Or it might be when you give your oldest childhood friend your treasured copy of “Contrivance Man Vs. The Zanthian Blorks” # 1 so he he can complete his collection even though you could have easily gotten $125 for it on FleaBay. It depends on where you are in Westview at the time. Unless these are characters I am unaware of, this is an extremely rare example of BatYam devoting an entire Sunday strip to random anon-o characters, which doesn’t happen a lot in the Funkyverse. Ditto actual customers in Montoni’s. That certainly doesn’t happen every day either.
I assume that maybe this is an homage to something, maybe those old “Peanuts” strips or something. And it’s harmless enough, I suppose. I guess sometimes FW is just plain deeply weird as opposed to deeply weird and highly annoying like it usually is.
Son of Stuck Funky 
“Love is . . . honey, is that a dead cockroach on the last pizza slice?”
“Uh–think of it as six tiny drumsticks, dear!”
So now Battyuk is ripping off the comic strip with the two naked people with no visible genetalia?
If only neutering FW kept it from reproducing.
While I’m here – Please stop trying to couple coffee mugs with pizza. Nobody does this. Nobody drinks coffee with pizza. Stop pretending that it does.
Good point. That never even occurred to me but yeah, yuck.
Yeah that bothers me too. I have also never seen a coffee counter.
Batty should have put more thought into his strip. He wanted Montoni’s to be center stage, but it just doesn’t work. But wow, it is based on a real pizzeria in Akron, oh-ah. So close to reality.
I hate that, too… In real life that coffee counter would be a full bar, but that would fit Westview’s family friendly facade
Sorry J.J. meant to give you a thumbs up. I thought of the Love Is comic too! I had buttons with those little naked people and their happy sayings on them-big trend for those of us who remember it :).
Just click the thumbs up to remove your accidental downvote.
Seriously, is this meant to be a sentimental Yuletide family comic strip or the storyboards for a Montoni’s Pizza TV commercial?
I would have assumed that–given a normal eight-slice pie–he would have planned to eat three slices, as would Wifey, and Daughter would eat two, so the math on this doesn’t add up. Does Smirky Goofball Hubby/Dad realize that he’s in a pizzeria and can easily order extra slices (Well, they’re eating on Montoni’s, so they may not be aware of that fact)? And why did that half-melted snowman move from the coffee brewer to the jukebox? And where are the bubble lights on the counter tree? And…oh, forget it!!!
This comic strip celebrates the noblest value in Westview: smug, pointless suffering.
Comparing this strip with the “Adeela Gets Arrested” arc and, more recently, TomBa’s December 10 blog posting, I’m really confused about the size and layout of Montoni’s. In today’s strip it looks like the place is long and narrow and maybe can accommodate four tables and the counter stools but the sketch he published on his blog shows the restaurant taking up three storefronts making up 2/3rds of the block.
I guess the underlying question is why, given everything SOSF has chronicled over the years, I should expect consistency in this strip.
This fascinates me too. Like you said, sometimes it’s this little pizzeria with a few booths and a table or two, then other times it’s an architecturally impossible monstrosity spanning the entire Montoni’s district. What I really need is a full overhead map of Westview, just to put it all into perspective.
Luigi’s in Akron is actually three narrow storefronts with doorways connecting them. The entrance is in the middle one with the bandbox over the door. Montoni’s – ?
There is nothing powerful enough to make me read Tom Batiuk’s blog.
Well if love his preachy comic strip, you will love his preachy blog.
If I had a few extra thousand dollars I would commission an artist to create at least one issue of “Contrivance Man Vs. The Zanthian Blorks” and dedicate it to Batiuk.
Contrivance Man…the superhero who always somehow manages to be exactly where he’s most needed. Along with his faithful sidekick Captain Obvious (“gee Contrivance Man, those Zanthian laser cannons sure look dangerous!”), he’s enlisted by the Fourth Galactic Federation to do battle with the Blorks on planet Bordomm, which is a flat, largely featureless land. Issue #1 was only available in specially marked boxes of Alpha Bits cereal.
At Montoni’s that’s a basic survival instinct taking over.
Gad Zooks! Paying customers in Montoni’s!
Fun Fact That’s More for Eastertime Than Christmastime: “Gad Zooks” was meant to be a watering-down of the 17th-century oath, “By God’s Hooks,” referring to the nails holding Jesus onto the cross at the Crucifixion.
I’m just sayin.’
For someone who is always going on about how comics can tell stories, he sure passes up good opportunities to actually tell a story. He couldn’t be bothered to have anything covid related?
Instead, many restaurants are closed but he goes ahead and runs today’s strip. Did he ever stop and think that it might not resonate with readers today?
A creator who is inspired by his work would rise to the challenge of revising his storylines to resonate. However, we know that TomBa polishes these things off about a year in advance and, from the look of them, makes no clean up or revisions before they go to the distributor, lest it cut into his other activities (re-reading Flash and blog entries).
“Love is giving away the last slice of pizza.” No, Tom, love is ordering enough goddamn food to feed your entire family.
It’s not like this is the last pizza ever in the whole universe. If you’re still hungry, order some more.
The man’s expression in the last panel doesn’t look like love to me. It looks like either “my pot just kicked in” or “I just ripped a vicious fart.”