Tag: transportation

Route Canal

Dinkle appears in today’s strip.
No “spoiler alert” tag… this is not a spoiler, it is a warning. You have been warned. Read at your own risk. Or don’t, your life will be better off.

You know what, I’m going to focus on just one small little part of this strip and let our great commenters take the rest of it apart. I’m going to deal only with the first four words that appear in the strip, “Speaking of band candy”.

“SPEAKING OF BAND CANDY”?!
NO ONE was speaking of band candy! No one other than Dinkle is ever speaking of band candy! No one in their right mind wants to speak of band candy! I suppose Dinkle is correct in “saying “speaking of band candy” because that is a 100% accurate description of what he proceeds to do… thus, he most assuredly wanders around uttering “speaking of band candy” whenever he wants to speak of band candy. There is no other possible explanation. I’m typing “speaking of band candy” over and over again in desperate hope that this will be last time those words are ever written. Please. Please.

Give the governor “HRRUMMPF!”

Believe it or not, today’s strip IS different from yesterday’s strip.

Well… I mean, some of the words are different between the two strips, that is all. It isn’t really different in tone or subject, the “gag” is derived from the exact same idea as yesterday’s strip, the artwork features the same characters in the same poses from nearly the same angles (what is this, Garfield?). It begs the question, did TB hatch this story arc because he decided that writing unpleasant elderly people is his wheelhouse (he wouldn’t be entirely wrong) or did he honestly believe that Funky Winkerbean was lacking in unpleasant elderly people (self-awareness is not a TB hallmark)?

Biddy Budd

A hearty salute to Epicus who, like all of our fine folks here at SOSF, deserves credit for finding something to say about this strip… especially when it spends two weeks on a remarkably contrived and amazing uninteresting road trip. Yep, billytheskink here to play tour guide on this journey from an Ocala retirement community back to Palookaville, Ohio which, of course, continues in today’s strip.

Holly’s mother is a nag. That’s it. I’m reasonably sure TB used this same gag with Jeff’s vile mother over in Crankshaft several years back. If TB stretches this gag out over the week there are going to be a lot of short posts.

Puff the Magic Wagon

Link to today’s strip.

I just have to shake my head at Holly.  Riding around in a cart is “a good idea”?  I guess it could be fun, and it gets you out into the open air, away from the human-stuffed Comic Con anchovy tin…it just doesn’t strike me as something she’d enjoy, and it definitely doesn’t strike me as something John would suggest.  It looks like something Tom Batiuk saw somewhere and said, “Hey, I gotta use that.”

If he were a far more interesting person than we’d been led to believe, I’d think John would suggest going to see Homestar Runner’s skull in the background there in the first panel on the left.  Or going to eat at Buster’s Crab.  (Can you believe I didn’t get that for a couple of minutes?  I’m getting senile.)

Physical activity for these three would be a choice of last resort.  And maybe that’s how this happened.  Maybe all sorts of suggestions were made, and Holly sighed about all of them, and Harry was no help at all, fitfully moaning into his blanket, and John, internally screaming from boredom, finally saw this cart thing, and pointed, and that’s how this strip came into being.  Another deadline met, Mr. Batiuk!  Whew!

Oh, and the answer to your question, John, is no.  None of them are helping you at all.  You’ll die alone and afraid, not knowing what’s happening to you.  Enjoy!