What a weird reaction to hearing “We’ve got some news.” Darin and Jess are both smiling, but Ann instantly goes into bad news mode. What was she going to say? “I hope it’s not bad news, because what with having to care for your invalid father I’m already on the verge of putting my head in the oven…”
46 thoughts on “(Fair)Good News”
Comments are closed.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Not much to say. It’s not really a bad strip today with the exception of the fact that for some reason she instantly assumed it was bad news*.
*Seriously, what’s it say about the Funky world that people assume from the start that things will go wrong?
I think Ann just leaped to the same conclusion I did, which is that Jessica’s pregnant. Assuming this is not an introduction to a Very Important Story about miscarriage, I’m betting they’ll go with Fred for a boy and Saint Dead Lisa Jr. for a girl.
Yes, the good news is that after 1001 clumsy attempts by Darrin to inseminate blondie here, one of his sperm cells actually managed to stumble and find it’s way into her egg. And with our malevolent god willing, this zygote actually might survive several miscarrages to actually be born and have to work at Montoni’s and sit through boring lectures by Les Moore which is the right of every Westviewian.
Plus there’s also the bonus that this will give his sex offender father even more impetus to want to come back to Westview and kill everyone in sight.
Have a cigar, Annie!!!
Maybe the news is, after – what – THREE year of dawdling, Blondie McBimbo has just begun that documentary film she breezed into town to make.
“I’ve finally gotten around to starting the screenplay!”
“Let me see what you’ve got… Hmmm…. ‘Fade in…’ That’s just wonderful, dear!”
“I think I’ve really hit one out of the park! YAY ME!”
Jessica can’t be pregnant, unless Batiuk intends us to sit through two weeks of Darrin’s sperm swimming around via flashback: “How did it happen, you ask? Well, just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip…”
I was thinking “They’re getting married?” but then realized these clods have been “married” for over a decade now. A baby is out of the question–you’d think they’d have done it a lot sooner, plus I was under the impression that Duckwad was impotent.
“Well, the big news is that Lisa Moore’s gonna be a grandma, so we’re gonna be leaving Westview to relocate somewhere where they might have jobs and apartments fit for REAL adults with MBA’s!”
Oh no. Oh f*cking no. No no no. Just…no. Please, for the love of all creatures great and small, do NOT let it be THAT. Let it be something really, really stupid and lame, but not that.
If she IS pregnant, could this be the way he leads into a FTR arc? You know, with a baby on the way Boy Lisa decides his sordid genetic history is more important than ever and yadda yadda yadda? Does Batso have an arc in him that’s that complex and nuanced? I won’t believe it until I see it but where else could this possibly be going?
Pregnant… oh no.. the news is that Jessica got a Hollywood option for her documentary about her Father who Less wrote a book about.
So what gives with the official wankerbean web-site?
The great cutting edge author can’t even do a web-site because when he tried he just left himself open to show all the mistakes and errors?.. You betcha!
Time for Lisa’s “Now that my bastard son has gotten some bimbo pregnant” VHS tape.
“We’ve got good news! Les Moore has terminal cancer!”
First off – John the Comic Critic waffled so much after meeting and talking to Batiuk that you could have poured butter and syrup on him.
News? Fuck you and the pregnancy TB.
Jessica: “And even better news–we’re going to film every moment of Les’ agonizing death, release this on DVD, and use the millions thus generated to transplant Fred’s mind into an unstoppable android body! You don’t want to know how great this is going to be, because ERROR DIVIDE BY ZERO!”
Ann: “Oooh, this sounds like an interesting development….sigh…which I guess means Tom Batiuk is going to abandon the story line to focus on some other loser in this strip? At least let it be Cody, we all don’t hate him as much as Owen, John, Crazy, Pepperoni, Mushrooms and Extra Sauce.”
Delivery Guy: “…Extra sauce. Thank you. And would you like Insane Cheese Apocalypse Bread? With the Dip Sauce? Ma’am? …Ma’am? Oh crap, can I get 911 on this?”
…I’m betting they’ll go with Fred for a boy and Saint Dead Lisa Jr. for a girl.
You’re doing a nice set-up for me. As the true believer in The Grounded One, Our Lad of Perpetual Visitations, and The Grand Finale, all of which involve dead people and passing into another life (here or elsewhere), I naturally assume Freddy’s dead…so I’m thinking “Saint Dead Fred Jr.”
I’d say Batiuk would be more likely to go for a stillbirth. That way you can pump-up the anticipation, then get an even bigger dose of misery when it hits.
It’s not really a bad strip today
Yes it is, because it follows the stalling tactic we pointed out during the terrible band convention series not too long ago. Darrin and Jessica have some news, but they’re not going to reveal it until tomorrow, because Tom Batiuk can’t write a full week’s worth of strips anymore. There is nothing that happened in today’s strip that is going to be relevant to the rest of this sequence. It’s wasted space and time.
Also, I’m stunned if it really turns out that Darrin impregnated Jessica, because most of the men in the Funkyverse shoot blanks. Think about it?
A man with no name (but not Clint Eastwood this time!) planted the seed in Holly’s garden that spouted into Funky’s son Cory. Funky does not have any biological children.
Bull shoots blanks, and had to adopt Jinx with Linda.
Fred and Ann adopted Darrin.
Wally and Becky adopted Rana, and apparently had some bio child together named Wally Jr, but he’s just a rumor at this point.
Gross John desperately wanted to marry Becky, but did not have any children with her once she agreed.
In fact, the only guys who’ve had success impregnating their partners, whose children actually became a part of the story, were Crazy and (of course) virile manly Les. Oh, and rapist Frankie.
Now if Tom Batiuk actually had Darrin hide Jessica’s pregnancy from Ann because he knows that the joy they’ll all feel at that news will result in the kid developing Autism or Jessica dying in childbirth or Darrin losing his hands in a pizza oven mishap or something, that would be darkly amusing in a fashion that TB only wishes he could achieve. Ann comes over to the house one day and discovers an eight year-old girl (it’s going to be a girl, because no one has boys in this universe either) watching TV, and discovers that she’s the grandchild no one ever told her about.
So this month Tom already solved bullying forever AND had Les write an Academy Globe-winning screenplay? Wow, at this rate Durwood Jr. will be accepted at Julliard by Mother’s Day.
I don’t blame Ann at all for assuming the news is bad. That’s the only kind of news TB permits in Westview. Oh and Jess, you should really stop smiling. I’m pretty sure you’re going die in childbirth or of cancer or something else because women are not permitted long term happiness in Westview.
Why would a pair living above a crappy pizza joint with no real source of income view a pregnancy as anything but ambivalent news? And they won’t stop that horrible smirking. They’re here to kill Fred.
Darin: “Yeah, Jess and I were playing football, and I tackled her and caused a miscarriage. Oh, happy Mother’s Day!”
@Jim… was thinking the same thing…an unemployed film maker and a massively underemployed MBA writing pizza apps and both living in a dump above a joint….Would darin make any more then $10/hour? Heath insurance… ya right.
So that is why I don’t think the big news is pregnancy …. it’s all about Less
Yikes! Those smiles are so scary. No one knows how to genuinely smile in Westview.
This is one of those universal rules in TV/comics/movie storytelling. Whenever a young childless couple says they “have news”, you can bet the farm that the news is that the woman is pregnant. And the coincidental re-appearance of Derwood’s rapist father a couple of days before this announcement can’t bode well. Certainly Batshit needed to find some way to suck the joy out of this story arc, and Frankie is just the man to do it.
This a great setup for Darrin to hand Ann the newspaper he just picked up out of her yard. What we are going to see, I’m betting, will not be as entertaining.
Yeah, let me say this about that: I’ve enjoyed the Comic Strip Critic’s work, but no more. In his latest (long-winded!) video, he describes seeing a “news article” online about Batiuk’s new comic strip. The article, of course, is my fake April Fool’s interview, but the “critic” fails to mention this. He emails Batiuk to get the details on Starbuck Jones, and TB responds by inviting the Comics Critic to his studio. Seized by a mix of fear of legal repercussions and sheer fanboy adoration, the Critic takes down his video rants on Funky Winkerbean (including where he proclaims FW the Worst Comic of 2012). He then makes his pilgrimage to the Medina Komix Kastle for a wonderful interview with Batiuk, but doesn’t post the interview footage...just talks about it, and about what a cool guy Batiuk is. Sheesh.
Just a couple hacks getting together.TFH sez: I hereby retract and apologize for calling ComicStripCritic a “hack”.
Oh, I get it; we’re backing off from Les for the length of a pregnancy, so that he can write another 3 sentences for his screenplay.
Sweet, sweet relief from Les’ Adventure in Wonderland, like a soothing balm, but something tells me we’re in for s syrupy circle-of-life story featuring Durwood and that documentary film bird, with poor ol’ Fred getting the Full Funkyverse Treatment with a visit from Masky McDeath. Maybe Fred will leave some tapes also. Right. Freddie’s Dead, Volumes 1-12 (e.g., Vol. 6-My Ho, Yo’ Ho) and a well-worn copy of Put It Where It Doesn’t Belong.
I don’t follow the Comic Strip Critic, but what a total sell-out. I hope this ruins his reputation on YouTube.
Up until last week when people asked me why I’m not on Facebook, it was hard to explain without sounding like Alex Jones. Now I just have to show them the bottom of CK’s new Funky Winkerbean page and they understand immediately.
Re: the Comic Strip Critic, it was really nice of TB to invite the guy out for a grand tour of Batom Inc. World HQ and all. I’m sure Mr. B is a nice, personable guy and a swell host. But, speaking for myself, this snarky criticism isn’t directed at him personally, it’s strictly about FW, the comic strip. Knowing that he’s a nice guy in real life doesn’t make the strip any better or explain why it’s so consistently goddamned annoying, boring and weird.
Charles: You got it, why tell a story in three panels when you can drag it out for six, or nine, or twelve? That’s every FW arc in a nutshell: premise, filler, filler, filler, filler, quick cheap resolution.
Well, it seems that the SoSF community really didn’t like my vlog about my interview with Tom Batiuk. Could I perhaps clarify my perspective a bit?
Firstoff, TFHackett pointed out that I didn’t post the interview footage. No, of course I didn’t. To do so would be highly unethical, if not illegal as a journalist. I interviewed Batiuk as a reporter for my TV station, not as the Comic Strip Critic. Tom Batiuk did not invite the Comic Strip Critic to his studio for an interview, he invited a student reporter. To present myself as one thing to him, and use that footage for another purpose entirely without his permission, would be unethical at best and career-ending at worst. To my knowledge, I don’t think he evens knows about the Comic Strip Critic, and I’d rather he not if at all possible. I don’t know why the final news story I presented was taken offline, but I’m looking into it.
TFHackett also mentioned that I didn’t clarify that Starbuck Jones was an April Fool’s day prank created by him, which I fell for hook, line, and sinker. Yes, that was a huge failing on my part, and a casualty of filming an unscripted, off-the-cuff vlog. I apologize for not clarifying that.
TFHackett: “Seized by a mix of fear of legal repercussions and sheer fanboy adoration, the Critic takes down his video rants on Funky Winkerbean (including where he proclaims FW the Worst Comic of 2012).
Fear of legal repercussion? Yes, I suppose that’s fair. I also admit that a part of it was not wanting to get into trouble with my producers at the station if this interview with an alumnus went very bad suddenly.
Sheer fanboy adoration, however? No. No, not at all. After the interview, I went back and looked at the strips that I reviewed in my video to see if my opinion on them had changed at all in light of my time with him in the interview. They had not. While I respect and agree with Batiuk’s view that comics don’t all have to be comedic, and while we both lament that comic strips are not as good as they could be and restricted in what they’re allowed to do and be…I still found that week of strips to be very insulting. Time, distance, and repeated exposure since their initial publication has reduced my reaction from rage to a sad, disgusted sigh. The Funky strips I’ve read since then have caused me to react in either I-don’t-really-care apathy, or with the predictable reaction that many SoSFers have of disgust.
I will un-privatize the two videos in question soon. Between the interview, my personal introspection after Roger Ebert’s death, and the insights brought on by watching Dear Mr. Watterson, I wanted to take the time to reflect on myself as a critic and make sure that what I was saying was really what I wanted to say. The initial video was made while I was in a very “hot” mood, and after a certain amount of time passed and my reaction cooled, I wanted to make sure that my opinion was still valid. It is, and therefore the videos will be made public again. If, somehow, my opinion on them changes in the future, I will say so when the time comes. I suppose part of this gig as the Comic Strip Critic is admitting that my opinion can sometimes change (which, I again clarify, it really hasn’t as far as that particular week goes).
Truth be told, the simplest thing I could’ve done was to never make the vlog at all, and not touch the YouTube videos. But I thought it would be interesting for my viewers, while being fully aware that it could be damaging for my credibility in the eyes of some of you. However, I felt that being honest with you viewers was the best course of action. I hope this clarifies what I was trying to say, and please let me know if you have any more questions.
Thanks for putting up with the wall ‘o text.
John Weber
-The Comic Strip Critic
It is interesting if this pregnancy announcement happens, it is mere days after Frankie, Darrin’s biological father, was reintroduced in the strip. We can surmise that Frankie wants a cut of Les’s “Lisa’s Story’ movie payday.
When Frankie finds out he’s going to be a grandfather, does he blackmail Les into sharing the movie money by threatening to contact Darrin and Jessica and demand visitation rights to his grandchild?
As the world turns
I truly hope that the next time someone interviews TB they ask the question we’re all dying to have answered: where the hell are Harry’s two missing kids? And Khan.
I do appreciate TCSC coming on here and clarifying his position.
I look forward to seeing the return of those privatized videos, not because they take TB down a few pegs (though I do enjoy that), but because they depict an honest reaction to a particularly inciteful story arc.
@ComicStripCritic (aka John Weber): I appreciate your clarification. From your vlog, it was a little hard to discern your reasons for interviewing Batiuk and then not putting up the video.
As a student who appears to be on a broadcast journalism career track, you might want to make sure you understand “full disclosure”. You seem like an ethical person, but I think you’re putting yourself on thin ice if you’re called upon to interview a subject and feel it necessary to censor your previous (and valid) opinion of that subject’s work.
Best of luck with future projects, thanks again for responding, and I apologize for calling you a “hack”.
I just figured out — seriously — why Annie always wears that same sweater: with her appearance and age varying wildly with every appearance, it’s the only was we can recognize her.
CSC: I fell for the April 1st gag too, I somehow even overlooked “Dick Hertz”…so don’t feel stepped on!
I fell for the April Fool’s Day joke as well…mostly because I really do want to believe that Tom Batiuk had finally found something to transfer his interest and passion into, so that a reader would feel likewise. (Sorry for the Les-like sentence, there.)
“At first I had a negative impression of the Tsarnaev brothers’ work. But then they invited me over, and I saw their comic collection, and you know what? I’m starting to really see things from their perspective now!”
Too soon? If someone wants to be “The Comic Strip Critic” they should be prepared to honestly review the work on the page, not fill in the blanks with a retroactive interview subject who I’m sure is very nice in person. If none of the other readers have the opportunity to have Batiuk explain his strip to them then it’s not their fault if the strip comes off as a pedantic schoolmarm from a bitter hollow.
I agreed with the general idea that comics can be ‘more than comedy’ in the first place, and thought your initial assessment was a little harsh. But if you worry about ‘immediacy’ then i suggest you view something, write a review, stick it in a drawer for a year, then drag it out and see if you still want to post it online or turn it in to the school paper.
You can see how well that approach works every day in Funky Winkerbean.
I enjoy TCSC’s videos. I think it’s great he came here. Since it’s a Vlog and not one of this normal video quality will be different but seems like a good guy.
Ann: “Wait a minute…if it’s not -bad- news, you aren’t going to share GOOD news, are you?”
Darin: “Hell no!”
Jess: “We don’t want the universe to punish us for feeling joy!”
Darin: “We just have, um, “neutral” news.”
Ann: “….neutral?”
Jess: “Yes, our news is something that happened, but touched us in no meaningful way whatsoever!”
Darin: “And now it’s over!”
Ann: “…well, um…come on in.”
Gyre: It’s not really a bad strip today with the exception of the fact that for some reason she instantly assumed it was bad news
Without that assumption, there is no strip: just “Hi, we have some news.” In other words, a throwaway Sunday panel.
@Comic Strip Critic — So when you arrived at Batom, Inc Global Worldwide Headquarters, did Swishy Tom greet you at the door and conduct the interview naked?
[img]http://www.blogcdn.com/www.comicsalliance.com/media/2012/08/nakedbatiuk.jpg[/img]
Or did he have his hand on your thigh the whole time? OR BOTH???
JHC….Tom Batiuk acts like he is the only one that ever created a drama comic strip, before. There are literally hundreds of soap opera comics over the years like Apartment 3G, Gil Thorp, Friday Foster….
What Tommy Boy forgets is that for drama to work…you actually have to care about the characters.
I literally do not give seven shits about what happens to Lisa, Les, Funky, Cayla, DSH John, Cody or any of the other twats that populate the cast of this show.
Thanks, John (TCSC), for coming over here to join the discussion.
There’s only one way he could ever salvage FW in my eyes. He’d have to skip 20 years ahead and start an Act IV. Just as WHS itself was the “lead character” in Old Act I, Act IV’s main character would be the Westview elder care facility. They’d all be there, just like in the beginning. Les would be the dork, Harry would have some sort of secret locker, Bull would threaten people, there’d be a deranged chorus leader, bad cafeteria food and etc. It’d be satirical, sarcastic, funny and sometimes even a little mean. Plus it couldn’t be ruined by introducing any sort of pregnancy arc, either. But he’d have to leave his magical little world of semi-developed characters behind and put the cornball drama to rest and quite frankly I doubt that’s ever happening.