Tombat’s ability to uncannily dredge up natural disasters and acts of terrorism just as they’re happening in real life is in full force in today’s strip! With the official US death toll of Hurricane Sandy rapidly approaching 100, today’s little romp seems poorly timed. Most casual readers don’t know Batiuk writes these strips a year in advance; the whole thing just comes across as rather tasteless instead of the usual unfunny.
26 thoughts on “Too soon, too soon…”
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Son of Stuck Funky 
Forgive me if I don’t find old man Dinkle’s hurricane gags too hilarious this week. I know these are written a year in advance but damn man, that’s some uncanny shit right there. So what is this, FW garbage dump week or what?
Thanks again to all well-wishers, hope all affected by Death-storm are hanging in. And everyone else, really, but especially them.
Can anyone recommend a good litigation lawyer? I have an extreme case of whiplash from two consecutive days of severe double-takes after our esteemed FW author veered from Cory leaves-to-Halloween hijinks-to-Band contest. Ow!!!!!
Just when you just can’t imagine this strip getting any worse, along comes another Dingleberry story.
As many fellow snarkers have said, I wish the best for those of you on the East Coast.
Meanwhile, you’re not missing anything in this strip. More “jokes” about high school marching bands marching in bad weather. For the TRILLIONTH time, I have to ask: Why is this supposed to be funny????????????????????
Lame joke — or set-up for a potential lame joke, whatever this is. It’s quite astonishing that Batiuk needs to prep a year in advance in order to write a 40-year old joke. Maybe I should just be relieved he wrote the gag a year ago, as opposed to having actually spent the entire year working on it. In any event, the funniest thing today’s strip has going for it is that awkward view of Becky trying to work the cabinet with her missing arm. File the damn paperwork with your teeth and save your good arm for the drawer! Dinkle should skip the weather report and use his phone’s camera feature to get a shot of that. He’s already standing at the opportune angle.
worse art of week , look at fingers in panel two
Maybe the Dark Lord of Medina has the power to summon disasters with his crappy writing.
I was really hoping that Becky had gotten arrested for the presumed murder of her mother. Seriously–Becky is one of the most heartless, complaining, passive-aggressive pricks full of hate on FW, which beats out Funky or Les in many aspects.
This isn’t the first time it’s happened. Big Batiuk apparently has sent all the online FW archives down the memory hole, but I recall Mopey Pete coming up with a supervillian named Earthquake or some such rot the same week as the Japanese tsunami in March 2011. On a smaller scale, he ran the ghost-Lisa-saves-Les-from-airborne-death story during the 50th anniversary of the Park Slope plane crash, which no doubt went over well with his elderly readers in Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Klumbus.
This is a rough equivalent to the Garfield-Veterans Day coincidence from back in 2010. Jim Davis explained and apologized, I wonder if TB will respond at all…
Of course, he was silent on the aforementioned Pete’s earthquake villian-Japanese earthquake/tsunami coincidence. He also didn’t comment on having Crankshaft, waiting in a TSA line, joke about a terrorist hiding a bomb in their underwear less than 6 months before a terrorist actually tried to down a plane with a bomb hidden in his underwear.
This is starting to move beyond uncanny, actually…
If Buffy the Vampire Slayer could pull “Earshot” because it was scheduled to air a few days after the Columbine shooting, then this strip could have been pulled and replaced with one of the sixty-five million other “Ha-ha, it always rains at the Battle of the Bands!” strips–I doubt anyone would have noticed. Bad form, Batiuk. (Not that it surprises me–Crankshaft was revisiting the “Crankshaft blows up the grill” gag when we were right in the middle of the Waldo Canyon fire…)
Thinking of you, East Coast snarkers!
Batominc has outdone itself on this one. Let’s begin with the absolutely contrived appearance of the very retired Harry Dinkle in the school office. The only reason for his visit—the only reason—is for him to carry a smartphone and read the weather report.
Batominc’s never-ending War on Limbs presents itself today in poor Dinkle’s strangely tiny wrists and asymmetrical hands. And somehow that chiclet phone in panel 1 becomes an iPad mini in panel 2. Even the pinned-up sleeve in panel 1, normally so painstakingly rendered, is slipshod.
Credit where credit is due: panel 3 may be the first time Lefty has been shown from the armed side. I say “armed” because we’ve already established that the amputated side is not consistently on the right or left. That aspect of the portrayal duly acknowledged, neither character’s face in panel 3 is really recognizable as that character.
Finally, former “educator” Batominc has done violence to the science of meteorology. I write this with gritted teeth, given recent events. Hurricanes do not form over Lake Erie. Also, shame on the syndicate for not substituting a “classic” strip for this one.
Contrived narrative elements: check. War on Limbs and Proportions: check. Shoddy characterizations: check. Science and reality beaten within a quarter inch of their lives: check. Tone deafness and insensitivity: check. A true Funky Winkerbean tour de force!
This may have been drawn a year in advance, but I tend to think that it was captioned in a drunken stupor, hours before the deadline… somewhere in the distance a TV drones on about a “hurricane” somewhere and the word registers deep in Tombat’s subconscious only to be regurgitated like a spew of cheap Muscatel for the upcoming strip, the deadline foretold by an alarm clock that has been ringing incessantly for three and a half hours.
The villians in the strips the days following the earthquake were Richter and Sue Nami, if I recall…
Does he have any original thoughts left in his head?
This had better not be a prelude to another week of lame “it always rains on the battle of the bands” jokes. With all the different plot lines he could be moving forward, there’s no excuse for this.
DavidO, I think Pete’s poorly-timed villian was named “Seismo: The Human Earthquake” (who got his powers from a drink called Tec-Tonic), though I can’t confirm this what with the archive having been removed.
A very quick hello to the SoSF community! I’m checking in from a public library a couple towns over. As Epicus has been letting you know, yeah, Sandy was a mutha. My part of central northern Jersey suffered more from wind than from rain and flooding. Lots of trees down in my town, all of which thankfully missed my house. My workplace in midtown Manhattan has been closed all week. Power’s gonna be out in my neck of the woods for some time. Not complaining, as a lot of people, especially “down the shore” (as we say in NJ), really were devastated rather than merely inconvenienced.
Today’s the first time I’ve gotten online all week and I was really moved by the thoughts and comments from you all. Thanks for thinking of us here in the path o’ Sandy! Catch up with you soon. TFH.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer well-wishes to those who faced–and are still facing–Sandy’s wrath. I was going to wait until there was a strip that had some substance to it before commenting thus, and then it struck me–such a strip will never arrive.
: panel 3 may be the first time Lefty has been shown from the armed side.
He’s actually done that a couple of times. What’s not surprising is that even so, he still jammed her sleeve into the frame when it could have easily been blocked by the filing cabinet. That’s commitment! He could’ve been lazy and left it out, but he… he HAD to do it! Like Kafka!
Anyway, I’m given the impression, from every appearance of Becky, that he never once investigated how someone with only one arm manages to do every day tasks. On a number of occasions she’s drawn in a position that would be natural for someone with two arms, but for someone with one arm, it looks awkward and unbalanced. If he really has that commitment to show her as a handicapped person, yet didn’t do any research to determine how her life might be different, that’s actually a beautiful capsule of this strip if there ever was one.
So many questions… I have so many questions!
First of all, isn’t Harry Dingleberry RETIRED? Why does he keep hanging around? Is Slot Machine Gurl so incompetent that BOTH her mother and former band director have to hover over her shoulder at work? I recall my high school band director (junior high and elementary school directors too) managed to do the job single-handedly.
Why is Dingleberry making a Ted Forth “surprise” gesture in panel 2? Better question – How did he get Ted’s tiny hands and wrists?? Why is Summer not at K*nt State? Oh, sorry — That’s not Summer. It’s Mopey Pete. BatDreck HAS to show the goddam pinned up sleeve, doesn’t he? Does Cap’n Hook buy ’em that way, or does Skunk Head painstakingly pin them all up? Does he UN-pin them to wash them, then RE-pin them? That’s a lot of work.
Geezer with an iPhone?? I thought he was getting addlebrained. How’s he handle a smartphone? Nudge it back another 1/4″, BatDummy.
How long is Lefty gonna hold that one closed folder? Oh, I see — Until she gets the empty sleeve to shove the drawer closed. Gotcha.
Yeah, Tommy Butthead needed to strike the hilarious and timely hurricane reference. Why not have Dingleberry exclaim, “Hold on… The entire band caught the cancer!” Then the punchline panel fits better.
Actually, I’m not surprised that he ran with Hilarious Hurricane Humor today. To Batominc, misery is SLAP BALLS funny.
Serious question: Have we ever seen Becky actually conducting?
Most conductors that I know (more from the classical realm, but still) use both hands to direct different parts of the orchestra through a work.
I would think having only one arm would be a serious detriment to a career in music. Aside from the keyboard, most musical instruments require both hands even if one of those hands is just holding the thing (Rahsaan Roland Kirk notwithstanding–but he had two hands anyway).
Are there one-armed band conductors?
@Beanie Wanker – Becky does her job – and every job – single-handedly. BOOM!
Sarge – Badda BING!
Speaking as an actual Music Pro, she could sorta conduct with one hand. She could conduct time, for sure. To indicate phrasing and expression would take some effort and could be a bit awkward, but if she were good, she could use other body language to convey all that. Many big time orchestra conductors rarely beat time. Spend much baton motion on expression and phrasing.
No doubt Swishy Tom made her a conductor to Show How Brave she is. Kinda like making a person with an artificial voice box a choir director. Just another quarter inch or two…
Hey TFH glad you’re ok. I’m in central NJ too, avoided major damage but some friends by the Raritan were not so lucky. Everyone near the rivers, bays and ocean got crushed, there are neighborhoods here that were totally ruined. It’ll be easier to begin restoring normalcy once the lights come back on. Right now it’s still chaotic here but I’m hanging in thx to car chargers, candles and flashlights. We’ve had some wild storms before but that one was terrifying. Even scarier than one of Dinkle’s band monsoons. Note to TB: we know it was just a bad coincidence but seriously bro, reserve the right to pull strips when necessary, LOL. No hard feelings. And please, no Les for a week or two?
Hey, wtf ever happened with that Becky’s mom arc? He dropped that one like Becky fielding a ground ball to short.