Today’s strip was not available for preview. I predict it’s either a single panel of Cindy and Marianne in bikinis, with Cindy bemoaning her figure, or Jeff in a cave pretending to be a spaceman. Or, knowing Batiuk, it could be Buck coming to visit an inexplicably alive Bull.
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Days until Funky Winkerbean’s 50th Anniversary
Funky Winkerbean made its debut on March 27, 1972. Click here for a countdown of days until the fiftieth anniversary and hopefully Tom Batiuk's retirement.
Son of Stuck Funky · The web's premiere source for Funky Winkerbean snark
Son of Stuck Funky 
Spacemanspiff85, sorry you drew the short straw as far as getting a whole week of “not available” strips!
It’s fine. 🙂 Coming up with something to say about nothing is actually easier than coming up with something worthwhile to say about the typical Funky Winkerbean strip.
LOL!
It was an especially bad draw. I’ve authorized HR to make sure spacemanspiff85 doesn’t get a copy of “Lisa’s Story” as a parting gift, as he’s clearly suffered enough. Around here that’s known as a “bonus”.
And the odds are you would be accurate anyway…………………….
It looks like Mason is going to kill someone in his car.
*rubs lucky rabbit’s foot* Please, please, please, let it be Les.
“Damn him, it will take months to order a new Gucci fender!”
I doubt Les would dent a car at all.
He would if it hits that thick skull of his.
He can get there faster than the ambulance!
I like to think that’s the face Mason makes every time he’s driving away from a meeting with Les.
“Goddamn asshole makes me go to New York to see where his dead wife found a quarter, but he’s got a goldmine of video and he won’t even let me look at it??!! And what the fuck is his problem with Marianne? Ugh, it’s one thing after another with this guy! Why did I ever want to do this movie? ‘The playground is closed for repairs’? I’m going to get a fucking Razzie for this shit. That’s what I get for not reading the book first. And Mister Precious Lisa needs to get his eyes off my wife. If I hear ‘when we were in high school’ one more time, I’ll fucking murder them both. I’m the biggest action star in the world, and I’m following a shitty English teacher around suburban Cleveland in a rented Honda Civic. Klaus Kinski didn’t need his ass kissed this much! God, I wish a huge fire would break out and rescue me from this shitshow.”
Did this reporter escape from a Dick Locker-era Dick Tracy strip? Woof!
I was thinking that he was supposed to look like Superman, as a fun visual gag for the audience, but Superman looks so generic without his undies and cape (by design) that it’s hard to tell.
Oh no, not CHANGING WIND DIRECTIONS! In Westview the wind never changes direction, it always comes straight down at extremely high velocity.
What would be really cool now would be a full week of all-black panels, like when Funky crashed his car that time, followed by a Sunday strip featuring a blackened charred landscape. In the second to last panel there’d be a rescue worker shoveling some human remains into a bag and we’d see something fall from the shovel, followed by the reveal that it’s Les’ wallet.
I mean yeah, an arc about a wildfire he saw one time is a major step up from doing one about, for example, a squirrel he saw through his studio window, but why in the name of the Funkyverse did he feel compelled to include it in the cancer movie arc? Why not do a wildfire arc AND a cancer movie arc? The guy has two ideas all year and he crams them all together into one big mess, it’s just so bizarre yet somehow totally in character too.
But it would turn out the wallet was the same one stolen by the hipster pickpockets in NYC, all those years ago. They kept it as a good-luck charm when they moved to California.
“And where will this strip go tomorrow? Which way is the wind blowing?”
“What they’re NOW calling the Point Dume Fire?” They were calling it that several days ago when it was on the news in Ohio (see last Sunday’s strip). Where have you been, heretofore unseen TV newsman? And is it just me, or does firefighter #2 have a hose stuck up his tuchis? Oddly, that’s how I thought this week’s “Crankshaft” would end, after Ed fell off his ladder (“Million-to-one shot, doc!”).
Seriously, did we even need today’s installment of “The Cowering Inferno?” We all knew there was a fire in the greater L.A. area that was going to somehow adversely affect the two subsets of people (Les/Mason/Cindy/Marianne, Pete/Cindy/Jeff, or some other combination thereof) we have been oh-so-eagerly following for the last couple of months. Telling us the fire is changing direction when we have no idea where everyone is with reference to said fire doesn’t do a darn thing to provide information, increase tension, or make us care. This is worse padding than the girl I took to junior-year Homecoming, Battyuk.
Batiuk doesn’t do foreshadowing. He yells the big surprise shocking twist over and over and over to make sure nobody can possibly miss it/fill space. “CANCER! CANCER! CANCER!”. “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!”. “CTE! CTE! CTE!”. But somehow it’s supposed to be a shock when something happens.
Oh, no! The fire that’s 25 miles away from the main characters has changed direction slightly!
USA! USA! USA!
To paraphrase Cayla as she’s enjoying way too many drinks with her friends back home, “His trouble is, he moves too damn fast when he needs to slow down and he’s slow as hell when he needs to be hurry up.”
Oh no! Nooooo!!!! I think something is going to happen….in about three months.
This reminds me of the Homerzilla story from the Simpsons where the reporter is hysterically bleating that
a) Homerzilla is two thousand miles away
and
b) takes a day to move two miles.
It also makes me wish that Batiuk would change his name to Mel Odrama.
Not Mal Odorous?
“The fire has not developed to Jff’s advantage.”
The picture of Mason driving like a madman sparked this random thought – could TomBa be planning to kill off Mason in fire-related heroics? It would solve the “Lisa’s Story” movie problem.
Nah, if Mason bought the farm, somehow Les would be persuaded to shave his beard and play his younger self (because only he could truly portray his manpain) and the filming would carry on.
It would put him in the perfect position to protect Lisa’s memory.
You know that little leprechaun is whispering into Batty’s ear: “Ya know what ya must do…kill em all! Kill em all”
Does Batty hold the record for most characters killed off in a single strip?
That’s too much drama for this strip now. I’d expect him to just get disfigured by the flames or smoke, if anything. Leading to Les smirking about how he’s now the handsome Les Moore again, and Cindy being relieved that she’s the hot one in the relationship again.
I’m guessing Mason’s mad expression is because he is driving to his house to rescue Les from the approaching fire. Oh and his wife and co-star. Them too.
This arc is approaching Ed Wood Level ‘Theater of the Incoherent’ nonsense without Ed Wood’s strange poetry to leaven it. I suppose it could be an exercise in non-linear storytelling or a cut up experiment al la William Burroughs but well sheer incompetence seems to be a more likely reason.
Batiuk – never use one word when six will fit better. “Changing wind directions”? How about “changing winds”?
I’m surprised he limited himself to just three words. He could’ve gone with “a change in the direction the winds are blowing the fire in, from what it used to be to what it is now, which is more dangerous and melodramatic!”.
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
Will Goatee Boy eventually find out that Dead Saint Lisa caused this fire to once again thwart the making of Lust for Lisa? “Spanky, I’m tired of you using MY misery and pain to make money. Just move on already, ferchrissake.”
“But…… but, Lisa…”
“Listen, I gotta go. Kobe Bryant is picking me up in five minutes. I think he might pop the question! Wish me luck!”
Plausible except for the Kobe part – too contemporary and sporto. How about substituting George Reeves in the sentence?
Will Goatee Boy eventually find out that Dead Saint Lisa caused this fire to once again thwart the making of Lust for Lisa?
That’s actually not a bad theory.
Hey, I just found the weekly “Act III” summaries, and noticed this week’s hasn’t been done yet. Here’s my suggestion:
August 1 – 8
Forces (i.e. Batiuk) tediously continue to arrange for as many Funkyverse characters to get to L.A. as possible, in time for THE! BIG! POINT! DUME! FIRE!, which is also tedious.
Any way we can get that smug assed old guy flashing his decoder ring in the website header?