Yes! My favorite Funky Winkerbean character ever, the Pouncing Darkness, makes his appearance brilliantly in the last panel–crawling toward Holly as the phone begins to ring.
In ordinary circumstances, I guess this storyline would resonate with folks who have loved ones overseas in combat zones. One would never know from moment to moment what might be. Every news story might contain heartbreak, every phone call might be the beginning of regret and mourning.
The thing is, though, this is Funky Winkerbean. The story will play out as lame, predictable and underwhelming. Three things that people in dire circumstances don’t really need.
I will give Tom Batiuk some slight credit here and say that his heart is probably in the right place. However, using Cory Winkerbean as an object of sympathy is never going to play. He was a rotten kid before he went into the army, and while the army may have changed him for the better, it would be good to, you know, actually show us this. Even though that–actually showing something–goes against the very nature of this strip, still, a leopard should at least try to change his spots, before deciding it can’t be done…
Son of Stuck Funky 
America’s most beloved long-running comic strip does it again! Few (if any) comic strip authors could take something as mundane as waiting for a phone call and turn it into a suspenseful, touching and lightly humorous tribute to our star-freckled fighting troops and the parents who love them. But with his lifelike artwork and crackling, witty dialog, Batiuk not only succeeds at making us feel Holly’s anguish, he triumphs. A moving, lively and compelling arc that not only tells a relevant story, but does it in a way that pulls at the heartstrings and leaves the reader craving more of these fascinating and hyper-realistic characters. God speed young Corporal Cory, God speed!
And oh yeah, happy birthday Mr. Batiuk! Here’s hoping your slices are piping hot and not too oily or doughy and your tabletop is wiped down BEFORE you’re seated!! Don’t you ever change, you lovable scamp!
You know what would really be funny. If it was a telemarketer asking if she wanted to buy cheap cut rate insurance for her children.
Hell, trying to elicit sympathy for any of the Winkerbeans is a lost cause.
Actually showing potentially-exciting action scenes involving soldiers in the Middle East? …naaaaah
Batiuk doesn’t know anything about the military to write about, and obviously America doesn’t have many soldiers so he couldn’t ask anyone for advi
Okay, no I can’t keep a straight while saying that. Batiuk just doesn’t want to write a story about anyone under the age of forty. Look at all the strips about Holly worrying about Cory. Then compare them to the number of strips that actually featured Cory, let alone had Cory as the main character.
Looks like Les’ yellow shirt has joined its green-checked brother in traveling from person-to-person.
No one depicts weeks of sitting around and waiting quite like Tom Batiuk.
I can only assume she’s saying oh no because of the caller ID. Well it makes sense – Only in Westview would folks have Masky McDeath in the Cellphone contract lists.
Does anyone else feel a sense of disproportionate, irrational loathing due to the way Holly’s head is cocked in Panel 2?!
This storyline, I’m assuming Cory buys it–possesses all the subtlety of a 16-ton weight, and it has since Day One, when Cory was doing chin-ups at Army booth at the County Fair while Wally was watching. That, having Cory join the Army a few days before Halloween, and the Pouncing Darkness at the end of almost every strip this week. Gad, Batiuk has dumped a whole vat of foreshadowing on us when just a trickle would have suffice.
And this has also been one of the most contrived stories ever. He has Cory join the army for no discernable reason, then all this garbage with STARBUCK JONES and mistaking Rocky for a woman, and then having Cindy get transferred back to Cleveland. The whole think just reeks.
The notes for Holly’s ring tone (panel 3) are a bit off. Here’s a correction.