I, your genial host, on behalf of myself and the rest of Team SoSF, stand in line for comicbookharriet and her always unique and entertaining take on Funky!
I don’t know about you, but Thanksgiving reminds us to be grateful to have made it nearly to the end of this calamitous year. Whatever else can be said about the distortion of time in the Funkiverse, the holidays usually coincide with our own, and Thanksgiving brings the Scapegoats’ annual fall fundraiser. I didn’t call it the “band turkey sale” because, in addition to turkeys and “rand curdy“, Becky and Dinkle have gone door-to-door peddling non-comestibles, like mattresses, and indigestibles (volume 3 of Dinkle’s autobiography).
(This time last year)
COVID-19 has yet to arrive in Westview, and depending on how you reckon strip time, it might yet take place ten years before or hence (yours truly is betting that the characters in FW will finally begin sporting masks sometime in March 2021). But you have to give Becky credit for having the foresight to take the whole thing “totally online” via Bandigogo™ a year ago. She showed this accomplishment off to Dinkel, who either didn’t comprehend or care; that is, until Becky got to the part about never having “to actually touch a turkey.” Looking at today’s strip, we can understand why this resonated with so strongly with Harry. “Why, when I was band director,” Dinkel himself would show up at your door, proffering an unfrozen, unwrapped, whole uncooked turkey. In his bare hands. This is about as far as you can get from today’s “contactless delivery.”
When Batiuk inserts flashback scenes showing the casts in their Act I & II iterations, those scenes usually employ the sepia tones and photo album corners. I’m wondering if that visual shorthand only applies when it’s a conscious flashback and not a dream? At any rate, contrast young Harry the Hat’s nearly featureless mug with his exquisite, old man grimace in panel 3.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Somebody please tell Mr. Quarter Inch From Reality that nightmares are SUPPOSED to be weird.
Oh, he’s going to LOVE having all the characters wearing masks. No more pesky facial continuity AND tons and tons of expository dialog so we know who’s who.
“Hello Les!”
“Hi, Funky!”
“So Les, want some pizza?”
“Thanks, Funky!”
Sigh. It’s band fund raiser time again. Other than Jeffy’s (Family Circus) continued idiocy it’s probably the least-anticipated running comic strip gag of them all. Seriously, they should have that kid checked out. But anyhow, why is Funky dreaming about band turkeys? He graduated from high school like ten billion years ago. These losers just can’t let it go.
While Jeffy’s perpetual melonheadedness (melonheadiocity?) is indeed an FC hallmark, I propose that strip’s most unwelcome and laugh-deprived leitmotifs are the quarterly or so times when “Bil” goes on vacation and Billy takes over with crudely-drawn, juvenile puns.
Also, the music note PJs are indeed the only way to tell that it’s Dinkleberg having the band turkey nightmare and not Funky, Funky’s dad, a guest starring Crankshaft or J*ff, or one of the other indistinguishable old men showing up more and more in TB’s strips. And who, exactly, is Dream Dinkleberry talking to in panel three?
Batty sure loves to draw old men. Not sure why he loves gerontology so much.
And their dowdy, middle-aged, subservient blonde wives.
All of them, save for Cindy, are stuffed turkeys.
Meant to Upvote that Banana oops
Is the resfusnik in panel two a relative of Pete? Is the green plaid shirt the object of some kind of analogue to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? Or does the last remaining Hill.’s cater is 1970’s ware hope Westview.
And I never expected to see a “Satanic cult” reference in FW.
I particularly enjoy the website, funkywinkerbean.com/books, wedged there between panels 1 and 2 like anyone would ever read this and think “I must read more jokes about these band turkey sales, but WHERE could I possibly do that?”
Westviewians may wear masks starting next Mach? At last a reason to make t through this year alive! I look forward to seeing everyone at Montoni’s eat pizza while wearing a mask.
I can just see see Tom Batiuk announcing his COVID prestige arc the day COVID is finally cured and nobody wants to hear about it ever again.
For a supposed master story teller, he is sure wasting a unique opportunity to tell a story.
I can think of a ton of possibilities. Teachers struggling to use Zoom. Kids struggling with social distancing. Les hoarding toilet paper and other essentials.
Dinkle dreams a fairly standard Funky Winkerbean strip, and reacts with intense, shattering anguish? Um…I know this is rich coming from a SoSF commenter, but that seems…disproportionate.
It needs context. Why is Dinkle dreaming of such an ordinary event from his own life? Why is it so upsetting to him? You could build a horror story around this scene.
I really thought that was Funky doing the dreaming, which says more about the artwork than it does about me, I think.
https://giphy.com/search/hail-satan
The first character to appear after the credits bears a striking resemblance to an infamous Westviewian, right down to his laugh:
Surely someone with nothing to celebrate or give thanks for is the archetypal Westviewian?