Hey gang. So I’ve been in the process this week of moving SoSF to WordPress.com (long story). I’ll spare y’all the technical aspects and the reasons why. One of the glitches in the process has been that my sometimes guest-poster davidorth has been unable to login as an admin to write his posts. Hence the sorta sketchy format this week. Until we get things sorted out, please enjoy today’s strip.
Addendum: might as well link to today’s Crankshaft too, where we glimpse a young couple named Fairgood who are not Darin and Jess.
Son of Stuck Funky 
What do you mean shed some light, Annie? That’s laughable since from every appearance it always seems you possess all the answers to the goddamn universe!!!!!
Also…how screwed would this quorum of idiots be, if Faux Farah Fawcett didn’t finally didn’t reveal the groundbreaking piece of info that she has unbridled access to ……..Jeff Murdoch!!!……….. The Keeper of the Secrets of Unwanted Sperm Recipients!!!!!!
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Then what was the point of the entire damn past two strips? They “might be able to shed some light”? Unless you think that Frank was the one struggling with Lisa you have no reason to think that they could help at all and if you DO think that Frank was the one then you already know everything important. If you mean “reveal the truth to the world” then why not say something like “testify” or “tell the truth on camera” or something else in the English language that doesn’t imply that they’re simply going to tell Les and Darin what they already know.
And yeah, Jeff just happens to be her uncle. Because writing a panel where they check FaceBook or ask some mutual acquaintances is so improbable and contrived.
I’m just somewhat curious how this’ll factor in the Time Skip difference between Crankshaft and Funky. Are Pam & Jeff going to be even more old than they are now?
Just when I think FW can’t get any worse, it does. Of course, it means Crankshaft is related to Durwood the Underachiever.
This current storyline is the “One More Day” of comic strips.
Unrelated question. Does anybody have a link to the 2007 Crankshaft comic that got Batyuck into trouble? (…as per the WP article on the strip.
Sorry, Crankshaft doesn’t have too much lineage to Darin. His wife’s aunt’s father is the Butcher of Language, but…
paulchebert: “Crankshaft became the subject of some degree of controversy when Batiuk wrote a cartoon that some readers and editors thought trivialized rape by saying that only young, attractive women need to fear sexual assault, implying that rape was in some sense a compliment. It was pulled from publication in at least one paper.” –Wikipedia
Reading Funky Winkerbean is like eating poop. You can’t remember why you ever did, you can’t explain it to anyone you know, you hope you’ll avoid doing so consciously, and you certainly hope you never have to do so again.
The way Batiuk drew high school Lisa I can’t imagine he thought anyone would be “attracted” enough to rape her. Seriously, she looked like a chinless hamster with glasses.
I can’t believe Stroke Man and Annie can remember Pam and Jeff once saved Saint Lisa from some boy 30 years ago, and never spoke to them about it again. This was a student in the high school they both worked at, and would undoubtedly have all kinds of contact with later after she married Les.
@ John from a couple of days ago – ALL of Batiuk’s crappy retcon shit sets me off. Most, if not all, of it has been totally unnecessary, and the lame excuses for story arcs would have worked without them. Does it really matter if Frankie dragged her into his van, or sweet-talked her in? Either way, he took advantage of a high school skank.
And Rusty’s above post explains the futility of Batiuk’s retcon very nicely.
Here’s a retcon worth going after, one that Batiuk has never touched or even alluded to – fill in that gap between when the skank finished high school and the babe returned to Les’ life.
@Gyre, “Because writing a panel where they check FaceBook or ask some mutual acquaintances is so improbable and contrived.”
But, but that would mean using that source of all evil the internet. Always remember that anything invented after TB became “cough” an adult has lead to the inexorable decline of civilization.
Funky Winkerbean is kind of like a Shirley Jackson story…minus the literary quality, creativity, talent, suspense, creeping dread, effective use of language and grammar…but yeah, almost identical.
@Rusty, “I can’t believe Stroke Man and Annie can remember Pam and Jeff once saved Saint Lisa from some boy 30 years ago, and never spoke to them about it again.”
I have no problem believing this, after all this is the same couple that had a mystery daughter show up photo bomb the strip then disappear again and NOBODY thought it was odd.
OK, let’s see. Darin and Jessica have been together for a long time: according to the time jump math at least sixteen years and probably a few years longer than that. They went to WHS together, the same school that employed Fred AND Ann. Is it feasible that they never once would have asked Jessica if she was any relation to the Murdochs they knew (and still remember well thirty-plus years on)? Seems far-fetched to me.
Ooops, I almost forgot: we’re now pretending that Boy Lisa & John Darling’s daughter are newlyweds, just starting out in their very first place and still very much in that adorable “feeling out” process, that’s right. Just like how we’re pretending that this big wad of contrivances is a “story”, or how some folks pretend that FW is “written” by someone who “gives a shit”. Now I get it. When you read it, you just have to pretend you’ve just been lobotomized, then it all just comes together.
Epicus, why would they have suspected Jessica was related to the Murdochs? Her full name, as we know, was Jessica Darling Whose Father Was John Darling the Talk Show Host.
S.P. Charles: I suppose that’s true, however given how long they’ve know her, how she never stops talking about her parents and how incestuous the Batiukverse is, it just seems sort of unlikely to me. And the second Ann mentioned “Pam and Jeff”, wouldn’t that maybe ring some bells in Jessica’s head and…oh, yeah. Never mind.
@’Chasm:
Well, there’s dread. There’s always dread.
Jessica’s uncle, Jeff Murdouche? Did he come tho their wedding? Did he ever invite Jessica and Darin over to dinners?……..oh never mind.
C’mon merrypookster, would YOU invite someone like them over to dinner?
Batiuk’s incomprehensible timejumps and incoherent retcons can only mean that he realized a long time ago that his “real” fans just don’t read the strip that closely. He can just make up or change events in the past whenever he feels like it because no one except bully jocks like us are going to call him on it. It’s kind of depressing in a way.
See, not only is this arc a textbook example of his staggeringly terrible story-telling skills, it’s also another demonstration of his complete lack of balls, too. If he had a pair, he’d just break out the sepia-tone and the corner thingies and do the teen pregnancy retcon job he’s been dying to do ever since Lisa was canonized (which was way before she died BTW). Her valiant struggle, his brutish violence, the shame, the trauma, the secret and etc. You know, the way a writer would approach it.
But instead he’s going for the most ridiculous, contrived and convoluted approach possible. In his own trudgingly ponderous and excruciatingly boring way he’s eventually going to IMPLY that Frankie MAY have coerced and/or forced himself upon Lisa in that van without ever actually SAYING that he did. Boy Lisa’s little nitwit posse will confront Frankie and use the possibility of maybe accusing him of possibly having done something he wouldn’t want exposed to force him to abandon his stupid project. And that will be it. Frankie will vanish forever and the story will end there. Derin will tell his adopto-parents how awesome they are, Jessica can start the John Darling movie stress-free and Les can get back to his screenplay (ugh).
No balls at all. No chops, either. Timid Tom, always taking the flaccid road, limping along with his tired smirk. He could have told his Lisa story but he didn’t have the nuts. He could have made Frankie into a real villain instead of a clownish buffoon but no chops, sorry. After forty years I guess you just don’t take “risks”, lest you offend someone and draw negative attention to the scam…I mean the strip.
Didn’t TF link to the story arc where Saint Lisa, Pregnant with Summer is scolding Frankie for getting drunk at Montoni’s? How do you reconcile that with him being her rapist?
How is any of this supposed to make Frankie back off with his reality show, in real-world terms? “If you don’t back off, we’re going to report your actions of 30 years ago to the police!” And if he calls their bluff? “Well, why didn’t anyone mention this 30 years ago?” an honest cop might ask. “Well, it didn’t seem important at the time, but now, 30 years later, this asshole’s trying to produce a reality series about the love-child he produced, and we can’t have that.” Um, who would you lock up for questioning if you were part of an honest police force?
Jess: “I also just happen to have a valuable comic book Pete left in his apartment that we can sell to free up 25 thousand clams to get DNA work done on the suspicious items we’ll find pressed between the pages of Lisa’s diary!”
Ann: “Well, gre-……WHAT?!?”
Darin: “Um, I think you’ve skipped ahead in the script.”
Jess: “Can you blame me? Three months on this arc and we’re STILL not at the bit where we read the effin’ journal.”
O.B. Dan: yes, it does matter, because there’s a big difference between “peer pressured into consensual sex” and “date raped”. One is a bad decision. The other is a crime.
And I was more confused by your comments about snarkers making up these retcons to pleasure ourselves. Tom’s the one making them. I think I can safely say none of the comic strip snark community is particularly pleased by them.
Why in the world did word press change “please ourselves” to “pleasure ourselves”? Good grief. o_o
Wow, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, and the writers of Lost put together couldn’t generate this level of contrived coincidence.
“Contrived coincidence”…that’s called “writing” in the Batiukverse. Seriously, as bad as FW normally is, this arc is just unfathomably poor stuff. It’s been a while since he’s done one this offensively stupid.
I can’t care about this story arc anymore, but I find it amusing that Jess’ nose goes from angled to potato nose in the span of two panels.
I just noticed the SOSF storefront in the banner. Excellent work, Mr. Hackett!
The storyline is preposterous. Fred and his wife just *happened* to live in the same apartment building below Pam and Jeff, who just happened to come upon Lisa being raped in the conception of their future adopted son just a few yards from their house. And Jeff just happens to be Jessica’s Uncle Jeff?
This is a new low of writing even for Batiuk! What are Pam and Jeff going to reveal? Must be that the date rape didn’t happen as everyone assumed. I mean too many years have elapsed to bust Frankie. They also didn’t turn Frankie into the police to begin with. So what happened? Perhaps the scene Pam and Jeff witnessed was in fact somebody else date raping Lisa, and that Frankie was there trying to rescue her. Lisa woke up and saw Frankie and not *the other guy* Frankie just took the heat for what happened because Pam and Jeff moved away and they were the only ones who could exonerate him.
Pam and Jeff will reveal who Darrin’s real biodad is…..the real shocker. Yes the real biodad is….Bull Bushka, Frankie’s football team buddy. This explains why Bull has been so nice and tender to Summer over the years as her basketball and softball coach and rehab trainer. He been trying to make up to Lisa for what happened, even though Lisa never realized what happened.
This feels like falling slowly off a cliff. I’m praying to hit the ground and splatter.