The squick continues in today’s strip…
Good grief Linda, you two aren’t even done moving all of Bull’s junk to the car and you’re trying to set up a date?! Also, “buying you A lunch”?! Who talks like that? And the worst part, you take Buck to Montoni’s! I’m pretty sure taking someone in the throes of CTE-dementia to Montoni’s is at least a misdemeanor. It certainly should be.
Buck, pick another topic. Linda has already heard all about “those privileged @#*%!!” from… oy, Brownie Point. She would know more if Crazy hadn’t stolen Bull’s DVD of Westview’s game against them… but that’s no reason to fill her in. She was married to a guy who reminisced in excess about his high school football career for 30 years, so she’s probably heard enough… eh, scratch that. Maybe listening to high school football stories is her thing.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Bull’s widow and Bull’s best friend and no one’s said a single nice thing about Bull thus far. Just wry quips and annoying banter, this couldn’t possibly have any less to do with Bull at all. Today’s strip is the worst one of this arc so far, if for no other reason than only being an excuse to work “Brownie Point” into the strip again. It’s not nearly as hilarious as BatHam seems to think it is.
A high school where all the kids drove Jags? Something tells me that the last time Batiuk saw a high school, he was watching “Twilight.” Which serves him right.
More like any John Hughes or Howard Deutch movies where the rich kids go to the same high school as the poors, because God knows the wealthy never, ever send Chas, Scooter or Trent to private school.
Brownie Point? As in Alice B. Toklas brownies? “Kids driving expensive cars” is usually a sign of “the kid behind the wheel makes a lot of money selling pot.” Or whatever kids these days use to get stoned.
Hey, they appear to be eating and enjoying that pizza. Are you sure it’s Montoni’s? (Yeah, of course it is, because God forbid anyone ever eat at the Westview Dale Evans or some other place.) And of course the only thing Buck can think of to talk about with a high school football rival’s recently-minted widow is…high school football.
In other news…”Brownie Point”? I’m sorry, but how does an exclusive (and, I assume, private) school get that name? Brownie points are what people earn by helping others and doing good deeds, or by trying to impress one’s work superiors, not something automatically handed out to the wealthy and privileged.
Once again the Lard of Language tries to jam a square peg of a phrase into the round hole of humor he dug himself into and seems unable to fill.
I think “Falutin High” plays better than “Brownie Point” but what do I know, I don’t even have one comic strip let alone two of them. I’d be happy to share some of these ideas with BatYam but alas, he’s not interested.
Dale Evans…LOL. McArnold’s, Burger Royal, Windy’s, Taco Gong (Mexican/Asian fusion), Crabappleby’s and everyone’s favorite, Six Guys.
I’d be all over “Taco Gong” if it existed
I hate privileged kids…yeah Batty, sock it to them. But I love perpetual victims like Wally and Adeela….they just can’t get a break.
Batty’s work is so timely and fresh…unbelievable…what is his secret sauce?
Tune in tomorrow when Buck reminsces about Big Walnut Tech’s other rivals, Morse Science and Communist Martyrs High!
Shoes for industry comrade.
Apparently youth, here, doesn’t seem to know about the disappearance of the old school!
This comic is improved slightly if you imagine that Buck sounds like Curly.
Who would be the best voice actor for the other characters?
I figure Les needs to be Gilbert Gottfried or William F. Buckley. Take your pick.
Many on this site have long pegged Eddie Deezen to play Les if the strip ever received a film adaptation, which I think suits the character well.
There was an early 90s high school performance of the Funky Winkerbean’s Homecoming play floating around the internet a while back where the kid who played Les employed a Deezen-esque 80s movie nerd voice and demeanor. It was effective in making me despise the character.
What about a FW/”Dobie Gillis” mash-up? Dwayne Hickman could supply the voice of Funky, Bob Denver as Les, Sheila James as Holly, Tuesday Weld as Cindy, Michael J. Pollard as Crazy Harry, and a cameo by Frank Faylen as Ed Crankshaft. Gilbert Gottfried could supply the ghost voice of Dead St. Lisa.
Eddie Deezen has to be Les. Mike Judge’s Hank Hill would be good for Funky. For Buck, I see a kind of John Candy “Johnny La Rue” type voice, particularly the snarky laugh.
For the rest of them, just pull in people off the street. You don’t even have to bring them back if the character has another appearance. If Batiuk has no need for continuity, why should we?
Soon to be a minor motion picture, produced by one of CME’s rival studios on Puberty Row.
It must have been weird for Brownie Point to play team after team whose mascot was the Batiukmobile.
Yuck. More awkward banter about a subject no one should actually care about. Just another typical day in Batiukland.
Sigh. I almost want to give TB credit for attempting something that ordinarily would seem somewhat heartwarming, even optimistic…but I can’t! It’s so poorly done and hastily scraped together, like burned bits in a frying pan.
It doesn’t feel right. Nobody in this town will ever let Lisa’s legacy disappear. Not her husband’s books, not her tapes, not her annual runs, not even her bench at the park. So, how is it okay for everything about Bull to get swept into a dustpan and thrown away in the face of his bereaved (?) widow’s budding romance? With a guy who has the same degenerative condition, mind you!
It makes sense when you realize Tom Batiuk has no concept of characterization. Every character in Funky Winkerbean has the same point of view: his.
TB hates Bull, so every character treats Bull with disdain. No thought is given to how those characters might have their own opinions about Bull based on their own interactions with him in the story. TB lionizes Dead Lisa. So everyone lionizes Dead Lisa, to the point of movie stars indulging Les’ unhealthy fixation on her death.
Different characters having different points of view is what makes fiction interesting. But that never happens in the Funkyverse. That’s why it’s so, so dull.
As further evidence: notice there’s no conflict in Funky Winkerbean. All the characters just walk around agreeing with each other, and smirking at each other’s indiscernible jokes. If someone disagrees with something, it’s in the form of a thought bubble, like “How does that help me?” or “The movie will probably never get made anyway.”
Occasionally there’s a strawman opponent to show a wrong point of view, or a deus ex machina character to give Batiuk’s many author avatars everything he thinks he should have. Chester Hagglemore and Kitschy Swoon are prime examples of the latter, handing out massive gifts and checks to comic people just for being comic book people.
FW is really the most spectacularly self-indulgent media property that exists.
Wow, this should be the preface for the next volume of the FW collection.
It provides a lot more useful information than the dribble Batty writes.
Great point. It’s amazing how many of Batiuk’s decisions are made with nothing more than a “it’s there” reasoning.
Why did Linda marry Bull? Because Bull needed a wife and Linda was there. Why did Funky marry Holly? Because after he and Cindy were inexplicably hooked up over the Act I-II gap and divorced, Funky needed a new wife, and Holly was there. There wasn’t any acknowledgement on Batiuk’s part that these people would need to develop any sort of relationship before they got married. The two characters being single was sufficient all on its own. Everything else about their relationships was hand-waved away.
And even the most developed relationship of Rachel and Wally was done with a sense of inevitability when Rachel first expressed interest in Wally. There was absolutely no suggestion that Rachel might reconsider when she realizes the depth of his problems, that she might not want to take those on herself, especially considering her own situation as a single mother. Nope, Rachel and Wally were there.
Hell, look at Les and Cayla. There wasn’t much there, and it appears that Cayla’s interest in Les primarily came about because she was impressed with his depth of character due to his obsessive devotion to Lisa. (There’s another relationship that started because “they’re there”)
Look at Gross John and Becky. Guy was willing to propose after two dates. And after that, nothing. Wally went away again and Becky hooked up with him because he’s there.
It happens with everything. Mason and Cindy. Cliff and Vera. Rocky and Cory. There’s not a single marriage or engagement in this comic strip that didn’t dispense with the relationship between the characters. They met and that was that.
So yeah, I’ve now convinced myself that Linda and Buck are going to get together, because after all, they’re there.
I’ll give today’s strip credit for one thing: at least it moved the story forward a quarter of an inch. At this rate, Buck and Linda will be holding hands by next Christmas.
Actually, I expect this relationship to bloom just in time for Buck’s CTE to kick in and forget all about it. That’s a Funky Winkerbean story arc if ever I heard one.
As bad as today’s strip is, it’s the only one this week that’s had anything close to a joke in it, such as it was.
What are the chances that TB is going to actually go anywhere with his prestige CTE arc, instead of just having Linda and Buck talk about the same things for one week out of each month until the 50th anniversary comes?
Wow…these are 60 year old adults and their idea of lunch is a $20 pizza and 2 soft drinks. Gosh Linda, I’m sure Buck would have appreciated a more substantial meal ( Longhorn, Applebees, Chilis, Olive Garden, etc.,) after helping you get rid of the reminders of your deceased husband. But then again, Westview is pizza, pizza and only pizza.
AAAaaaaand Buck just lost his shot at hot widow Linda action. If a girl asks you on a date, you do not spend that date talking about your high school football career while she silently sucks down soda.
In Westview, going to Montoni’s and talking about high school is considered foreplay.
And the action begins when the Band Box plays Springsteen’s “Glory Days.”
Okay I get it — Rich people in the Funkyverse are EVUL unless they’re publishing comics (Chester) or making Hollywood movies about Lisa Moore (Masone) while putting dozens of Funkyverse cronies on the payroll with do-nothing jobs…
Yes, that is true. Comics=Lisa=good. All else = ebil.
That was exactly my thought. If Linda’s buying, Linda gets to talk.
This might have worked when he was a hot-shot jock in high school but now? Not so much. Actually, even back then he surely had a better chance of scoring by bragging about his wins than griping about being relatively poor.
Linda may have surpassed Les as THE MOST despicable character in this “comic”.
Hey! Buck Futt is still in the running!