Strips like today’s, where whatever value there might be in the strip would come from the audience being familiar with the recurring “Pizza Monster” and being excited to see it in the strip again, are among the most baffling to me. Even as out of touch as Batiuk is, it seems hard for me believe that even he thinks there are people out there who think Halloween is Pizza Monster in Funky Winkerbean season and are dying to see it come back. It’s not the Great Pumpkin. And most other strips with recurring “gags” like this actually do something different with it each time. With Batiuk’s recurring gags (especially in Crankshaft-Lena’s bad at bowling! Lena’s coffee is terrible! Lena’s brownies are terrible! Crankshaft is buying gardening supplies again!), he thinks that just repeating something over and over is enough.
So, yay, the Pizza Monster showed up again, everyone can relax now.
Pizza Monster Monday
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Son of Stuck Funky 
I empathize with the jack-o-lanterns in panel 1.
Ugh. Like all of his superheroes, the Pizza Monster is more embarrassing than anything else. I mean it’s just cardboard. Hit him with the hose and he’s a pile of mush. This is another of those weird tonal changes, where he goes from a “serious topic” to something “zany” just completely out of nowhere.
Oh boy, more Montoni’s action! Yay!
Say, didn’t the Pizza Monster debut last year? So, it’s not exactly a “tradition” yet.
I was wondering the same thing, which makes this even more baffling. I guess in Batiuk’s head, it was a huge hit last year.
For Batiuk it’s just one more hit in the head.
It’s not even a cool monster, like for example a huge Jabba The Hutt-like mass of oozing cheese and sauce or something. It’s cardboard boxes, the least attractive and most annoying thing about ordering a pizza. He can’t do anything without sucking the fun right out of it.
Get off the drugs, Batiuk!!!! Or on them.
Is the Pizza Monster going to bring back the impounded delivery car since ICE did on Sunday?
“Didn’t” (Autocomplete strikes again!)
Oh, come ON.
Ah, the excitement of wondering which lame-ass character will be mildly bewildered by the Pizza Monster’s departure! Wait, that’s why Skunkhead John is in the banner, right? Uh, okay, how will he respond to this visit from beyond the gravy? Will he gape at it like an idiot, or pontificate how Roger Corman and Paul Blaisdell did cardboard monsters much better in the Fifties?
But wait…who’s that sitting at the counter? Could it be the heretofore unseen “other delivery driver,” waiting for an order to drop off at the Clinton Foundation?
Just when you’re convinced that TB can’t deliver a proper dramatic storyline, he jumps up to remind you that he can’t do comedy, either.
I see that the Pizza Monster has been a thing since 2007, but I had never heard of it before last year. Since I was going to the bar next to Montoni’s (Luigi’s) to see what was going on for Hallowe’en (nothing), I decided to check on the PM. I went in around 8:30 and asked if the PM had made his appearance, and they told me he had been there about six.
I haven’t been to a bar in over seven months, so I won’t be checking on the PM this year. I guess I’ll shoot for next year, unless the plague or ICE get me first.
If the Pizza Monster shows up in the real world around 6, I’m guessing that this is a fun thing for little kids on Halloween, right?
So of course the FW crowd of seniors, seniors-in-waiting, and put-upon guest characters will be just as much into it, if not more so. Much, much more so.
A bunch of 50-year-old comic book geeks in a pizza shop, failing to solve a mystery aimed at 6-year-olds. What a perfect metaphor for Funky Winkerbean in Act III.
My first thought was that this strip should be running on Saturday. But then I realized that Batty has an entire week to fill and so it makes sense.
At least we are done with Icy Adeela.
This time put rat poison in its free pizza, so it won’t keep coming back. With any luck Sunday morning will find Les Moore dead in the alley, and nicely boxed up for his funeral.
Hose down the Pizza Monster and the Inedible Pulp will be revealed.
Pizza Monster?
My only surprise is that Batiuk is presenting it to us directly instead of those wacky creatives from Atomikkk Komixxx with some fancy hi-res cover done by a guest artist…
If the SoSF banner is related to this arc, then Dead Skunkhead John will see the pizza monster. He could describe it to Dullin, who could then tell the story to Mopey Pete, and that could lead to a Sideways Sunday panel about the apparition. Depending on how much Batiuk can drag it out, this could bring the Atomik Komhax into the story as soon as next year, and keep it going for several more years. (Does anyone really believe that someone with Batiuk’s ego would retire?)
One of the girls is the pizza monster. Maybe Cayla?
Or the gay student/teacher/office-worker/prankster from the prom arc?
Better yet, Becky’s mom.
We can’t relax until who knows how many people make their guesses as to whom the Pizza Monster is, only for each guess to show up to disprove it, and of course Saturday is, “He (assuming it is male) got away again! And I suppose you whine about Charlie Brown never kicking the football or Hillary on Sally Forth never getting her chocolate Easter bunny ears, too.” (BTW, Charlie Brown DID get a chance to kick the football once – and ended up kicking Lucy’s hand.)
Rachel?
Haiku of the Day
I have no context
Someone put a Frankenstein
Through a wood chipper?
These are just beautiful. Stay. Stay forever.
Sunday: “We live in a world of fear, a world of chaos, our rights hang on tenterhooks, and our people cry out for absolution – also pizza?”
Monday: “Wheeeeeee! It’s the Pizza Monster! ZOOM BOP POW AHAHAHA FUN FUN FUN!”
Tuesday: “Did anybody remember to fire the attorney?”
Wednesday: “HA HA FUNKY FAT”
Thursday: “Where we’re going, Holly, we won’t need eyes to see.”
Friday: “So it turns out that Mindy’s dad knows a queen or something? I just thought that she’d forgotten to tell me that the old man was senile.”
Saturday: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of pizza, must also be in want of a wife.”
Sunday: Les watches Cayla put away the Halloween decorations, whilst telling her all about how Lisa would have wrapped the mummy bandages back around the spool from the party store, NOT around his neck Cayla! Cayla! CAYLA NOOOOOOO NOT ON ALL SAINTS DAY