Wall Banger/Newspaper Comics

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


9 Chickweed Lane

  • 9 Chickweed Lane‍'‍s World War II flashback: It starts with the Foregone Conclusion that Edna (Gran) ends up married to Bill O'Malley - rendering the Love Triangle between her, O'Malley and Nazi P.O.W. Lt. Kiesl more about Juliette's paternity than anything else. Then we have to deal with the snowballing implausibilities that make the story go, starting with the OSS tapping a naive, untrained USO singer to spy on the Nazi POWs, continuing with O'Malley beating up a British superior officer for calling Edna a Nazi-loving whore (which was what it looked like because the Americans never told the Brits what Edna was doing), to a 10-year Time Skip to when Edna and Kiesl reunite and become lovers in earnest (and later become engaged) only for Edna's boss, the base commander whom Edna now worked for as a civilian, letting Kiesl and Edna know that Bill was still alive (in a move worthy of Iago). The lack of drama got so bad that Brooke McEldowney threw in a flashback-within-the-flashback to establish that Edna and Bill had more than unspoken attraction between them and to try and show that Edna wasn't being needlessly melodramatic over Bill's still being alive. The resolution which details what happened after Juliette was conceived, which tried the patience of even the most loyal of the strip's fans, devoted a week's worth of strips to Gran's marriage to O'Malley, Gran's vague comments about how for reasons she couldn't fathom, she was disliked and that it was entirely possible it was wrong of her to treat Juliette as harshly as she did merely because a previously-unknown son died.
    • Edda's 2012 pregnancy scare: she reacted to the thought of possibly being pregnant (apparently after getting "carried away" and having sex with Amos without protection. Once.) by first driving to Vermont to talk to her mother, then the both of them immediately flying to Vienna (a spur of the moment flight that would've been prohibitively expensive) to talk with her grandparents. Apparently phones don't exist in the 9CL world. And neither do pregnancy tests, since Edda didn't even "anoint the stick" until long after she'd returned from Vienna. Ditto actually telling Amos about it. Only one character, Seth calls Edda on her flightiness.

Doonesbury

  • A recent[when?] Doonesbury strip had a guy with a permit to carry. Some woman insulted him because he has a permit to carry. This being Doonesbury, the guy was portrayed as a moron. But, whatever your politics are, you probably shouldn't insult someone who is openly carrying a handgun.

For Better or For Worse

  • The event that defined Anthony as For Better or For Worse‍'‍s Creator's Pet: the 'going-after'. After saving Elizabeth from her attacker, Anthony instantly squashes any good karma he might have earned by claiming he 'never had anything to fight for before now!' Problem was, he was married to Therese, and they had an infant daughter. Things rapidly decline from there: rather than take the shaken Liz to the police station or even back home, he drives her to the park and begs her to 'wait for [him]'. When she insists that she doesn't want to be a homewrecker, he wails "I have no hoooome!" Then he proceeds to outline just why his marriage is suffering, blatantly admitting that he tried to snare Therese in a baby trap and acting as if it's entirely her fault for not wanting to Stay in the Kitchen. He promised that if they had a child, he'd look after it while she went back to work, and was upset that she actually held him to that promise.
    • An earlier Wall Banger occurred around the time of Farley's death. The entire incident happened because a four-year-old April was left completely unattended, free to slip out of the backyard. However, an earlier strip established that April could open the (very simple) latch to the gate... by having Elly watch her do it from the window. Despite knowing that April could open the door on her own, she made no attempt to fix the problem by, say... replacing the latch with an actual lock? Yet April is the one blamed for everything that followed...
    • For all the complaints regarding For Better or For Worse in its later years, one big Wall Banger came back in 1989 when Mike and Lizzie were still kids and Elly takes away their TV privileges for two weeks - for saying a couple of swear words. What makes this Wall Banger territory is how Elly immediately blames the TV for giving them such foul mouths - when she and John have been seen swearing in earlier strips, sometimes within earshot of the kids! Even today, with many readers now adults, this looks like an extreme punishment that makes Elly look like a Puritanical dictator and a hypocrite.
      • In fact, let's just throw Elly's entire parenting history in here, especially if she should ever talk about her experiences as a parent. Elly's impression of her own capacity as a parent is a case study in the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Funky Winkerbean

  • The reappearance of the title character's nephew Wally: while it is, after all, remotely possible that the militants might have taken pity on a victim of brain injury and kept him alive for the decade Wally was in captivity, his treatment by the Army on returning Stateside is harder to believe. Simply put, they simply checked him over, told him his symptoms and cut him loose back in Westview to fend for himself.
    • Not only that but the Army apparently found some remains, declared them to be Wally's, and had him buried. First of all, the Army (or any branch of the armed services) doesn't declare anyone dead until they are damned sure they have identifiable remains. Second, remains of fallen soldiers are now identified by DNA testing (which is why there will likely never be an Unknown Soldier from Iraq or Afghanistan). So this thing is being sloppily handled from beginning to end.
    • The general indifference to his return was particularly jarring, especially considering he was a POW for ten years. Most soldiers returning home under those circumstances could expect lots of public fanfare, interviews, and photo opportunities with various high-ranking politicians. Wally gets a short check up at Walter Reed before being immediately drop-kicked to the curb.
      • ... out-processing and "transition to civilian life" training (generally, stuff like 'how to fill out a resume' and 'how to apply for veterans' benefits') generally takes weeks for guys ending their service in peacetime under normal conditions. Guys who have been in heavy combat get still more time for 'decompression' and PTSD screening before they send them back to civilian life. A guy who spent ten years in a POW camp would be kept on active duty and in the Detachment of Patients until they were absolutely sure he was physically and mentally recovered.
      • Additionally, if he was determined to have any lasting medical effects of his imprisonment he would almost certainly be placed on some kind of disability pension or medical retirement so he would at least have some kind of supplementary income. While one grants that the Veterans' Administration is often sloppily administrated and underfunded it does still exist and a veteran with serious service-connected injuries should be able to show up at any VA hospital and receive treatment, particularly since the comic establishes that his injuries were officially recorded as happening while in service.
  • Going back a few years, it's mind-bending that Lisa, a lawyer no less, never sued her doctor for malpractice for all the critical mistakes she made in her care - both addressed in the strip and otherwise. In one case the doctor even told them they made a major mistake in her care, Lisa realised that she's lost months of valuable time in her treatment, and now her cancer was terminal because of the mistake. The doctor then called the person who got Lisa's results by mistake to tell them they were healthy and not dying of cancer - ANOTHER case of malpractice. Basically, everyone involved in Lisa's treatment was an idiot. The real irony being that the original "Lisa has cancer" storyline won Batiuk an award for his accuracy in depicting cancer treatment.
  • And then there's the February 2011 strips involving Summer blowing out her knee during a state tournament basketball game. First of all, this is being told to Les after the fact as apparently no one thought to contact Les to tell him his daughter was in the hospital. Then we're told that the Lady Scapegoats actually forfeited the game in order to go be with Summer at the hospital. And Bull lets them without apparent protest. Words cannot express how stupid this is to anyone who knows anything about sports to someone who doesn't. Suffice it to say, in real life, Summer's reaction would be less "That is so sweet, you guys" and more "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO THAT FOR!?!"
    • And then the implausibility ticks over into the impossible when Central Catholic, the Lady Scapegoats' opponents actually refused to accept the forfeit and insisted on finishing the game. Central Catholic would not be allowed to do that. They'd be forced to accept the forfeit so the tournament could stay on schedule, which is usually a tight schedule as most state tournaments are held at a neutral site that the tournament only rents for a few days. Naturally, the Scapegoats lost.
    • And what team willingly names themselves the Scapegoats to begin with?! Talk about low self-esteem.
    • That itself is an example of the over-riding Wall Banger of the strange transition of the strip from a comical look at high school to an ultra-depressing soap opera. Things like the school mascot being a Scapegoat, or even the main characters having names like "Funky Winkerbean", "Les Moore", and "Harry Dinkle" just don't fit with the now somber tone.
  • As if we need to see just how much more implausible we can get, the Westview School Board just canceled athletics in the middle of the season due to a lack of money because the school levy failed. Never mind that school budgets are set the spring before, or that the levy failure would affect next year's budgets, or unilaterally cancelling athletics would screw up every other school's schedule. Not to mention that it appears that the marching band gets to survive the chopping block. Let's just go with Batiuk has absolutely no concept of how anything involving schools actually works.
  • And then we have the much-ballyooed 2012 prom storyline "featuring" two gay students who attended the prom together. "Featuring" is in quotes because not only did the gay couple in question only show up in three strips in the entire arc (none of which were at the actual prom) but they were never even named. The boys were less characters and more living MacGuffins.

Garfield

  • The Garfield comic posted on April 24th[when?] certainly didn't match the cheerfulness of the Easter holiday. Jon took making fun of Garfield's weight to a new low. As Jon serves Garfield's lunch, he calls out to him by shouting "SOOOO-EEY! Pig! Pig! Pig! Pig!" and it looks like he's smiling as he says it. And he seems to have a smug grin on his face the whole time as Garfield eats. It's just a comic, and Garfield shoving his food dish in Jon's face at the end was satisfying, but man. You get the feeling Jon only adopted Garfield so he'd have somebody constantly around to feel superior toward.
    • I'd like to say that at the school I go to, a few days after that strip, they had that strip hanging on the wall of the cafeteria for the rest of the school year. The logo box parodying Pac-Man was pretty clever, though.


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