Haha, can you imagine? An actual(?) superhero man is petrified just at the thought of being near a woman! Hilarious! Can you imagine if maybe an actual superhero was a woman, and not just this evil supervillain(?) Pizza Monster? The entire multiverse would collapse! They’d have to invent new words like “superheroine”, probably! Ha, total fear just from being near someone who merely suggests they might be a woman, truly this is the epitome of hilarity and quarter-inch from reality writing.
by spacemanspiff85 | October 29, 2020 · 10:58 pm
That Brown Mush on the Plate is Disturbing
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Tagged as actual customer at Montoni's, annoying holiday fonts, Anon-O-Character, bricks, cardboard, gender confusion, Halloween, handguns, impractical monsters, Montoni's, Mr. Monster, pizza, pizza boxes, pizza monster, streetlights, things that make you seriously regret ever starting to read FW in the first place
Son of Stuck Funky 
Did it steal a pizza? Or did it leave its loot behind, where it can endanger some unsuspecting fool like Smirky McCustomer?
So the guy who was just waving two handguns at the Pizza box Monster is now immobilized because it MIGHT be a woman. Because girls have cooties, I guess? Tom Batiuk, what the hell is wrong with you? Seriously, what the HELL is wrong with you???
Bonus points if we eventually find out that the pizza monster isn’t a woman, and they were just playing mind games.
Though honestly, I’m beginning to think the monster will never be unmasked. Just an eternal recurrence, like Charlie Brown and the football. (Except instead of an interaction between two characters with clearly defined personalities and motivations, it’s an interaction between a weirdo with unclear motivations and a guy who doesn’t want to serve the weirdo but does anyway for unexplained reasons.)
This story should work just like Charlie Brown and the football. Let’s watch it again:
In addition to the clear personalities and motivations, we see the conflict happening. Lucy has to convince Charlie Brown to try to kick the ball when he doesn’t trust her. She convinces him through the adult formality of a signed agreement, and then tricks him by claiming that formality wasn’t properly met. That’s the fun of the story, and of Charlie Brown in general. We know he’s going to fail, but how?
Every year, the Pizza Box Monster has to pick up his pizza order, and Funky has to figure out who he is. Funky is Charlie Brown in this scenario, initially refusing to give him the pizza until he reveals his identity. The PBM is Lucy, having to use guile and wit to convince Funk to give him what he wants, and escape again.
Rather, that’s what this story SHOULD be. But Tom Batiuk is so conflict-averse that he cuts around it. The PBM is somehow leaving the store with the pizza in his possession. Mr. Monster should be pissed. “You had me put on this suit and point two guns at this guy to get him to reveal his identity, and you just gave him the pizza and let him leave?!”.
Good analysis. The last line sums up my biggest problem with the entire pizza monster scenario: I don’t understand why Funky “just [gives] him the pizza”. Funky looks genuinely terrified in some of last year’s strips, and we never got a strip where we explicitly saw his attitude shift. How does he feel about the pizza monster now? I’m honestly not sure.
My second-biggest problem with the scenario is: what does the pizza monster do while his/her pie is in the oven? Stand around? Make small talk? (Actually, you could make a pretty funny scene out of that. I’m thinking of Eddie Izzard’s “Darth Vader in the Death Star canteen” bit.)
Funky’s attitude is all over the place this week. In the Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday strips he was excited, then annoyed, then amused. Last year he was scared, as you said. Any of those is fine, but his POV needs to be consistent, or the story needs to tell us why it’s changing. He just looks bipolar. On top of that, the guns are realistic enough to be threatening, but the scene isn’t overplayed enough to make that funny. Pick a tone and stick with it, Tom!
Look, there’s a CUSTOMER there. And the disturbing brown mush is decidedly un-pizza-like. This arc is incoherent even by FW standards, I have no idea what’s happening here or why.
Good Lord! I never thought I’d see it in my lifetime, but in the first panel today’s FW strip there’s actually a valid reason for a character to have a sh*t-eating grin on their smug little mug…because it sure looks like he’s eating a plate of sh*t. Congrats, Battyuk
Haiku of the Day:
I’ll take my pizza!
Oh, it isn’t ready yet?
Thirty-minute wait?
Well it certainly can’t be Becky cos the “Pizza Monster” has two arms.
Two soon!
Will that be dine in or carry out miss? Oh, hey Becky. Dine in it is.
Of course the customer is smiling. No way is that pizza monster anywhere near as scary as what he’s eating.
Whoa! This strip did give me a fright! There was an actual customer!
Today’s installment is disturbing on so many levels that I don’t know where to begin. It appears to have it all – misogyny, food poisoning, idiocy – all topped by nothing remotely funny.
Sounds like an Adam Sandler movie.
Thanks. I thought I was the only one who hated his movies. I call him Hollywood Batty.
Batiuk and Sandler have the same problem: nobody to tell them “no.”
You know, I don’t even see how the person in the costume can even move, let alone run. I should think he’d (or she’d) be covered in bruises from all the time he (or she) fell on his (oh the hell with it) face.
So the monster’s not getting unmasked this year either… Is this what J.J. Abrams meant by “mystery box”?
Pizza Monster’s dialogue is like “All Your Base Are Belong To Us”, but less understandable and far less entertaining.
And how does he breathe? For that matter, if it’s a person wearing a costume, why aren’t there any large holes in the tops and bottoms of the boxes?
The sign in the window in panel one says it all. This is Azz.
Also note that in panel two the (sigh) pizza monster is clearly not carrying a pizza. So what was the point of this, wanton littering?
Just another typical Westview crime: a case of shit and run.
Maybe he stacked it on top of his head. Anyone willing to count the boxes? …Yeah, me neither.
Mr. Monster is flustered because Funky played this on the band box:
Not much of an observation, but that’s over 50 custom-made Montoni’s pizza boxes this guy’s stolen to make his “Monster” costume. So Funky or Wally hasn’t noticed that huge number of boxes just vanishing? They didn’t notice when they had to reorder the custom boxes?
And that should really be the only thing Funky cares about in this situation. Some guy puts on a Halloween costume and orders a pizza. This isn’t the damn Voynich Manuscript or something.
Actually, Funky should also care about the epic littering this asshole is committing on the sidewalk outside his restaurant. Someone’s going to have to clean that shit up.
That’s what Wally’s for.
And in prior strips Funky was portrayed as a money grubbing, penny pinching business owner so presumably he would be all over something like that. But Batty just goes where his wishes and whims go, reality and continuity be damned.
They’re a year’s worth of ‘used’ boxes. The Pizza Monster smells like rancid grease and rats.
After wearing it, roaches accept you as one of their own kind. Primitive, but kindred.
I was going to mention that they probably weren’t used boxes simply because there weren’t any grease stains on them. But honestly, if Ayers had bothered to draw them in, it would have made that strip less unamusing.
It would have also moved this costume design from stupid to certifiably insane.
Ayers: What should I draw on the customer’s plate?
Batiuk: I don’t care, any old sh*t.
1. Who the hell is gonna clean up all that litter on the street?
2. Why would a monster made of Pizza Boxes eat pizza? Wouldn’t they eat the box instead?
3. Okay I realize 2020 has been surreal, but today’s dialogue is the single most batshit insane thing I’ve seen on any comics page in 40 years.
4. Why does it have to ONLY be male or female? These days they got intersex, gender fluid, non-binary, and some other new categories I can’t remember.
5. For the record, no woman on Earth would have uttered such an outrageous line… Pizza Monster also has a decidedly masculine manner in size, build, gait and the horribly uninspired costume made of boxes.
No woman on our Earth, sure, but what does that have to do with how women behave in the Funkyverse?
TB can barely deal conceptually with gayness. The gender spectrum would leave him gasping for air.
One of Mr. Monster’s superpowers is that he can protect himself with a forcefield made entirely of urine. I’m guessing.
Then Adeela enters the room, quiet as a mouse, and politely asks which customer ordered the Fire Chicken pizza.
Oh, in case you were wondering, that’s cheese, chicken, jalepenos, and I think maybe onions. There’s a really good place up the road from where I live that I used to drive by, and think about how I missed ordering pizza from the local chain that used to have the same thing, only different.