A Special Denouncement

It’s about time! I was wondering if we’d ever get there, but today’s strip finally gives us the call back to John Darling we’ve been expecting. Yes, Phil is terrible at his (former) job, just like he was back in 1979. Back then, making fun of the local weather forecaster was a comedy trend surpassed only by making fun of Billy Carter…

JD7-30-79
This strip appeared opposite an ad imploring you to come test drive the all-new Chevrolet Citation…

Oh, for Pete’s sake!

I remain baffled by the pie case at Montoni’s. Who eats pie there?
That’s a rhetorical question of course, nobody eats anything at Montoni’s. Not even Crazy, who is only ever seen there sipping a bottomless coffee or soda and avoiding his job. But still, what’s with the pie case?

27 thoughts on “A Special Denouncement”

  1. Typical Westviewians, their local TV news weatherman is an incompetent moron who no one respects. Do they just prepare for the opposite of whatever he forecasts? That seems inefficient. Or do they take his word for it every time then roll their eyes at his ineptitude? That seems stupid.

  2. If memory serves, wasn’t this one of the strips Batiuk displayed to showcase the new direction the strip was taking with the new art crew? That’s my recollection, and I also remember commenting that the new stuff seemed “funny” as in, “ha ha, a joke.”

    Well, if all that is true, then Batiuk has really played a good one on me. How to diffuse a joke? Easy! Give it five days of tragic backstory. Something I never would have foreseen. Or forecasted! Ha ha, I turn the joke around!

    1. @beckoningchasm If memory serves, wasn’t this one of the strips Batiuk displayed to showcase the new direction the strip was taking with the new art crew?

      Good call there BC!

      1. From that link:

        “He turned out to be the perfect choice and Chuck and I have shared a lot of adventures together riding Crankshaft’s bus.”

        Hmm. I’ve never heard it called THAT before.

      2. Interesting, that strip was already tagged “11-16”. Did we miss a week somewhere? Is TB off his game and only six months ahead instead of his beloved year?

  3. Exactly how old IS Beardo McMailman?? No, never mind the hair that goes from white to gray to brown, sometimes within the span of a week. That doesn’t bother me. I expect the inconsistent drawing, even though there’s supposed to be a new (better) artist (but isn’t). Why is he wearing a tee shirt that nobody over the age of 14 should be wearing? I get it that he “works” in a comic book store. I just get creeped out by 60 year olds dressed like kids. And yes, I’m also thinking about Dead Skunk Head.

    Clearly, Batty has no Creepy Filter. He probably thinks Skunky John is the coolest guy in the comic, whereas he’s straight up creepy. John, that is. Well, Batty too.

    1. If old guys in kid’s t-shirts bother you, don’t ever go to a Comic-Con. If plain old guys in plain t-shirts bother you for some reason I can give you a list of Harrison Ford and Sylverster Stallone movies from the last ten years you shouldn’t watch.

  4. The artwork continues to mystify. Funky’s nose in panel two looks like an ill-fitting prosthesis.


  5. The fact that Channel One is teasing this “special announcement” about recently phired Phil makes me hope that the old weatherman will get the chance to pull an R. Budd Dwyer on live TV. We already know that he has the gun.

    1. I just googled that and saw the unedited version. Yikes! I gotta admit this was pretty disturbing.

        1. I knew the reference. I remember seeing teased out on the local news just short of Budd putting the artillery in his mouth. Now my past curiosity is satiated.

    2. “makes me hope that the old weatherman will get the chance to pull an R. Budd Dwyer on live TV”

      I do remember that, and it would be perfect for a FW character. But since he already has a record in this area, I was thinking good old workplace violence.

      I love the way they use the dismissive word “disgruntled” when they don’t want to admit that the actor may have had good reasons to act the way he/she did………..

  6. If this guy is such a joke, then why do they care about the special announcement about him?

  7. I was going to comment on how banal a joke about inept weather forecasters is and how boring the people making it are but now I’m worried that the forecast will be “Cloudy with a chance of on-air murder-suicide.”

  8. Regarding the pie case, Batty needs a way to make Montoni’s a gathering spot. Who knows of a pizza shop with a counter where people sit all day and drink coffee?

  9. Welcome to Centerville/Westview, where everyone is clownishly incompetent at their jobs, and nobody is ever held accountable.

    1. Off the top of my head I can only think of one FW character who’s truly happy with his/her career…Harry Dinkle. And HIS career mostly consisted of torturing children. Everyone else is either totally ambivalent (Bull, Les, Funky), totally incompetent (Bull, Crankshaft) or utterly miserable (Becky, Linda) and if they weren’t (Cindy, Harry) they were summarily dumped as soon as they outlived their usefulness.

  10. Only in the Funkyverse can someone put in 40+ years of substandard work and have the nerve to be shocked when he’s let go…

  11. Those of you mentioning R. Budd Dwyer and Howard Beale–I’d ask you to consider that either scenario would mean that something interesting happened in Funky Winkerbean. Ponder that for a moment.

  12. Was John Darling a widely read strip?
    Did a lot of newspapers carry it? Of course that was the only way one could read the daily funnies back then, before the Information Superhighway.

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