Tag: Ruby Lith

Chester M’Boy

hitorque
February 21, 2020 at 2:13 pm
…I FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT!! Chester the Molester is supposed to be Bruce Wayne, but instead of fighting crime through an alter ego, his mission is to right all of the wrongs of the comics industry while saving the entire genre for posterity singlehanded…

Well that would make at least as much sense as whatever has gone on around here this week! Bought off his conscience? Chester’s really not guilty of anything, aside from being a rich nerd. Unless the guilt he feels is over having built his entire fortune on all those comics he stole from the drugstore as a kid. In which case it’s going to take more than selling off one rare comic–which he owns in triplicate–to truly fix his karma.

Pant the Load Right On Me

I right away had to look up “pantload;” not as a prerequisite for moving it to the Batiuktionary, but because I understood it to be a pejorative. It’s what you might call someone who’s clueless and unpleasant: “Chester’s a real pantload.” Indeed, over at urbandictionary you can find some pretty colorful definitions. More um, sophisticated reference sources, however, support Ruby’s usage: a nicer way to say a “metric shit ton” of a given thing.

Bye Bye Miss American Buy

Sensing that Ruby isn’t going to be an easy lay after all, Chester resorts to a combination of flattery and bribery. Ruby’s mistrust of the Chiseler is on display again. For him to attempt to ravish her or shake her down for money would be more plausible than him (awkwardly) handing over the Miss American cover art for which he’d paid big bucks.

Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now

Maybe Chester recently learned he’s only got a few weeks to live? Why else would the one they called “the Chiseler suddenly acting so generous? If we’re talking about this particular cover, by “rights” it belongs to neither of them: Ruby admitted to having smuggled it out of her old place of work. I guess posession is nine tenths of the law.

Stranded in a Limousine

“First time in a limo, Ruby?” “In a limo this small.” How squicky is today’s strip? Only when Chester’s tiny Town Car pulls up to the gates of his mansion does Ruby realize that they’ve taken a detour. Rather than just explain his “reason for stopping here first” (preferably before they get there), Chester turns even more creepy than usual, sitting thisclose to Ruby in what is supposed to be a big car. The sight of his O.J.-like black gloves do nothing to put her at ease.

spacemanspiff85
February 17, 2020 at 12:59 am
I really wonder if Batiuk overheard something about Me Too in the news about a year ago and thought “Inappropriate workplace advances? I bet I can get a week’s worth of strips out of that!” and thus this strip was born.

There are tons of ways that TB could have wrought a chuckle out of this setup without invoking #MeToo. But he goes there, naturally, and in the most hamfisted way imaginable: as if  the #MeToo movement had a switchboard with operators standing by to take your call.