Today’s strip is filler. Total filler. In fact, it is possibly the filleriest filler that ever filled four panel borders. Filler filler filler filler…
The idiocy of Winkerbeans here is wearing the same clothes they were back before Wally and Amicus visited Adeela in jail, so it is presumably the same night/day that Adeela was arrested and President Clinton was called. Why are they all so resigned? Just how quickly do these people think Federal agencies work? And they expect a call back from Mr. Clinton himself, assuming failure when that doesn’t happen within an hour? Between yesterday’s strip and this one, there is probably a long list of right-leaning organizations that have more trust in the Clintons than these five.
Son of Stuck Funky 
So who announced “It worked!”? My money’s on Adeela. If she shows up now it would destroy any hint of a suspense in this story and open the way to an even more pointless gabfest.
How the F**k did Adeelalilly become such a beloved character to these mopes?
She volunteered to deliver a Montoni’s pizza. That takes a courage that matches a soldier throwing himself on a hand grenade.
This right here is some shameful, shameful shit, even by Batiuk’s sub-cellar standards. Once again he appears to have completely lost interest, right during the “climax” of the story, no less, which begs the question…why even bother with “writing” it at all? I hope BatHam has direct deposit, as I’d be embarrassed to cash a check for this piece of garbage in person where people might recognize me.
If we knew why Batiuk bothered to write any of this, I don’t know if we would be so driven to study it here. Batiuk is like that nonverbal autistic outsider artist with Down’s Syndrome who would make fascinating sculptures by wrapping clusters of objects with yarn.
Who knows why he does what he does…his mind is so different from ours.
Who said “It worked!”? Why, the missing delivery car–whose driver we’ve never seen because it’s a magical TALKING delivery car, like the 1928 Porter in “My Mother the Car” or KITT on “Knight Rider”–of course, parked at Montoni’s front door with the insulated bag…er, Adeela inside. Sitting on the hood are a smirking Bill and Hill Clinton, alongside Zanzibar the talking murder chimp and Funky’s robot running buddy, and they’re all singing “Auld Lang Syne” and eating Montoni’s pizza in a Capraesque happy ending…
…and then we fade out to find a dying Adeela, trapped inside her burning vehicle down along Nobottom Road. It turns out she never made the delivery, as she swerved to avoid the “nearly headless” ghost of Bull Bushka, and this whole story was just a figment of her imagination.
Excellent! Now that’s what I call writing!
It’s closer to a 1/4 inch from reality that Batiuk can achieve.
A perfect Halloween ending, which is why we can be sure it’s not what we’ll be seeing.
There must have been threats involved. Not to ruin careers. But to be pizzaboarded with Montoni’s.
Literally no chance of it working like that, literally nothing. If tomorrow has Adeela making an appearance than Bathak has truly lost his mind.
Funky, glumly staring at his phone waiting for it to ring, flat glass of cola at his side, saying “nothing”…
This story arc would have been significantly better if it was simply a whole month of that.
Haiku of the Day:
Night to day to night,
Still no soul can leave the scene.
Tough luck, Amicus.
He’s billing them by the hour to sit there and mope.
Amicus don’t care.
He’s charging them by the hour.
Breef’s doing okay.
Great minds blah blah, harriet.
Who said “It worked?” Bill Clinton.
Also, carrying on this week’s subtheme, Wally’s coffee mug is yet another Montoni’s product placement.
Good catch! They had to brand the coffee mugs, because Crazy Harry kept walking away with them.
I counted the product placements in this arc. Since September 14, the word “Montoni’s” has appeared 44 times:
– 25 times as part of a complete Montoni’s logo
– 12 times in the store’s neon window sign
– 6 times in dialog
– 1 time on Bill Clinton’s phone display
The 25 Montoni’s logos appeared in 8 different places: aprons, interior walls, the front door, the marquee sign, the car door, pizza boxes, a coffee cup, and Bill Clinton’s t-shirt.
In addition to the above, the word “pizza” appears 12 times in the store’s window neon sign, and 9 times in dialog. No one is ever depicted making a pizza.
None of this includes:
– the ICE agent eating the slice of pizza like he’s in a commercial
– Bill Clinton complementing the restaurant and ordering a pizza from it
– Funky asking about his insulated pizza boxes
– probably more pizza references that I missed because my senses have been so bludgeoned by Montoni’s pizza that I need to eat two salads and take a long bath
I assume the off-screen voice is Adeela. In other words, Batiuk cannot trim the cast in case there are awards to be had.
It’s still a story told by the world’s dumbest toddler. Take pride in that, Batiuk.
Just realized that the walls, counter, booths, and seats are all the same distressing skin tone. Like they’re inside some kind of terrifying flesh cave within the maw of an eldritch living building.
Maybe Montoni’s is a Liu Wei sculpture made out of dog chews.
https://www.designboom.com/art/liu-wei-big-dog-qatar-museums-cai-guo-qiang-03-22-2016/
For the love of God,why??
MONTONI’S PIZZA IS PEOPLE
If Westview had a suicide center like in the movie, would anybody be left after 48 hours?
Les would survive. Because he loves his status and imaginary dead Lisa more than the chance of being reunited with her.
That would explain what happened to Maddie Klinghorn.
Now that is some amazing storytelling. Our heroes save the day by calling someone else and asking them to do it. And then sitting around moping until someone off-camera tells them it was done. This is the Hero’s Journey distilled to its most fundamental elements, folks.
Maybe this arc is about introducing Amicus Breef as a new FW cast member There is a lot they can do with Amicus. Maybe Mason, impressed with Amicus’s work in Adeela’s care, hires him as his new lawyer/agent and he moves to Hollywood. Or Amicus stays in.Westview where he falls in love with and marries Adeela. Or Less hires Amicus as his divorce lawyer when he finally dumps Cayla (we can only hope)
You mean Cayla hires him when she finally dumps Les.
Is it just me, or is the timing of this strip seem awfully suspicious? Hillary loses Dem ticket bid in 2008 and presidential bid in 2016. Now, election time 2020 … a chance for Hillary (and Bill) to emerge victorious! 😆😆
That’s an interesting angle. Maybe TomBa has given up on a Pulitzer and is hoping to get a grant from the Clinton Foundation or the Clinton Presidential Center.
It’s times like this when one can reflect on just how greasy the interior of Monton’s must be.
It’s times like this when FW allows the gentle reader to reflect on just how greasy the interior of Montoni’s must be.
Wait, so it’s clearly the same night or early morning at Montoni’s even though Clinton CLEARLY made his phone call the following day during a morning or afternoon jog…?
How hard is it to show the slightest bit of continuity here? Is Batiuk really that afraid of the “complications” of sending all these useless characters home and opening the shop for daily business?
Batiuk has made four different posts on the Funkyblog showing cartoons from Bill Clinton’s 1993 visit, with an attitude like he’s showing off his research. Yes, Tom, the dumb story you made up about Bill Clinton in 2020 is consistent with the dumb story you made up about Bill Clinton in 1993. I give.
The 1993 strips are intentionally goofy and light-hearted, as opposed to the current Commentary on the American Immigration System™ (with one tonally-clashing joke about Bill Clinton’s love of junk food). As someone who didn’t read the strip prior to Act III, I found them surprisingly charming.
Those 1993 strips have an Act I feel to them. In Act I the joke was often that people take high school life too seriously, and important things not seriously enough. Like the lady yelling at the presidential limo not to park in the band bus space. It’s an actual joke, and it fits perfectly with that tone.
Act III thinks it’s still making that kind of joke, and also doing deft social commentary, when it’s doing neither.
Has anyone seen a current picture of bill Clinton…. he ain’t jogging