Smirks ‘R Us
October 25, 2012 at 8:43 am
And the Smirk-Mobile rolls on…..yawwwnnnn.
…and on, and on. The Tour de Fairgood as now widened in scope to take in not just Ann and Fred’s first apartment, the place where Ann once worked, and now, their second apartment, which “didn’t have the charm of the first place,” which was in a slum. In the unseen fourth panel, Jessica takes umbrage at Ann’s “cardboard boxes for dressers” remark, as it aptly describes how she and Darin have been living for the past ten years.
Snarkers, hatin’ on Funky Winkerbean 24/7 sure can wear a body out. Your ol’ pal TFH is going to take a break this week and turn over the proceedings to my caporegime, David O. I’ll see y’all down in the comments section. Thanks for snarking.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Funky Winkerbean was once a train wreck. Now it is the slowest moving train wreck in history.
I counted 52 bricks in panel 3. And if I really, REALLY get bored, I’ll go ahead and read the dialogue.
“And here is our third apartment, where we had a stove!…
Here is our fourth apartment, which was better because it came with a door…
It wasn’t until Fishstick Annie started taking kickback money from KSU for basketball recruits that the money really started rolling in.”
Tomorrow’s strip will be seven panels of Fred and Ann describing how the lint trap worked in the dryer in their second apartment building.
Why is the tree in panel one still green?
I honestly would like to know what the point of “The Fairgoods show their adopted son and his bride places they used to live” is. Is this supposed to be Batom Inc.’s idea of gag-a-day? It can’t be, because the blurb for “Funky Winkerbean” pompously informs us that “Funky Winkerbean began as a gag-a-day comic strip about high school life, but the strip evolved as cartoonist Tom Batiuk himself matured…” When you insist on only writing about “real life issues,” this is what you get: utterly uninteresting, unfunny weekly arcs like reminiscing about places you used to live.
Whoops, members of BatDick’s congregation are starting to get riled up! Stand by for The Coming Holy War.
Too bad we can’t look ahead any more. I just want to know if any of this is leading to something, or if there will be any kind of tie-in to anything else that’s going on. If this is just a “standalone” arc, just a digression, it’s the most boring, meaningless one anyone could ever come up with. That’s because not only do the readers not give a shit about any of this, neither do the other characters! And if anything, why wouldn’t Boy Lisa have already heard about all of this at some point in his life? And if the true purpose of this arc is to retcon Fred and Ann into a couple that had been together in their youth, why bother? As others have said, who really cares much about these fringe characters anyway?
Here’s the killer – Like FW or hate it, the wedding of Goatee Prick and, — um, what’s her name again? — is one of the most significant events of Act III. The way Tomboy glossed over it, to the point of reducing the ceremony to 7 words and COMETELY skipping the reception, is mind boggling. And he abruptly cut away from the wedding for this?? For THIS???
My Conspiracy Theory (and I’m stickin’ to it): Tommyhack had written a whole sequence involving Dead Lisa at the wedding. Maybe she smirked approvingly during the vows. Maybe she took Les aside for a private conversation. Maybe they (ugh) danced. I dunno. Use your imagination. We’ve been hooting down the inevitable Lisa Wedding Visitation in this space for months. And we KNOW TB lurks here. Since Batominc wrote this dreck a year ago, I say he avoided the Snarkocalypse by hacking out all the Lisa stuff. Didn’t the wedding arc appear chopped up to you? And the Slum Tour arc was shoehorned in to take up the slack.
Or maybe I’m wrong, and we’re just seeing Tomahack’s jerky, disjointed “writing” style.
At least he hasn’t worked in the “I helped with the delivery” joke, unless he’s saving that for the Sunday climax strip
On the other hand, we could thank TomBot for sparing us the uber-tedious grossout of Les and Cayla and Lisa’s honeymoon.
As with TFH…..I gotta take a break for the next week..
Hmmm Bourbon and cigars along the beach might help.
This memory lane recon of the Fairgoods is painful.
I bet Fred and Ann have boxes of slides they bore the shit out of visitors with.
(*click*)
This is Fred at the front of the house.
(*click*)
Here’s Fred at the side of the house.
(*click*)
And here’s Fred walking around the back of the house, but you can still see the side of the house.
(*click*)
And here’s the Spanish Inquisition hiding behind the garbage cans, as this wasn’t the nicest neighborhood.
“I didn’t expect this sort of Spanish Inquisition!”
‘Strouble down a’ mill.
This arc has drained me of all snarkage, I mean what’s left to say? One of the most instantly forgettable weeks of FW ever.
What’s next? A week full of of drawings of rain hitting the sides of buildings and leaves clogging storm drains?
I got nuthin’. After Ann using the abuse of vulnerable teens as a punchline earlier this week, anything else seems redundant.
Okay, Batiuk, if it’s wall-of-text vs. wall-of-bricks you want, let’s just cut to the chase and go all the way.
The Defenders of Batom Inc. have got to be all related to him.
Not sure if they’re all related, but it’s clear that Ahia is well represented in the Two Digit IQ Society.
As an Ohioan, I can’t really argue with that, B.W. Sadly.
“I’m a sixteen-year old girl who loves Les Moore”? That’s got to be cyber-trolling for a pedophile, right there.
And at the risk of repeating myself, from the comments:
“A beautiful strip, with beautiful art” underneath a wall of text driving past a brick wall. Is it any wonder we deride the validity of the commenters?
Present company excepted, Flummoxicated! No offense intended.
But I must admit, sheepishly, that Tommy Hack did to my opinion of Ohio and Ohio-ites what Lynn Johnston did to my opinion of Canaduh.
None taken, B.W.! Ohio can be a real mixed bag. Ohio has given the USA something like 24 astronauts – and Jeffrey Dahmer. It’s brought us Cy Young, Devo, the Black Keys, Clark Gable – and Charles Manson. It’s given us Rita Dove, Zane Grey, James Thurber – and Tom Batiuk.