Today’s strip also wasn’t available for preview. Based on Batiuk’s track record with Crankshaft, I’m assuming we’re in for a solid week of airplane urination “humor”.
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Son of Stuck Funky · The web's premiere source for Funky Winkerbean snark
Son of Stuck Funky 
After two consecutive strips that are vaguely related, I’ll guess today’s strip will be the introduction of another boring and random plot thread.
Coming tomorrow: Funky expresses concern when his mozzarella delivery from California doesn’t arrive on schedule.
Maybe they’ll fly over the Point Dume Fire and put it out with Jff’s pee!
Well, since the strip isn’t here yet…
I know it’s pretty much a common occurrence in SoCal these days, but has anyone noticed that right now there’s a major wildfire (Apple fire) raging about 30 or 40 miles to the east of Hollywood right now? Gosh, do you think some unwary golfer started it? Is the shooting of a maudlin romantic drama based on a maudlin book in jeopardy? And to think Battyuk came up with all this a year ago…is he our 21st-century Nostradamus?
Every so often I feel obliged to post this again, as it’s just so perfect…
Brilliant stuff from the late Dan Ronan — funnier, cleverer and more on point in 6 minutes than Tom Batiuk has been in 30 years.
The 9/11 gag is so on the money, IMO he had the potential to be the greatest SoSF commenter of all time.
My favorite gag is the very special arc about racial integration. The fact the ‘author’ hadn’t realized that schools had been racially integrated for some time. Just like our dear author who tends to jump on parade bandwagons that are already parked at the end of the line.
I cannot watch that enough times.
Same here. It’s a classic.
“The strip went on like that for about 10 years.” Great stuff.
“Samuel Squirrel, the one friend who’s a little nuts…”
Underrated stab at Crazy Harry/Roland/TB’s assorted other “odd” characters, who were always extremely on the nose.
Everything in this lands. My favourite as-yet-unmentioned moment: “The girl!” But he doesn’t miss with any of it, from opening to pay-off. Elegantly written, and impeccably performed — post this as often as you like!
“Did you see all that smoke and that weird blue glow over the nuclear plant?”
“It’s probably just a massive core meltdown. I wouldn’t worry about it. Decoder ring, pizza comic books.”
Uh yeah Pete, I mean they’re just disgusting Californians, right? So who cares? Vapid, greedy, unfeeling West Coasters…all so very very un-Ohioian. Does he even re-read this dialog before he calls it a day? No one makes his characters seem like assholes better than Batiuk does. Perhaps he ran into a bunch of assholes when he visited California to “research” this (ahem) story.
“Did you notice all that smoke when were landing, the smoke I’m mentioning now instead of the moment when I actually noticed it on the plane?”
“It’s climate change. Fires, floods, species dying out, pandemics. I wouldn’t worry about it. Doesn’t affect me, so I don’t give a shit.”
“Well, I doubt it will affect the premiere. The creator of this strip isn’t that predictable.”
“Have you two seen our luggage yet? Is there a restroom around here? My decoder ring is tingling and my bladder is throbbing.”
It’s like he’s checking off a bingo card made of cliches. What we’ve just seen is ‘famous last words.’
I’m trying to decide whether he’s foreshadowing a major plot event (the parallels to the second Wally capture) or if this arc will just trail off like so many before it. Will he kill off Pete, Mindy and Jeff? Is the “Scuba Cop” cover intended as a tribute to departed coworkers by Atomik Comix? Maybe I’m giving TomBa too much credit for plot development, but there does seem to be a lot of telegraphing going on.
I’d love to see how Atomik Comixxx survives with just one sketch artist and an 88 year old retiree reviving her retro marginally popular characters from 60 years ago for pure kitsch value…
What I get from that link is this story will trudge on for an entire month and a half. Wake me up when September ends.
1. Once again, we see that no female characters are ever allowed to have any thoughts or concerns that can’t be instantly overruled by the “men” in their lives… The only exception to this is Cindye, since she married ‘outside’ of the Funkyverse family…
2. It’s funny because news of the wildfire is almost certainly on every TV at every terminal gate, bar and restaurant and selfish Pete can’t even be bothered to even look because there’s nothing in his life that doesn’t revolve around his pathological obsession with almighty comics… He really is nothing more than Les version 1.2!
3. I know, I know, but it’s a personal irk of mine — Isn’t Pete way too old and in way too high of an income bracket to rock his “90s grungy slacker college freshman” -look? Especially on a trip with his fiancee and what I assume is his future father-in-law?
You expect Batty to update his art to reflect modern times? My irk is the way he draws women’s hair. I’ve never seen so many women with a boy’s haircut.
He never got over his crush on Helen Reddy.
Yeah the boys haircuts irk me off too
I HAVE a boy’s haircut and I hate it. Is it that hard to draw a couple of wavy lines?
It’s probably another Funky Winkerbean strip. They’ve become a lot more inane with climate change. I wouldn’t worry about it.
It seems really stupid and poorly written to have a character dismiss a catastrophic event like a wildfire with “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Did you hear those shots?” “Probably an active shooter. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Are you vomiting up blood again?” “Probably the black death. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
Worrying is for people who still value and enjoy their own lives, so we’ve got nothing to worry about.
It’s awful and BatYam seems to have no idea how much of an asshole it makes Pete appear to be. Not even a week ago Pete was all excited about being invited to a premiere, now he’s already all crabby and griping about it, like it’s another thankless task.
Smoke to the north?
Look at a map of Southern California. Malibu is along a long stretch of coast that borders the ocean to the south. Point Dume is practically in the center of it. This statement isn’t just geographically wrong; there is literally no dry land anywhere on earth where Malibu is “to the north.” It’s practically due west of downtown Los Angeles.
It’s not even possible that their flight passed by Malibu, because they came from the east and Malibu is at least 20 miles west of where they’d be landing. Even allowing for circling, alternative airports, great circle routes, growth of the fire, wind patterns, and the possibility that they landed in Chile, there is absolutely no way Mindy saw “smoke to the north.” She’s not even in a window seat!
Why can’t Mindy just say “smoke in the distance”? Because this is Tom Batiuk’s gift: his talent for including small details, and getting them 100% wrong. This isn’t just bad research: it eliminates every possible way the reader might give Mindy’s statement the benefit of the doubt.
I am reminded of Matt Taibbi’s great takedowns of the pompous, vacuous columnist Thomas Friedman. “He does not get these things right even by accident. It’s not that he occasionally fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It’s that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it’s absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. An ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that’s guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.”
I know, the whole thing is stupid in terms of where the fire is burning. Like there’s a LA County golf course, close to the coast, that is not a lush green. They were and are, lush and well kept even in the midst of the drought a couple of years ago. It’s all just typical BatHack bullstuff, he can’t be bother with details, because it’s writing, ya know!
Not to say he isn’t correct, but a hack like Taibbi needs to look in the fuckin’ mirror one of these days. But that’s a discussion for another forum.
It’s always a hoot studying the “extras”— the clothes, hair, posture, etc.
Then I cry for them, because they’re trapped in this strip.
“Supports efforts to stop climate change” probably just got added to somebody’s Pulitzer application
It just occurred to me that the end result of this could just be Pete being inspired to create a new superhero. And Jeff would probably be involved in it somehow so Pete will hire him for Atomik Komix.
JEFF: Wow, look at everything burning! Wouldn’t that be a neato super power?!
PETE: That’s genius! We can call him “The Wildfire”! And his sidekicks could be “Brushfire” and “Greasefire”! And their nemesis would be “The Firefighter”! We’ve got a whole franchise here, let’s call up Mason to option it to him!
Oh, I think that’s almost a certainty. Everything in Funkyland that doesn’t revolve around Les’ ego revolves around inventing new comic books.
And this arc sets up to give us an avalanche of both at once. Lisa’s ghost will save Les from the wildfire. Jeff Murdoch will solve a mystery with the decoder ring. Pete will invent a new comic book that will get a Sunday cover and never be spoken of again. Everyone will declare Starbuck Jones 2 the greatest thing ever created by human hands. Production on Lisa’s Story will stop for some dumb reason, then in a couple months it’ll start all over again from the beginning. Repeat forever.