Tag: Mindy

Skin Flakes, Phlegm and Excrement for Color

Link to today’s strip.

So, everyone wanted to see Crankshaft, probably in the futile hope that his demise would be depicted onscreen.

Well, here’s Crankshaft.  He looks like a plastic bag filled with pus trying to decide if gravity is worth resisting any longer.

Tom Batiuk keeps trying to shove Crankshaft down our throats.  And it never works.  No one cares about Crankshaft, it has never generated any interest in anyone to watch it unfold.  I suspect it’s a very low performer, newspaper-wise, and perhaps Mr. Batiuk is trying to shovel his legacy over there now that he has destroyed Funky Winkerbean.  But that’s like trying to choose between a burning building and a sea full of sharks.

And to be honest, the fact that Mindy seeks the approval of the Old, Unplaceable Odor makes her a truly terrible person.  At least Pm N Jff recognize that Crankshaft is something to be tolerated, not cultivated.

But The Grandfather

Link to today’s strip.

Pete looks utterly distraught in that last panel–Oh, my God!  She’s making me meet her grandfather!  Well, this relationship is over…too bad, I thought it might have worked, but no, she’s gotta bring in the grandfather….

I can’t think of any other explanation for the expression oozing off his face–unless he once had a dream that he would die at the hands of some girl’s grandfather, and all of this is exactly like that dream….

The point is, he sure doesn’t look happy at all about this, and it’s worrying him to the point where he doesn’t even notice Mindy’s transformation into a 1960’s toothpaste advertisement.

Re-Pete-I-Tion

Link to today’s strip.

I find the most reasonable explanation for Mindy’s attraction to Pete is the one offered by a number of commentors–she’s hoping to sleep her way into some of those Starbuck Jones/Cable Movie Entertainment millions so she can buy her way out of this strip.  That’s surprisingly cynical for a strip like this, but, let’s face it–Pete is otherwise a repellent character, who has no attractive features of any kind, and only an insane/desperate person would find him worthy of affection.  I mean, he and Mindy had two remarkably stupid conversations, and suddenly she wants to divert from the airport to Bedside Manor?  (To meet He Who Shall Not Be Named In This Strip, of course.)  I’d find it more plausible if she was driving him to some remote field where she’d force him to dig his own grave before gifting him with a bullet.

Pete is one manifestation of the Ultimate Batiuk Form–the Whiner.  If Mindy is serious about wanting to be with him, she had better get used to endless whining about how hard he has to work at what would otherwise be his dream job.  Because those who exist in the Funkyverse without constant complaining don’t truly exist at all.

Of course, the sleeping-to-the-top theory falls down when you realize this would mean a female character has drive and ambition–and those things are not directed toward bringing milk and cookies to her comic-reading man.  Sorry, everyone.

It does remind me of the old Hollywood joke–this one comes from the 1930’s I believe, so it’s right there on Nostalgia Boulevard.  “Did you hear about the aspiring actress?  She was so stupid, she slept with the writer!”

Shooting Gallery

Today’s strip

Greetings, folks, BChasm temporarily in the captain’s chair for the next little while.  What’s this?!  The viewscreen shows a sea of hostiles–ready photon torpedoes!   We must annihilate this threat before it spreads across the galaxy!

I’m going to skip over Mason’s “movie we filmed here,” comment, because while I don’t think any of the film was shot in Centerville, I honestly don’t remember the “school bus drives into shot” bit well enough, and–Tales to Astonish–I have no desire to look and see.  So I’ll give him that.

What else?  Well, we’ve got a crowd shot of almost everyone, including Les–which sets our Les Watch back to zero, damn it.  At least he’s not saying anything, and is both poorly drawn and partly covered by a word balloon.  Funny, though, I’d have expected both Comic Book John and Imbecilic Harry to be there, but I guess they got their exposure in at Comic Con, so no need to feature them any longer.  But who is that between Jim KibblesNBits and Marianne?  It looks like they flew Marianne’s mother out there after all!  I guess?

The fact that so many of the cast and crew are in the audience–and sitting right up front, too–makes me wonder if Tom Batiuk believes that the first time anyone involved with a movie actually gets to see the finished film is at the premier.  In the real world, the director would have seen the film dozens of times by now, and there’s almost always a screening for the cast and crew.  So all these people would be backstage, or at the back of the hall, gauging audience reaction–pacing, room for laughs, people getting bored at certain parts, and so on–and looking for “oohs” and “aahs” for the cast members.

But not in the fantasy land that is the Funkyverse.  Here, everything happens the way a five year old imagines that it happens–it’s all just magic, and friendship, and comic books and pizza, and it works every time!  In a way, that sounds like an attractive world…for a few minutes.  But after those few minutes, I’d want something of substance, something that would stir the imagination rather than just “be” everything forever.

Poorly thought-out as the Lisa stuff is, it’s at least an attempt to address adult concerns–something that a comic strip aimed at “contemporary problems of young people” should attempt more often.  Because I’m pretty sure the contemporary problems of young people aren’t that they wish there were more comic-book movies.

Another Pizza My Heart

Another perpendicular panel and more of Pete and Mindy meeting cute. I can’t tell you “the age of that joke” (I’m guessing ancient) but I can tell you Batiuk last used it six months ago (in another sideways strip no less). I guess he forgot, just like he forgot that it was a Tweet, not a “coded Junior Spaceman message” that Jff sent to the director. Pete nurses a glass of coyote urine as he watches Mindy gorge on pizza and Italian bread. He’s either too cheap/broke to get a slice for himself, or perhaps he’s already grooming svelte Mindy to join the ranks of dumpy blonde Westview wives.