Month: June 2016

Friday, July 1

Sorry folks, we’ve got one of those occasional instances where today’s strip is not available for preview twice in a row.

So to fill some space in lieu of my typical 20/20(0) insight on today’s new strip, we’ll once again hop in to the WABAC Machine. This time we’re traveling back 30 years (or is it 40 in strip time? maybe 44?) to July 1, 1986. Wonder what was going on back then?

Dinkle? Really? What a terrible coincidence…

Or is it? The story arc for the week of the 4th in 1986 involves Dinkle learning that the Westview High School marching band has been chosen to perform in New York City for a 4th of July celebration. This necessitates coming up with a replacement band for the Westview town square performance on the 4th. Dinkle, naturally, choses the only other “band” in Westview at the time, Crazy Harry’s air guitar group. On top of that, John Darling AND Crankshaft also show up.

Looks like TB is going back to the well in 2016.

Thursday, June 30

I am happy sorry to say that today’s strip was not available for preview.

Instead, please enjoy a trite Throwback Thursday Funky Winkerbean strip!
What was going on in the Batiukverse on June 29, 1996? Only one of the Funky Winkerbean-iest strips in the history of ever!

It’s everything that has made this strip what it is since the middle of Act II except for cancer and comic books, all masterfully worked into just 3 panels:
Lisa, Les, Les being insufferable, a woman being unfathomably interested in Les, writing, Lisa, Montoni’s, bricks, John Darling, Lisa, smirking, Les smirking, Les’ face being punchable, Les’ face being punchable while smirking, and even LISA.

Ugh-mblebrag

Oh, of course today’s strip is going to drag the Bedside Manor band back into this. I had my fingers crossed that something else would happen, but really, who didn’t see this coming? Hopefully we’ll get the lucid Mort Winkerbean this time.

I hope the Bedside Manor ensemble’s ill-fated record deal involved a lot of Sousa marches, or at least a slow-paced take on The Ballad Of The Green Berets, because they’ve got less than a week to rehearse. Looks like Dinkle’s about to write a check that his baton can’t cash.

The background characters almost make up for it all, though. Almost.
Let’s see… we’ve got Wooly Willy, Hawaiian giraffe-man, the no-neck dad from “Dustin”, and a blonde smart enough to hide her face so she can always deny having been an extra in Funky Winkerbean. I would much rather be dropping in on their conversations.

Back To Square One

Oh good, TB doesn’t have Lefty lollygag in explaining her community band problem in today’s strip. Yeah, it’s a stupid problem and it could have easily been explained in yesterday’s strip, but we also very well could have spent a week getting to this point. Unfortunately, I expect we’re still spending a week with these two.

Ah, the national community band competition… a great American 4th of July-ish tradition. Yes indeed, it’s up there with Coney Island hot dog eating contest and the international stingray decoration show and that thing Jimmy Smits used to host on public television.

In the reality that is recorded on the internet, I was able to find two things comparable to Lefty’s competition, but nothing exactly like it:

Note your cuts of meat

Hello folks, billytheskink back for another round of kicking off our daily deconstruction of the Batiukverse. As always, I hope to facilitate a strong discussion by highlighting key aspects of each comic and offering a basic analysis to be exapnded upon in the comments. When today’s strip sends that plan off the rails in a few seconds, I will likely resort to comparing the characters to various basketball players from the 1970s or reciting the specs of vintage Macintoshes.

Harry Dinkle is hosting a barbeque, which is a new thing for him… I think. Probably a new thing, given how overdone those hamburgers look. The phrase “Harry Dinkle barbeque” sounds like a setup on a hidden camera show aimed at 7-year olds. What a Harry Dinkle barbeque entails however, making poorly-timed complaints about the community band, sounds like a setup on a hidden camera show aimed at nobody.

Anyways, did you know?
– That the Macintosh IIfx, released in 1990, ran at an impressive 40 MHz and would remain the fastest Macintosh in existence until the release of the Quadra 840av in 1993. Originally priced at $9,900, the Macintosh IIfx cost roughly as much as a new, base model Ford Tempo in 1990.
– That Harry Dinkle did not become the “World’s Greatest Band Director” until after he changed his last name from Dinkl?