An indeterminate period of time has passed since Fred’s stroke. Jessica’s gung-ho “marriage, not a dorm” attitude has diminished to the point where she no longer feels she has to accompany Darin on his hospital visits. Fred’s regained consciousness, but his speech has been affected by the stroke. TB’s going to attempt to derive a chuckle from this situation by likening it to the communication gap between between parent and child. The difference, of course, is that Fred likely understands what’s being said to him, but he’s suffered a serious impairment to the part of his brain that allows him to speak. It’s just one of the cruel aftereffects of stroke. And when this happened to my late Mom years ago, my family and I found it difficult, no, impossible, to joke about it the way Darin’s doing. Kudos to him, I guess.
34 thoughts on “A Tale of Two Nitwits”
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Son of Stuck Funky 
Fred had a stroke just so Anne could gripe about her marriage and Darin can make bad jokes. Everybody but Batiuk suffers for his art.
Jessica managed to get some distance on this, but no followup on her bizarre reaction to Darin’s reformation of social security?
You quack me up Darin.
Both Darin & Anne are ready to pile the dirt over poor Fred.
Me Me Me….while good ole Fred ( A Lighthouse Survivor) at age 80 has just suffered a stroke.
Batyuck you are one whacked puppy to be producing this sh1t.
Does Brendan Burford read this at all?
Ugh. Just awful. Only in the Funkyverse is a debilitating brain injury a source of mild amusement to everyone…except for the brain injury victim, I think. But who’d know? Does Batty even realize how mean-spirited and tasteless this is?
Yup, Boy Lisa’s upbringing has officially been retconned into some sort of dysfunctional hell. His parents barely tolerated each other and he couldn’t communicate with his dad. Awwww. Perhaps he’d have been better off with eighteen year-old Lisa and the date-rapist. Bet it would have been slightly more entertaining than this garbage, too (although I certainly wouldn’t wager on that). Then again, three weeks of black panels would have been more entertaining than this drivel.
I was wondering why Tom Batiuk seems to absolutely despise all his characters (the original Moore family being the exception).
I’m wondering if he just wants to end the strip, but can’t for some reason (bills to pay being a likely reason, demand from the syndicate less believable). Maybe he’s grown to hate this strip because, like marriage, it’s keeping him from doing what he really wants to do.
Once again, Batuik excels at “Show, Don’t Tell!”
Any chance Batiuk will let us get one last look at Fred before he’s in the coffin? Nah, that’ll probably be closed-casket, too.
Batominc’s colorist really borked his snow in panels 1 and 2. It’s falling from a blue sky, and is so transparent that you can see the grey building through the flakes. Either that or it’s soot from Montoni’s oven.
And what’s this in panel 3? Oh! Durhey’s caught the contagious Bell’s palsy that’s endemic to Westview. Though in this case, it might be Amazon’s or Nike’s palsy.
Yet Batiuk still expects to get an award from the American Society of Stroke Victims.
BeckoningChasm, that’s exactly what I wrote on some forum or another during the final years of FBOFW: that’s Johnston had apparently come to hate every one of her characters, as well as the strip itself.
It’s not so much of a joke as more of a self-pitying observation.
I know they’re on the second floor above Montoni’s, but what kind of apartment has a front door with a huge window and no curtains?
“Hi, adoptive dad!”
“BOXCAR! BOXCAR!! MUTHAFUGGIN’ BOXCAR!!!”
“What are you asking for, adoptive dad who helped with the delivery? Juice?”
“BOXCAR!! BOXCAR!! SONOFABITCH!! BOXCAR BOXCAR!!!”
“Are you hungry?”
“BOXCARBOXCARBOXCAR STIGGITUPYERASS BOXCAR!!!”
“Did Timmy fall down the well?”
“BOXCAR GAWDAMMIT SOMBITCH FUGGIN BOXCAR!!”
“I’m glad we had this adoptive father adopted son chat, adoptive dad. My show is on now. Bye.”
Dorkwad waddles off.
The landlord got a buy one get one free deal on steel doors, so their apt matches the Montoni’s door. But at least the heat from the pizza oven makes it warm enough for Blondie to wear short sleeves.
Fred may have trouble articulating himself, but at least he doesn’t describe everything as being “hard”.
SP Charles: I thought I had read somewhere (here on this forum, maybe) that Lynn Johnston had some real-life problems (husband left her, as I recall) that might have made her attitude sour. I wonder if Tom Batiuk is experiencing something similar.
No wonder Jessica thought Ann was Durwood’s biological mother back in Act II. The only thing Fred’s stroke has elicited from either one is memories about all the times he was bad company.
TB’s wife left him for a hospital, I’m guessing.
Jess: Well Darin, your Dad is a fighter. I’m sure his spee…
Darin: I’ll say he’s a fighter! You should have seen him kick his legs when I put that pillow over his face. Lucky for him the nurse came in. Say, what time’s my show on?
Ah yes, where were we before this nonsense? Well, there was Crazy Harry and his naked dance (which we never saw, although there was Les in black tights and shorts, which we DID see)…and before that there was Les and Cayla as Les was brutally attacked by Cayla on those days. While it was Les, it was Les getting beat up. I miss those days.
Jess: “….*….so, um, it’s funny to you, that your father has suffered brain damage, is that what I’m supposed to be getting?”
Darin: “Mmm. Yup!”
Jess: “Dare I ask how your mother’s taking it?”
Darin: “Oh, you know Mom! She’s such a rascal! She told Dad on his sick bed, in front of all the nurses and aides that she wants a divorce and that he ruined her life! But to be fair, Mom’s always been slipping things in! Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck, hyuck!”
Jess: “…you’re a real card, Darin.”
Darin: “Speaking of cards, I think we need to get some cardBOARD, if you know what I mean!”
Jess: “…Montoni’s? AGAIN?!?”
Darin: “I guess you could say my craving for pizza struck me like the stroke struck Dad! HYUCK HYUCK HYUCK HYUCK!”
Jess: “….have you been spending lots of time with Les lately?”
Darin: “Um, yeah. How could you tell?”
I just read Spode’s comment, and it jogged my memory. My mother-in-law was in home hospice and had to be moved to the hospital to die because of a hurricane. We listened to a comedy CD in the lounge near her room. It was such an awful situation, this made it bearable.
Maybe it’s the insufferable Mick in me. We deal with tragedies like this by laughing.
There’s a big difference between finding comfort in a comedic recording and making fun of someone’s brain damage.
There’s no question that laughter serves as a relief even in the worst of times. But yeah, Darin’s remark just comes off as flip. Especially given his behavior during this crisis: apart from this one panel, he hasn’t offered any comfort to his mother; he’s merely sat there impassively before heading off to the vendos for some coffee.
I think Durn can’t understand his adoptive father due to all the crystal meth he has done. Just look at how shaky his hand is while trying to hang up his coat. And that may not be snow in panel 1, that might be some sort of a drug-fog around his head.
The Argument at Montoni’s is updated again. I plan to write an “alternate” Act III, in which the events in Act III DO happen, and this time, what happens to Les won’t be quite as harmless.
I realize that TB writes these things at least a year in advance, so if it has been done, it has been done . . . but please, in the name of all that is good and holy, let him not make a joke about the Heimlich Maneuver.
I have come to understand that for all of us, there are things that are just too personal and painful to ever be funny. As we go through life, one of the challenges we face is to not be insensitive and boorish to those with whom we interact. This can be tricky because we don’t know their whole life stories.
Batiuk, on the other hand, fires away at ordinary human sorrow like a redneck shooting up highway signs with a shotgun. Or like an infinite number of rednecks shooting at an infinite number of signs . . . eventually he will offend everybody.
This isn’t a Steel Magnolias-esque “laughter through tears”–more like a “smirking through ennui.”
You know, this is the only strip were the readers feels cheated when a character fails to die.
So Dillweed and adoptive dad didn’t get along in the “best” of times. I don’t even want to think what the worst of times were like! I’d guess Paw Fairgood would get impatient with Dagwood being a lazy ass who only wanted to hang around actual productive people and tell them what they’re doing “wrong.” When asked to get off his lazy butt and DO something, he couldn’t be bothered, especially if “his show” was coming on.
I’m sure Darvon was a joy as a kid. Yeesh.
Looks like the consensus around here is that Batiuk hates his characters. I know I do. Every last one of them.
And the parallels between FBoFW and FW are…chilling.
It’s sometimes easy to forget just how staggeringly weird FBOFW really was in its “heyday”. And there are definitely parallels between it and FW: they both began as harmless, semi-amusing little “slice ‘o life” satirical comics that absolute caromed into melodrama and sick pathos at mega-warp speed. I often could not believe how hard FWOFW tried to top itself week after week. In fact, it may have been even worse than FW ever was, as incredible as that may seem. BatWrite may have blown up post offices, severed limbs and done full-panel Sunday strips featuring a woman receiving radiation therapy for cancer, but the guy never offed a dog (as far as I can remember).
Who knows what BatUck has against Fred? He could have just killed him off and still done this bizarre “turns out that Fred was a weak husband and mediocre father” arc AFTER he was dead and it still would have had the same (minimal) impact. But nope, he has to torture the guy off-screen for some reason instead. What a sick f*cker.
It’s way past time for Cayla to kick Les’s ass some more.
@ Epicus: Blandthony is in some ways preferable to the creeps in this strip.
@Epicus Doomus: When talking to my non-comic-reading friends, I ended up telling them to imagine FOOB and Funky as the same story, only one’s being told by a little old lady who thinks it’s heartwarming and the other is told by an angry old fart who wants you to know life is terrible.
That’s about the only difference between the strips.
–@Epicus Doomus: When talking to my non-comic-reading friends, I ended up telling them to imagine FOOB and Funky as the same story, only one’s being told by a little old lady who thinks it’s heartwarming and the other is told by an angry old fart who wants you to know life is terrible.
That’s about the only difference between the strips.—-
One other difference, Inkwell….FBOW ended it’s run and re-spawned.
We could only hope that Batiuk would do what Lynn Johnston did and return the strips heyday.