We move on to the exposition portion of the story arc where attention is finally turned away from Summer and Les towards Darin and Jessica. As fate would have it, these particular chew toys are headed back home after an undisclosed amount of time at an undisclosed location. With seemingly no funds to rent an apartment, or a planned means to earn that money, one wonders how this situation came to be. Based on the half-lidded expression on Jessica's face, and Darin's apparent lack of teeth, it's likely the move was precipitated by an abrupt and violent end to their prescription drug/methamphetamine ring. Laying low while the dust settles is a wise move…but they're headed back to Westview. If the guns, drugs, and withdrawal won't get them, the ennui will.
-Stuckfunky
Good grief. Jessica's having a mild stroke, from the look of things. She's even creepier than the Grey's Anatomy chick!
(But still less creepy than Susan, with her crazed, fixed, wild-eyed Stepford grin.)
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Upon a second glance, it looks like a teeny-tiny Easter basket has been placed in front of the room's required Lisa Shrine.
Foreshadowing of her ghostly return this spring break, no doubt. *shudder*
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Come on! Another Pubic Chair? Another Hatchet Face? Gawd. Someone explain to me why I'm supposed to care about these two losers. Let's get back to…um, wait…no, I can't think of any other story line I want to get back to. Never mind, then, I guess.
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Jessica's hair and those curtains are bad enough, but my God, that chair. It's the most egregious example of unnecessary squiggling yet. What an eyesore. It looks like the time Stevie Wonder tried to do one of those children's restaurant placemat mazes all by himself. Why go through all the trouble of drawing in those little background details if you're just going to end up scribbling all over everything for no reason anyway?
Whose picture is in the frame in the background? Is that Act II Darin or some other long-lost character I don't know about? Sometimes I regret missing so much of FW Act II. This is not one of those times.
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John, sourbelly, it's very common for comic strip characters to be drawn crudely and inconsistently when a strip is just starting out. As time goes by, the artist generally learns how to –
What? Funky Winkerbean's been around for how long???
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Oh my God, that's supposed to be Lisa? (facepalm) Sigh, I should have known.
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Squiggly lines galore, hatchet faces (you ain't seen nothing yet, trust me), and crummy art, to say nothing of improbable stories. You thought I was joking about the Old Crow and Rx meds? I wish.
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How to Read Funky Winkerbean, Vol. 1:
In the event of a single-panel strip, there will be no joke. This differs from multi-panel strips only in that the latter attempt to make jokes that no civilized person would find even moderately amusing. Multi-panel strips will, however, move the perceived storyline further along than the to-what-purpose single-panel strips. On second thought, both panel types are equally unfulfilling… although today's attempt fails on too many levels to acknowledge fully. At least give us gentle readers something that we can smirk at for a change.
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Jeffcoat-"perceived storyline"…LOL! The ol' mid-week single panel trick, for those times when there's just not enough to make it to Saturday.
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Oh great…two more losers have returned to Funkytown, pushing the end of this horrible strip even further away.
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So, what will Lisa's holiday visit entail this time? During Christmas, she tried to save Les (and ONLY Les) from a plane crash. Les called his dead wife a "sicko". In a fit of spite, she ended up saving the entire plane, thus ruining his surefire second bestseller: "I Survived a Terrible Plane Crash and All I Did Was Write a Book About it".
Then, there was the infamous undead New Year's Eve kiss, her spirit causing Les to, um, act pretty much the same towards his alleged love interests.
For Easter, Lisa will:
a) Tell Les he's a Wise Author.
b) Ask Les why he never uses a cellphone to check up on their daughter
c) Reveal that the un-researched, botched foot operation is merely the beginning of the severe health issues that will plague Summer the rest of her life. (So get crackin' on the new book!)
d) Reveal that not only was Bull Les' secret best friend, but that Les was so manly and poetic that every woman in the world secretly wanted him, back in his soulful youth.
e) Reveal that Buddy the Miracle Dog has rabies.
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One question: Which of them has cancer?
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One answer: They all do.
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…and of course, She will be wearing an Easter Bunny costume and holding a basket full of remainder copies of Lisa's Legacy (now marked down 50%!) and on the way to a reunion celebration at that evil pizza joint, she'll "push" a rapturous Loser out of the way of a speeding delivery truck and let Sum' Mo, Darrin, and Jessica go under the wheels.
Meanwhile Fu(ky, in a rare appearance in his own venue, will be griping to his spiteful diety that his delivery of synthetic, saturated-oil based cheese-like pizza topping is late. Again.
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Darin! The only thing I remember about that loser in Act II was his weeklong trip to the post office that went nowhere…
Monday: Darin walks to the post office
Tuesday Darin enters the building
Wednesday: Darin opens his PO Box. (Why does a 17 year old need a PO box?)
Thursday: Darin opens letter
Friday: Darin looks shocked at contents of said letter.
Saturday: Nothing, really. Storyarc over! 7 weeks later we find out Lisa was his mom.
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I'm surprised that Les took so long to Hrrrr at the sight of Dolphin (and me so long to realize this) but when Les sees him, he sees the guy that had cheap and tawdry sexytime with The Lisa in the back of a van, and it makes him chuck his grub. That said, I sometimes wonder what Les was doing while Lisa was receiving the manseed that would sprout Darwin. Upstairs, helping Porcelain make the bed? Downstairs, whipping his rat? Whatever, I'm sure the thoughts torment him. Sure hope so, anyway.
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Of course these two freeloaders will wind up living in Casa de Les. It's called writing!
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Don't worry, Sgt Saunders — I'm sure it won't be long before Batiuk rewrites history with a week-long flashback that reveals Lisa pretended to be pregnant as a teenager, which will also allow him to erase Darrin from existence so he won't have to keep reminding everyone that this character's in the back arsenal. The only bad part is that it means a smug Les will proudly point out to his daughter that his was the only butter knife that ever spread butter on Lisa's bread.
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Ok…. this is looking like something TB should have been doing all along ala' ACT III. That is to develop story lines of characters from ACT II.
As par .. he is just a shit-ass story teller. So I'm not about to expect much of which I will surely not be disappointed.
And stop calling me Shirley.
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i've seen the future, and this is some of the most phoned-in artwork i've ever witness TomBat produce.
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The future is not pretty; not pretty at all. More proof (as if we needed any) that King Features will publish just about anything mailed to them from the cartoonists they represent.
A drawing of my dog's poo could make their "cut." I would be glad to mail you some, Batom. Postage due.
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I sometimes wonder what Les was doing while Lisa was receiving the manseed that would sprout Darwin
Sarge: I can't recall all the circumstances at the moment, but one day Lisa showed up at teen-aged Les' front door extremely pregnant back in Act I. She told Les that she and she dated a jock from Big Walnut Tech, who bedded her on the first date and then dropped her immediately afterwards. Her parents shipped her out West to live with relatives after the baby was born. The Faircloths adopted that same baby during the infamous "teenage pregnancy" story arc, which was pretty risqué stuff back then–it was, after all, the Sevevties, and teenage pregnancy just didn't happen to nice, white middle-class folks then, no, sir! [And yes, Westview was the same "small town" then as it is now, and nobody knew/suspected that it was Lisa's baby.] Les was at her side through the entire arc.
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@redbird: Preview and proofread! Kinda like: "Roads and Bridges", "Car and Driver", "Love and Marriage", etc.
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