$$$Westview Oncologist$$$$$
January 22, 2013 at 12:49 am
Personally, I think Jessica’s assumption of Fred and Ann being the victims of a freak lightning storm to be quite an appropriate catalyst to their tepid romance.
Her interest piqued by Ann’s story, Jessica presses Ann for all the romantic details of her courtship with Fred. No doubt she’s envisioning an epic liason along the lines of Reds, with Ann and Fred finding love against a backdrop of turmoil and unrest. Ann, rather abashedly, brings Jess’ expectations into line, this being Westview and all.
Son of Stuck Funky 
So on top of everything, Ann reveals that her entire marriage is a sham of a relationship based on convenience rather than any actual feeling. Why not just drop a meteor on the town and have done with it?
Um… adoptive father, not stepfather.
TFH sez: Corrected. Thanks, S.P.!
Westview is “Strawberry Fields where nothing is real” with Tom Batiyuck as a real no where man drawing in his no where land making all his no where plans for Westview. for truly he’s as blind as he can be, just draws what he can see (from his attic) isn’t he a bit like less & funky
“During the Big Surprise Strike of ’75, I had nothing better to do so I hooked up with Fred a few times. He was semi-tolerable so we just started hanging out a lot, next thing you know we just said screw it and we got married. His toilet seat gag aside, Fred wasn’t much in the man department if you get my drift, so after a few futile attempts at conceiving a child we just said screw it and adopted that tramp Lisa’s bastard kid. Turns out he fit in perfectly, as he was as bland as we were. Still is, in fact. Anyhoo, it was a drab life with a bland family in a humdrum house in a miserable town full of horrible, horrible people. I also coached girls’ basketball. Now excuse me, I have a murder-suicide pact to fulfill.”
Kinda surprised (but hardly shocked) to see BatBat kick ol’ Fred while he’s down. Jessica is squirming with delight waiting to hear all about Fred and Annie’s romantic past and Annie basically admits the whole thing was just a sham borne out of routine and convenience, while an either somewhat stunned or completely oblivious Boy Lisa looks on in his usual expressionless way. Poor Fred is lying there drooling with tubes sticking out every which way and meanwhile Annie is regretfully spinning tales of woe about their mediocre life together with those weird Les comma eyes of hers. Such a grim and kind of sick way to go with this story if you ask me. The guy’s been in the hospital for an hour and already Annie is poor-mouthing him to the kids. Is she going to go on all week like this?
“We just fell into place.” Can someone explain what that’s supposed to mean? I mean, I gather it’s supposed to sound profound and all, but it makes no sense.
“Your stepfather and I were in a loveless match made because the collective demanded it. And when your infant husband came along and ruined everything for us, we had to beg for an exception that, honestly, we didn’t really want. We just got caught when we were going to drown him in the well and Fred stammered too much to get us a pass. Naturally, we were denied breeding rights but, by this time, the widescreen TV was more than enough compensation, and we could use old newspaper strips as diapers (pacifiers, too), so we ceased to care. Until an hour ago. For some reason.”
Jess: “You and Fred fell in love during a teacher’s strike?”
Ann: “Well, no. Not really. He was a man. I was a woman. We found each other suitable for sating our sexual needs, that’s it.”
Jess: “…oh.”
Ann: “Man, ol’ Fred would put a crazed weasel to shame, let me tell y-”
Jess: “I GET THE PICTURE! HONEST! …*…um, Darin? You’re spacing out again. You want to talk to your Mom, maybe? Hold her hand? Comfort her?”
Darin: “…heh. Thought our show was on TONIGHT. But I showed her all r-…uh?”
Jess: “…never mind.”
Me likey where this is heading —> the shocking revelation that the REAL true love of Ann’s life is none other than Act III Bull Bushka.
Fishstick Annie has put on some serious poundage since we last saw her coaching the whatevers to the whatever championship. Maybe because she’s had to live through a classic Loveless Westview Marriage. Or maybe not. Who cares?
Meanwhile, Mr. Fred Fishstick continues to, um, die, or whatever. Yeah. What an emotional roller coaster. Wooohhh.
Ann and Bull certainly seemed warmer and more affectionate in each others’ company than they have with their respective spouses, eh?
I’m trying to work out a scenario in which Fred married Anne because she convinced him she was pregnant. Fred thinks Darin actually is his biological son, and while everybody thinks he’s making a lame joke with the “helped with the delivery,” he thinks he means it literally, and wonders why everybody responds with a pained smile.
This is Westview. It’s certainly not unreasonable to assume he really is that stupid.
Panel 3 is my favorite. Darin’s face looks like he’s bored as shit, Ann’s neck looks like it’s broken to shit, and new wife looks like she just smelled shit. Maybe Fishstick is actually leaning over, farting on her adopted son in order to get some kind of response, but only Jess notices as Durn is completely abosorbed with the thoughts of the TV he could be watching.
to bad tombat drug out people nobody ever gave a fk about,why couldn’t he have made Les having stroke, now that would be fun
I’m loving Darrin’s withering glare at Jess. He looks mad that she even asked. Apparently someone wants to hear this story less than we do!
Just to make a small note of the art here. I’m struck by how Batiuk has deliberately drawn Darin to look as if he really doesn’t like being near Annie all that much. (Not that I think it was deliberate to make it look this way, rather, inattentively incompetent) He’s got his leg crossed away from her, and his left arm is also pulled away. His body language shows that he’s repelled by her.
Also, in my experience, when people are suffering from some type of medical emergency, I’ve found that those people close to them tend to sugarcoat and embellish just how wonderful and meaningful they are to them. Annie should be overwhelmed with her feelings for the man she married, who she quite possibly may lose, if not completely then in some emotional way. (If his brain is badly damaged, she’s just had her last “normal” conversation with him) Instead, she’s talking about how she never really felt love for him. He was just there.
Way to be on top of how people act and respond, especially in your self-proclaimed, highly charged bread-and-butter moments, “writer”.
“We just fell into place in the back of the Westview Death March, trudging through years of doom, misery, and despair towards an empty void. Now it’s your turn, children. Saddle up.”
Well, I guess this makes it official. Fred is toast, but Annie will always have her memories of this love…until her stroke takes it all away…
“We met during the labor union strike against the evil capitalist overlords, but became acquainted while going door to door pressuring people to vote for Democrat candidates and tax raises. The union, who tells us how to eat, sleep, shit, and vote, assigned us to each other. Said it was ‘our place,’ so we fell in line. So is Bull on his way over yet?”
I’m thinking that the time jump never really happened for Darin and Jess, as there’s 10 years between it, not one. Now, if Darin had come home with being noticeably aged and a small child in tow, then that would make more sense.
Another way to explain it: between II and III, Darin got married to someone else, had kids, and then his wife left him, leaving him as a lazy unemployed drifter for a few years before meeting Jess.
Batiuk loves his wordplay…and Batiuk loves his “deep, serious issues.” But he doesn’t seem to realize that these things work against each other.
I’m really starting to hope that “place” is Westview slang for “an open sewer”.
Some “Classic Funky” updates, from the old collections I’ve been picking up on Amazon.com: I’ve added a few more strips to the Westview P.O. bombing arc.
And from You Know You’ve Got Trouble When Your Mascot is a Scapegoat (hereinafter to be known as YKYGTWYMIAS): turns out the fishstick anecdote is not a retcon; repeat, not a retcon!
January 18, 2012:
January 6, 1982:
And lastly: any web design types out there, proficient in CSS, who can troubleshoot the dropdown menus at the top of this page? There are dropdowns that appear when you mouse over “Act III” and “Other Crap”, but when you move the mouse to the sub menus, they disappear. Drop me a line if you can help fix! Thanks.
This is seriously one of the saddest FW strips I’ve ever seen. I am very much in love with my wife and couldn’t imagine how soul-crushing it would be to enter a marriage of convenience.
The artwork is probably even sadder. W.C. Fields makes a cameo as Fishstick in panel 3.
The amazing thing is that Batom Inc. is so clueless about writing (sorry, “writing”) that he doesn’t realize “we just fell into place” is the least romantic possible way to explain a relationship’s origin.
“So Fred didn’t love you really and you didn’t love Fred really. So what the hell are you doing at the hospital? Go hit the slots, you have a cell phone, someone will call if something happens. “
Funky Winkerbean, the pinnacle of misery porn.
I still want to know how, during the first “leap,” loser Funky somehow managed to hook up with Cindy.
Batiuk wish-fulfillment, perhaps?
TFHackett : So it’s now -confirmed canon- that Ann was too stupid and careless to SWEEP THE DAMN FLOOR before CHILDREN practice on it?
Interesting. Tom’s barely concealed contempt for any non-Lisa, non-Summer female characters becomes more blatant all the time.
I have to say, this retcon regarding Ann and Fred might be the most severe in a long, long while. I had always assumed, given their status as adoptive parents of the spawn of Saint Lisa the Holy that they were fairly safe.
But nope! Tom continues the 2012 trend of making it QUITE clear that as far as he’s concerned, men and women only get married for sexual purposes. In fact, if a wife ever gets ideas that she needs to do MORE than sate her husband’s needs, she’s stupid, evil, and needs to be put in her place.
The resigned, bitter look on Ann’s face says it all. She was never invested in these decades of living with Fred. She never was. She’s just another woman, thus seen by Tom as cold and worthless.
*shudder*
So it’s now -confirmed canon- that Ann was too stupid and careless to SWEEP THE DAMN FLOOR before CHILDREN practice on it?
Sweep the floor? She’s a teacher! You want her to incur the wrath of the IBSC (International Brotherhood of School Custodians)?
I guess it’s also canon now that she was too stupid to clear the chairs and tables away, though they weren’t mentioned.
Man, FA aged a lot in a year. Or did she just ditch the Miss Clairol and more youthful wardrobe (for westview at least) for the frumpy frau look. Must be something in the pizza that’s making them age so much damn quickly. Or that DNA aging gene most people in this town have from all being each others cousins. On another note… So the romance started as screwing the boss to get a better gym and they ended up married. Lovely.
Yes, amazing how Tomahack youthened then re-aged Fishstick so drastically. There was a time when she had just started coaching the Lady Women’s Female She-Goats Girl’s Basketball Team when she looked maybe 35. A week or two later, she was at a game and looked fully 85. To me, this seems sloppy, lazy, and ***CARELESS***. But I’m probably wrong about that because I don’t get paid to draw my own cartoon.
Unless you are a fellow syndicated professional cartoonist like m- I mean, like Tom Batiuk, then you have no right to judge his work! Or even to read it! You’re all just jealous meanie pickyfaces!
There are Lifetime movies about spousal abuse that are more lighthearted than FW.
Regarding the January 6, 1982 comic, I must say that the phrase “slipped on a fish stick” is amusing as a punchline. Note how this is handled in the now normal ham-handed manner in the January 18, 2012 strip by “sticking” the phrase in the middle of the sentence. I do think FW should return to using the fringe and potted plant background of the earlier strip.