Bleah, more Harry Dinkle. Becky no longer mentions the “volume three” part, as it no doubt made (potential) customers say, “Three volumes from that old shriveled husk?! Why, he must be even more of a pompous windbag than he looks! He must talk non-stop, when he’s not clutching a book with his teeth!” Of course, even at one volume it’s still the story of a pompous windbag, so (like yesterday) I’m guessing from that stack that sales are not brisk.
I like thinking they’ve sold absolutely no books at all. “I’d rather the whole school close down forever than buy that book. That book is so awful that throwing it in the garbage is the highest critical praise it’ll get,” is probably the usual response. Other responses: “Sorry, I don’t have a table that has a short leg, and I don’t have a toddler who needs his booster chair augmented.” “My birdcage is lined with quality newspaper, thank you very much.” “How well does it work to get my fire started? I thought so.” Followed by SLAM! SLAM! SLAM! etc.
Hey, does this week’s story mean that Harry is now on a tour promoting his book? He gets more and more like Les all the time!
Another thing I like is how the falling leaves look like Harry is surrounded by flies seeking his rotting, purulent flesh.
The best part of this one is imagining how Brad DeGroot from Luann is pronouncing his sentence. “I thought you’d be selling a turkey,” with the words going down in pitch from “thought.” In other words, “this is a very bad thing you want me to buy, and it isn’t even edible. Its one use seems to be to neutralize the arms of that horrible old man you’re with, and I don’t have a horrible old man, so get lost before I shoot you with my 38 special and then burn your bodies in the yard and consider my Christmas wish has come true.”
Okay, maybe that last little bit wasn’t really implied in Brad’s sentence. Much. As the British say, “No ‘arm in tryin’.”
Son of Stuck Funky 
Their salesmanship sucks. Just bring one copy to the door. If you see someone who can barely see over the stack of books, you’re going to think (rightfully, in this case) “Damn, that book must be awful, nobody’s buying it”. But if you think it’s the last copy, you might want to buy it.
Of course that would ruin Saturday’s strip where Harry gripes about his hernias and how Becky better put out after all he’s done for her.
If this is the third volume of Dinkle’s autobiography it means he’s written exactly as many books as Les has. And one of Les’ is just a crappy graphic novel thingy, not a real book. Thus Dinkle is the most prolific author in town, unless you count journals and diaries. So f*ck you, Les.
Why does she keep introducing Harry to everyone? Why would anyone buy an autobiography of a person they’ve never heard of? Especially from an insecure one-armed woman who’s going door-to-door? Beats the hell out of me.
Good to see Brad DeGroot make a guest appearance today. He fits right in, as the meandering and underachieving “Luann” is not that dissimilar to the Funkyverse.
Please, your sales won’t even cover whatever you paid the vanity press to churn those things out.
I applaud the restraint each potential customer shows in not staring at that dumbass pinned-up sleeve. This whole arc, substituting a non-existent biography for the band turkeys, is just more tortured setups for his stupid puns and crappy wordplay.
Nathal Obral, Luann is a creepy “Nice Guy” fantasy and Brad DeGroot is at the center of that nonsense, but that comic does not deserve to get lumped in with the madness that is Funky Winkerbean. At least Greg Evans properly understands plotting and can tell a joke that’s not a bad pun.
The really annoying thing is that the lousy salesmanship is consistent. Remember, they actually took the turkeys door to door instead of doing something smart and carrying a clip-board and telling the people where they could pick them up.
Becky used to have prosthetic arms. Several, actually. For some reason she’s just completely stopped wearing them. Probably because it lets Batiuk remind readers how edgy and thought-provoking he is, with DUI storylines. Not the ones where it’s a dumb school name, I mean.
“they actually took the turkeys door to door instead of doing something smart and carrying a clip-board and telling the people where they could pick them up.”
Well, how else can you start an epidemic of botulism and e coli?
Oh, wait, this is Westview, those toxins and bacteria can’t live there……
Becky has no arm, and she must punch. She also literally has no mouth, and presumably must scream.
It’s dumbfounding as to why Batiuk insists on identifying or reinforcing his characters by narration dialog every time. Apparently his intended fanbase – scientifically narrowed down to elderly subscribers of the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram – just can’t remember who is who anymore.
Becky is the typical Funkyverse character – a lot of potential, but squandered by God-awful writing and abysmal character “development.” She annoys me more than Act III Harry Dinkle, and that’s saying something.
Panel 1. Worst “Kilroy was here” I’ve ever seen.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to sell turkeys and just offer the book as a free bonus with each turkey in order to A) ACTUALLY RAISE MONEY FOR THE MUSIC PROGRAM and B) that way they can pad Dinkle’s moronic ego in a way that won’t completely and utterly sabotage their efforts to RAISE MONEY FOR THE MUSIC PROGRAM.
It’s like Batiuk just revels in how stupid, pathetic, and incompetent he can make these people.
Also don’t get why Harry has to heave the books when he could just put them in a little wheel cart borrowed from the school closet. And I have always found Becky’s pin up sleeve that Natiuk draws as if we’re too dumb to know she has no arm really grating. I’ve never seen an amputee in real life who constantly wears a sleeve that’s pinned up in a giant cuff.
Batiuk, not Natiuk obviously.
And the alternate example I mentioned above would allow the characters to both have functioning brains while still letting Batiuk keep his corny little “book as a booster item” gag.
Q@captaincab: But this is the Batiukverse, whose denizens are so utterly fascinated by the life and times of a high school band director and music teacher, that they not only want to read all about it, but want to do so in deep, minute detail.
Gotta love the threat as a sales technique, too. Does Ohio have a stand your ground law?
Panel 2: Hey! I always wondered what Spoderman looked like without his mask!
Hmm…. looks like i was wrong about skipping band turkeys entirely, and the question of the football season is still open. Let’s call it a draw.
Howard and Nestor: I lump Luann in with Funky as well; even though it’s a little behind Batiuk, it seems intent on making the same mistakes. For instance, a few months ago Evans made a big deal about graduating his students from high school and pushing them out to breathe new life into the strip. Since then, instead of college hijinks and new cast members, we get a lot of the same gang hanging out together planning parties and ‘getting the gang back together’. This was capped off by this Sunday’s strip, a Batiukian masterpiece of “tell don’t show”, in which Luann describes her busy workfilled new life in college — none of which has been shown in the strip itself.
http://www.gocomics.com/luann/2014/11/23
Meanwhile in Crankshaft, wordplay has devolved into such gems as “nosal” for “nasal”, and “jelly” for “gel”, and then segued into an example of the purest Batiukian dickiness i can remember. That last panel is how i picture Batiuk laughing at his audience.
http://comicskingdom.com/crankshaft/2014-11-16