SosfdavidO here, and ooh, look who’s being soooo coy in today’s strip not showing the face of the random weirdo wandering around the high school football game by himself.
Are we readers waiting for a payoff? Because unless he turns around to reveal Hannibal Lecter it’s going to be a letdown. But let’s keep padding this story out because we’ve got a whole damn week to fill
SosfDavidO here! And we’re kicking off this week’s arc with a mysterious stranger! Who could it be in today’s teaser? More importantly, does anyone care? It could be any one of the 21,836 characters that have popped into Westview in the past 40+ years or it could be a retconned character pulled out of thin air. Les’s brother Stanley! Sure, why not?
As usual, Sunday’s offering was not available for preview. As I said last week, Sunday strips tend to be outside the continuity of the previous (or upcoming) week, so who knows what we’ll get? I’m going to guess “band camp.” It’s been a long while since we enjoyed one of those. …many, many years in fact. I’m sure we were presented one within the last year, though.
I doubt we’ll get a continuation of the “Flash Museum” arc, as Saturday showed both Pete and Dullard leaving the place. I suppose they could babble and babble about the stuff they’ve seen for six panels–it would not come as a surprise.
Note that I said “the stuff they’ve seen.” We sure as Hell didn’t get to see much of it. Jay Garrick’s hat, about half of Captain Cold, a distant picture of Gorilla Grodd, and some boomerangs. Someone who had never heard of the Flash, reading that story…would still never have heard of the Flash. On Wednesday, this person would learn that a comic book is involved, and on Thursday he’d hear about “Flash villain(s).” Though whether or not “Flash villain” is a villain opposing the Flash, or a type of villain, he would not know. Also, is the Flash a person, or an organization like SHIELD? For being such a big Flash fan, Tom Batiuk doesn’t seem to be able to say much about the man himself.
As Charles mentioned yesterday, Mr. Batiuk seems to have some peculiar ideas about Hollywood, and I’ve long suspected that the entire strip is just Mr. Batiuk saying, “This is my universe, and I can make it work however I want. Comic books are the most revered art-form. Anyone who works on a movie is paid enormous amounts of money, but they constantly daydream about what they really want to do–work on comic books. Females are there to see that the man is supported in all things, unless it’s Funky, because screw him.”
Speaking of money, I’ve occasionally ordered DVDs from Warner Bros online store, so they send me periodic emails about other things. One of them is a life-size statue of Wonder Woman, made out of some kind of foam and looking pretty realistic. In order to get one of those, prepare to have $1300 dollars on hand. Pete’s “dolly” looks less and less like an indulgence and more like an illness.
UPDATE: Well, today’s offering did involve the flash, though not the one people were nattering on about last week. The art in this one has a nice sense of space, flows well and looks pretty nice, though the two images of Dinkle do what in film school is called “crossing the axis.” It’s something you’re not supposed to do, as it tends to subliminally confuse audiences.
The one thing I really want to mention is that image of Funky. He has now become indistinguishable from his father, which makes that last panel pretty…disturbing.
Well, I see the light at the end of the tunnel is growing dim, so time for me to climb out of the pit before it fades entirely. Please welcome your new dungeon master, DavidO! Let’s all look forward to tomorrow, when, uh, a thing, er, might happen…or might not, but as always…um…[slinks away awkwardly]
The panels in today’s strip read at least as well in reverse order. To paraphrase Nate, who can say what the past four years held for the Class of 2017? The only glimpse we get of WHS ’17 is a few pairs of feet in panel 4 (nicely-rendered, by the way, and feet are hard to draw) . Recall that Cody and Owen handed over the reins of WHS’ in-house media operation directly to some freshmen. I’m supposing Tank and Conner to be underclassmen. As befits these anono-grads’ status, their commencement is held not in a stadium, with drones, but rather in the auditorium, listening to Nate name-check the author of A Game of Thrones.
Epicus Doomus
June 1, 2017 at 11:27 am
…[S]houldn’t “Ms. Lopez” be “Mrs. Bushka”? Did Bull die off-camera or something?
Here’s another unanswered question: is Jim being witty or does he just not know what a credit union is? Another question, and this one’s for any teachers out there: are you required to pack up and schlep home all your belongings at the end of every school year? Linda’s got but one box but it looks to be loaded with books; Jim’s got two boxes but still manages to get a hand free to push open the automatic door. Burchett gets to introduce another new character: that janitor who vowed to one day kick the ass of the guy whoever the hell peed in his closet 40 years ago.
Son of Stuck Funky 
