Today’s gonna be a short post, since I’m fighting the evil forces of My Grain valley.
Plenty of humor to wring from this weird weird situation.
Even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while.
Tag: silhouette
Binge and Bungle
It must have been a combination of the dramatic lighting plus Holly’s come-hither look: “How about ‘ Mozart in the Jungle‘” sounded to me like some code word for sexytime! I didn’t know it was a series on Amazon. One that I guess TB enjoys watching, perhaps at home in the evening with the missus. Which I suppose is how he was inspired to come up with today’s strip. After a three week story arc set in Atomik Komix Cloud Cuckoo Land, Batty’s finally back to writing what he knows. And here at SoSF, we binge-read and write about Funky Winkerbean, and your guide for the next fortnight will be comicbookharriet!
Banned Room Revolution.
Well, it’s been a real teeter-totter of a shift. One week of super-depressing Lesplotation misery porn, and another week of weightless recycled turkey gags. But you how the old song goes: When you’re up, you’re up. And when you’re down, you’re down. And when you’re only halfway up, it’s Sunday and the strip isn’t available for preview.
Our glorious leader TFHackett, is assuming his place on the podium tomorrow. Please treat him with the respect due a founding father of our blogiverse. He’s chopped down Lisa trees, and crossed the mighty Cuyahoga, and seen our troops through the frigid winters of Ohio. He stood up to the rotten king who tried to silence our freedoms through C&D, and brought us to this promised land.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Facing the Music.
Went on a weird journey for today’s post. At first I was just going to point out bad art. Like Dinkle touching his face with a tiny little prop hand. Then it occurred to me that Dinkle has touched his face in shocked contemplation no less than three times this week, which is gross and not something you want to be doing during cold and flu season.
But I stopped when I noticed that Becky mentioned practicing music for the Christmas Concert…because Westview doesn’t have a Christmas Concert. They have a Holiday Concert, so as to not offend those who do not celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, and/or a night where the undead soul of a fourth century Turkish bishop breaks into people’s homes. I had vague recollections of an entire Holiday Concert arc dealing with Principal Nate becoming a somehow more exaggerated prototype of South Park’s PC Principal. So I dug into the archives, and sure enough there was an arc from December 7th through the 13th in 2015.
My trip took me farther back, because I decided to review some of the tired old Band Turkey gags, and I discovered that Dinkle himself assisted Becky in selling something other than turkeys back in 2014.
Then I looked up, and right there, November 2014, I found the arc where Bull had been offered a college coaching position, only to have it snatched away from him when the college’s first choice called back. And I was stunned to see that, five years ago, Batiuk thought to include a strip where Bull and Linda include their children in life decisions. Probably the last time Jinx has spoken in strip.
Reading that arc again, after everything, had me genuinely sad. And also kind of grossed out. Because Batiuk wrote Linda as incredibly horny back then.
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
Epicus had a great comment yesterday, and judging by the upvotes most of you agreed. There was one thought in particular that gave me pause. He said, “A child could write it. Unfortunately though, no children were available so BatYam took a stab at it…”
When I was younger, I used to do theater. My first role, when I was 12, was the mother in James and the Giant Peach. I was eaten by a giant invisible rhinoceros at the very beginning of the show. I flung myself all over the stage screaming and dying, and I got a pretty big head by thinking I was good at it. That was, until I heard my director say, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.”
As near as Grandpa Google can tell me, the actual origins of that famous turn of phrase come from a story movie director George Seaton told about going to see his friend, the actor Edmund Gwenn on his deathbed in 1959.
“All this must be terribly difficult for you, Teddy,” [Seaton] said sympathetically.
Gwenn didn’t buy that sympathy. A smile touched his lips.
“Not nearly as difficult as playing comedy,” he answered cheerfully.
They were his words of exit. His head turned on the pillow. He was dead.
As a kid that pithy little aphorism was a revelation. Melodrama is easy. It’s easy to act, and it’s easy to write. Death hangs like the sword of Damocles above us all, and in time every sword will fall. Who do you love? Your mom? Your spouse? Your goldfish? Find the fear you hold inside knowing they are mortal, and you’ve found the massive emotional button any artist worth their paycheck can push at will. Entire genres of weepy books and Hallmark Channel movies are built on the cheap, baking-soda-and-vinegar, combination of love and death.
Twelve years ago, Batiuk pushed that button. And, go back and read those strips, he was effective.
This strip is cloying. It’s maudlin. And yet, it is 110% more real than anything we’ve seen in years. A mother won’t see her daughter grow up. A father struggles to explain. A child tries to comfort a loved one they can hardly realize they’re about to lose. Death is taking a knife and cutting to ribbons the story of a happy family just as viciously as Rose stabbing a precious comic book.
We’ve gotten none of this in Bull’s death. None. We didn’t see Linda calling her children. We didn’t see the pain of Jinx thinking about how Dad wouldn’t be there to walk her down the aisle. Or Mickey realizing her own kids would never know a Grandpa Bushka. We didn’t linger on Linda’s pain as she sits through a funeral full of terrible secrets, as she comes home to an empty house, as she has to do laundry that will only remind her of her dead husband’s illness.
It should have been easy. A child could have done it. But Batiuk decided to give us a death without really showing the love that death was cutting off.
Instead Batiuk decided to end this arc (for now?) with a week of strips where Linda gets down on her knees in front of his author avatar so she can fellatiate Les Moore’s metaphorical ego-dick.
In the past, I’ve tried to cut Tom some slack. But not today. Please insult this man.
Son of Stuck Funky 