Tag: sepia-tone

Swing and amiss

I will give Tom Batiuk this, he rarely reuses artwork. Story arcs, dialogue, themes, comic book references, potentially fatal diseases, and whatnot, sure… but not artwork. No, he loves redrawing Act I scenes in his current “realistic” style.

Which we see in today’s strip, where he has redrawn a pair of panels to almost exactly match the strip from May 10, 1985.

FWcompare8517

Lisa appears less desperate in the 2017 panel than she did in 1985, though one could say she appeared Les desperate in 1985… On the Funky Winkerbean retcon scale this is RETCON NINETY-FIVE. Today’s strip hits RETCON ONE in panel 3, though.

Les, who alleges that he was so in love with Lisa back when this happened, actually asked three other girls to prom before he asked her: Cindy, who Les files a sex discrimination suit against after she turns him down; Allison, who Les asks via world’s worst wingman Crazy Harry; and Tracy, who Les openly insults before asking.

Oh, and he doesn’t appear to know or remember Lisa’s name until after they dance, (in some pre-prom dance in the gym that they are both attending? I can’t quite figure out what is going on.) referring to her as “that girl” in his thoughts before asking her to dance.

The Wheels On The Bus Fall Off And Off

Link To Today’s Strip

What? I’m staring at this thing, trying to see if maybe I’m missing something but I can’t for the life of me figure out what the joke is supposed to be here. Did he mean to say “hearsed” in panel three? I mean yeah, that’s awful but at least there’s a logic to it. If this is how he meant it to read, well, he’s got bigger issues than stupid boring pointless crossover arcs to worry about because this one is troubling-ly terrible.

Until this week I honestly had no idea that Crankshaft was just as full of contrived drippy pathos and attention-seeking melodrama as FW is. And here I thought it was all gags about the elderly and dumb malapropisms, but it turns out that’s merely half the story. It’s just like FW except instead of constantly whining about getting old, the CS characters already ARE old. It all makes such perfect sense now.

Killing Ed Softly With Baton

Link To Today’s Strip

Few people remember how this legendary Act II arc ended up playing out. Dinkle did indeed stab Crankshaft, causing the bus to plunge into one of Ohio’s many ravines. A guilt stricken Dinkle rendered first aid to Crankshaft who managed to survive, but the entire band died of exposure while awaiting rescue. In one of the strip’s most harrowing twenty-two week sequences, Harry and Crankshaft resorted to cannibalism to survive long enough for Les and Lisa to rescue them.  Some of TB’s most chilling (pun intended) work.

The fact that Dinkle is the one reciting this retconned story makes it pretty creepy if you ask me. He’s flat-out admitting that he once threatened to kill a school bus driver for refusing to drive children through unsafe conditions. While that sort of thing was considered hilarious back in 1976, now it’d probably result in that weirdo Dinkle being banned from the school for life, at least. And he’s telling this story to a woman who lost her arm in a car crash, no less. Surprisingly tone-deaf stuff from a guy so in tune with the issues facing young people today and (zzzzzzzz).

*(ZZZZ)

Link To Today’s Strip

Wow, what a listless outing. It’s hard to believe there’s an entire comic strip devoted to this grating, annoying and unfunny moron (Crankshaft, to be clear), but the mysteries of comic strip syndication are lost on me, so there you go. I’d also like to know how BanTom defines “a certain age” because his “Captain Video” gag* is totally lost on me too. A tad before my time, as they say, and I’m guessing yours as well. Way to pander to the prized “over-85” demographic. At least he didn’t reference an old comic book this time, thank God. **

* It’s bad enough when you have to explain the joke, but when you have to explain the acronym that explains the joke you MIGHT be better served by just starting over from the beginning. In cases like this, the wastebasket is the comic strip author’s friend.

** Also, f*ck Les Moore. It just needed to be said.

Please, you can have the book, just leave.

After an excruciatingly long conversation with the store owner who was just trying to make polite conversation, Crazy Harry delivers a bit of Dialog That No One Would Ever Actually Say and comes across as almost as smug and pompous of an ass as Les.

Again, one has to wonder, why in the hell did Les have his book tour in a pizza joint when he could have helped out an actual bookstore!?