Tag: pen

I Know Where He Can Find A Mind Exactly Like That

Link To The Strip

You know, the strip is drawing to a close, as is my beloved SoSF blog, and I really wish it didn’t have to be this way. It’d really be nice if we got a story that offered some kind of closure, or even a nostalgic “life goes on” clip show kind of thing, where we could chuckle at the gang and their various pitiful antics over the years. But, unfortunately, he threw whatever this is supposed to be together, so there’s nothing you can really do but marvel over how unbelievably terrible and stupid it is.

Impossible events (that they’re only talking about, mind you), wild incongruities, dialog that contradicts itself all over the place, awful artwork, it’s unquestionably one of the most terrible FW arcs I’ve ever seen. And it’s not even terrible in an astonishing way, like when Les saved Marianne from a fire. It’s just stupid. I mean sure, maybe this helmet nonsense will lead somewhere and we’ll all be like “wow, I can’t believe how that cat figured into the story!” but what are the odds?

My current guess is that the strip will end with Les asking Summer how her book is coming along. Summer will reply that it’s already finished. Then the last panel will show “The Complete FW” with a caption that says “Thanks For Reading…Stay Funky!”. This story isn’t going anywhere and nothing will happen, so right now that’s the most likely ending.

Great Moments In FW Arc Recap History

November 19-December 20, 2012

An extended Crazy Harry arc begins. Harry explains to Donna his love of old comic books. The next day he walks into Montoni’s to inform Funky that USPS is shutting down the Westview Post Office and he’s out of a job. Harry decides he must sell off his beloved library, spending a week sorting and packing his books and his comics before schlepping them off to John, who offers Crazy Harry a job at the Komix Korner.

Being a mailman was Crazy Harry’s entire post-high school identity, so OF COURSE Batiuk had to destroy it, as he’s often prone to do. I was shocked to discover that Crazy has been working as John’s Komix Korner lackey for TEN YEARS already, as I thought this happened far more recently than this. Time sure does fly. He just loved to torture these characters. He absolutely bludgeoned Funky and Wally for years on end, he had Dinkle go deaf, he had a trombone prodigy lose an arm, he had Bull lose his mind AND die, he crippled Fred Fairgood AND rectonned him into a philanderer for no reason whatsoever, and he stripped away whatever dignity Crazy had left (hint: not much), just for kicks. He’s a dark, dark character, that Batom. He obviously loves the idea of cruel fates befalling his characters, especially if they were popular or good at something in high school. It’s always been one of his weirdest traits.

In Westview, It’s More Of A Disadvantage Point

Happy Thanksgiving from your pals at SoSF!

today’s strip

I don’t know how many of you watched “Twin Peaks: The Return”, but during the final episode (spoiler alert for five year old show) there is a rather long scene near the end where literally nothing happens. And while tension did indeed build, a quick glance at the clock revealed that there was no freaking way the show would explain everything (or anything) in the amount of running time it had left. And then it really got confusing and weird.

I mention this because after today there are like only forty FW strips to go, and knowing BatYam as I do, it seems incredibly hard to believe he’ll be able to bring whatever this is supposed to be home in that amount of time. The strip is winding down for good, and it’s squarely focused on a character who’s been absent for most of the last ten years, and a guy who isn’t really a character at all. He’s obviously setting up some sort of insane time travel thing here, which only makes me wonder where all this imagination was hiding for the last fifteen freaking years.

Obviously the fear here is that he’s going to somehow reunite Les and Summer with Lisa in some way, shape or form, and the strip will end with the three of them hugging. Cayla will presumably be conveniently retconned away or shipped off to “Crankshaft” or something. We all know he (BatHam) never really cared for Cayla anyway, given how little she factored into the strip after she married Les. In my opinion, the whole strip noticeably slowed down (no, seriously) after that.

Great Moments In SoSF Arc Recap History

June 14-June 20, 2010
Funky checks his dad into a nursing home. Afterwards, he orders a “vodka and orange” at a bar, but changes his mind and leaves.

Which led to his collision with Cell Phone Girl (RIP?) and “the black panel”, the greatest individual panel in Act III history. This is FW we’re talking about, so there was some speculation that Funky had died, but he just went into a coma instead. He then traveled back in time, met his teenage self, and advised himself to buy a copy of “Starbuck Jones #1″…the very same comic book that had saved Montoni’s in a prior arc. Then he recovered and PTSD and blah blah blah who cares, but that was where the Starbuck Jones legend truly began, which spawned a sequence of events that directly led to Ruby Lith retiring just last week. Who’d have thunk it?

What’s in your head, in your head? Ruby, Ruby, Ruby-y-y-y

I’d argue that today’s strip is the product of an AI tasked with generating images for the word “wistful”… but that’s an insult to artificial intelligence and I don’t want to be responsible for unleashing Skynet. This is just completely sad, but in the stupidest way.

Mindy is the one that really punches up the stupidity here. First, “when” Ruby retires is essentially right now, it doesn’t need to be discussed as if it is well in the future. Second, Mindy also draws a paycheck from Atomik Komix… so does she dramatically underestimate the financial resources it takes to travel extensively or does Chester really pay that well?

And if Chester pays that well, why can’t he spend some money on an office that doesn’t look like a dungeon crawl game being played on a vintage grayscale Macintosh? Maybe everything in the office is made of stone. So that’s why they called him “Chester the Chiseler”!

The Trilogy Of Tedium

Link To This One

It’s called a “tetralogy”, you nimrods. Or a “quadrilogy”, if you prefer. It took me all of three seconds to learn this. But BatYam felt he really needed to drive Flash Freeman’s general imbecility home, again, so here we are. It would appear that once again he’s done the impossible and discovered something even more tedious than that “Elemental Force” arc from a few months back, and that “something” is watching Flash and Phil talking to Batton about it. That BatHam, always pushing his artistic boundaries.

That “Elementals” arc was absolute hell to get through and I really hope we’re not revisiting that fiasco again, because I am totally out of sub-atomic particle puns. It really is remarkable how quickly Flash Freeman became one of my most despised FW characters, as he wasn’t even in the strip until a few years ago. And it was better that way. Marginally, yes, but nevertheless.