Foobonia and Points West.

As you know, we're coming up to the first installment of a long-term plot involving Uncle Phil: his having to quit cigarette smoking. The generalized premise behind the whole thing was that Phil is a spoiled brat who won't listen to the older sister who knows best, a pathetic Neanderthal who confuses the benevolent guidance of the women in his life with being neutered and an anti-social jackass who thinks that his need to puff his brains out is the only consideration that needs to be taken into account. The problem is that she accidentally lets it slip from time to time that Phil is pretty much terrified of failure. Unlike Jim who thought that since he never died of cancer that there was no proven link, Phil joins Candace aware of the risks involved. He also shares with Candace the fear that taking on adult responsibilities means turning into an embittered, angry failure so when things get dicey, the two of them will always have the urge to backslide.

The interesting thing is that this reminds me of the constant hectoring about quitting smoking on the comic strip Curtis. The protagonist can't seem to get that when his dad talks about there's a stress in his life that can only be calmed by a pack of menthols, what would make Greg quit for good is if Curtis turned into the grinning drone who always agreed with authority figures and never bothered questioning what anyone older than he was said that Billingsley holds out as an ideal of childhood. In both cases, we're dealing with a child who should gleefully cast himself into a furnace if an adult told him to who needs to accept that he owes the stupid blind obedience.

Ah. well. At least the humorless granite block of moral absolutism calling himself Ray Billingsley has the courage of his grim, anti-human convictions. When he says that Greg is a fool, Curtis an annoyance and smoking as much a device of Satan as his main character, he means it. He's not like Lynn who only objects to cigarettes because she hates the smell. If she liked it, the Pattersons would be accompanied by their own personal smog cloud.

As those of you who follow the Comics Casserole blog have learned, King Features Syndicate has taken the step of making the URLs of its strips next to impossible to predict in order to somehow save its bottom line from hemorrhaging because no one in a position of power is smart enough to figure out how to make money on the Internet without forcing people to deal with a pay wall. This couldn't have come at a better time because I'm getting heartily sick of the KFS strips I used to cover. If you'll indulge me, I'll explain why I no longer miss them.

I'll start by saying that I will not miss the strip Curtis by Ray Billingsley in the least. The creator touts his celebration of self-defeating behaviour as being the Thinking Man's comic strip; he is sort of right to do so but he makes me think things that he'd probably rather I didn't. The thing he makes me think that he'd rather I didn't is that Gunther the barber is the only character I'm going to miss. Sure, the guy never gets Curtis's name right and tells obvious lies about his celebrity connections but his funny signs are the only light in a world of darkness and stupidity.

I won't, on the other hand, much miss the principal character and his self-defeating need to not follow the rules because he thinks that being pointlessly, self-destructively rebellious makes him an individual. Sure, he's a product of his environment but it's hard to sympathize with someone who hasn't figured out that since he lives in a town filled with irrationally thin-skinned people who take offense at the least thing, it makes sense to tread lightly.

I also won't miss Gunk, his insane stories of his bizarre homeland and the amazingly dangerous plants and animals poor, dim Curtis thinks he can exploit for profit. I also won't miss the "Take Fredo Out To The Boathouse" vibe he gives off. Billingsley would rather I not think that Gunk is trying to kill Curtis for kicks but, well, that's what I see happening.

I'm not at all going to miss Mrs Nelson, her non-stop lectures about how Curtis has untapped potential and especially not the realization that she doesn't live in the same world he does. It seems to me that most of why Curtis was beset by hooligans was that they flattered the doughy old bat and since she shares the same mental failing as Diane, she thought they were good and Curtis bad because he stupidly told the truth.

Speaking of Derrick and Onion, I'll be in a position to not miss them post haste because I know that a rock-stupid woman I know of (hint: she always believes that Curtis is trying to hit Barry for no reason) will call for their reinstatement because of a lying promise of reform.

I won't miss Scary-Ass Stalker With A Crush Chutney or Mean Girl Michelle nor will I miss championing the former rather than the latter because the failures Curtis calls parents hate successful people.

I won't miss Greg, his crappy attitude, his stinginess, his ridiculous belief that cracking open his wallet will destroy Curtis's work ethic, his sullen hatred of the fact that he isn't allowed final say on whether things will change and especially his refusal to admit that his grousing about having to work for a living is what HAS destroyed Curtis's work ethic. One Elly Patterson is quite enough, thanks loads.

I won't miss that treacherous, malicious, gutless and annoying pain Barry, his non-stop insults, his habit of pushing buttons and his running to mother. What we see is what Red Green calls a fist-magnet; what the stupid women in this strip see is a victim of a bully that wants to pummel him for no reason because he says so.

That leads directly to a discussion of who I'll miss the least: the rock-stupid matriarch Diane. Most of what's wrong with Curtis is her angry refusal to admit that nice, sweet little Barry could be playing her like a damned Atari. In the veeeeeeeeeeeeery unlikely event that Barry boasts about fooling her where she can hear it, it'll be on Curtis because he isn't a lying piece of shit like Barry is. It's like she's a horrifying genetic experiment wherein some maniac combined that anger-prone, clueless oaf John Patterson with the mother from "Everybody Hates Chris" and her tendency to over-react to piddly crap because she's afraid of what the neighbors will say.

I did omit one of Curtis's impossibilities the other day; he cannot under any circumstances prove that his claims that the bizarre foods and animals his freaky friend Gunk brings from Flyspeck Island do what he says they do. This is so Billingsley can have him be introduced to an invasive species, see its bizarre power, figure out a means of abusing it, think he's beating the system, crash down to Earth hard and get punished for lying. The other reason is that the artist loves weird crap; this not only manifests itself in the myriad ways that Curtis has tried killing himself using the dangerous produce Gunk leaves sitting around for any fool to misuse, it also appears every Kwanzaa. During that period, the regular storyline is put on hold so that we may be treated to a fable of some sort; the result is heavy-handed moralizing accompanied by weird art.

Let it not be said that Curtis is the only character who cannot do certain things and maintain the integrity he needs to have the strip continue. His parents are also hampered by the inability to do certain things and think certain thoughts. As an example, Curtis's mother cannot admit to herself the possibility that younger brother Barry might be lying about how Curtis is angry with him for no reason. We know that the title character is almost always reacting to an extreme provocation of some sort but the instant the Troll puts on the 'sweet, harmless kid' act, Diane's mind freezes in place and she goes off to pulverize her kid; what's more, she doubles the tanning she gives Curtis because he 'lied' about being goaded. This, of course, is because she suffers from a mental defect that a lot of adults in fiction do; she assumes that a child that is quiet, respectful and helpful to adults is a good child who has no reason to lie and a rude, noisy and stubborn child like Curtis is always bad. One should think that she wonders why Wally and the Beav are so nasty to their polite friend Eddy Haskell because he's always so respectful to adults because she cannot or will not see that she and June Cleaver are being played for suckers by their respective rat-bastard phonies; having to do that would mean having to admit to an imperfect knowledge of her children and she cannot do that and still be the Diane Wilkins Billingsley created. She has to be an ill-tempered stooge for the old 'wounded gazelle' ploy or the strip will end. Greg isn't nearly so bad; all he's got is a hatred for rap and a two-pack a day habit that he can't really quit without going nuts. If he'd married a woman for brains instead of looks and mad skillz on the dance floor, he wouldn't be as messed up as he is now. The jury is out on whether he believes Barry is a lying little fink but it's established that he doesn't care; like Ward Cleaver, he wants his older son to suck up the abuse he has to take like a man and quit pestering him for money he doesn't have.