Well Aisle Be

Say it with me now: “Funky Winkerbean is a reality-based comic strip that depicts contemporary issues affecting young adults in a thought-provoking and sensitive manner.” Today’s contemporary issue: young adults working in retail are constantly bothered at their jobs by really, really old people who wanna like, buy stuff.

17 thoughts on “Well Aisle Be”

  1. It’s pretty obvious that this one is just an old “Crankshaft” he traced and tweaked a little. He managed to mention “anniversary” again too, just in case we forgot and became baffled as to why a Westviewian would be in a party supply store.

    A party supply store in Westview? I guess they do a brisk business in black balloons and “so your diagnosis is terminal?” cards. And I suppose that 50th anniversary stuff they had in stock would probably indeed be very old, as few if any Westviewians ever live long enough to observe 50th anniversaries of anything. In that context, the punch line is almost funny in an inside-joke sort of way.

    Awesome title, TFH…you are the master!

  2. “Funky Winkerbean is a reality-based comic strip that depicts contemporary issues affecting the aged, the elderly and the infirm in a perfunctory and unimaginative manner.”

  3. I don’t know who this clerk chick is, or where she came from all of a sudden, but she’s definitely the coolest new character to come along since Frankie and Oreo Lennie left town. Scrap all the Westview regulars and find more for her to do instead; I’d love to see what kind of treatment she gives when Les wanders down her aisle.

  4. Wait. He’s only JUST NOW getting the party supplies? What in h-e-double-hockey-sticks is WRONG with him? Was I actually more correct then I guessed a few days ago? Is he actually going through senility?

  5. Why is he planning his own anniversary party? This is not how life works. How far out of Westview did he have to drive to find a retail business?

  6. Anybody who’s spent five minutes in a party supply store knows there’s always a nice section of gold-trimmed 50th anniversary decorations to look through. Scrunchie Girl (who seems to be Batiuk’s go-to extra for representing The Kids These Days) probably recognizes Harry for the cheap bastard he is, and is pointing him in the direction of the clearance rack where he’ll stock up on drab yellow napkins, tacky hula girl cutouts, and “Happy 2012!” banners.

  7. You open a shop that celebrates life’s great moments Westview and you have to expect these sort of things……. Namely, liquidation sales, where you’re entire inventory is 40-70% off.

    I guess this once again proves that Montoni’s and Komix Korner are the only functional businesses in this godforsaken town.

  8. TheDiva: Any decent sized GROCERY store these days would have something relatively decent for a fiftieth anniversary. A party supply place?

    And Westview: I thought the same thing at first. But look closely at the sign. It says “special”. Not “going out of business” or “final days”. In my experience places going out of business say so. They want to really get in the fact that if you don’t shop now, you’ll never get another chance.

  9. I’m imagining the party store is located in a run-down, semi-occupied strip mall at the very edge of town. There’s a Liquor Barn at one end, a few empty storefronts, the party store, a nail salon, Cash4Gold/check cashing joint, a skateboard shop that’s never open and a few more empties. No one goes there at night anymore except for rowdy gangs of street-racing thugs looking for their fix of cheap generic beer for the evening and there are constantly stories running in the local paper about how the town wants to seize the land, demolish the mall and reserve it as future cemetery space.

  10. Aww, someone’s feeling very sensitive about his age…Tom. I’m guessing all of Westview shops in the aisle Harry’s looking for, considering most of the town is either old or dead from cancer. Not to mention those like Wally and the CW that TB has apparently sent to the Bermuda Triangle never to be seen again.

  11. With the 10 year time jump we all know and love, I sometimes wind up thinking of FW strips as little windows into an awful near-future.
    Today we learn that not only will scrunchies come back into style in the coming decade, piñata’s will soon be made out of pastel-colored dryer lint.

  12. Harry: “Something for a 50th wedding anniversary,” *gets right up in sales clerk’s personal space.*

    This isn’t a joke, look at that third panel, Dinkle gets right within bad breath distance and rubs his front along her side! I’d look away and be frostily rude too! Dinkle’s palpable contempt in the final panel is less about her attitude and more about his attempt to cop a feel and make suggestive remarks being so easily foiled. How he misses Becky! He gives Becky intimate touches and close kissy-looks all the time and SHE never complains!

  13. Apparently Scrunchy Girl didn’t get the 50th anniversary repetition, because she seems to have heard “fifty year old decorations”. “The really, really old stuff is …” Actually, her proper hateful response would have been “If they were up you ass, you’d know where they were. Douche.”

  16. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that a little over a year ago, Tom Batiuk encountered a surly teen working in a low-wage service job.
    How shamed that teen must be now.

  17. Ah, yet another youth with a teardrop-shaped head/neck thingy. Hey! Maybe the Batiuktionary defines “contemporary” as “teardrop-headed.”

    In panel 2, I see that poor, old Harry’s head has gone all misaligned with his spine.

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