Yup, Mindy and Pete are sure getting real ellipsis lately. The Valentine, Montoni’s AND a date to go visit Gramps Crankshaft at the ol’ nursing home…move over Bogie and Bacall, this one’s a romance for the New Millennium. Kind of “steamy” by FW standards but that Batiuk is never afraid to “push the envelope”, as they say. NEXT week they’re planning to lay a wreath at the local unclaimed deceased pets memorial followed by a trip to the medical supply shop to pick up a new filter for Gramp’s oxygen generator. After that, it’s marriage, kids, cancer, the whole f*cking shebang. Let the good times roll.
Tag: Pete
Commander Vomit
This SoSF shift is dedicated to LFB, always my # 1 fan
What did I ever do to deserve this? The (sigh) Atomik Komix gang is back and apparently they’re already being henpecked and overworked. No one saw THAT coming, eh? “Commander Comet”…”Rip Tide”…”The Pulp”…sigh.
Tom Batiuk doing arcs about the exhausting demands of being a “big time” comic writer is pretty funny when you think about it. Maybe it’s some kind of subconscious or subliminal guilt trip, I dunno. Or maybe he’s just trying to convince everyone that he’s putting way more into this than he actually does, although no one who actually reads it is ever going to buy that.
By Your Powers Combined!
What powers would ‘soggy superhero comics’ give? I don’t get it.
On Friday, commentator Erdmann made the guess: “Anyone else suspect there’s a comic book cover Sunday strip headed our way?”
To which Bobanero replied: “It would be the longest lead up to a Sunday Comic Book Cover strip in history.”
Kudos for both the prediction and the comment. Indeed this entire meandering, yet linear, arc over the past three months seems to have been building to this end.
And by ‘this end’ I mean Batiuk establishing some of his protagonists in a new comics related field so he can keep getting his precious commissioned covers whenever the mood strikes. He obviously had gotten all the Starbuck Jones covers he wanted, and is preparing to branch out.
Interesting that we don’t get a tip of the Funky Feltpen directly on the strip. The name on the bottom of the line art says Fairgood. Honestly interested in who drew this.
Infinity Bore.
So sorry for the late post today. Finally went to go see Infinity War, which despite juggling dozens of characters and plotlines, and having plotholes big enough to drive a Hulk truck through, was infinitely better than this because the emotions of individual characters were both believable and dynamic.
This is going for dynamic, since it can’t manage believable, but it falls right on its face at the climax. The worst comic character name since Matter Eater Lad.
My cat sometimes presents me with an inedible pulp on the rug…and it usually takes hours of elbow work to get the stink out.
Tarps for everyone.
Today’s strip reminds me of a story I once heard.
There was an old farmer, set in his ways. His son went to college and came back with all kinds of new-fangled ways to ‘maximize profits.’ He no longer wanted to hear his dad’s old advice, about snakes on the road or frogs chirping, relying instead on science or innovation.
He upgraded all their equipment, used his smart phone to run their irrigation system, bought drones to guard the sheep from wolves instead of the old donkey. But most contentious between father and son was changing the way they handled the manure from their feedlot and pig sheds. The old farmer had always dry composted it for fertilizer, but his son badgered him to build huge wet lagoons covered in plastic tarps to collect all the methane to generate electricity.
Everything went fine. Until one May, it rained and rained and rained and rained, until the lagoons were full to the brim with a fecal slurry. It was on a May day, during the heart of tornado season that a dark funnel cloud formed south of their farm. Touching down over the hog buildings and their very new, very full lagoons, and then headed straight toward the farm house.
“Dad! Dad! We gotta get to the cellar!” The son shouted over the howling wind.
“I got one thing I have to do!” The dad shouted back, as he ran out to the stock barns.
The son followed him at a sprint. His dad grabbed an dusty oil cloth and threw it over the old guard donkey in it’s stall.
“Dad! What the hell are you doing!” His son yelled!
“Son.” the old farmer said, solemnly, “Every old farmer knows, when a shitstorm is coming, you gotta cover your ass.”
Now look at that pile of ‘comic-books’ and tell me that Rusty’s store, (and us by extension) didn’t just get overwhelmed by a massive shitstorm.
Son of Stuck Funky 