SoSFDavidO here, and thanks for your patience, all! My little hamlet of Ben Lomond, CA, has had a downpour of rain lately and I’ve not had power for days!
Fortunately, as seen in today’s Strip, there’s not much to snark on. This is a filler week if there ever was one.
Dinkle’s wife should have cleft him years ago.
Son of Stuck Funky 
And you thought yesterday’s strip was a new low…
I need brain bleach after seeing that pathetic pun. It isn’t even a lame pun… it’s a pun with a terminal autoimmune disorder.
This is the comic strip equivalent of losing a filling on the eve of a long holiday weekend. It’s like driving over railroad tracks on the way home from the doctor after suffering a fractured tailbone. And that punchline is like biting down on a wayward bone in your McNugget. 2014 FW has officially hit its low-water mark today. I hope so, at least.
Working a year in advance, and this is the best joke you can think of in that time. Yeah.
Wow. Not only is it unfunny as usual, the so-called “punchline” just sounds inappropriate and vaguely creepy. Dinkle’s facial expression does not help.
Who is Batom® appealing to now? All five members of the Brooke McEldowney Fan Club?
@Nathan Obral: Ha, fat chance. At least McEldowney doesn’t completely suck at writing self-indulgent, elitist wish fulfillment; some might say that it’s his raison d’etre. It’s a dubious ‘talent’ you can use to legitimately entertain people with. Horrible, horrible people but they’re entertained all the same.
Bathack can’t even get that part right. If the writers of Luann and/or 9 Chickweed Lane got into a spastic slap-fight contest with Batiuk, McEldowney and Evans would have Batiuk demoted to permanent intern at the Apartment 3G sweatshop. That’s how much of a hack this guy is, he gets his artistic ass kicked by a hipster douchebag and a Nice Guy creeper.
Ha ha, it’s funny because women are completely terrible, right Tom?
One wonders what this instrument looks like. Perhaps it throws out comic book collections because girls are stooooooooooooopid.
I wonder if Claude Barlow expected his womandolin to put out when he wrote something nice for it.
I’m. Gone. Puke.
@Howard and Nester: Such a spastic slap-fight would be over before it began, as Batom® would be disqualified for trying to throw Marvin poo-filled diapers supplied to him by Tom Armstrong.
This is the best comic strip I’ve ever seen about Warren Buffet typing terrible jokes into Wordperfect.
To be fair, this is the only comic strip I’ve ever seen about Warren Buffet typing terrible jokes into Wordperfect.
Oh!! Har, har!! What a great joke!! No one … and I mean no one … in all of human history has ever thought to tack W-O in front of a word that starts with M-A-N!! Kudos to you, Mr. Batiuk, for your stunning command of comedic genius!! Yes, kudos to you, indeed, sir!!
I’m catching up on a week’s worth of strips and noticed this from the “Harrry in the Hallway” post from Jimmy regarding dumb things Nate has dropped the ball on as a principal:
“*Said English teacher is caught in a compromising situation with a fellow teacher, but the blame is all laid on her.”
What was this about?
@captaincab:
Remember when Susan foisted herself on Les, but he didn’t exactly back away? It was all swept under the rug, and HR was never involved.
@Jimmy: given that Les ended up with Cayla (another employee) and Bull is married to Linda (both teachers) it is hard to figure out what the problem was.
captaincab: Susan Smith was one of Les’ students who developed an obsessive crush on him (really). She tried to kill herself over it but Les GOT HER TO A HOSPITAL in time. Then (because of course she did) she became a teacher at WHS. She was always sort of benignly flirting with Les for the next several or dozen years but it never led anywhere.
Then Les received his movie-script-option deal. Upon hearing the news Susan could no longer control her lust for Les and she threw herself at him after school in Les’ classroom. Some punk kid with a cell phone filmed the kiss and posted it online. This resulted in Susan leaving her job as a sneering, gloating Les obnoxiously bid her farewell. She was last seen skulking out of WHS in abject shame and humiliation.
@Epicus …making Susan Smith one of the lucky ones.
In the few strips I’ve seen with her, she offers creative advice on Les’ book while Cayla mutely agrees. In other words, Susan Smith (aside from an inexplicably crappy taste in men) actually had ideas and a creative sense, which of course made her a direct threat to Les.
Cayla, on the other hand, fills the role of “Les’ doormat” to perfection.
All of that occurred during a stretch that featured Les at his absolute most obnoxious. It was just unbelievable. In the span of a few months he: ran off to the park bench to whine to Lisa, went on his condescending book-launch-tour, forced Funky to issue him a groveling apology for daring to laugh at the idea of women wanting him and then the Susan thing, where he literally sneered and mocked her right to her face for an entire week. It was harrowing. If I’m not mistaken it covered late 2010 into 2011.
And I thought Fozzy Bear had bad jokes…
Thanks for clarification on the Susan story. I knew about her pre-jump history but had no idea about the post jump debacle outlined above, wow.
“This resulted in Susan leaving her job as a sneering, gloating Les obnoxiously bid her farewell. She was last seen skulking out of WHS in abject shame and humiliation.”
Unreal. By any chance is there a link to an archived copy of this? Batiuk is so dumb, does he not realize smirking and/or scrunching your face at someone is NOT a sign of respect?
“Some punk kid with a cell phone filmed the kiss and posted it online.” Wasn’t that Keisha?
Sadly it looks like the week of interest (July 2011) are not in the ganneff.de archive, but the action is described in the “Act III” pulldown menu here on SoSF.
^^^^
Ah, OK, thanks.
beckoningchasm: “In the few strips I’ve seen with her, she offers creative advice on Les’ book while Cayla mutely agrees. In other words, Susan Smith (aside from an inexplicably crappy taste in men) actually had ideas and a creative sense, which of course made her a direct threat to Les.”
It’s crazy how consistently true this is.
Also I didn’t know Les made Funky apologoze because he chided him for women being interested in him? What a pathetic cretin.
@CaptainCab – the Funky apology is, in my opinion, THE defining Funky Winkerbean strip, and THE best illustration of Les’ personality.
As luck would have it, captaincab, Comics Alliance was doing its monthly FunkyWatch back in June 2011 and has several of the strips during that storyline posted.
Funky’s apology comes in at #9, and Les’ appaling parting shot at Susan #1.
Oh, here we go, most of the good stuff is archived at Comics Alliance’s Funkywatch:
http://comicsalliance.com/funkywatch-junes-12-most-depressing-funky-winkerbean-strips/
Both “there were some children left behind” and “yes you did”… classic, classic Les.
I guess i’ll never beat billytheskink!
No, no you won’t.
Oh god, the apology. Bear in mind that it was Les’ two oldest and dearest pals gently poking fun at what a loser he was with the ladies back in high school…which was true. Then Les (smugly sitting there on his porch swing) forced Funky to issue him a groveling apology…which he did, as opposed to punching him in the mouth and banning him from Montoni’s for life.
Re: Susan, remember that at the time Les STILL hadn’t firmly committed himself to Cayla in any substantive way, as he was still groping Imaginary Lisa at every opportunity. He only eventually proposed (invoking Lisa AND cancer all the while) after Cayla basically forced him into it. Les was still sort of flirting with Susan as recently as (shudder) the New Year’s Eve strip (if you haven’t seen that I’m warning you…DON’T). Then, after one ill-advised kiss, he disposed of her like she was no more than garbage. In fact, if I’m not mistaken Susan’s final shot is her walking away with an actual garbage can taking up most of the panel. Seriously.
And it’s come to this: the strip right now is so devoid of any entertainment value (snark included) at all that we’re forced to reminisce about the worst of the worst.
I’d like to slice Tom Batiuk upon a man-sized womandolin. Just sayin’.
There is no way that “Funky Winkerbean” has an actual fanbase. It’s been reduced to the trolls on Comics Kingdom and the blue haired subscribers to the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram.
I betcha most people in Batom®’s own hometown don’t even bother to read the strip. If they did, he would have been subjected to a Mad Max-style banishment a decade ago.