Tag: the Lisa tapes

Kancer Komix

Previously on Funky Winkerbean:

I don’t know about you, reader, but I was so sure that yesterday’s postmortem, backhanded “I love you” to Cayla would serve to finally close a number of plot threads: the existence of the Lisa tapes, Les’ perpetual grief, and even Cayla’s second-class second wife status. I expected today’s strip to be a wacky Sunday throwaway: a Scapegoat football gag, perhaps, or hijinks with Cody and Owen, before Monday we maybe check in with Pete and Darin in Hollywood.

But Lisa’s not done with us, folks. And while I am loathe to deliver spoilers, and try to dissuade my fellow authors from doing the same, I must warn you: this goes on into tomorrow and this week. The story of a woman who, faced with a lingering, wasting, terminal illness, feels compelled to spend her last days on this earth recording messages for those she will leave behind. Lisa on Les: “He’s filled with great wit…” Certainly Les thinks this to be so. The rest of us see a pretentious douchebag. No wonder he misses this woman so.

For what it’s worth: Batiuk continues his laxity when it comes to using the photo album corner visual cue to depict events in the past. Could he be signaling to us that Lisa is in fact, somehow, still alive???

So Crazy in Glove

Looks like His Craziness is tackling the Digital Lisa project starting with Volume One, Tape One: the Lisa we see onscreen still looks pretty hale and hearty. “I want you to have these so you’ll remember me…” Because if I don’t spend huge chunks of the precious time I have left on this earth delivering rambling lectures into a camcorder, I’ll be forgotten?

File this whole setup under “Batiuk Aims for Heartwarming and Hits Creepy.” Harry’s face is wayyy too close to the monitor in panel one, perchance to appreciate the enhanced quality of his baked videotape. And the white gloves, what’s he slipping these on for? “This calls for white gloves! And some lube…”

Bake on Through to the Other Side

…is what I imagined Crazy Harry to be saying in today’s panel 1, because “baking” video cassettes is something I’d never heard of. Turns out that magnetic recording tape uses a glue, or “binder”, to hold the oxide particles to the tape. Over time, moisture can affect the binder and cause the tape to “shed” its magnetic coating. So baking the tape at low temperature for an extended period removes the moisture, improving playback quality while lessening possible wear and tear to the playback equipment.

Don’t Forget to Wipe Your Arts

Welp. As just about everyone including Les has surmised, Crazy Harold is only too tickled to be entrusted with digitalizing Lisa’s Ghost. Harry does seem to have some “state of the ark” gear for this daunting task…I think I see that USB dongle that a commenter here over at the CC said he’d need. Whether he’s being compensated beyond the honor of being asked remains to be seen.

Conversion Therapy

Guest Page Turner Author

September 7, 2015 at 11:30 pm
Crazy Harry, the downsized mailman from her Dad’s peer groups, is the one to digitize these tapes? The man who works in a comic shop, worships 1950s Bandboxes, and seems to have all disparage for any technology beyond 1975?

So many questions! Here’s mine: has Summer even approached Crazy Harry about “converting these tapes to video” (and you mean “converting to digital”, sweetie; they’re already video)?  Or does she plan on just strolling into the Komix Korner with the Sacred Box o’ Tapes and bid Crazy get busy? Readers know that this box–and it’s just one box, not a steamer trunk?–contains hour upon hour of Lisa lectures: is Crazy Harry getting paid for this task? “Psh!” says Les. “Are you kidding?” Who would decline such an honor? He’ll do it and be damn glad about it too!