So I guess some guy dressed as Mr. Monster (who is actually a character not created by Tom Batiuk, so I do feel bad now about making fun of, but really, if you’re doing a “tip of the felt tip” to another artist, maybe don’t do it super tiny in between the panels of a daily strip?) really did just bust into a crowded (ha) restaurant and pull what sure look like two real guns on somebody, just because they’re dressed up in pizza boxes? Just to find out their identity? And this is supposed to be funny? Wouldn’t it have been easier, and safer, if Funky and Harry and just pulled out bats and started beating the Pizza Monster, or maybe set the boxes on fire so the Monster would have to remove them? That seems much simpler than arranging for someone to hold somebody at gunpoint in the middle of your restaurant.
Putting aside the “haha, he never thought it could be a woman” angle, which is weird since Funky also referred to the Pizza Monster as a he earlier in the week, shouldn’t it be obvious who the Pizza Monster is, just based on the voice? Only like five people, at most, are ever shown eating in Montoni’s anymore, and it would be very weird (although much creepier) if this was just some random person with no ties at all to Montoni’s. Or is there a voice changer under the pizza boxes (that also have no eye holes, but that’s another issue)?
by spacemanspiff85 | October 28, 2020 · 10:30 pm
Unmanned
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Tagged as annoying holiday fonts, cardboard, Funky, gender confusion, Halloween, handguns, Montoni's, Mr. Monster, pizza, pizza boxes, pizza monster, things that make you seriously regret ever starting to read FW in the first place, times I wish I'd never discovered FW at all, vertical strip, why?
Son of Stuck Funky 
The balloon says “GULP” but the expression says “I crapped my pants.”
Is that what happens to Superman when he encounters kryptonite? [*cough*header*cough*]
These weird vertical panels are really starting to annoy me now. I’m so sick of having to turn my laptop on its side. But anyway, yeah, this Mr. Monster guy is indeed waving a gun around while Funky looks on with apparent amusement, which is an odd FW visual. Usually you only see handguns in FW when characters are contemplating suicide or something like that, they’re hardly ever played for laughs anymore. Act I did prominently feature an old World War One-style machine gun on a tripod, but that was back in the 1970s when the idea of a machine gun in a high school was still considered funny.
So, Pizza Monster’s identity is a little clearer now. Apparently it’s a woman with a very manly voice, which narrows things down a little. A stupid, pizza-crazed woman with a very manly voice, which doesn’t narrow anything down at all. Sigh.
Or it’s just a pointless misdirect, which is sadly more likely.
It’s hard to believe that any woman in this strip would do something as active as portray a monster, even if her husband told her to do it.
Have you met Becky’s mother?
No, I wasn’t reading the strip back then.
She was pretty great. I miss her. EVERYONE IN THE STRIP HATED HER.
You missed out on a great character. Classic Batty straw wo-man.
“Who said I’m a man?” Any Funkyverse character could ask that question.
Oh! It’s so obviously Les!
What, Les hiding his face like that? He would never be so considerate!
Also, the Pizza Box Monster said twelve words and none of them were “Lisa.”
A female pizza monster? Sheesh, Maddie Klinghorn’s life is somehow even sadder than I thought…
Maddie hit a rough patch after high school. She fell in with Westview’s “bad crowd” and started eating subs and reading novels, after which she was obviously promptly disowned by her family.
Maybe Summer has decided to declare themself non-binary.
If so, good. It’s about time she declared herself something. This is what, year ten of college basketball with her little gal-pal?
It does fit the woman who sounds like a man speculation.
Maybe Summer has been taking roids to improve her athletic abilities.
But wow, a female monster, what an unsuspected turn, that all of us anticipated.
It would be unexpected for Batiuk to give an active role to a woman, and it would explain the “Women are geek kryptonite” line in the banner.
I think, as SpacemanSpiff suggested, the Monster is using one of those voice changers.
Although honestly, it could be that Batiuk just hasn’t put any thought into this at all, which would seem to be his working method these days.
Why put through into work when you can put it towards old Flash comics instead?
Hooookay…so, which “boxes” did the PM remove–or reveal, I guess–to show Mr. Monster that they might not be a man?
Also, one has to love the smirk on Funky’s face as a lunatic brandishing automatic pistols bursts in his store. It’s the sort of thing that could create a panic in other restaurants…but, then, other restaurants have customers to panic.
“He’s armed!” Funky smirks. “I could hire him to bring in customers at gunpoint! And I bet minimum wage is better than what any do-gooding superhero makes!”
Funky was pranked by the Pizza Box Monster last year, and failed to discover their identity. This year he arranged a counter-prank. The next scene should follow from that! Put ghost peppers on their pizza. Duct-tape them to the wall. Spray them with water. Cut the pizza boxes with scissors. Put an inner tube around them so they can’t fit through the door. Tie their shoelaces together. Decline their credit card. Have your new buddies from ICE demand to see their ID. Do any of ten other things people have suggested that would fit in with a light-hearted Halloween prank war, and Funky’s goal of identifying the Pizza Box Monster. Who of course would defeat these efforts, forcing Funky to wait until next Halloween to try again.
What you don’t do is commission a guest artist to draw an obscure indie comic book character to point two realistic-looking handguns at them. Everything has to be interrupted by Tom Batiuk’s fetishes, even Tom Batiuk’s fetishes.
I really don’t know why this strip doesn’t just become a single repeated panel of Batton Thomas typing at a computer, with all the text being Batiuk’s blog copied and pasted in.
Funkenstein: “ARE YOU TWO COSPLAY JAGGOFFS GOING TO ORDER SOMETHING OR NOT!?”
Not that I care, but is Mr. Monster meant to be some geek cosplayer in one of those fake padded muscle outfits, or is he meant to be the actual Mr. Monster superhero, whom Funky somehow can call in favours from, as with former-president Clinton?
The idea of calling in a superhero cosplayer to fight a pizzabox cosplayer is kind of funny, but if he’s a real superhero, an adversary who extorts one pizza a year is pretty crap as a supervillain.
And since I’m profoundly bored with the Pizza Monster Identity Reveal, I’m going to share this post from TB’s blog:
https://funkywinkerbean.com/wpblog/summers-story/
You guys know I have more sympathy for Summer than TB ever wanted his audience to have, and this post does make me angrier on her fictional behalf.
Summer’s story didn’t “have a natural home in Lisa’s Story” because Lisa’s story was Cancer Cancer Cancer, but it was important to show how brave Lisa was while preemie Summer fought for life in the ICU, so Summer is just “the final brush stroke to the picture I’ve been painting of Lisa” and also the “missing piece that ties together the tapestry of Lisa’s life” (Mix those metaphors, Tom! Be bold!).
Summer doesn’t have a natural place in Lisa’s story? Granted there’s very little natural about the Funkyverse, but wasn’t Summer the target of the Dead Lisa tapes? You’d think that Batiuk would want to show her growing up as a normal, healthy person* thanks to her mother’s postmortem influence. Somehow having her daughter vanish makes Lisa a bit less than the superhero Batiuk calls her.
* assuming he knows any.
Let’s be real, there is no kid in this weird universe who has a ‘natural place’ in the story of their parents in late Act III. Each kid in story was a plot device for a single arc or two, and then was put on a bus only to be brought out to be the punchline of a joke. Even kids who should still be living with their parents.
That is the worst blog entry ever. It looks like it was written in English but I just can’t derive any meaning from the words—and boy were there a lot of words.
What the hell is a chapbook? Ok, it is a word. I guess that word fits since it refers to a small book that is cheaply produced with crude illustrations.
Ugh, that is appalling. Batiuk can’t fit Summer into Lisa’s story because Summer was just a badly-written prop. Summer was born for three reasons: so Lisa could suffer some more; to say sad little things while Lisa died; and so Lisa would have someone to talk to in her stupid tapes.
You know what really chaps my ass? A self-identified wordsmith using “chapbook” over. And over. And over.
Wow, that’s just awful… and from a guy who acts like Sadie Summers was his only mistake as a writer. I suppose its, uh, refreshing (?) that he pretty much admits that he doesn’t write anything for Summer anymore because he never cared for her character to begin with, which is more than he has admitted for every other post-Act I character not named Wally, Pete, or Durwood. What lazy and irresponsible writing.
At least “Summer’s Story” is named after her. Cayla’s story (complete with her silhouette on the cover) is in a book titled “Lisa’s Story Concludes”, which I think cannot be stressed enough.
Oh Lisa’s Story will never conclude…I can guarantee it.
When Batty is finally dragged off the comics page, Batty will have a huge wall of incomprehensible dialogue, and Lisa will be smiling down from the heavens. She will be a big part of his final strip.
He thinks Lisa is a superhero? I. Words fail.
My favorite part is where he pretends he isn’t still flogging Lisa’s Story at least monthly in his horrid comic.
Summer exists because Batiuk realized Les needed somebody to talk about Lisa with after Lisa died.
LOL “Summer’s Story”. Drama, new baby character, basketball, ambition wanes, “who’s Summer?”. There you go…Summer’s Story.
It’s three small boys who couldn’t afford a trench coat.
Wow, even Hi and Lois can pull off a gag better than Batty. Read today’s Hi and Lois, then read this week’s Crankshaft.
I have heard an explanation for all of this: Tom is competing with “Sally Forth” writer Francesco Marciuliano to see who can come up with the lamest “Halloween tradition” – which, of course, means that the Pizza Monster will probably never be revealed, unless there’s Yet Still Even Another Time Jump at some point (I still think either Summer or Keisha will end up as athletic director at Westview – first order of business: get rid of the football program) where there’s a throwaway gag of a bunch of pizza boxes lying around somewhere
Bwahaha! Its hilarious because a guy in tights pulled two loaded guns on a kid in a goofy Halloween costume in the middle of a pizzeria because the store owner asked him to do so!
Haiku of the Day:
Who said I’m a man?
Women can do dumb things too.
Check your privilege.
Alternatively:
Monster’s not a man?
Jeepers! I can’t shoot a girl.
What would Mother say?
Nice. You really captured the essence of today’s mess of a strip.
The juxtaposition of the two enhances both.
What really sucks is that this is goin to end with everyone, monster and superzero included, merrily eating a Montoni’s pizza.