Reader Jon Weltz writes the following with regard to our recent discussions of the current continuity in the Gasoline Alley newspaper strip…
I followed your link and read it and I'm glad I did but it's very frustrating that they're arranging funeral services and actually having the funeral and they haven't told us yet for sure who died. Over on his blog, Peter David said he thought this was "bad writing." You seem to think it is good writing and since you and Peter are two of my favorite writers, I am intrigued by the different views. Could you elaborate? And can you tell me how you would have handled this story?
Well, I'm not sure it's good writing. Unlike my pal Peter, I'm waiting for the payoff before I say it's bad, and he may turn out to be right. The writer-artist, Mr. Scancarelli, seems to have something deliberate on his mind and I'm as curious as anyone as to what it is. (Actually, one might argue that anything that gets people to go out of their way to read Gasoline Alley, a long-ignored strip, is good writing but I assume that's not the kind of "good" we're talking about here.) How would I have handled it? I have no idea how I would have treated the whole notion of killing off Walt and/or Phyllis. I wouldn't have done it the way Scancarelli is going about it, but that certainly doesn't mean he's wrong. For one thing, he knows these characters a lot better than I could ever pretend to, and he's probably been planning this for years. However, if I suddenly had to take over right now and plot the ending, here's what I would do…
Let us review. Years and years ago, in the defining moment of his life, Walt Wallet adopted an abandoned baby named Skeezix. Walt later married Phyllis and they've had a very long, happy life together. By some estimates, Walt is pushing 105. Finally, Phyllis says it's time she tells him the secret of the abandoned baby…a secret she has somehow kept from her husband for 83 (!) years. Despite his coaxing, she says she'll tell him tomorrow…and then in the middle of the night, we have the death of someone or maybe two someones, and we haven't seen either Walt or Phyllis since then.
If I had to pick up those plot threads now, it would turn out that Phyllis died. If Walt died, then he died without his beloved wife telling him an important secret, revealing something vital she knows about his past. That's very unsatisfying. It's almost like she did something cruel to him by drawing it out and not telling him sooner, knowing full well that either of them could go at any minute. So what I would do is say that Phyllis died in the middle of the night and Walt made the mysterious phone call in the middle of the night to Skeezix.
Then Walt himself had to be hospitalized because of grief or shock or illness, which would explain why we don't see him in the funeral sequence now being played out in the strip. I would have someone, probably Skeezix, go from the funeral to his bedside and say, "It was a lovely service. Too bad your doctor wouldn't let you attend." Or maybe I'd have a shot of him in a wheelchair at the graveside and indicate he's been in the hospital for the last few days and was let out briefly to attend the funeral…and then he has to go back to his hospital bed.
Either way, you then have to have someone tell him the secret of how Skeezix was abandoned. Scancarelli has set it up for revelation and it would be very mean to the readers not to reveal it…which means that regardless of who died, the surviving characters in the strip have to learn it. If Phyllis died, she had to have left behind a diary or a letter or someone who was authorized to tell Walt in case she predeceased him. It would have been very thoughtless for her not to have done that. So in my version, someone comes to Walt's bedside and says, "Phyllis left this letter with me, just in case" or "Phyllis wanted me to tell you…" Perhaps another child of Skeezix's mother could come see him, thereby introducing Skeezix to a sister or brother he never knew he had.
Then the secret is revealed of how and why Skeezix's biological mother abandoned him. Once he learns this secret, Walt can pass away in peace, thereby reuniting him with his beloved Phyllis. (Some have suggested that it will turn out that by some incredible machinations, Skeezix is actually his biological son. But I can't imagine Phyllis keeping that a secret from both of them for 83 years because of a promise to an outside party, even the mother.)
This is the only logical ending I can envision to what's recently happened in the strip. If Walt died, then Phyllis would have to live with the guilt that she didn't tell him sooner. That would be an awfully negative way to end one of the happiest marriages in the history of comics. If Phyllis died and didn't make provisions for him to learn the secret then she did a heartless thing to the love of her life. Again, a bad way to end that. If both died together, then she still didn't tell him something he needed to know. The only thing that makes sense to me is if she died, Walt learns the secret and then he joins her.
Which is not to say this is how Mr. Scancarelli is doing it. Several comic strip websites seem pretty sure that Walt has died and they sound like they have inside information. What I have here is not a prediction. It's just the way I see the storyline wrapping up. In a day or two, we'll see what actually happens over at this website.