a pediatric cancer patient.

Between Pete and Mindy is either an escaped convict in a hat or a construction worker on break. Right of Mindy’s head is the reincarnation of King Tut, complete with sloping forehead, elongated skull, slim body, and slight gut. Mindy’s arm is blocking his feet, so we can’t tell if he was cursed with a club foot in this life too. Next to him is a poor shoulderless woman who either has prominent rounded ears or a horrifyingly unfortunate nose.

Then we have the return of the dickhead! He even has a nice little coronal line where the shaft of his neck meets his glans, I mean face. He is drinking a refreshing beverage from a reusable cloth cup and straw he has fashioned from leftover fabric from his shirt and hat.

His wife looks like an extra from Planet of the Apes trying to pass. Lucky for them two of their three children look relatively normal. The poor kid in the stoller though. Pull that sunshade down! No one needs to see that! And it’s child abuse to let your lumpy potato child roast in the sun until he’s nice and crispy brown.

You Don’t Know Jack

Link to today’s strip.

My understanding of the slang word “jack” is that it means “nothing,” or perhaps “a small amount.”  Like the title of this entry, for example.  “You don’t know jack” means “You know nothing about this subject.”  “You get jack” means “You get nothing.”

Now, it’s been established that Batiuk has created his own world with its own idiots idioms.  The thing is, your own private slang only really works when there isn’t a real-world version.  He’s usually safe in this regard, as no human being has ever uttered things like “solo car date,” “vendo,” or “bio-dad,” but people use “jack” in the context I mentioned all the time.

Here, it seems to mean “money,” at least as far as I can fathom Pete’s meaning.  “Jack,” used here, is such a square-peg forced into a round-hole (forced with a hammer, while the peg is screaming) that I’m thinking it might get added to the Batiukionary.

Normally, in most strips with a *cough* joke like this, the drawing in panel three would be a slight variation of panel two, with the two halves of the *cough* joke implying a character’s single bit of dialogue in a single moment.  But I like to think that Pete said his dumb first line, then silently struggled to shoe-horn “jack” into his next sentence while everyone else ordered, paid, picked up their coffees and headed toward a table.

Perfectly Gross

More confirmation that this strip has devolved into nothing more than the author’s favorite characters having their wildest dreams fall into their laps today. Given how all we’ve really seen of Darin’s drawing skills is Sophomoric Sightings I don’t think this is really saying much. And I strongly doubt Pete’s writing skills would produce much of a woman, either.
What do you think Jess and Darin are talking about? I think it’s either “Did you know chimpanzees and silent film stars can be part of a murderous love triangle?” or “Wow, your significant other only wears Flash Underoos, too?!”.

Batiukian Butt Banter

So . . . it took Jess several years (it’s been years, right? it hasn’t just felt like years?) after she finished the documentary about Her Father, John Darling, Who Was Murdered, to realize that the Hollywood Biz Life wasn’t for her? And what exactly did The Biz do to him? He got murdered by a psycho because he was an asshole. I don’t recall that it was The Biz that turned him into an asshole, I’m pretty sure that’s just who he was.

Is it me or does Jess look pretty creepy in this strip? Like I kind of feel that Baituk instructed the artist to make sure he really showcased her “sexiness” or something. And speaking of badly drawn women, when I first read this I really thought Jess had flown back to L.A. already and was talking to Cindy, but no, that’s Mindy. I think. I really cannot keep track of these identically drawn Attractive Young Blondes Batiuk’s been showcasing lately.

Oh, and going back to the topic of assholes, Crankshaft (who had a love/hate relationship with someone literally named Keesterman) apparently talked about buttering asses enough that his granddaughter remembers it fondly, decades later.

Like I Care

Having satisfied her simian sexual appetites, as well as getting in a “bonding moment” with her child, Jessica has hastened back to L.A.—the world must not be made to wait any longer for that very important Butter Brinkel documentary! She’s probably been back in town barely long enough to unpack her suitcase; long enough to compel Darin to show his “caring” by sending her a package. Rather, “one of” his packages, which suggests this is a thing with him. Batiuk persists in depicting Darin and Jessica as these two starry eyed, young sweethearts, tragically kept apart by their respective, oh-so-important careers.