SoSfdavidO here, bringing you snarks for the next couple weeks! Who is up for some more wacky hijinks with Funky & the Gang? I know I am!
Oh, great, the damn talking cat is back in today’s strip! The problem is, the cat is looking less ethereal and more like an actual clawing, pooping cat. Any reader new to Funky Winkerbean and casually dropping in (God help them) would just assume this is a strip that features talking animals.
Don’t we have enough of that with Mark Trail?
Son of Stuck Funky 
Oh great–another week of “Les is such an awesome talent, Hollywood hacks are incapable of appreciating him.”
Sadly, an appearance by the bearded dick with ears was long overdue and today he’s back and in full “tortured artiste” mode already, fretting to the point of hallucinating over that annoying cancer book-based screenplay of his. HE needed three years to finish it but now he wants those godless Hollywood heathens to reply to him AT ONCE! What a self-centered dick, even his delusions mock him. Anyway, I’m sure that if the studio didn’t get the screenplay they’d most likely send him an email saying something like “hey you smug obnoxious dipshit, where’s the f*cking screenplay?” or words to that effect. God he’s as punchable as ever today and that horrible yellow shirt again….ugh.
Okay, what’s weirder… the appearance of a talking cat (without introduction) in a strip that has removed all fantastical elements (and can’t mention John Darling without giving a mini-bio each time), or doing one-off gags about old men exercising when you have an entire other strip dedicated to just that function?
In the last panel I believe the cat speaks for all of us.
It figures that the only creature not willing to fawn over the Specialest Snowflake of the Universe is a hallucination.
If that cat visits other people and points out their deficiencies, what’s going to be left for us to do?
Bats sure does have, uhh, interesting artistic ability(?). In the second panel: when a cat is getting ready to spray, that’s how the tail is held. (Don’t ask!) What we need is Tara the Hero Cat to come racing in to claw Les and Bleu to death. Now, with that thought, maybe I can sleep soundly with sweet dreams.
This means that we’re in for a week of his beefing about something he doesn’t understand. We knew going in that a man in a misery capsule isn’t going to understand that Hollywood would let him know if they’d approved his stuff; what we’re looking at here is the results of his finding out that they do respond rapidly…..in the negative. How dare they not know True Greatness when they see it! What do they mean, no one is going to want to watch a bleak, unrealistically angsty and downbeat tale of cancer, pain that can never go away, wounds that will never heal, loss that can never be made good, heartache that grows in intensity, futility and despair? People need to see reality, damn it, and realize that hope is a mocking lie because I HAVE CANCER, MOMMY!!!!!!!
So holy shit, the guy sent the thing off months ago to someone he had a contract with and he hasn’t heard anything about it, even whether the person received the script in the first place?
What the hell is this?
And the cherry on this particular rancid sundae is that Batiuk can’t even come up with a name for the organization that’s producing the proposed movie. So Les didn’t send the script to “[Misery Porn Pictures]”, he instead sent it to “Hollywood”, which makes the whole thing sound even more half-assed and phony.
Perhaps he really did send the script to holly@wood.com
Heh. I just realized something. It could be that Batiuk actually does know that he’s writing errant nonsense. He just doesn’t care because he likes his warped and crazy version better because he’s got himself an agenda: hammering home the idea that the Cruel, Corrupt Outside World only exists so that it can go out of its way to crush the noble dreams of decent small town people like Les and Funky and Cindy. Every time they try to escape from the claustrophobic, insular, go-nowhere, accomplish-nothing, sit-around-and-mope world of Cancerview, BAD THINGS HAPPEN. Case in point: Becky was set to go to the EVIL school of Julliard in EVIL New York to have an EVIL life in the heartless and inherently evil OUTSIDE WORLD when she was punished for hubris by having her arm go away.
Um, doesn’t Les have an agent? Shouldn’t he just be calling his agent to find out what the status is of his miserable script? Does Les actually think “Hollywood” is some massive entity that will immediately call him once t hey realize the magnificence of his script? Or does Tom Batiuk think that?
Less is so dumb, he actually thinks his first submit will be accepted with no rewrite. Like “Hollywood” won’t have a professional go over it and make changes. Idiot.
*beep* ‘Hello Les, it’s Ann Apple. Did not hear anything from you about those proposed revisions, so the network is going ahead. Just wanted to let you know that casting is now underway. The frontrunners for you and Lisa are Ted McGinely and Shannen Doher-‘ *click*
Hmm… not Hollywood. Next.
*beep* ‘Les? Ann Apple again. Filming for Lisa’s Story: The Other Shoe Is An Alien is set to begin in Toronto on April 17. I think you will like the new musical number, ‘Lisa Hates Mondays Too’ featuring Robbie Rist as Le Chat Orange. We’d love to fly you out to -‘ *click*
Still not Hollywood… This is discouraging.
Last week he did a week’s worth of (more or less) universally understandable gags. Now he’s right back to things only longtime FW readers would get. I mean who the hell would know that Le Chat Bleu is only a hallucination unless they read the original “tortured author” arc from 2007 or whenever it was? What a self-indulgent hack.
Well, Les does seem the type to not realize that they’re gonna call Anne first AND to rail about the unfairness and inefficiency of it all when he FINALLY figures it out. He IS Batomic’s avatar, after all……..
Pourquoi le chat bleu parle-t-il en anglais?
Never mind that. Here’s the missing fourth panel:
EXT. SHORE LAKE ERIE
We ZOOM IN to view a MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE. We SEE a TAG attached to the BOTTLE. We can READ the TAG, which reads:
FADE TO BLACK.
I’ve figured out the talking cat. The talking cat is Lisa Moore. When LIsa died she was reincarnated into a cat so she can keep an eye on Les.