What? This one really didn’t require any dialog at all, but that’s never stopped Batiuk before. This one is just too stupid to even bother picking apart. I think I know what he was going for here but jeepers, did he ever fail miserably. This guy can take the hoariest, moldiest, mustiest old gags ever written and botch them in ways you can’t even imagine.
As far as I know this marks the first time Funky’s house has actually spoken. Let’s hope Les’ house keeps its big mouth shut, as I don’t even wanna know. Merry Christmas to all, now let us never speak of this one again.
Son of Stuck Funky 
So that’s what happens when you try to write in the snow when you have a prostate problem.
Wha’ the wha’?
Or, to quote the great Alan Ford as Brick Top in “Snatch,” “In the quiet words of the Virgin Mary…come again?”
Who could possibly be speaking to whom, here? Aside from Rocky, they’re all members of the same family. They should know each others’ taste in music.
It’s pretty funny to think this might be Holly talking to Funky.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
I assume it’s Holly explaining to Funky how she always gets him shirts as gifts because she doesn’t know what kind of music he likes, which implies that it’s an either-or thing with her. It also implies that Funky apparently listens to music in secret and keeps his musical preferences hidden from everyone including his wife, which must mean he’s a closet Bon Jovi fan or something. Music and shirts…he’s a man of broad interests, that Funky is.
The unknown gift-giver speaking is almost as lazy as this comic strip. You want to get someone music (or, y’know, anything) for Christmas, ask questions and pay attention!
My wife got a specific Tim Buckley record for Christmas last year because I asked her which one she was looking for. She, in turn, knows what Peter Wolf albums I don’t have because she asks me. Will I open one in the morning? Maybe, maybe not… but if not it won’t be because she doesn’t know which albums I have.
Merry Christmas SoSFers, you deserve better than TB gives.
And not only does she not know “what music he has” (which is ambiguous enough as it is) it’s an ongoing thing, which implies that she’s never made the effort to find out what music he “has” despite the same conundrum arising every year at the same time.
So year after year Funky is disappointed by another shirt he doesn’t especially like instead of delighted by a brand new CD, all because his dimwitted wife is too lazy to put in five minutes worth of effort on his behalf. That sounds about right.
You’d think Holly would ask herself “What kind of music does he play on the Band Box?” Or would the answer make her throw up?
Or the jukebox.
“Merry Christmas to all, now let us never speak of this one again.”
An alternate 2020 themed ending to “A Visit from St. Nicholas”
Truer words have never been spoken.
Merry Christmas to TFH, Epicus, and the entire SOSF blogoscape.
I don’t know what music you have because I’m too fucking stupid and lazy to look.
I’m beyond words
Merry Christmas, Funksters! My present to you is two crappy parody strips from the past.
Funky thinks he has it bad. My wife got me The Complete Funky Winkerbean Collection…
Just kidding Batty..
Check out the Batty Blog….his photography skills are lacking too.
I noticed that yesterday. It’s the first photo you take with a camera that you just got and are trying to figure out. The response should be “Well, I’ll just delete that one” instead of TB’s “I must share this with the world!”
He could have easily snapped a picture of the Medina square near his house. They have nice Christmas decorations there.
But why do something when you can be lazy?
It’s kind of fascinating in a way. Not only is it out of focus, there doesn’t seem to be a clear subject–unless it’s the arm of the sofa. It clearly sums up Batiuk’s vision and his works. You couldn’t get this kind of perfection if you struggled for a year.
I had a similar reaction to the previous post “Cover Me 133.” What is he looking at? I wracked my brain trying to figure out what was even different between those two comic book covers, much less why it constituted “one of comic book history’s more baffling editorial decisions.”
Seriously, does anyone know? The top one is more detailed, but the perspective on it is a confusing mess. And this is a generic 1977 discount comic, which I suspect isn’t the top of the line as comic books go, and not that relevant no matter how bad a choice it may have been.
“It’s called ‘soft focus’!”
I agree with Banana 6000 that neither cover is particularly memorable. The top cover is pencilled by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and inked by Berni Wrightson. Garcia-Lopez is a master draftsman and Wrightson had the most beautiful linework in the business, but it doesn’t look like either one of them brought their A Game to this one. My guess is that the choice to kill the cover had less to do with the compositional weaknesses that you rightfully noted than with the gruesome half digested corpse in the plant’s gullet. It may have been a little much for a 1977 comics code approved book. Neal Adams is one of the most revered and innovative cartoonists of all time, but in the late-seventies he was devoting most of his energy to his ad agency and drawing a few covers for DC. He probably stopped by the office to drop off some work, was asked if he could fix this cover, and cranked out a quick revision in an hour or two. I’m sure Garcia-Lopez, Adams, and Wrightson (if he were alive) would all be shocked to see any of us devoting this much time and thought to drawings they probably forgot about fifteen minutes after finishing them.
Thank you Rick, and to beckoningchasm below, for your answer. That would explain why the top cover was rejected. But why doesn’t Batiuk know that? He doesn’t say “This cover being rejected for this inferior one is a fine example of the stupidity caused by the Comics Code.” Especially when he’s got a hate-on for the Comics Code!
I think the bottom one is a lot filthier anyway.
The plant’s orifice in the accepted cover does bear a striking resemblance to the legendary vagina dentata, doesn’t it?
Yes, it does! I can just imagine the second artist thinking “you want to censor things? I’ll give you something to censor…” And submits that Freudian nightmare to replace the cover with the dollar-store Halloween skeleton.
Of course, Batiuk fails to notice any of this. Just like he didn’t notice the three-foot penis on the aerator robot that was “oiling his foot pads.” He even drew it in the strip:
Original photo: https://funkywinkerbean.com/wpblog/the-secret-sauce-2/
I don’t know which character is talking to which other character, but I know that I loathe them equally.
That’s gotta be the Dinkle place. He’s the character that doesn’t understand music.
Hey-Zeus Key-riste in a creche! At least last year we knew how easy it was to hate Durward, Jest, and whiney Skypilot. This year Todd wants us to hate everyone. Merry Christmas!
So Funky lives in a mansion now? When did he upgrade? Because that’s definitely not the house we’ve seen in the past:
I’ll stick to my theory that they needed a larger house to accommodate the word balloons.
Banana Jr 6000 – in the case of the two horror covers, I would guess that the skeleton in the top one was the reason it was vetoed. The editors would probably say that made it TOO gruesome for the Comics Code.
Great minds . . .
Merry Xmas, SoSF!
What drove the mysterious shirt-giver to utter this sentence? Did the shirt-receiver complain out loud? Did they have a disappointed look on their face? Or did the shirt-giver just spontaneously decide to give this half-assed non-apology, apropos of nothing? I want to know what flavor of dysfunction we’re dealing with here.
P.S. Merry Christmas, everyone!