Your genial host TFH returns to guide us all through the holiday madness! My sincerest thanks as always to DavidO, Epicus Doomus, Beckoning Chasm, Oddnoc, and billytheskink for their guest contributions, and most especially to you, the reader. While it seems odd to some that we daily read and analyze a comic strip that makes us mad, it’s always good to commune with those with whom we share something in common, especially around the holidays.
At first glance, today’s strip seems to depict Holly and Funky about to be abducted by aliens. No such luck: it’s just another “taking things to the extreme” gag involving the gazebo tree. Query why, if the lights are so uncomfortably bright, the Winkerbeans are drawn like moths to it, standing so close to the light that it blinds them. Even Batiuk’s Medina neighbors must be scratching their heads over this one: the gazebo’s real-life counterpart is much more tastefully appointed.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Looks like someone just watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Tomorrow’s joke: Funky gives Holly a membership in the Pizza Slice of the Month Club instead of the indoor toilet he’s been promising.
See, I would think that if anything the Westviewian town holiday decorations would be a string of sad, barely visible lights hung all haphazardly and held together with tape. But once again, Batom proves me wrong in the lamest way imaginable. It’s rare to be so unpredictable and so boring at the same time.
A one-panel non-homage Sunday strip? Now that’s lazy. Man, he was really scraping rock bottom while doing these December 2014 strips, the lack of interest just leaps right off the page.
Funky cold Medina.
Since when do Funky and Holly go for walks? Shouldn’t it be Les and Funky?
At some point, the residents of Medina, the faculty and students of Midview High School, and the owners of Luigi’s Pizza have to come to some realization that Batom® is really depicting them all in unrealistic, awful ways, with horrible artwork and miserable characters.
But he’s still the hometown hero of Medina, Grafton Township and Akron, for reasons that escape me. Maybe people don’t read the comics page that much anymore.
(Can I get a guest author to go in and delete the strip please)
TFH–done!
I thought only comic book cover rip-offs merited a full Sunday panel. to be fair, it is the exalted gazebo, the Mecca of Westview.
I’m thinking you used too many words in that run-on sentence, Funky.
There aren’t that many lights on the gazebo. When you look at the center you realize it’s not a lighting problem, it’s a core meltdown. Merry Christmas Westview, cancer for everyone!
Now we know why the Montoni’s decorations are a dreary black-actual expressions of holiday joy repell them like sunlight on vampires.
It’s always the clunky dialog that gets to me. When you’re at the gazebo, looking at the tree in the gazebo, you’re not going to it as “The gazebo tree” Awkward phrasing like this is probably the number one reason I love hating this claptrap.
This, I should think, is the essence of who Batiuk is. He takes an idea that could be possibly amusing and sucks all the wit and charm out of it because of his irritating clumsiness, lack of self-awareness and stupidity. As for the local people cheering him on, maybe they like being represented by a clueless, flat-footed egomaniac.
We can at least be grateful that, during TB’s brief tenure as an educator, he did not teach English composition.
It’s not a blinding glare from lights, it’s the blinding glare from the holiest day in Westview: the Transfiguration of St Lisa.
The only local people I definitely know of who cheer Batom® on are the editors and writers for the Medina Gazette and the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram. It’s not like anyone else in Medina is campaigning for a life-sized statue of St. Les the Righteous Smirker at the gazebo (thankfully!).
I went to the opening of this exhibit yesterday. If you appreciate comic strips as an art form and are within driving distance of central Ahia, I’d highly recommend it. Mort Walker (his son curated the exhibit) was there as well as the president of King Features and Brendan Burford, whom I did not have to courage to ask about what strange hold Batiuk has over him.
BTW, three guesses which oh-so-serious work of sequential art was NOT represented in the show?