Did Thomas T. BatBore just suddenly forget that Summer is twenty-five years old? If he wanted to do childish Summer gags he shouldn’t have skipped over her childhood. But he did and it’s way too f*cking late now. Whether it’s intentional (ha) or not, Summer is suddenly the biggest loser in the strip. Totally rudderless, sleeping til noon, shoveling candy into her face like some sort of dimwitted feral cave-dweller…Bull Bushka donated tens of thousands of dollars worth of physical therapy for THIS? He really DID die in vain.
Consider this: at one time Summer and Cory were at the forefront of the (then) new Act III generation. Summer was the twee goody-two-shoes with a side of grit and a hell of a jump shot, while Cory was the slacker sleazebag with the bad attitude and the haircut to match. Summer was going places, Cory was going to prison. But now, only (sigh) seven short years later, Cory is a ramrod-straight soon-to-be-wed decorated Army veteran with strong ties to both the comic book and pizza industries, while Summer is an immature lazy slob with immense student loan debt and a dad who keeps writing the same book about her dead mom over and over. It just goes to show you how little high school really matters, even in a comic strip where it means absolutely everything.
Actually going to commend the artwork today, relatively speaking. The ruler did a lot of the work, but there is good attention to detail for once. In the background at least. Les is drawn as a sightless abomination talking out of his ass, but I’m guessing that’s Ayers subtle caricature of him. And putting up the porch swing in spring not only sets the season, it’s a subtle callback to the strips way back in June 2011 when Cayla and Les confessed their love on it. Batiuk may forget how many kids his characters have, but he seems to always remember that Les has a front porch swing.
