“No, it’s my father’s room. He has some pretty severe developmental issues.”
“No, it was my bedroom when I DIDN’T live here, you clod!”
“Whaddya mean “when I lived here??”
Those bedroom eyes are pretty freaky, eh? I wonder if he’ll ever actually marry these two or if they’ll be perpetually engaged, like how Boy Lisa and Jessica are perpetually” young kids just starting out”? It’s uncanny how Batom always misses the most obvious story arcs. Like with these two. Cory comes home, gets engaged, gets married in a quick blow-off Sunday strip, tells everyone he’s moving away to Chattanooga or wherever and bam, out of the strip. No need for updates, forced dialog and etc. Quick and easy. I mean who would care anyway?
Son of Stuck Funky 
“I never expected to have a girl in any bed, much less this one!”
If I knew why Batiuk chooses to feature certain characters, I’d have to be some kind of genius. Or idiot. One and the same, perhaps.
Cory is a great example. What does Batiuk think his appeal is? Who does he appeal to? What purpose does it serve to put him in the strip at all?
I hate that the answer is probably “to reach the 50th anniversary,” but I can’t think of any other.
It’s simple. He stumbles upon a bad joke or pun out in the real world and then he tries to force fit it in his strip. And if none of his existing characters fit the Bill, he creates new ones, or does a poor retcon.
Cory and Rocky were created for awards chasing purposes.
“So does it feel …?”
“Yep. Really hard.”
“So stop keeping it to yourself!”
“But–but–mommy said not to do anything else with it!”
And this strip is just another “young kids starting out” thing. Yes, it’s weird to share your childhood room with your significant other , but most people get used to it by age 24 or so. How many years have you two been together? How many years were you in the military, Cory? Does anyone in this world ever grow up?
“So, this was your old bedroom when you lived here?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure it was. But, upon further examination, it could just as easily have been Skunkhead John’s, or Mopey Pete’s, or Durwood the son of Dead St. Lisa’s, or maybe some other dweeby, comic book-obsessed man-child who infests this strip and winds up drawing attractive, once-independent women into his orbit and turning them into personality-free,
interchangeable Stepford spouses. It’s almost as if some idea-drained cartoonist keeps running with this idea as a wish-fulfillment avatar. Now, am I the one who got a Cosmic Treadmill from the Flash Museum, the inheritor of a bunch of Golden Age covers who auctioned them away, or the one whose mom frantically worked to complete his Starbuck Jones collection while he was deployed overseas?”
You know, I don’t normally reply to my own comments, but after writing the above on my laptop while watching the evening news in my living room, I retired to my bedroom. What was waiting for me there? Two shelves of Carl Yastrzemski statues and memorabilia, two shelves of plastic dinosaurs, a Marx Presidents of the U.S. diorama, a complete run of Aurora Universal Monsters models, bookcases filled with Sherlock Holmes and Oz books, and action figures of the Justice Society of America, Doom Patrol, Metal Men, and the Avengers. Oh, and I’m 60-plus years old. How DARE I snark about some comic strip characters’ nerdy obsessions?
J.J. – Like you, I am a Boomer Nerd. I still have 20 long boxes of Silver and Bronze Age comics and a modest collection of original comic book and comic strip artwork. I think we’re justified in snarking on Cory because it’s so strange that EVERY SINGLE male Funky character has the same nerdy obsessions.
Meant to upvote you JJ
So we’ve arrived at the source of the current masthead image (Cory’s uptilted, grayed-out head). Looks like my “stargazing” guess was wrong…unless he has those glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling. Which, given the other decor, actually seems pretty likely.
I mean, Cory is right in that it is weird that Holly and Funky have apparently left Cory’s room just like it was when he was a high school delinquent. To be fair to the Winkerbeans, this same thing seems to happen a lot in pharmaceutical commercials, so maybe that is where they get their home decorating advice.
1.) In my fine upstanding parents’ house, unmarried couples do not share a bed. Funky and Holly are vile heathens.
2.) In my fine upstanding parents’ house, no one is forced to share a single twin or full mattress with anyone. Funky and Holly are cheap assholes.
3.) From left to right, Cory has a lopsided Captain America shield, and Batman, probably Lex Luthor in a warsuit, probably Orange Lantern Larfleeze, a lumpy tomato statue, Domo, and what is probably Black Canary.
What is Domo doing there? Domo first appeared in 1998, but really wasn’t a thing in the US until the mid 2000’s. How old is Cory?
“How old is Cory?”
He looks like Kesterman’s son so i’m going to say 60.
I thought the one next to Batman was the Hulk. And the one next to him, I had no idea. Maybe one of the Red Ghost’s super-apes. Batiuk is big on apes, after all.
Judging mostly by the eyes and the mid-air-with-drawn-up-legs pose, I’m going to say that the “lumpy tomato” is Spider-man. Or possibly Daredevil.
I can’t imagine that those superhero figures would have remained on display like that in his old room. If they’re collectibles, wouldn’t he want to have them in his current residence? If they were action figures, I’d think he’d have gotten rid of them once he’d reached high school.
Also, I’m really surprised that King Features isn’t concerned about possible backlash from some more conservative readers for depicting an unmarried couple sleeping together.
J. J. O’Malley: Actually, you raise an interesting point that goes along with my comment. If the figures have any sentimental value for Cory, why aren’t they with him in his house?
Because mommy won’t come over and dust them for him?
On a similar note: why does Cory’s old bedroom have a two-person bed?
It does seem odd that the room is preserved as a “shrine” to adolescent Cory, particularly since this is the guy who promptly sold off his “priceless” Starbuck Jones comics collection–which Holly tirelessly completed for him while he was in the Army–so he could get Rocky an engagement ring. If he is a comics nerd, why did he do that? If he isn’t, why not sell the action figures, too?
Who is Cory’s biological father? Is it known?
Probably Frankie. Guy gets around.
Corey was introduced as a high school punk, complete with one of those bicep band tattoos that were fashionable back then. There is no way he would have kept his bedroom full of “action figures”.
Does this get printed in papers? I remember back in ’76 many of them censored Doonesbury for portraying the then unmarried Joanie Caucus and Rick Redfern in the sack.
And Corky looks like he’s lost his mojo.
1. Why is dude even sleeping in his childhood room? Doesn’t he live right in Westview with everyone else?
2. As old fashioned as the Funkyverse is, I refuse to believe that even the most permissive of parents would let an unmarried couple sleep in the same bed…
3. But since he DOES have this unique opportunity, WHY is this dude not, to coin an army term, “servicing the target” between his girl’s thighs??
4. Do *any* of the Funkyverse WAGs have lives or family members of their own to enjoy? And I don’t mean the WAGs who are daughters/nieces/cousins of established legacy characters…
5. And as others have said, out of all the things she could ask, this was a really stupid and intentionally awkward question out of left field… I think old girl was trying to say *she* feels weird without really saying it? Besides, I thought she was supposed to be a tomboy? She should be digging in the closet for the slot car racetrack and the still-working PlayStation 1…
6. FWIW, every girlfriend who ever saw my childhood room had nothing but nice things to say, even if they were just being polite…
For number one, Holly said the weather was too fierce for anyone to travel.
But the entire premise is creepy AF… If someone didn’t know this strip or these characters, based on the dialogue one might think they’re cousins or stepsiblings being forced into the same bed because of a lack of space or something…
Hell, Batiuk is supposed to be a comics geek… Maybe he was thinking about that notorious time Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent had to share a bed?
Although to be fair, Superman can literally sleep while floating in mid-air so this shouldn’t have been an issue.
Check out today’s BattyBlog entry which is a reprint of the intro to volume whatever in his collection. He really thinks he changed the comics page for the better.
Contrast that to Watterson where he wanted to recreate some of the beautiful artwork of the past. In other words, he was building upon the work of the past masters. He didn’t want fame and popularity, he just wanted to put out good material. And when he realized he said what needed to be said, he bowed out gracefully.
I get the feeling Batty is going to have to be dragged away kicking and screaming.
Based on that blog post, we can add “antediluvian” (meaning pre-Noah’s Flood) to the things TomBa doesn’t know.
Yeah, he is always throwing in big words in an attempt to look like a polished writer. He thinks people are lazy and won’t look things up.
I fully expect TB to bring in a Bible-thumping “old maid” character named Aunty Diluvian at some point.
So Cory spent the money he stole from Les on… a bunch of those collectible statues from the comic book store, and a Queen-sized bed. Nice!