Obligatory Haiku post for today's strip Where nothing happens "Who spent most of his Time at war with the world and Ev'rything in it"? We talking about Phil Holt or that Ed Crankshaft? Both? Makes me shudder C'mon now, Durwood Phil did not know a dang thing About your mother C'mon too, Mindy Who here cares one iota About your granddad? Pete here wins the strip Only offense is a smirk Default win's a win
Tag: the untimely death of Phil Holt
Something’s got a Holt on me
If there was a contest to use the most words possible to say “Flash and Phil didn’t like each other”, today’s strip would definitely be a contender. Same for a most exposition crammed into a single panel contest, with panel 1 making a game effort. The only place such contests could possibly exist is, of course, the Batiukverse… so please forgive me if similar contests appear in this strip a year from now.
All that exposition in the first panel and Flash doesn’t realize the hall of fame awards given out at Comic-Con honor the deceased on the regular? Seems like having Comic-Con remotely would work well in Flash’s hypothetical honoring a live Phil Holt scenario, but since Flash doesn’t even know that dead people regularly get honored at this and other hall of fame ceremonies then it stands to reason that he wouldn’t know that Comic-Con and other events are held remotely. And by “Flash” in the previous sentence, I mean TB.
Understatement Of The Year
How do you make a “long story” longer? You do what TB does in today’s strip, talk about how long the story is while telling absolutely none of it. It could low-level fridge brilliance if it was in the service of a joke about how long everything in this story arc seems to be taking.
How do you make a short SOSF post shorter? Make it about today’s strip…
Hypermortality.
All Hail! Here is the beloved Holy Ghost of Dead St. Lisa! Once again haunting a charity function in her honor. But this time she has company. Their horrible dialogue in the first two panels is supernaturally banal. The only interesting thing about what they’re saying is that the lines seem all out of order. SEEM.
Until you consider what we’ve seen of Funkyverse’s afterlife. Masky McDeath comes and reaps you, sure; separating spirit from body. But the multiple ghost appearances, by multiple characters, in the strip suggest a soul remains on Earth. Drifting through the physical world, fully conscious of what is going on around it, and tied to objects and family it was close to in life: Dance hall railings, benches, comic covers, bio-sons. It only makes sense that the spirits beyond would introduce themselves to each other by explaining what in the physical world is their current tether. What goes on in the real world has the power to please or distress them. Like ancient pagan ancestor worship, the memory offerings of their progeny please their departed souls.
Which is why it is HILARIOUS when Phil learns that the precious comic covers he kept framed on his dinky apartment wall all those years, and then willed to someone he thought would treasure them and his memory forever after his death, were instantly liquidated to enrich the memorial of a woman who didn’t give two shits about stupid disposable funny pages. Silly man, you thought you had a LEGACY? The Death Cult of St. Lisa devours all offerings!!!!
Do Ya Think I’m Altruistic, Baby?
No preview…stay tuned. My guess: Boy Lisa drops by one of Les’ “Lisa Trilogy” book signings to drop off the Batom Comics covers for the big “Lisa’s Legacy” cancer charity auction while wearing a Kent State sweatshirt and everything at long last comes full circle.
UPDATE: There’s a lot of information packed into this little gem. I got the impression that Phil was bitter and angry, mainly by how bitter and angry he was acting, but today Boy Lisa verifies it. What a surprise, as the usual one-shot FW character is normally all full of rainbows and light and all.
Then things take a typically sappy turn as Darin’s Lisa “gosh darn helping people” gene kicks into overdrive which, strangely enough, sends Jessica into another craven display of wanton desire, this time sexual instead of financial. Man, this woman is just a ball of “help me I never signed up for this” energy, isn’t she?
Son of Stuck Funky 
