Tag: squiggly lines

The Good, the Tiny, and the Sleazy

A new scene abruptly flash-cuts into view, as last week’s Starbuck Jones arc is abandoned once again. A bar, much too nice to be in Westview, and much too soulless to be anything but a hotel bar. I have to hand it to Batominc: he has mastered soullessness. And vast expanses of squiggly lines.

But of course, proportions always go haywire. Witness panel 3, where pint glasses look more like salt & pepper shakers, Cindy nurses a stemware shot glass of wine, and Smirky McSleazy’s old-fashioned glass also seems to have been provisioned by the CMDF.

And the dialogue—oh my!—the dialogue makes me want to invent a time machine so I can go back and dissuade the inventor of narrative fiction. Let’s see if we can make improvements.

First draft

Smirky McSleazy: Nice shoes. Wanna boink?

Second draft

Smirky McSleazy: Are you an interior decorator? Because when you entered the room, it became more beautiful.

Third draft

Smirky McSleazy: Did you bathe in sugar? Because you sure look sweet.

Nope. Going nowhere. I’ll be in the lab, working on that time machine. We’ll be better off without literature.

Hold The Mayo

Today’s Strip

While I’m not 100% sure about this, I believe this “I Chong” was an pre-Lisa Act I bit he used to do semi-regularly as a way to squeeze more of his famous bad puns and awful wordplay in there despite there being no storyline reason to do so. I remember it vaguely, sort of, I guess, but not anything specific about it. And the gag holds up about as well as you’d expect a forty year old gag to hold up, which is to say not at all. I don’t think I’ve heard a Mayo Clinic gag since Johnny Carson retired.

So not only is Funky not helping Holly at all, but he’s going to get squiggles all over the back of his favorite Montoni’s shirt and end up tracking even more squiggles throughout the house. Nice going there, fatso.

Soaked In Stupidity

Link to today’s strip

“Drenched in irony”…not exactly, unless “irony” is now synonymous with horse doot. So Lisa was either “trying to fit in” or she was trapped in a violent, abusive relationship…which one is it? I also have to assume that Summer is skipping over entire months of this journal, as Lisa now knows she’s pregnant, but whatever. It’s not all going to suddenly start making sense at this point, you know? I just wish Cayla had “drenched” this idiotic journal with gasoline before tossing it into the nearest bonfire.

So, it appears that the big “plan” to foil Frankie’s demented scheme somehow involves putting Jessica’s oft-mentioned camera-pointing and tripod assembly skills to work…finally. Too bad for Boy Lisa that she’s not this ambitious where actual paying gigs are concerned. I haven’t a clue as to how filming Summer reading random diary passages will stop Frankie’s nefarious plot (so to speak), but hey, I guess Batom has to start wrapping this disaster up sooner or later, regardless of whether it makes any sense at all or not. Nor do I know what’s going on with the trippy purple background or the wild scribbling and the less said about Summer’s painfully bony and angular legs, the better. What a fiasco.

(S)Hit Parade

Link to today’s strip

So when Pm & Jff interrupted Frankie during his wind-up, it turns out he was about to pummel Lisa because she was breaking up with him, not because of her pregnancy or whatever. Perhaps I’m just way too cynical but to me this one reads as if BatTom felt he really needed to give the reader a reason to hate Frankie even more. So he used the diary contrivance to inform us that his assaults were an ongoing thing, without elaborating, the same way he always dances around and skates the “issue” at hand while pretending to “address” it. Now he can add “teen domestic violence/underage drinking” to the ever-growing list of “relevant topics” FW has “tackled” and he can get back to his real “plot” which involves a reality TV show or something.

Panel three features some of the corniest dialog he’s ever put to paper. Good thing Lisa grew out of her “eye-reading” phase because quite frankly she really, really sucked at it. Also of note today is the bizarre shading in panel two (shadows??) and that horrific squiggle-haired chair which honestly makes me nauseous, as does Summer’s “concerned/sad” face.

Blink Once For “Yes”….

Hey gang, it’s your old pal Epicus, taking the SoSF reins for what promises to be a spectacular week of earth-shattering FW events and mind-boggling TB plot twists. Or banal TB idiocy and pathetic FW contrivances, with is probably far more likely. Special thanks to TFH for the opportunity to host the interweb’s premier Funky Winkerbean snark blog, it’s both an honor and a privilege! Likewise, props are due for our previous guest host, DavidO, for a job very well done! Now let’s leap right on in to this week’s edition of the big Frankie mega-arc and see what went on (shudder) in that hideous leopard-skinned van, shall we?

So finally, after approximately thirty-seven weeks of boring chatter and nonsensical developments, we learn the truth about that awful, awful night when the despised Boy Lisa was conceived. There wasn’t any rape or even any actual coercion involved at all! Nope, while a beer-addled Lisa tried to communicate her growing (and awfully sudden) revulsion for Frankie via deep, meaningful telepathic eye contact, she blinked, which he naturally interpreted as “green light, all systems go, let’s get bizz-ay!”. An honest mistake, as who among us hasn’t had a drunken blink misinterpreted as an invitation to wanton, reckless sex and unplanned parenthood? Good thing Lisa didn’t sneeze, as God only knows what sort of perversions Frankie might have unleashed upon her. In any case, several moments later Lisa was inseminated, beginning a series of events which would eventually lead to the ruination of an entire comic strip. Nice going there, Blinky.

Hopefully Summer takes her mom’s story to heart and remembers the sex-blinking code if she ever finds herself in some creepy guy’s van exchanging deep soulful stares, although we all know that’s highly, highly unlikely for any number of reasons I won’t go into here. It’s such a shame that Lisa couldn’t think of any other way to communicate her feelings other than through eye contact and telepathy. Maybe sign language or semaphore or something, I don’t know.