Tag: Washington D.C.

Doppelg-Anger

The good news? Batiuk is opting for once to “show, not tell” how Cliff wound up in front of Sen. Joesph McCarthy’s committee. The bad news is that rather giving us a straight-up flashback, TB’s presenting  Mason Jarre starring in The Cliff Anger Story. No way could the guy in today’s panel 3 be the same one we saw in yesterday’s: not with that cheese-cutter nose and maddening, dangling anglerfish-like forelock.

Gerard Plourde
November 26, 2016 at 1:31 am
The “Red Scare” and blacklist of the late 1940’s and 1950’s is a very complex subject and an understanding of that history is not helped by confusing and conflating events…

Many of you in our very erudite audience have rightly taken Batiuk to task for his fuzzy depiction of this chapter in our nation’s history. If TB can’t be bothered to do research, neither can I, though a little Googling turned up an article mentioning Dashiell Hammett, who was in fact called before Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations but refused to cooperate. The article fails to mention if Hammett “sassed” Sen. McCarthy in the manner of Cliff Anger; but though he was blacklisted, effectively hastening his demise, he was not put behind bars.

And Now, Part Two: The End

Link to today’s strip.

WOW.

So we get most of a week of Les spitting weak jokes at a bunch of parents, and then we…cut to the grand finale.   No scenes of boarding the bus, no hijinks along the way, nothing with the hotel, or anything having to do with Washington DC.  (Yeah, sure, the White House is mentioned.  Mentioned.)  All we get is two panels of a miserable looking bunch of people (Owen aside) staring dead-eyed into the distance.

And…that’s it.  Yes, that’s all of it.  That’s the entire senior trip.  This way to the egress.  That’s all she wrote.  Th-th-th-th-that’s all folks!  Finito Binito (sic).

This is pretty unprecedented for this strip.  Hell, the simplest, most mundane tasks typically require several days of strips.  Wedgeman’s ring comes to mind.  Here, Tom Batiuk has willingly skipped over a potential couple of weeks.  Not that I’m complaining, exactly–I imagine that a fortnight trapped on a bus with Les Moore would be sheer torture.  Worse than stabbing a coloring book.

No, it is a relief to be spared all this.  It just begs the question.  How is he going to reach the 50th anniversary by passing up material?

There’s only one plausible answer, and we all know what that is.

He had to wrap this up so he could get back to Starbuck Jones.   I mean, it’s increasingly clear that Starbuck Jones is all he cares about in this strip (and it’s creeping up in Crankshaft, too).   He must know by now that Les Moore as “beloved character” is never going to happen.  That seems to be why he’s pushing Starbuck Jones so relentlessly, even to the point of cutting off a Les arc.

So, next week I’m guessing we’ll get more people talking about Starbuck Jones.  Not really doing anything–I think the bus scene exhausted his “show” abilities–but talking about how things might happen.  His “tell” abilities are always at the ready.

Next week we’ll see if I’m right.

The Batiuk-Signal, Robin!

Link to today’s strip.

Greetings fellow snarkers, BChasm back for another stint in the chair.  Congratulations to HeyItsDave for giving us an exemplary two weeks on his first time out.  Well done indeed!

As for today’s offering, there’s one thing worth noting:

Wedgeman’s back!  There he is, near the center of panel one, burnt orange t-shirt, arms angrily crossed as if he’s been assigned to read Funky Winkerbean.    What tales he could tell us!  Like maybe, what the heck is Alex doing with her hand?  Stifling a yawn?  I’m with ya there, Alex.  Note that Glasses seems to’ve lost a lot of weight, and behind him is some kind of creature I think I saw in a scary YouTube video.  And right under the dialog there’s a girl who is fading out of existence!  Wow, someone could use that if there was a space movie filming nearby!

Other than that, ho-hum.  When I was in high school, any excursions off the school grounds did not require a face-to-face meeting with the parents.  Usually, a permission slip had all the information my parents needed (itinerary, what to bring, etc), so I brought it to them, they read and signed it, and I turned it in.  Are there now actual after-hours meetings for this sort of thing?  If so, my next question is “Why?”

I’m going to pass over the comic book stuff and point out the awful overly-spun dialog we’ve got today.  Always a problem when you draw your word balloons a year before you know what to fill them with.  Wouldn’t panel one read better like this:

On the other hand, maybe we should just go with our inner Batiuk: