SoSfDavidO here!
You would think merging two of the 7 known plots in the World of Funky Winkerbean would make for comedy gold but somehow it doesn’t! This strip reminds me of when I was ten and decided that, hey, I love Mountain Dew and I love Nestle Quik– why not put Quik powder IN Mountain Dew? This strip, and that drink (Mountain Quik) both left me with a terrible taste in my mouth.
It isn’t the bad pun, or the uncomedy that is the failing Ohio School System or even impending budget cuts that irk me about today’s strip. It’s the fact Harry is droning on DURING a music performance. Do we really need to tell the supposedly “World’s Greatest Band Director” to shut the hell up during a live performance?
Son of Stuck Funky 
Don’t know what’s worse about panel 3–the beyond stupid pun, or the Dueling Maori.
Derp! That’s “Maoi.”
Coincidentally, OMEA is having a Professional Development Conference next week. Perhaps this week’s lame arc is some kind of homage to that? Perhaps the nameless bland characters depicted this week are real people? Also, as an administrator, if you’re preparing to eliminate your music program, why are you sending your music director to a conference?
Of course we all know that this entire week was nothing more than a set-up for this joke, right? He had “fiscal clef” bouncing around in that sincere little head of his and he was going to use it no matter what, even if he had to construct a whole boring-ass, stupid arc out of it. Mission accomplished. Although it doesn’t explain why the idiot Dinkle is jabbering away during a concert like that, especially just for the sake of that abysmal little bit of sorry wordplay. What a dick.
Panel 2 – Who knew Todd Packer was crashing a music convention? This guy!!
Looks like music education in Ohio high schools is in treble…
Hey, I can write knee-slappers too.
Batiuk’s never been able to tell the difference between good-bad puns and bad-bad puns. Last week I read Volume 2 (1975-77) of the Collected Funky Winkerbean while awake with a sinus headache and an intestinal virus (which only seems appropriate) and it was almost nothing but wretched puns, limericks (!) that didn’t scan properly, and other grade-school quality wordplay. It seems like it took him years to realize that the (decidedly relative) strengths of FW lay in character-based humor rather than in crap puns like today’s.
This wordplay is so bass. Clearly, music based puns are not Batiuk’s forte. My respect for him continues to diminuendo. If he doesn’t scale back his attempts, he’s going to put the audience into a coda.
(I apologize for that. In my defense, I didn’t drag it out for an entire week like certain parties would have.)
Wow. Here it is to the day. As per Wikipedia, The United States fiscal cliff was a situation that came into existence in January 2013 … Batiuk literally watched the news a year ago, scribbled out this bit of hackery, and shoved it back in the drawer to see the light of day now.
Fresh, fresh material.
Helskor: Interesting. I believe I probably began reading FW regularly sometime in the late 1970’s, perhaps ’77 or maybe ’78. I do recall a lot of terrible puns and awful wordplay, although I also recall the birth of the weekly “arc” format (like Les gets stuck on rope in gym class, the falling leaves bit, football gags, the flaming baton thing and so on). I was also like 12 years old too, so perhaps my comparatively fond memories of Act I were tainted by the fact that I was a little idiot at the time.
badwolf: Excellent, I was actually wondering about that. To the day, eh? UN-freaking-believable.