Har har har, I get it. Add “music hipsters” to the list of modern-day whackadoodles. Or maybe it’s a fond homage to those annoying plastic converter things you used to need to play 45 RPM records. Who knows and frankly, who cares? All things considered, this isn’t the worst FW gag I’ve ever seen but DAMN is that gigantic single panel jarring, it’s just huge.
Note the park bench, as it isn’t just any old park bench…it’s a very special park bench. I like how the seasons change in Westview, just instantaneously all at once. That would be so cool in real life, you know?
One final beady-eyed nitpicky point: the floating music notes should be coming from the headphones, shouldn’t they?
Son of Stuck Funky 
Please, not another week of “Funky is fat, old, dying and jogging”. Please.
Isn’t this kind of a broad visual gag for something that pretends to be a quarter-inch from reality?
Well\, at least this goes well with last month’s jogging strips. What a payoff! Truly delayed gratificatin at its best.
In leiu of entertainment how about another weekend discussion: what would be your one piece of advice to TB? For me, it’s: throw away your year-ahead lead time. Dump all the strips and re-write them as the deadlines approach; you can force yourself to be more concise and more topical.
It’s not a bad gag, actually. If this were, say, “F Minus”, I think most readers would chuckle and admire it.
What would be my one piece of advice to Batom®?
I actually have three.
1) Kill off everyone and cancel both comics. Just get it over with. You aren’t going to reach the so-called 50th anniversary, and you know it.
2) Never speak of your insipid comic book fetishes ever again. Or of your boasts of being this great writer that you never were. Or of anything relating to your career.
3) RETIRE and leave the stage for good. Give someone talented like Dana Simpson the clearances for her superior strip, “Phoebe and Her Unicorn.”
Oh, and today’s strip is impractical and unfunny. Typical Batom® material.
I only really have one tip, and I think it would make this strip a lot better:
Stop and really think about how your audience is going to take this strip, and then get somebody to read it first. Take what they have to say seriously.
This would have prevented the months of “Holly is handed comic books”, “Dinkle types”, and “Funky caresses his trainer’s core”.
@SpacemanSpiff55 – I think he’s already done that. Thought about his audience, I mean. And I think he understands that his only audience hates this strip. And he’s decided they must be punished for this. Hence…everything.
The more I think about it (oh GOD HELP me I’m thinking about Funky Winkerbean), I think the “King Kong” strip was a message. The message is, I can do whatever I want, I can lie through my teeth, and the syndicate pays me still. Bite on that, critics!
We’re not dealing with someone who listens.
Wow, so Tommie can write a normal comic. It’s not the best gag, but it’s a gag nonetheless.
My personal theory: Ban Tom inadvertently painted himself into a corner with all that insane melodrama over the years. Now he doesn’t have the energy/desire/ability to keep up with the machinations of his fictional little universe anymore, but his joke writing ability has atrophied over the years so he can’t go back to a gag-a-day format either. So now it’s the worst of both worlds, the occasional weak joke and gobs and gobs of lazy pointless character-driven slop that never goes anywhere and only exists to kill time.
@SpacemanSpiff55: Remember his sock puppet squealing about us internet bullies? We’re dealing with someone who honestly thinks that he IS trying his best to please people only to be picked on for reasons that he (like his avatar Les) is too stupid to understand. The otherworldliness, pomposity and cluelessness that are The Delicate Genius are all Batiuk.
I don’t get you, Funky. Shouldn’t you be smiling wistfully through half-lidded eyes experiencing flashbacks of the good old days? You’re never satisfied!
I agree with the previous comments here. This isn’t gag-a-day anymore. It can’t be. This strip is much too far gone for that by now. The subject matter leaps from PTSD, failed marriages, and Les to stuff like comics, fat jokes, and now crazy dudes running around with vinyl records strapped to their wrists. I mean, I guess I get the intention, but strips like these are just feeble and out of place these days. Look at our deuteragonists compared to the other guy. I mean, really? Today’s strip would have worked around 1996 or so.
The musical notes off the record may be that tiny for a reason. You could hear music faintly on some unamplified record players, but in this case I would attribute at least something to the cans. But that tone arm is all wrong, extending to the centerline of the turntable and making the tone arm too long to function. Oh shit, I’m a vinyl nerd and a beady-eyed nitpicker. Help me, Rhonda.
I guess this gag is only slightly better than the “smart pad” gag from last month. Still, he felt compelled to use both.
Oh, my. I’m reminded of an angry letter the guy who was the dad on Brady Bunch sent the show runner about the thing with the hair tonic. The image he used was Hawkeye and Trapper John trading zingers with Frank and Hot Lips when, BAM!!!, the Adam West Batman rushed into the OR as a means of trying to convince the man that we couldn’t have a realistic family about a blended family AND crazy crap like fancy hair tonics. Schwarz didn’t listen and neither does Batiuk.
Based on this week’s header, looks like the long-awaited Funky Winkerbean – Dondi crossover is about to begin!
Re: the SoSF header…
Either Mickey had a gender swap…
…or Batom® is going to single-handedly set back US-China relations a good 200 years.
No spoilers here, but I can tell you that guy’s smirk will be haunting you by Thursday, I guarantee it.