Lazy cartooning

When I mentioned in the last post that the Benders would probably be well served to extend the fight sequence over several weeks, I neglected to mention that this would require drawing more than one fight scene that they use over and over and over again.
Because, as you can see below, that is precisely what the Benders have done.







In the April 15 strip, we get the first scene of the melee with Oop grimacing as he clups a Lemmian with a red bandana upside the head. Behind him to his left is Foozie with an uncertain look on his face as he is set upon by a clone of the guy that Oop just bashed. And to the right of Oop is Wooly locked in a struggle with three Lemmians - one has grabbed his club, another has his left arm and a third looks like he’s going to hit him while he is being restrained. And immediately behind Oop is a menacing-looking bald-headed Lemmian with both arms up in the air looking like he is going to try and tackle Oop from behind.
So far so good. Then on Sunday we get a repeat of the same picture since the Benders have given up on producing new materials for Sunday and just rehash scenes from the previous week.
Finally, on Monday, April 20, we resume with the fight.... except that it is simply the exact same fight scene as before only flipped so that whereas earlier Oop was swinging his club with his right hand, now he is singing with his left hand and so forth. So the Benders did as little work as possible. Alley Oop is still in the process of hitting the same guy, Wooly is now off screen, but everything else is just the same as it was the week prior.
Then on Tuesday, April 21, we get a change. Oop is STILL hitting the same guy (flipped back again and using his right arm once more) and we can now see Wooly once more still in t he exact same position. The only difference now is that the bald-headed guy behind Oop suddenly has a club in his left hand that he is swinging awkwardly at Oop’s hat. Why the sudden importance being placed on the hat is beyond me. The fact that Oop stops in the middle of a fight to liberate Moo so that he can retrieve his top hat is stupid beyond compare.
And it’s not even worth noting that in the split second it takes for the swinging club to strike Oop’s hat, he has already switched his club from his right hand to his left hand.

More Wham! Bam! Pow! please

Finally, after weeks of Alley Oop and the Moovians behaving like sniveling cowards, they finally show some life in this April 15 comic. Maybe the Benders decided to take a clue from the new movie “Kick-Ass.” Here, for an all-too-brief moment, we have Alley Oop acting like the hero he is supposed to be and whaling away at the Lemmians. The Benders could run several weeks worth of this fight scene and improve the strip greatly. Oop should be able to take on five or six of these guys at a time. Instead, all we’ve seen him and the rest of the Moovians do is immediately surrender everytime they see more than two Lemmians together at one time. It’s pathetic!
But no. One brief glimpse is all we get and then we have to turn the focus back to Oola and some Lemmian deserter having a long, drawn-out, pointless conversation. Yawn.
If we are lucky, we may get one more brief glimpse of the fight before Oop blows his horn and Dinny/Oola ride to the rescue scaring away all the Lemmians who will act like they’ve never seen a dinosaur before. Sheesh!

Right foot..... No! Left!

Isn't that amazing? Alley Oop somehow managed to switch feet as he was being trapped by the Lemmians. You can clearly see in the first panel that Oop and Wooley both get their right feet caught in the trap. But in the next day's panel, Wooley is hanging by his right foot, but Oop is now hanging by his left foot!!!
Do you suppose this has something to do with the plot? Or were the Benders once again not paying attention to the details?
I'll let you decide.

Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

Really sad that after years of building up to this point that the Benders would just pull the plug on the whole marriage thing.
I really don't have much more to say other than to note how ridiculous it is for Alley Oop to put on a necktie when he is not even wearing a shirt. But we needed a new thread so here it is.

Hitting rock bottom

Can the Benders make Alley Oop sink any lower in character?
Oop has just poisoned an innocent and unsuspecting Wooley (and inadvertenly poisoned his would-be fiance) in a fit of jealous rage. And now, the same Wiz who instructed him on how to mix up his little potion is advising him to duck out and shun responsibility - like a kid who just hit his baseball through a neighbor's window and then runs for cover.
What a FINE example Alley is setting for all his young fans!
Perhaps now Doc will save the day by zapping Alley Oop back to the future for the start of a new "adventure". Maybe he can then send Oop back into his own recent past where he could slap some sense into himself before he ever concocts his poisonous plant scheme.

More mis-perspectives

This is sooooooo awful!!! I can't believe that the Benders are such idiots! They just CAN'T be this stooopid! It has to be that they are simply thumbing their noses at the readers in pure disdain.
In the strip above, we have Ooola hiding behind a rock that magically materialized behind the poor, unsuspecting musician who we assume is about to suffer the wrath of the insanely jealous Alley Oop.
The first frame gives us the perspective from behind Ooola as she peers around the RIGHT side of the rock and watches the musician direct the singers with his RIGHT hand. Then in the very next frame, we get the same scene from Alley Oop's perspective, but now Ooola is peering out from the LEFT side of the rock (from her perspective) and the musician is now directing the singers with his LEFT hand.
There is no consistency whatsoever. Simple details are carelessly overlooked or ignored. It is enough to drive anyone mad. Perhaps that is what has already happened to the Benders.

Jumping to conclusions...again

I think we have all seen this story line before from the Benders. Alley Oop comes home from another long bout of time travel to discover his long-neglected flame Ooola (Gasp!) TALKING to another man!!!
So naturally our overly jealous and presumptive hero Alley Oop throws a big hissy fit and then walks away in a huff. No effort to fight for and reclaim the love of his life, just complete indifference and self pity.
Remind me again why we are supposed to be rooting for such a despicable character as the Bender's version of Alley Oop? If their point is to disgust old fans and drive them away from the comic strip, then they are certainly succeeding.

Consistently inconsistent

I have to hand it to the Benders. They are stubbornly consistent in their inconsistency. Throughout the entire kidnappying ordeal of Dr. Bronson, they couldn’t make up their mind how they wanted him to be tied up. Sometimes we would seem him sitting with the ropes going just around his chest and his arms tied behind the chair. Other times we would see the rope going all the way around both arms, pinning them to his side in a way that his hands could not be tied behind his back.
Now here in the last strip of the series we see both examples once again back to back. In the first frame, the rope is around Bronson’s chest, but not around his arms or the chair. How this binds him to the chair or restricts his movement in anyway is unclear. In the second frame, the ropes are clearly around his arms again.
I just don’t see how they can miss this. Are they doing it on purpose? Don’t they have any respect for their readers, much less for their own work?
It is just baffling.

Time (Machine) Shifting

With Alley Oop these days the sloooow pacing and the dull storylines are just part of the problem. What really drives me crazy is the lack of consistency in perspective. Today’s strip is a perfect example. In the first frame we see the mysterious man peeking around the time machine at Oop and the lady in the red dress. The time machine, you will note, is on his left side and Oop and the lady are about to walk out a door on a side wall to their left.
In the second frame, we get the same scene from the perspective of the mystery man, but now the time machine is on his right side and Oop and the lady are walking out a door that is straight in front of them. Also, Oops ax is in his left hand in the first frame, but is missing (presumably in his right hand) in the second frame.
There is no explanation for this other than that the Benders are being careless, sloppy and lazy.

In case you missed it...

Just in case you were dozing off during the past month's worth of Alley Oop strips, the authors haved decided to recap all the action for us this week.
This latest turn of events has earned the Benders the title of "THE laziest creators of any currently running comics strips" at The Daily Comics Review.

Oscar Boom returns

I really don't know what to say about this. I thought they were unfair to Oscar when they turned him into a bad guy all of a sudden. Are they going to flip him again and let him return to being a good guy, or are they just setting him up for his next diabolical scheme?

Ooops! That must be Alley’s cue...

Like helpless 2-year-olds, the womenfolk have gone and gotten themselves into a big mess again. Poor Alley, can’t turn his back for a second without one of them wandering off and getting eaten by a sabertooth tiger (or is that a sabertooth sloth cosidering how slow it is?) or stupidly rapelling halfway down a cliff and getting stuck because she didn’t use a long enough rope.
Now Ooola has tripped and will no doubt end up dangling on the end of the rope with Dee where they will have to wait for Alley to come to their rescue.

Graverobber

My Lord, this is getting downright creepy! What the hell is wrong with these people? The look in Dee’s eyes is just sick as she practically drools over this recently dead neanderthal’s remains. Doesn’t she realize that what she is doing is in essence graverobbing?
She is not at some archeological site thousands of years in the future. She got in a frickin’ time machine and traveled thousands of years into the past, just shy of when the neanderthals were living, and is now digging up gravesites under no more than a few inches of top soil (considering that she uncovered it with a little hand trowel in less than a minute).
Ooola was right to react disgusted by what Dee is doing. This IS disgusting!
Maybe Dee will next fixate on Ooola’s pristine cavewoman skull. Imagine how much she could learn from that!
“Hey Dee! What are you doing with that axe in your hand? Whoa! Watch where you’re swinging that thing. You could take someone’s head off!”

Time traveling archeologist?

Let’s see if I can get my mind around this. I don’t know what era Moo is supposed to be in, but just for grins let’s say it is 10,000 BC.
So, Dee wants to know what was going on in 15,000 B.C. and she has access to a time machine. So what does she do?
She goes back to 10,000 B.C. and then starts an archeological excavation!?!?
Does anybody else see something wrong with this picture? Did it ever occur to her to simply get back in the time machine and go back another 5,000 years or so?
Maybe if we are lucky she will get eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger before she does too much digging.