June 2020 – Page 4 – Son of Stuck Funky

Doo Diligence

So Mason is insisting on holding a phony casting call just to assure Les that he’s putting every available resource into finding the perfect Lisa, even though he’s already decided who’ll play her? So they’re going to waste thousands of dollars and everyone’s valuable time just to put the smug bearded dick with ears at ease? BatHam’s insane “inside Hollywood” fantasies are spiraling out of control again. This is the most laughable cancer movie premise yet and they haven’t even settled on the cast yet. For anyone else setting your story on the set of a Hollywood movie would have all sorts of potential, but just like with Starbuck Jones he instead opts to focus on the most mundane aspects, like picking up a guy who’ll be sitting in during casting. Yet another fanciful sub-universe full of lore, characters and lingo where absolutely nothing ever happens. Sigh.

Why is Cindy always chauffeuring Les around? Isn’t she some sort of newscaster? It always amazes me how everyone in the Funkyverse always seems to have nothing better to do at any given moment. “The same driver”…he mentioned another arc, albeit a way more recent one this time. He’s suddenly doing that all the time and I find it kind of unnerving.

Chemical Snore Fare

Link To The Latest Breaking Lisa News

Awww, how adorable. Cindy will graciously refrain from being a psychotic, jealous, sexually-threatened shrew while her husband does his job. How very thoughtful of her. Why she needs to be involved in the cancer movie is another question entirely, but that’s just how things work in the Funkyverse. By the time this is over Pete will be “head writer”, Boy Lisa will be “storyboarding” it and Funky will be running craft services, from Ohio, via Skype.

You don’t normally see a lot of cleavage in the strip. Not that I’m demanding more, mind you, in fact quite the opposite is true. But, for reasons only known to him and probably best left unexplored, he had to make sure to remind readers that Cindy is still hot, just in case we somehow missed every Cindy arc since her ignominious Act III return. The characters in this strip “grow” more slowly than stalagmites.

In case you’re counting, “Cindy is jealous over Mason’s co-star” is the sixth old arc he’s mentioned over the last four weeks. It’s officially a trend now and not just a weird FW anomaly. Someone’s wallowing in nostalgia again, why is anyone’s guess. It seems that having an excuse to use Lisa again sort of jump-started his interest a little, which had been noticeably waning over the last, uh, five years or so. Sigh.

…that the Play is the Tragedy “Les,” and Its Hero–

Link to today’s strip.

…is the Enabler Cayla.

You know, Les and Lisa are horrible, horrible people. But today’s entry makes a strong case that their infection has spread beyond the immediate Moore family, and has made its way into the outer world. Soon, entire cities, entire nations will fall as the Lisa-Worship pandemic spreads to every corner of the globe.

Because here’s Cayla, Les’ current wife, asking Les to make sure that Lisa, Les’ dead wife–dead at least twenty years now, mind–is protected from the machinations of the cruel, uncaring world of entertainment–you know, the slugs who push awful contrived entertainments on the (shudder) masses so they can sell toilet paper and cheap auto loans.

And this is something Cayla cannot stand. Because Lisa’s reputation, Lisa’s legacy, is the only thought she has.

Not a thought for herself remains. Not a thought for herself, her own child, her marriage, her future. It’s all Lisa now. It will never be anything other than Lisa. Lisa.

I thought I was being clever the other day when I referenced “Colossus: The Forbin Project.” (And c’mon, I kinda was. And if you haven’t seen that film, then you should.) But the real reference film here is far more chilling. From 1956.

Well, it started, for me it started last Thursday. In response to an urgent message from my nurse I’d hurried home from a medical convention I’d been attending. At first glance, everything looked the same. It wasn’t. Something evil had taken possession of the town.

The “Colossus” movie ended with Dr. Forbin’s defiant “Never!” The book ended similarly, but included a final paragraph:

Never?

Anyway, that’s all from me for now. Thank you all for your indulgence, your creativity and your knowledge. It always makes hosting this place a treasure, when the actual strips make it a chore. I learn nothing from the strip, but learn a lot from you all. Kudos!

Tune in Monday, when your snarker extraordinaire Epicus Doomus takes the center seat in the Funkyverse’s most-watched game show, “How Bad Can It Get?”

Best Fiends Forever!

Link to today’s strip.

Lots of good speculation this week about what Mason might do, now that he’s learned of the Lisa Tapes, but as always there’s more creativity in the comments here than in Batiuk’s entire studio. Mason just makes his excuses and leaves, and from the looks of it, he’s not doing anything interesting like hiding a couple of the tapes under his shirt. Just another extraordinarily lame “joke” and we’re done.

Think about that for a moment. The Lisa Tapes were mentioned, Les was extremely snotty about them, and the subject was dropped. Mason didn’t even ask what was on them. Long-time readers such as we (and probably only we) know all about the Tapes, but any casual reader is going to be baffled by their mention. “Well, gosh, what are these tapes? I didn’t learn anything about them!” Batiuk probably thinks that since the Tapes are Known to Him, they’re Known to Everyone–something that happens a lot to folks who work on a project for a long time. The details are so ingrained in his mind that he thinks everyone is similarly familiar with them. “Everyone knows Dinkle hates vanilla ice cream, no need to address that at all, the joke works fine as is.”

But the casual reader has to be brought up to speed for a situation to make sense. As Stan Lee famously said, “Every comic book is someone’s first comic book.” Without the background, this mythical casual reader will soon become an ex-reader. Here’s the problem, though–Batiuk can’t talk about the tapes themselves. Batiuk thinks the tapes are cute and endearing and evidence of the great love that Lisa generated.* But any casual reader–and, realistically, anyone else–would find them horrifying, evidence of deep mental problems in Lisa, Les, Cayla, and anyone else caught in Lisa’s web. A casual reader would be repelled–the characters, Les especially, would be revealed in the full glory of their loathsomeness.

The cynic in me has another answer, though–Batiuk hopes this will intrigue a casual viewer into taking the next step–“Since I must learn what those tapes are about, I guess I’ll have to buy the books to find out more!”

It’s right there, between the second and third panels.

*PS: I agree with Comic Book Harriet that a tape left for a child by a dying parent can be a touching display of parental love. But that’s not what Lisa is doing here. She’s never told Les or Summer that she loves them. Every tape is designed to run every aspect of their lives according to her will.

The tapes…which tantalize Onanism

Link to today’s strip.

Les’ fetish has never seemed so sick. Of course he can’t let part of his shrine be glimpsed by an unbeliever. I’m surprised he’s allowing Mason to touch them. I’d have thought Les would have punched Mason in the face at such sacrilege. (Mason: “Huh, I thought I felt a light breeze just then. Did I forget to close the door?”)

This and yesterday’s strips really should have Mason backpedaling furiously toward the door, his voice a gibbering quaver of terror as he makes his excuses. But no, he sees these tapes as some rich vein of unobtainable treasure, sure to give his movie the gravitas it requires. In this terrible, terrible comic strip everyone worships Lisa. Not one person sees anything wrong with this.

As seen in the strips highlighted yesterday, even Lisa thinks she is an object of worship. It’s clear to her that any “other woman” would never supplant Lisa in Les’ heart. All this “other woman” can do is bake cookies for him, anoint his brow with oil, and make sure the Lisa shrines are properly dusted. Les’ heart is forever bound to Lisa. “Moving on” is something that Lisa (and Batiuk) cannot comprehend, much less allow.

Hey, Les, maybe there’s a tape in that bunch labelled “For the actor who wants to produce a movie about me.” What do you want to bet? And, if there is…what do you do now?