She’s a network TV news vet who worked her way up from Channel One to the American Broadcasting Company (and back down again); who’s spent time in war zones and who even brokered the hostage swap that freed PFC Wally Winkerbean. Time may not have diminished her looks (as it has for her ex-husband and for every other adult in this strip save Les), but Cindy is filled with trepidation as she primps for her date with Mason Jarr the Movie Star. She can’t even bring herself to apply that black lipstick she’s holding in panel one.
11 thoughts on “‘s Cool, “Girl””
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Son of Stuck Funky 
Seriously, Batiuk really has a strange fixation with Cynthia lately. Given this strip, I assume there’s supposed to be some contrast between her perky high school self and her haggard middle aged self, but there is none. She just looks like she finally realized what a sensible hairdo looks like. Given what happened the last time Batiuk focused on a female character so much, Cynthia might want to look into oncologists.
It’s just variations on the same joke, over and over and over again. Cindy’s not as young as she used to be…OK, understood, but does it have to be her sole defining character trait?
Oh, pardon me, it’s not her sole defining trait, as she also like Mason Jarr, the movie actor. Why is he so hell-bent on deconstructing this character? There’s no rational reason why this woman would suddenly become a gigantic ditz out of nowhere. Old fictional high school grudge? Or old habits? Whatever the reason, it’s really just awful, he really needs to stop with this “rom-com”-type stuff as he’s just terrible at it.
Batiuk’s obsession with tearing down the popular kids who were mean to him in high school is reaching pathological levels. Maybe he could start a therapy group with Greg and Karen Evans of Luann?
I’ve always rather enjoyed Ban Tom’s cavalcade of random anon-o-characters. Like this dude, Johnny Handfull. I wish there was some place where they were all pictured together, like in a huge collage or something. Just anon-o-characters. no one with an official name.
If she was so popular – and stuck up – in high school, how did Cindy wind up married to a schmoe like Funky?
What really annoys me is that this whole thing seems to be a sort of continuation of an arc from either the beginning of Phase Three or a few months before Saint Dead Lisa became Saint DEAD anything. You see, Cindy sought out all the people she’d ever been stuck up to in order to apologize only to be met with a solid wall of indifference because it was high school and she couldn’t help being a vain snot and who is she trying to make feel better anyway?
@JerrytheMacGuy: He wasn’t always the beaten-down and angry slob he is now. At one point, he had ideals, wit and charm; it’s just that his need to be the alpha male eroded all of those things away.
I remember Funky as a cipher in Phase I; Summers came in later in Phase I and I don’t remember her dating anyone. She was just the popular snob with the Farrah Fawcett (I guess?) hair. I don’t know if Batiuk ever depicted them dating; suddenly it was Phase II and they were a couple. Of course, I stopped reading this strip for years at one point so I am a poor historian.
@Rusty, “Of course, I stopped reading this strip for years at one point so I am a poor historian.”
Now, now don’t put yourself down, I’m sure you can still do a better job of continuity than TB.
How much more endearing would this strip be if Cindy still sported that narwhal hairdo?
Not much more? Yeah, OK. But a little bit is better than nothing right?
You know there is an almost amusing point here where if Cindy would reflect in a self aware manner that now she’s flighty as a school girl and she wasn’t flighty when she was a school girl so it might be her time then. But no, rather than that we get the dead eyed stare of bleak despair.