Month: October 2018

Pair-able of the Sour

Fair or unfair, the military briefing-college class parallels continue in today’s strip. Wally and Adeela are bad at engaging others in conversation. Professor Forehead makes Ralph from Sally Forth proud by assigning a group project on day one so he doesn’t have to spend any time at all lecturing these students. Buddy may have disappeared… I’m sorry that I am just recapping the strip, but I don’t know what else to say here.

What will happen when Wally and Adeela finally speak to each other (presumably) three and a half weeks from now? The suspense is mildly irritating me.

Syllabuster

It is not really fair for me to question the comparison of a military briefing to first day of an unidentified community college class as in today’s strip. While I have my suspicions about how appropriate the comparison is, I have only experienced the latter situation.

I will, however, point out that both Colonel Crew-Cut and Professor Forehead are awkwardly stating what both their audience in the room already know and what newspaper comic strip readers could reasonably infer without such clunky exposition. It is like TB leading off each strip with a drawing of him saying:

The following is a comic strip I wrote. It carries the weight of substantial ideas. Silver Age Flash is also important literature.

Uh, maybe I shouldn’t have thrown that idea out there…

Tardee-la

Nice as that introduction is, Epicus, I don’t know if my return is triumphant. Even so, billytheskink is here for a couple of weeks of wading through the marsh that is TB’s latest “substantial idea”.

Last week’s slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow build up continues in today’s strip. I guess this is supposed to build suspense while we wait for Wally to become uncomfortable enough around Adeela to win an award or at least generate a Tuesday Arts & Entertainment section quarter-page story about how Funky Winkerbean is more serious than Sherman’s Lagoon.

But there is no suspense in this strip. There is only Dilbert’s brother, the Human Bowling Pin:
FunkyDilbert

Sunday October 14

Link To Sunday’s Strip

Coming tomorrow: the triumphant return of billytheskink!

Sunday’s strip is, as usual, unavailable for preview. What will it be? Another comic book cover? “Wallace McHero and Budrick the Space Dog”. A continuation of whatever this Wally nonsense is about? Something totally unrelated? Sundays are always a crap shoot (emphasis on crap), anything can happen (so to speak) and it’s as unpredictable as a line of Keisha dialog. My guess? I’m running with the theory that this “Adeela” character is Wally’s Afghani girlfriend who lost an arm when Wally got hammered at the annual enlisted man’s ball and crashed his Jeep, then she dumped him for a Pakistani comic book virgin dude after believing he was dead. But the joke’s on HER because he WASN’T!

And that’s it for me for now, I’ll be back right around when the last leaf falls and the blizzards begin, or “November” as it’s known in the Funkyverse.

Issues Of Futures Passed

Link To Today’s Strip

Poor, poor Wally. At long last everything appears to finally be going his way. He’s about to graduate with a coveted six year degree in pizzeria management, he’s once again able to freely mingle and fraternize with co-eds and his uncle is about to bestow upon him the highest honor a Westviewian can achieve. So naturally the Great Pulitzer Nominee is setting him up for yet another brutal gut-punch, another cruel setback, another trigger that will send his PTSD into overdrive and destroy the happiness he’s painstakingly built for himself over the last several years.

Apparently “Adeela” is some sort of new character hailing from the war-ravaged Middle East, a character who just happens to be enrolling at Westview Community College just as Wally reaches the apex of his long and painful recovery. And if I know my FW, this Adeela will probably be a one-armed radioactive comic book fanatic who stepped on a “bouncing Betty” on the way to the chemo ward after gaining a lot of weight. Lord only knows where this might be going but if Wally’s involved it’s a safe bet that it’s nowhere good.