While I’m not 100% sure about this, I believe this “I Chong” was an pre-Lisa Act I bit he used to do semi-regularly as a way to squeeze more of his famous bad puns and awful wordplay in there despite there being no storyline reason to do so. I remember it vaguely, sort of, I guess, but not anything specific about it. And the gag holds up about as well as you’d expect a forty year old gag to hold up, which is to say not at all. I don’t think I’ve heard a Mayo Clinic gag since Johnny Carson retired.
So not only is Funky not helping Holly at all, but he’s going to get squiggles all over the back of his favorite Montoni’s shirt and end up tracking even more squiggles throughout the house. Nice going there, fatso.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Great, now he’s just borrowing bad puns.
Worse yet, he’s found an entire book of bad puns. This does not bode well. Even though it’s Friday, Funky can read that damnable book for days on end, a pun a day until he gets them all out of his system. This could take weeks. Weeks, I tells ya!
Do you think we’ll get a bunch of flashbacks next week?
It could be worse — he could have found the spare copy of Lisa’s Secret Diary that she hid in the Winkerbean attic in case Les didn’t remarry before Frankie’s return.
My God, that’s just epically bad. I used to think Tom Batiuk just wasn’t interested in trying anymore; a strip like today’s makes me realize just how wrong I was.
It’s way, way worse than not trying. It’s trying as hard as he can in the wrong direction.
“Ching-chong”?
Yeah, that’s real classy, Batiuk. I can see why you didn’t want masterful wordplay like that to be lost to the ages.
Having voluntarily exposed myself to volume 1 of the Collected FW, I can confirm that this I Chong shtick dates back to the early days of the strip. Maybe later this week we’ll be treated to a cameo from the sentient computer or the talking leaves.
TB claims he wants to move the strip forward, yet he continues to beat all his old dead tropes – bad football team, rain during band events, bad puns with no context to the story line.
The Skinkster Says: A strip where bad puns are read in the attic… could only be drawn by Tom Batiuk.
I would rather witness Funky find his old stash of Penthouse magazines than sit through a bunch of his “not-quite” puns. Batiuk is convinced this stuff is funny. He may need an intervention by his fellow comic artists.
Okay, if Batiuk’s going to go with this old on-the-verge-of-tasteless gag, we might as well get “Guerrilla Vietcong Reader” back for a review.
Um, Is the attic really a good place to put your glasses on and cuddle up with a good book?
OT, but too good not to share – old comic books, it turns out, are not worth what John Howard and Tom Batiuk think they are worth.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/those-comics-basement-probably-worthless-095537403.html
“Um, Is the attic really a good place to put your glasses on and cuddle up with a good book?”
It is if you’re trying to avoid contact with your loathsome walrus of a wife and her ass-hat kid…
BC: Interesting article. As I’ve told people in the past, stuff like comic books and sports cards are only valuable if a) they’re truly rare and b) if someone desperately wants them. Otherwise they’re just paper and cardboard. So if you thought those A-Rod rookie cards were going to fund your retirement plans, guess again, suckers.
Coming next week: Owen finds the old hall monitor machine gun in the infamous janitor’s closet and discovers the hard way that it was in fact NOT just a “prop”.
–“Um, Is the attic really a good place to put your glasses on and cuddle up with a good book?”
It is if you’re trying to avoid contact with your loathsome walrus of a wife and her ass-hat kid…–
True. Plus I always suspected that Owings Corning insulation made for a good pillow.
[audio http://tfhackett.com/music/loserhorns.mp3 ]
This one left me speechless. Is it too much to ask that Batominc be left speechless, as well?