First a couple random notes: though I don’t like to promote the, ahem, competition, Chris Sims’ Funkywatch over at Comics Alliance is especially spot on this month. Also, head on over to the offical FW site to be treated to the spectacle of Ed Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean fighting over the last Christmas tree in the lot!
Th’ hell? Is Cory dead already? Funky and Holly rummage through his room (just as he left it, snif) and Holly speaks of him in the past tense.
While Cory’s room is actually fairly tidy, what’s a “total mess” (as usual) is the continuity. A month ago we saw Holly include this rare volume in a package that she and Funky were sending to Afghanistan (the rest of that week showed—in flashback—Holly acquiring the comic from “Rocky’s” mom). Now she reaches under the bed and files Starbuck Jones #7 in Cory’s box of Silver Age comics. Perhaps it returned through the same wormhole that enabled Les to check out Funky’s new car in the middle of the Kilimanjaro arc.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I knew there was a certain wierd bite to Funky Winkerbean. I really should take a much closer look. How many characters from a classic comic strip are serving in Afghanistan? It’s probably only this Cory character. I’ve lost the habit of reading comic strips. Your enthusiasm makes me want to go back and give it another try.
Continuity? Bothering to draw a different Starbuck Jones cover? Nah, that would require effort and thought. It’s just so much easier to toss together a quick trope salad and be done with it.
And what’s so unusual or noteworthy about a Westviewian keeping his comic book collection in immaculate condition? Isn’t that an inherited trait there, like smirking or obesity or the ability to create and hang hand-lettered signs? I would imagine it’s the second thing a child would learn in Westview, right after how to properly hold a slice.
But remember, the important thing is the comic books. Never forget the comic books. They are the glue which holds life together.
The Diva has seem to have forgotten the pizza. Never forget the pizza. It is the artery clogging gunk that keeps Funky and Cindy and Bull and all the other Westviewians one step closer.
And as Holly thumbs through the box to place Starbuck Jones #7 in its rightful place, she discovers, to her horror, that Cory has actually been collecting back-issues of Playboy Magazine for years. Nah, too interesting, not gonna happen.
Starbuck Jones. The comic that she was supposed to be mailing off to him. The comic that hasn’t even been mentioned in what, a week or two? And why is she putting it IN the box? That clearly isn’t the box she’s going to be sending over there, it was just left under the bed this entire time.
Speaking of sharing, I want share this with TB:
http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/offense.html
I hope he puts it to good use!
“Isn’t that an inherited trait there, like smirking or obesity or the ability to create and hang hand-lettered signs?”
The last panel of today’s Crankshaft gives us the perfect description of Westview, and actually makes sense.
I think you’re on to something here. What if Cory was dead all along, and Holly’s been obsessively (ob-Les-ively?) watching the Skype calls she recorded and occasionally responding as though her son was still alive? She’s not assembling the Starbuck Jones collection to send to Cory, it’s his memorial.
This theory is contradicted by the strip a few weeks back when we saw Cory alive and talking to Rocket, but hey, it’s called Batiuk.
Holly: “I cannot help but emphasize that out of all Cory’s character traits that were DEFINITIVELY DEFINED before he left, the most important one was his intense love of comics published seven decades before he was born.”
Funky: “Um, actually, I don’t th-”
Holly: “Also, people better not pretend this is something that just came up, seemingly at random in order to shoehorn in the author’s personal preferences! There were entire arcs all about Cory’s intense love of seventy year old comics! Why, it won us an Eisner nomination AND a Pulitzer when we did ‘Cory finds a copy of Action Comics #1…autographed by LISA arc!”
Funky: “Dammit. Why can’t I be off neglecting to show my father genuine love an affection! Why am I suddenly a part of this arc?”
Holly: “CORY! COMIX! CORY! COMIX! CORY! COMIX!”
Funky: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!”
Batuik reminds me of Francis Coleman in his utter disregard for any sort of continuity (reusing the comic that was sent over seas) and his grim view of life. However Coleman was working in film and with tiny budgets where you really had no choice. What the hell is Batuik’s excuse?
Are we resuming the arc as if the previous few weeks of space filler never happened? A brief pause for pregnancy and Les being….Les, before getting back to the all-important comics? Which we then apparently soft-retcon? There was some mention of about seven Sunday strips’ worth of Starbuck Jones covers, and confusion of how the story could last so long. Maybe we’ll just repeat the ‘find comics, send comics’ story every two weeks or so, putting a new spin on it every time!
—Batuik reminds me of Francis Coleman in his utter disregard for any sort of continuity (reusing the comic that was sent over seas) and his grim view of life. However Coleman was working in film and with tiny budgets where you really had no choice. What the hell is Batuik’s excuse?—
You know. If there ever was a director who could have done justice to the the Funkyverse, it would have been Coleman Francis. He could even have played Act III Funky.