Tag: Summer

Summer Dropouts

SoSfDavidO here, ready for an all-new storyline!

It’s Monday in late January so it doesn’t make sense that Summer is hanging around helping yet another group of doomed souls move into the apartment above Montoni’s but here she is in today’s strip still wearing her shapeless burlap hoody. You’d think her coming home to visit for the first time in a lonnnnng time would warrant a bigger story line than MyPod music recommendation algorithms but apparently not! She isn’t even given a line. Aside from the lifting duties she may as well be a potted plant.

Chips Ahoy

Link to today’s strip.

Well, it’s the same dim-witted word-play, the same squinty eyes, the same smirks all around.  Everyone looks both miserable and punchable as always.   Or, as it’s usually known around here, “Friday.”

I confess – I wrote the above paragraph before I’d even seen the strip.  I figure it’s a good guess.  We’ve had four days of “Lisa’s favorite tree must be culled” and when the Glorious Author has a Lisa Fetish, that’s an itch that just can’t be scratched away in a strip or two.   That Pulitzer nomination must just gnaw at Tom Batiuk night and day, all seasons of the year, every waking moment.   That’s the lure of the established awards culture.

You know what made me re-think the entire “Awards Have Meaning” thing?  The 1979 Grammy Awards.  The nominees for “Best New Artist” were Chris Rea, The Cars, Elvis Costello, Toto, and A Taste of Honey.  Look at those names, and look at their careers.   Costello, the Cars and Toto went on to have big hits, become household names, and influence millions of bands and record buyers.  And the winner that year was…A Taste Of Honey, a disco band that had one hit and went nowhere afterward.

My point is this–you killed off Lisa so you could get an award.  It didn’t happen.  Acknowledge this and move on.  A Taste of Honey still has their award, but Elvis Costello wrote, and continues to write, great songs that will speak forever.  Both Toto and the Cars made hits that you can find on the radio every day of the year.

You could give it a shot, Mr. Batiuk.  Throw the past away.  Shred that letter from the Pulitzer committee.  Move on.

And, if you’re going to move on, please kill Les Moore.  Your fans would love that.  A LOT.  I mean, it would require re-tooling the strip into something positive, but then…are you Toto, or A Taste of Honey?  Because that’s the real question.

For Leaf Closure

Link to today’s strip.

Dear Mr. Batiuk–

Look, we get it.  You killed off one of your favorites to win a prize, and when you didn’t win that prize, you’ve tasted ashes and been filled with regrets ever since.

But it doesn’t change the fact that she’s dead, and you need to stop bringing her back.  Either that, or finally give Cayla a small bit of dignity and have her divorce Les for “irreconcilable differences.”  She can even make puns on the way out the door.  Then Les (and Summer) can wallow in Lisa memories until March 2022.

She’s not poignant.  She’s not insightful, or funny, or even interesting.  Les’ continued need for her makes him look even more pathetic than he actually is.  Here’s the thing: The more you bring her back, the less special her death becomes. 

It’s like the dork who finally gets a laugh with one of his dumb jokes, so he repeats it endlessly until everyone was sorry they laughed in the first place.   And they wonder why they laughed at all.

One thing I’m sure of.  I’m willing to bet real money that the Pulitzer Committee is not reading this strip and thinking, Wow, we really made a mistake.  This is great stuff.  Let’s award him a do-over prize!  No, like most of humanity, they’re not reading this strip at all.  And if they did, they’d think, Wow, we were lucky on that one.  How did we even nominate this?  Were we drunk?

We get it.  “Lisa’s Story” was your crowning achievement.   Typically, when one has a crowning achievement, one retires.  Otherwise, as one’s crowning achievement recedes more and more into the distance, that crowning achievement begins to look a lot less like the result of talent and more the result of blind luck.  And one ends up as one of those sad old people whose every sentence begins with, “Hey remember when I…”

Oh No, These Tapes Have Got To Go

Link To Today’s Strip

“Funky Winkerbean”: the comic strip where opening mail and drawers is considered “action”. Tomorrow’s strip will no doubt feature the DVD tray slowly sliding closed, then a close-up of Cayla’s finger reaching for the “play” button, followed by that annoying FBI warning screen. I’m assuming that by “non-believers”, Summer is referring to the Lisa cult, a cult Cayla will be indoctrinated into very shortly no doubt, thanks to these f*cking DVDs that just refuse to go away. What a pile of shamelessly awful tripe. This is Batiuksturbation of the highest magnitude, just off the charts, the work of a very sick man with a very limited imagination. He resorts to his infamous “silent panels” in a sad attempt to give this contrived trash a sense of “importance” but all he succeeds in doing is making himself and his strip look even dumber. Which is quite a feat when you stop to think about it.

She’s Got Person-Banality

Link To Today’s Strip

Summer didn’t have any problem with being filmed while reading Lisa’s journal entry about the time Frankie sexually assaulted her, but somehow this video footage is “personal”, even though Cayla never even knew Lisa at all. Yup, that makes sense. Dollars to donuts says it’s the usual patented Lisa drivel, featuring lots of pious platitudes and cornpone idiocy centering around the loathsome “Spanky”, delivered with that sickening saintly grin and those dead Lisa eyes. That ghoulish Lisa image in the header is nightmare fuel, it’s just hideous.

Oh what I wouldn’t give to see Cayla finally grow a spine, right here and now. “Summer, for the final time: I am sorry about your mother but right now I want you to get these f*cking tapes out of my house and go back to school because I’ve had my fill of Lisa for ten thousand lifetimes”. Then maybe she could refer Summer to a really good therapist or something, as this kid just ain’t right. This arc is just so sniveling and obnoxious it’s almost unbelievable and Batom just doesn’t care how stupid and implausible it is, he just wants to keep reminding everyone about that goddamned cancer arc, again and again and again. I quite frankly think it’s time for HIM to consider talking to a mental health professional too. It’s like he’s flat-out admitting that he hasn’t done a single noteworthy thing since that horrible arc ended, which is true, but still. It’s just plain not normal.