SoSfDavidO here, surprised that Tombat’s script actually seems a bit timely today! Though it was written a year ago, in January, so a weather-related joke couldn’t have been too hard to predict being relevant.
The strip is a little strange– I thought Cody and Owen lived at Comix Corner, sleeping on a cardboard box that had been thoughtfully flattened out by John but it appears these two have actual homes and families!
Son of Stuck Funky 
OK, sure, it’s pretty stupid. But at least it’s an attempt at humor, so it’s a cut above 99% of your usual FW strips. Although watching Cody & Owen die of frostbite and exposure would have been (way) funnier. And now we know why Westview is so perpetually cash-strapped…snow removal bills. Seriously, is mid-central Ohio having one shitty winter or what?
Link’s about a month and a day off, sorry.
And today’s strip looks like something from a series that would actually be denouncing comic books and all similar hobbies. Two teenage boys go out into the snow, loudly talking about how dangerous it is, just to get to their comic books at a store run by a man who can’t realistically expect business on a day like this and yet he keeps the store open.
What could justify this? Maybe an arc about how Owen never gets along with his parents and Cody is pushed around by an older brother, which means that the two see the store as the one place where they can relax and just be themselves, and John can provide a friendly ear?
Maybe, but you sure won’t see that kind of character building in THIS comic strip, no sir!
So…where are they going? I mean, the whole strip is setting us up for “Our education system is terrible, and under-funded, and it makes POOR, DESERVING students like *cough* whoever, WHATever, yawn *cough* traipse endlessly through the global warming until they arrive at…HA HA HA, not the school, HATERS, but where real education begins…the Komix Korner. REALLY?!?
The most severe critic of Funky Winkerbean could not have written and drawn a more damning episode.
Neither rain nor sleet nor gloom of night will keep the two token teens from the comic store.
We’re supposed to believe that Mr. ‘M&Ms and Booze make good hors d’oeuvres’ has enough of a work ethic to open his store on a work day??
We’ve been asked some really farfetched things in this comic strip like two adult women pining after Les or Les getting his script babied by Hollywood or Les not getting kicked in the throat, but this is really unbelievable!
*open his store on a snow day. How embarrassing.
We all know what’s waiting for Owen & Cody upstairs at the Komix Korner: Crazy Harry’s happy dance. The boys don’t have to go to Komix Korner. They get to. They get to.
The Pizza joint is open as well…. Durwood lives upstairs so there is no excuse for skipping breakfast pizza.
I’m surprised Wally isn’t shown shoveling the walk using just his bare hands.
I hate to admit it, but today’s strip is actually moderately amusing. One could even go so far as to say it approaches competence. Congratulations to the blind squirrel of Medina for finally stumbling across an acorn.
I’m reminded of that e-card parody about the bitch eating crackers like she owns the place. This particular strip isn’t really that bad at all. Certainly better than the existential gloom of last week’s springboard for suicide.
*fingers drumming*
Tom…the early 90s were a long, long time ago. Teenagers aren’t completely absent from comics readership these days, but they largely avoid the direct market stores. They also don’t really have the obsessive collector/character loyalty mentality -or- the speculator mentality you attribute to them. Not in almost two decades.
These days most teens buy their comics in trade, digest, or hardbound format at a bookstore chain, or download the issues directly in their digital form.
Tom Batiuk: “EVIL TECHNOLOGY!”
*sigh*