billytheskink here, back for my third non-consecutive fortnight of guest weblogging. Today’s strip was not available for preview, so we’ll have to all be unpleasantly surprised together. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll get a month-long break from the usual schmucks and watch Mr. Clean repair the band box, gear by gear and piece by piece.
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Son of Stuck Funky · The web's premiere source for Funky Winkerbean snark
Son of Stuck Funky 
“Why of course he would. He used to write comic books-not Starbuck Jones-something even dumber sounding, amazingly- until he got fired after he whined about his work becoming profitable. Uh, and he’s from Westview.”
So Mason holds a cell phone to talk while driving. Well he sure went down in my opinion. Seriously, I’ve seen people actually get into car crashes because they were doing that.
And Cindy hasn’t even met Pete, but she thinks he’d be perfect for a film that’s probably already costing millions to make.
Holy crap, Mason is sucking the lifeforce out of Cindy over the phone! She’s lost about 30 pounds and gained 10 years between panels two and three.
She also has Funky’s face. I’d make it part of my drinking game to take a shot every time you see Funky’s face used for another character, even just for female characters, but you’d definitely drink yourself to death if I did.
Wow, talk about over-reaching. “Hey, would you hire this guy you’ve never heard of based on the recommendation of someone else you don’t know?”. Uh yeah BanTom, I’m sure that’s how it works.
Why does he call Cindy “Holly?” Why does she not correct him?
Wow! Comics books! And filmmaking! Who’da thunk it?
Batom®, look. We all know you really have run out of ideas for Funky Winkerbean, are totally disinterested in doing anything resembling creative thinking, and are clearly padding the hell out of the strip just so Brendan Buford can get you that gold watch in 2022. But it would probably be in your best interests to run random clipart sans dialogue instead of… of THIS.
Not that anyone was ever going to take you seriously, because they wouldn’t have… but the dead horse you’ve been flogging has already been beaten to particle level.
“Hey boss, the sort-of girlfriend of our lead actor kind of knows a guy who used to draw comic books.”
“Well, I was thinking of courting Chris Nolan, but that sounds much better!”
*Totally how the movie industry works, honest.
@Das Smirkmunder: Damn. You’re right!
When Batom® can’t even remember the FIRST NAME OF A CORE CHARACTER, let alone Mopey Pete’s last name…
Add to that Batom® draws this crap
and doesn’t let anyone proofread it.
Das Smirkmunder: Nice! Totally missed that epic blunder. Maybe she goes by Holly now, like how Pete’s last name changes all the time.
This is the absolute worst episode ever written. He allows his character to be called by the completely wrong name. This is the sloppiness and lazest kind of writing ever. I am just appalled. I can’t even think of something clever to say (not that I ever really do, compared to my fellow snakers on this blog.) I may actually be done with reading this ironically.
Batiuk getting the name wrong should be surprising, but it’s obvious he doesn’t care about this. He’s putting in time until the 50th.
Pete Roberts has always been named Pete Reynolds. Funky’s first wife has always been Holly. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Tom Batiuk has always been a forgetful hack who screams really loud when people point out stupid continuity errors like this.
Seriously! Even Lynn Johnston has a better grasp on her own strip’s past and she makes passive-aggressive complaints about how we’re better at remembering the Pattersons’ story than she cares to be.
So did TB really get his blonde middle aged core characters confused? So unbelievable and so typical. Or are they on a conference call? And where’s Cell Phone Girl when we need her?
A conference call is possible, so i’ll take a wait-and-see on this one. Although with the Pete Roberts/Reynolds thing also in there, i’m being pretty generous in doing so.
Perhaps Mason is using a time phone, as he does appear to be talking to Act II-era Holly.
That’s California for ya, all palm trees and sunglasses and convertibles and time phones.
It’s pretty bad when getting a major character’s name completely wrong is perhaps the least problematic thing in this particular strip. We have Cindy/Holly calling Mason Johnson on his cell phone to tell him about this guy Pete Rappold, who was recommended to her by Durwood, a person who she is barely acquainted with, who would be PERFECT to come in and save a major (?) Hollywood film in mid-production, because he just got fired, and has nothing else to do.
Sadly, I’m afraid TB may be suffering from dementia. I almost feel bad snarking on this.
This might by why the author constantly identifies folks as in “My father John Darling who was murdered.” otherwise he forgets the name.
No, no, no, no. Mason is talking to Holly. Cindy is monitoring the conversation on her Evil Technology (R) phone device so that she can, when the time is right, rat Holly out to Funky regarding her clandestine relationship with Mason, thereby inflicting more misery on Der Sinkerbean. It’s all very Westviewian.
@TF Hackett. Briliant TF, brilliant.
@TF Obviously, we readers know this strip better than it’s creator.
GAH at the worlds most horrible ventriloquists’ dummy in the masthead. At last, Funky Winkerbean is moving in the direction it should–“survival horror.”
As for getting two characters names wrong in a single word balloon (seriously, that’s practically an Olympic Event), I don’t think any more proof is needed that Tom Batiuk recognizes that his sole audience is us…and he’s screwing with us. I’m almost totally convinced that the “King Kong” strip of last March was him saying, “Sure, go ahead, say whatever you want. I’m still getting paid to do this, and you’re a bunch of nobodies.”
@bobanero:
I’m almost inclined to agree with you.
It could also explain why:
• characters like Holly, St. Darin the Fair Good, Dead Skunk Head, Becky, and
CindyHolly have had their faces drawn with Funky’s ugly, bulbous nose … or even with a traced form of his entire face. Almost as if Batom® can’t remember how to draw them (and he’s been botching the proportions of his characters more frequently of late)…• nothing massively traumatic has remotely occurred in the strip since St. Fred the Fair Good had his stroke… I don’t consider Bull’s DUI rejection as a massive traumatic event, just a dumb, go-nowhere storyline…
• the entire younger generation graduated and entered the Witless Protection Program (not that they were THAT memorable to begin with) while Cody, Alex and Owen continue to languish as fifth-year high school juniors in an alleged “real time” strip…
• Batom® has a bizarre obsession with bringing up My Father John Darling Who Was Murdered and Mason Jarr the Movie Actor and bludgeoning their names for weeks on end…
• unfunny punchlines that made fun of PTSD, drunk driving victims, those who have lost an appendage or two, and alcoholism… material that Batom® insisted we take seriously because writing…
• the previous two weeks that were an odd attempt to disregard almost two whole decades of material, and focusing on stuff that is totally outside the realm of realism… an off-year high school reunion and a band box contraption that has always factored little into the strip… while the characters were reminiscing about the past.
• Batom® has failed to correct the invalid copyright on his own website…
… and on and on.
It’s either that… or he’s deliberately trying to go all-out and turn Funky Winkerbean into a comic strip version of “The Room,” and hoping that the tens of people who read the strip unironically won’t notice.
Oh, hai Funky.
In the Tuesday, April 21, 2015 strip, she was renamed “Holeee”, or Holly for short.
The whole Roberts/Reynolds–Cindy/Holly thing has me genuinely concerned for Tom Batiuk’s health. If this keeps up, I might have to withdraw from snarking on FW. Getting the names of 2 major characters wrong in one panel is far beyond sloppiness. It has the taint of dementia.
I’m not going to kick a sick, old man, not even in jest.
It really is just a ghastly error and it definitely confirms our suspicions re: proofreading. I mean seriously, is it even possible that these strips are going out without ANYONE looking them over first?
You know how he’s always leapfrogging from arc to arc? I wonder if he actually writes them that way? I assumed he does them all at once then chops them up as far as their running order goes, but maybe not. It could explain how he’d make such a bone-brained mistake like this.
Handheld cellphone use while driving is illegal in California
Mason: “So, you think this Peterson McAvoy would be a good writer to rework the script? So, he DOES have a few registered, formatted, polished Showcase Scripts I can send to the producers right away, right? And as an actor, I totally have the authority to make this recommendation, right?”
Holly: *superior smirk* “This is Westview, foo’! We do things our own way.”
Mason: “…..uh….”
Holly: *superior smirk* “Just tell them LES MOORE is my friend.”
Mason: “….nnnnno. See, you’re a former high powered news personality. Les is the guy who whined, whined some more, then demanded to be payed for his whining.”
Holly: “You’re just worried about being in the script by the time the final rewrite is finished.”
Mason: “….*….that’s not what….HEY!”
Holly: “Also, tell the producers Pete wants his trailer to be well stocked with pizza!”
And yes, I know I got Cindy’s name wrong, but since Tom got it wrong first, I feel free to call any character anything with impunity. 😀
@oddnoc; @Nathan Obral @bobanero; : I tend to agree with you hgys as well. Roberts into Reynolds could be explained by laziness and apathy … but Cindy into Holly… it is kind of like snarking on Frank Bolle’s deteriorating artwork in Apartment 3G, yeah I thought it funny that he had the Tribeca cafe look like some one’s living room until I found out he was 90 and compared his wrok today with that of ten years ago
@Epicus: Playing devil’s advocate, it is possible that Batom®’s recent scattershot writing and failure to juggle multiple storylines at the same time could be due to something that is simply… beyond his own control.
I hope to God (or to whomever higher power you the reader subscribe to) that I’m wrong. But today’s strip is borderline alarming to read. It’s… not right. Even if Mason Jarr The Movie Actor calls Cindy by her correct name tomorrow.
Cindy was so insecure about her looks while dressing for dinner with Mason just a few weeks ago, you’d think she’d collapse in tears when he calls her by another woman’s name.
Let this be a lesson to anyone tempted to give TB the benefit of the doubt, next time.