← Friendly Stranger in a Black Batiuikmobile
The Lifetime of a Role →
by beckoningchasm | June 3, 2020 · 10:30 pm
Strike A Posey
Link to today's strip.
My recollection of Jared Posey was that he was a moody smoker who had a good football arm. Crazy Harry was (was) an imaginative kid who was very outgoing and inventive. How Les draws a match between the two sure puzzles me. Oh, wait, I get it–they're both written by Tom Batiuk, so continuity be damned. I'm thinking neither will be mentioned again this week, but Batiuk has a talent for baffling in the dullest way.
And there's Frankie (presumably) trundling right along behind. I guess he didn't pull into the Moore's driveway and filch things. He just drove to the school, sat in his car, and is now following them again. What he hopes to gain by this course…well, who knows. It's not like Les takes a different route to work every morning, to keep his enemies off-balance so they can't track him. Hell, Frankie could have just bought a map and drawn a line down the most likely streets.
This is lazy writing at its laziest. By now, we should have had some hint of who this is and what he's up to. Sure, we're all thinking it's Frankie, and it may be, but maybe it's Jared, miffed at being "referred" (roofie'd?). Remember when Buck first showed up? I recall that it was a couple of weeks of him drawn from the back only, leading to much speculation about who might be returning to the cast.
"Don't get your hopes up" is always wise advice with this strip.
Tagged as Batiukmobile®, bricks, Cayla, Crazy Harry, Jared Posey, Jarod Posey, Les, maybe Frankie, Westview High School
25 responses to "Strike A Posey"
Uh, the Jarod Posey arc was in 2013, so maybe Jared is his younger brother or something, unless Jarod had to repeat his senior year six or seven times. Note how Les has been teaching at WHS for decades yet his only frame of reference is who HE went to school with forty-whatever years ago. Dick.
Look at BatYam, trying to "build suspense" as nothing happens, again. Sometimes I'd swear he's deliberately trying to write the worst story he can, then other times I just assume he isn't paying any attention at all.
Rusty Shackleford
The way Batty tells it on his blog, he writes the best strip. All this talk about the "secret sauce", the meticulous research.
He is going to keep pushing Lisa on us because he was cheated out of his Pulitzer.
Of course he isn't paying attention, he sees only what he wants to see and then warps everything to fit his view.
Perfect Tommy
When Batty, on his blog, says "One of my better half hours." I can't tell if he's being self-effacing or serious.
Jarod was in school at the same time as Summer, who has been in college for a million billion years.
What awkward dialogue. Since Cayla works at the school and Jared has been a student there for some time wouldn't this observation about his alleged similarity to Crazy Harry have happened already?
billytheskink
If Jared and Jarod are the same kid… sheesh, he's the longest-tenured high school student in Act III (and that includes the decade of Owen and Cody). Smokin' Jarod Posey is forced to play football was a fall 2013 plot!
One things for sure, though, the Westview faculty still have nothing but disdain for the kid.
Wow, I didn't even catch the name change, good work. Of course, in a strip where Pete's last name changes by the hour….
It's just so bizarre how he brought up Jarod completely out of nowhere like that. He hasn't even mentioned Owen, Alex, Cody or Wedgeman in years, yet Jarod gets a nod today. Very strange.
So Mr. Sinister followed Les and Not-Lisa to Westview High, and waited all day for them to leave so he could follow them home? And nobody noticed the creepy guy in the black car, parked across the street from the high school? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that Batty doesn't understand how stalking works?
spacemanspiff85
I mean, it's not like he ever raped a Westview student in his vehicle or anything like that, just to pick a totally wild random example.
Jared and Crazy still have a better relationship with reality than this conversation.
Double Sided Scooby Snack
Boy, the creepy guy in the black East German Batyuckmobile must have an iron bladder and an enormous amount of free time. And did he have to special order that black piece of shit car?
"What color Batyuckmobiles do youse guyz have?"
"Well, we have snowball white and robin's egg blue."
"Nah. I need a black one cuz I'm a shady and evil guy. And when I follow people, I don't wanna be seen."
"Hmmm, our dealer in Siberia has one. It'll take only eight months to get here. Can you hang loose until then?"
"Yeah. I'm here FOR KEEPS. I'll just park across the street from your dealership until it comes in."
Shit, I just realized that with Mason being on the masthead, the guy tailing Les is Mason, who is surreptitiously researching Les for his role.
Every character in this stupid strip is a lunatic and a weirdo, and Batiuk doesn't even know it.
Batty thinks he has created a strip with a deep and rich tapestry of characters.
We see them as two dimensional cut outs who speak a form of the English language that exists only in this strip.
Count of Tower Grove
Mega?*
*Indicates the up talk inflection that actress Marianne Winters probably speaks with, and Todd doesn't know how to portray?**
**Indicates irony.
Doghouse Reilly (Philadelphia)
I swear, I had to go back and look at today's strip several times–a course of action, I hasten to add, that no sane person should ever attempt with FW–as well as the comments just to try to connect the three panels and their seemingly random assemblage of balloons.
After the talk earlier in the week re: Frankie, all of a sudden they're deep in discussion over someone named Jared who, as far as I could recall, hasn't been involved in any storylines or even seen in several years, and Battyuk expects his "audience" to pick up on this? I think I'll just sit in my jet-black car, pull over to the side of the road, and wait for all this to blow over…and I'm sure it will blow.
The man can't be bothered to remember that his wife is a co-worker. He's an idiot. Whatever Frankie does to him, he deserves.
1. Posey looks like he's 27 years old?
2. I know TomBa is trying to portray him as that kid "Most likely to shoot up the school", but is the all black+trenchcoat look still a thing? Seems too 1990s…
3. Even if Jared wasn't sent to the principal, why the hell is Les surprised to see Cayla knows about his day? Does he not know that students and teachers talk and word spreads?
4. How old is this Jared again? Even in the Funkyverse timeline, Bushka retired what, three years ago?
What is "Frankie" even doing? He waited in front of their house, followed them to school, waited all day there, and then follows them some more. He must know their workplace and schedule, or could easily find it. He could base his nefarious plan, whatever it is, on that knowledge instead of wasting hours doing an asinine stakeout.
This story should have cut from "Frankie" pulling into frame as they leave, to the aftermath of whatever he did. It's called editing, and Funky Winkerbean needs a lot more of it.
And what's with this conversation about a troubled student? Is the strip trying to be Gil Thorp now?
Doghouse Reilly (Minneapolis)
Hmm … would that mean Bernie Silver is Marty Moon?
In fact, I think there's great potential for FW/GT crossover. They're both about high school sports, and the setting of Milford feels like Ohio to me. It makes total sense that they could exist in the same world.
Recently in GT, a student named Mike "The Mayor" Knapp got expelled and spent several days moping about the terrible school he'd have to go to instead. Now imagine that he turned up in FW as a new Westview student. That'd be funny! And self-deprecating. Both of which FW could really benefit from.
Best of all, imagine a playoff game between Westview and Milford, told simultaneously by each strip. Milford would win, because they're allowed to experience happiness sometimes. Imagine one of FW's idiotic football stories told and drawn in GT's matter-of-fact style. "New Thayer inserts into the game… the homecoming queen?" Imagine Gil and Coach Kaz smiling victoriously, while their opponent self-destructs in some ludicrous Batiukian way. Then imagine them meeting Bull Bushka for the post-game handshake. This could all be great fun. Or at least more fun than Dead Lisa and Atomik Komix.
I'll get you started: have one of Milford's opponents be Big Walnut Tech.
What a creative idea. And to explain Bull's presence it could be revealed that he faked his CTE and death as part of a plot to catch Les who, it will be disclosed, is a serial killer who actually did kill John Darling and framed poor, crazy Plantman. It will also be discovered that Lisa was also one of his victims.Les switched Lisa's x-rays and gaslighted her in order to hasten her death.
Guess who was in the Milford teacher's lounge back in April 2017…
Rick Brooks
The driver in panel two looks like Lucy Van Pelt.