What could cap this story arc any better than today’s strip?
It was never about Marianne, cyberbullying, suicide, or Hollywood vanity… it was always about Mason’s sainthood, as it were. Cindy’s rampant insecurity (on display again today, if winked at) serves to highlight Mason’s good nature for sticking with her. Marianne’s freak out happened largely to provide contrast to Mason’s unfazed reaction to internet criticism. Mr. Director’s and the police’s failure to locate Marianne? What do you think…
Yes, what better way to top off a whole two weeks devoted to building up Saint Mason than with Saint Mason taking Cindy out for a snazzy Southern California Christmas experience? He’s pretty great, huh?
On a brighter note, I would like to sincerely wish all of our commenters and readers (you too TB) a Merry Christmas and wonderful holiday season.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Good thing Cindy specified which Marianne (Winters) she was talking about, otherwise we might have gotten her mixed-up with one of the other Mariannes who almost killed themselves recently. And Mason always speaking in that wryly sarcastic way and taking those silly little digs at Cindy’s insecurity stopped being funny several seconds before his first-ever appearance.
Funky Winkerbean reminds me of childhood–specifically, watching a brightly-colored balloon deflate over the course of a couple of weeks, leaving nothing but a limp sack tied to a string.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all. May your travels be safe and your gatherings be pleasant and joyful.
Boom, and there it is. Cindy is jealous. That’s all it was ever about.
Merry Christmas! It’s not the gift you asked for, but it’s what you unwrapped.
This little quote that appears above every comic at the Comics Kingdom site is always a hoot:
But it’s especially ridiculous today, where the strip features a movie star treating his newsanchor fiancée to an expensive meal during a day trip to an island.
Interesting metaphor to use after two weeks of black-and-white strips.
@beckoningchasm:
I can think of at least four characters off the top of my head in this strip who could probably best be described as “limp sacks”.
Merry Christmas to everyone. 🙂
You’d think that super newswoman Cindy would be all over this story, I mean, a famous actor tried, or at least thought of committing suicide, and she could get an exclusive from Marianne about the trials of sexism in Hollywood, internet bullying, and mental health issues — you’d think! But not our Cindy, she goes straight to Hotel Coronado, exchanges smirks and snide smiles with her hero, and bypasses a chance to jumpstart her foundering career. What a putz!
I mean her floundering career, I’m a putz at spelling!
Well, this was never a surprise, was it? Just as Batiuk thinks that a God-awful serial is the apex of cinema, he thinks that those trashy and moronic Silver Age Flash comics are the perfect template for storytelling. They too had a stupid hero who did something ridiculous and get praised for being just better than everyone else despite not actually earning it really.
Merry Christmas to all!
BTW, what happed to Cindy’s face in the last panel?
Her face looks puffy from being beaten up and her eye sockets appear to have been rearranged.
Possibly we see the results of bipolar disorder?
Smug, condescending, and vaguely sexist-in other words, the perfect end to this arc. Merry Fucking Christmas!
@louder
Batty doesn’t believe real news comes from the Internet. Once Cindy got kicked out of her TV gig in NYC, that was it, no more news reporting.
@louder,
“I mean her floundering career, … ”
There’s been something fishy about this since the beginning.
or
TB in another attempt to be taken seriously starts drawing Cindy in the Cubism style.
Here’s another question for the “reality-based” strip – We’ve had Thanksgiving and now the winter holiday (Christmas/Chanukah/Festivus/Saturnalia/Solstice – insert the one you celebrate). Don’t Cindy and Mason have family they could be visiting instead of driving down to San Diego for dinner?
I think Batiuk is officially bored with Ohio.
@Gerald – yeah, kind of surprised they aren’t in a booth at Montoni’s for the holiday. Didn’t Mason say he wanted to move to Westview?
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Considering that Marianne Winters is Summer’s doppelganger, she really isn’t all that beautiful…
That’s one thing that always occurs to me in a strip like this. Until Les Moore galumphed into Mason Jarr’s life, he apparently had no friends, no family, no girlfriend/wife, no community that he was a part of, no entourage like, say, Leonardo DiCaprio’s, no groups of female admirers despite the fact that he’s supposed to be a hot, successful actor. He has no handlers, no personal assistant, no one who helps him with his day-to-day responsibilities like a personal trainer or a nutritionist (does he vacuum his house himself? Does he make himself breakfast?), no agent, and no advisors. He was a blank slate. He literally had no one.
The only thing we’ve learned about him, beyond the fact that he’s a big time actor, is that he starred in a movie called “Dino Deer”, but we’ve been given no information about it whatsoever. We don’t know if it was a big budget blockbuster, or a television movie, whether it was financially successful or unsuccessful.
And most amazingly, here’s a guy who, let’s consider him WinkerbeanWorld’s version of George Clooney, does not inspire any awe or fanfare when he shows up in Westview. No one geeks out when he shows up. No one ever gushes about how he loved Mason in his movies. No one is stunned into silence by his presence, not wanting to say something stupid. No one’s even asked him for his damn autograph, for Christ’s sake. And no one is stunned when the aging hot chick from the local high school just glides right in and gets him to propose marriage to her.
It’s called (appallingly, disgracefully) bad writing.
Merry Snarkmas, everyone. @billytheskink: That CK blurb is what infuriates me because there’s only 1 term that’s accurate, “contemporary issues.” The rest is the equivalent of false advertising, and someone should mount a campaign to shame CK into either changing it or removing it because it’s insulting to their customers, threaders.
CK has actually updated the blurb. Now it’s much wordier, but it still leads off with a lie. The first phrase: “Tom Batiuk’s popular Funky Winkerbean…”
The character profiles are laughably outdated, so there’s still that. http://comicskingdom.com/funky-winkerbean/#characters
And another thing, no waiter worth his salt would attempt to open a wine bottle like that. The corkscrew with the hinged lever is called “the waiter’s friend” for a reason. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=waiters+friend+corkscrew&t=ipad&ia=products
@oddnoc
I think FW used to be a lot more popular before they started focusing on cancer and misery. Not sure how anybody but us snarkers gets anything out of it now.
@ odnoc –
Good eyes regarding the waiter. It’s even worse, though. Judging by the shape of the glasses and the contents shown in the last panel, it looks like they’re having a sparkling wine (champagne, Asti Spumante or the like). You don’t use a corkscrew on those wines at all.
Meanwhile, for Christmas, under the tree I find…The Complete Funky volumes 4 and 5. Did the strip become worthy of snarkiness by then, or does that happen after the graduation/time jump?