Having Wally as a member of the Westview Submarine Band gives Batiuk license to recycle all those band jokes from Acts I and II. While I enjoy a good band joke as much as the next euphonium player, the gag’s gotta make sense, and this one really doesn’t. The “spit valve” (properly called the “water key”–a trombone has no “valves” of any kind) is at the very end of the outer slide, and at no point in today’s strip do we see it anywhere in the vicinity of Buddy’s paw.
And so, 400 miles from the few friends he has, and unable to find companionship in the big city, Pete succumbs to his curiously outdated, retro fantasy. Flash and Dale have come to enlist the Pro-Crasturbator’s help against the Lord of the Late. Since LotL is known as the nemesis of comics writers on deadline, it’s unclear why Flash Gordon would have a beef with him.
John
March 13, 2013 at 5:57 pmPete: “Well, I’d better go before the combined totality of my neurotic loathing of my own chosen vocation chooses to manifest itself as a sentient, malevolent recurring hallucination!”
Too late, Pete! You know, it’s a fine line between a hyperactive imagination and chronic hallucinatory psychosis, and it looks like being called upon to actually earn his paycheck has sent Pete around the bend yet again. Hey Pete, maybe women instantly dislike you because you can’t get their names right? Don’t feel bad, though: I thought she was supposed to be Elaine from Seinfeld.
Charles
March 12, 2013 at 3:24 am
Tom…. Dude… Just… You don’t know how to do jocular teasing. Just stop right now.This is why every single one of your characters is an asshole.
Jocular? Jerk-ular is more like it. Yes, we fellas like to engage in good-natured ball busting with our buddies. In fact, the closer the friendship, the more outrageous the kidding. But it’s supposed to be reciprocal. 
Sleepy-looking, mopey Pete is always on the receiving end of Darin’s zingers.Even saying hi to the folks at home is too much trouble for Darin. And that twisted smirk on his face for the last three days makes me want to reach through my monitor and Pete’s to punch Darin’s lights out.
If one’s goal in life is to be a writer of comic books, I just can’t imagine what would be a higher pinnacle of success than living and working in Metropolis itself, writing the adventures of Superman! Yep,
working at DC Comics looks like a dream job, all right. Yet Pete still can’t find a woman and he doesn’t know why.
Son of Stuck Funky 
