A large tank full of a winter’s worth of the Winkerbean’s slowly-thawing poo or another day of Dinkle…no contest there. I’m choosing the poo ten out of ten times. I’d suggest stuffing Dinkle into that septic tank but it’d be a shame to spoil perfectly good poo like that. If he comes back tomorrow I’ll be crushed.
But anyhow, yeah, BatHam isn’t getting out a whole lot these days, that much is clear. Church, the eye doctor, the yard…that’s about it, my friends. “Well, it finally stopped snowing so I went outside and walked around the yard for a while and I noticed how the ground above the septic tank always thaws first. So I thought it’d be very funny to do a strip about that phenomenon”. Yes Tom, there’s much humor to be mined from the simple things we observe from our studio window and so forth. Sigh.
And with that my two weeks are up and it’s time to turn things over to our resident licensed (and bonded) Official Funkstorian, billytheskink! It’s been fun (except for the Dinkle stuff) and memorable (except for the Dinkle stuff). And SoSF’s official anniversary date is rapidly approaching, so keep your eyes peeled in case we decide to observe it or acknowledge it in any way. No, it won’t be a parody post, I promise.
Son of Stuck Funky 
So does Westview not have a city sewer system or did the Winkerbeans flee town? Both?
It’s probably both.
I understand the layout of that town less and less with every passing year. And now that you mention it I can’t ever recall seeing a bathroom at Montoni’s, WHS or Komix Korner, which only adds to the confusion.
The Westview sewage-processing facility decided that the Winkerwastes were too toxic to handle.
The septic systems for Westview are built like the concrete coffin around Chernobyl.
I would really, honestly love to ask Tom Batiuk how he expects a reader to react to what he produces.
I mean, in reality, I would guess he doesn’t care at all, but for the previous “Dinkle” arc, what would he say?
“Well, my readers love Dinkle, so naturally they would want to see him triumph!”
It’s just baffling that he takes these extremely unlikable characters and keeps pushing them, with no hint of awareness.
No moment of triumph or disappointment for Dinkle or the church ladies, just the same ancient “Dinkle is a megalomaniac” gag he’s been doing for two hundred years. Literally the only “action” in that entire arc was Harry racing to the bedroom for sex, as troubling as that is to contemplate.
I was actually happy to see Funky’s septic tank lid today. There’s a sentence I never imagined I’d someday write.
Just walking around aimlessly until you come to the repository of your life’s excrement…if that’s not a fitting metaphor for the last couple of decades of this strip, I don’t know what is.
Tomorrow: The St. Spires chorus crones all receive 5 a.m. wake-up calls from Dinkleberg, telling them to be in the church loft and ready to praise Jeebus by 5:45 or else heads will roll a la John the Baptist. Hilarity ensues.
Thanks for carrying us through the past fortnight of musical madness, Epicus.
Thanks J.J.! But we couldn’t do it without you guys, the best damn commenters on the whole damn internet if you ask me.
You don’t attract good commenters without either good source material or good posts… And we know we don’t get good source material any more.
[Checks calendar]
Yeah, I think spring is here already alright…
So how far apart do the Dinkles and the Winkerbeans live? The weather in the entire Dinkle arc appears to be early spring (in fact the March 27th installment shows green grass outside the Dinkle house). Do Funky and Holly live in Elsa’s realm of Ardenelle from “Frozen”?
Funky must live up in Westview Heights (elevation 145 feet) and at that altitude the snowpack doesn’t fully melt until August. His backyard looks out over the valley aka Westview Flats, where the long-shuttered comic book mills stretch clear to the horizon and discarded comic book pulp continues to plague the local waterways to this day. Beavers won’t even use it to build dams.
Dinkle no doubt lives in Westview Proper, not far from the high school, in a worse-for-wear post-WWII suburban neighborhood where he’s reviled by his neighbors and former students alike. His lawn is always really ratty, his garage smells strongly of that cheap discount kind of chocolate that no one really likes and his next door neighbors are having trouble selling their home because no one wants to live next to the weirdo with the big treble clef painted on his house.
As promised, here’s my retelling of this arc as a porn movie. Hat tip to Mr. A and RustyShackleford, who gave me ideas for the title and a joke, respectively.
This is the quality content I follow this blog for.
Outstanding. An entire parody arc…extremely impressive work! I stand in line.
Bravo!
Nice! Lisa would be proud!
Banana Jr. 6000, this is one of the greatest strip remixes in the nearly 11-year history of SoSF! You’ve put more thought and effort into this than Batiuk puts into his strip over a whole year. Who knew “comics” could be funny? Excellent work! I stand in line.
Awesome Sauce!
Thanks for the kind responses, everyone! I’m glad you all enjoyed it.
This is utterly brilliant.
And now the organ face plant is FUNNY! Love the Carol Burnett drop in too. This is wonderful satire-nicely done!
I laughed, I cried, I will never see a church organ the same way ever again… Well done!
When I was growing up in the South, our septic tank was completely buried. If you needed to access it, you had to dig. Is that not how it works in Ohio?
The mid-central Ohio permafrost makes it impossible to dig more than a few feet down. Remember, it snows there continuously between Thanksgiving and St. Patrick’s Day, which means the ground never really thaws fully. And the layers of fallen leaves act as a natural insulation, trapping the cold. Plus you have the smoke from the pizza ovens, dimming the summer sun. It’s basically a barren windswept wasteland, which is why so many Westviewians lose themselves in their comic book fantasy worlds. Or so I assume.
Yeah Batty always depicts Ohio with endless winters featuring tons of snow.
But this year winter was very mild, there were maybe 3 days where the snow needed to be shoveled. Spring came early as March was very warm with many days close to 70 degrees.
Same here. Also, people care about their lawns and wouldn’t want an ugly septic lid sticking up in the middle of it.
Good old Funkenstein, that classic old romantic who has ladies melting in his arms… Lucky for him Funkyverse women have zero standards…
It’s funny because we’ve burned three weeks talking about church choirs and hymns and organs yet on Easter we get Funkmaster Flex talking about septic tanks…
I’ve come to the conclusion that all Funkyverse marriages are the same… This exchange of dialogue could have literally happened between any couple you could name and we’d never know the difference
Yeah, an Easter strip that shows Dinkle leading the choir (and dare I say, even playing the organ) for an Easter service with actual parishioners present would be a great way to wrap up a story arc that’s already gone on two weeks too long.
We had a septic tank at our house in Long Island. It didn’t have a lid on it, it was buried, but it did make a circle of melted snow, but this time of year (long after the snow has melted) we would have a circle of grass that is longer and greener than all the other grass in the lawn.
Batiuk did draw Dinkle playing the organ, but I guess he didn’t think it was worth working into the arc:
The first panel looks too much like he’s succeeded in some nefarious plan. The second one could have been a really nice end to this arc if the choir members were drawn looking somewhat joyful. It’s Easter (or at the very least a Sunday service), they have an organist-hallelujah! But no, we had 2 am practice Dinkle so now Lillian looks wary and the other two look almost asleep. It’s a shame Dinkle looks focused and even a bit humble.
Sorry-I left out a word-it’s a shame BECAUSE Dinkle looks focused and even a bit humble.
I’ve never visited his blog even once in my life, so if it’s not in the comics strip it didn’t happen
“They’re the only house in the city limits of Westview that refused to have a sewer line installed. Those two are keeping something buried back there and they don’t want anyone finding out. I bet it’s the children they abuse in the basement of their pizza restaurant.”
Wow, what a way to celebrate Easter Sunday. Septic systems here, Crankshaft’s bowel movements over there.
Hard to imagine selling enough pizzas to afford that estate. Also, Westview has no city sewer and water system.
Really thought we’d get an Easter Sunday extravaganza with Harry at the musical helm. Instead we got a snow-swept wasteland and a waste disposal portal. Sigh.
Every now and then TB slips and lets Funky and Holly have a pleasant moment together, usually out walking. I think there was one a few years back, with them looking at (of course) autumn leaves. Sure, this one ended with a gag that was better applied when Erma Bombeck wrote her book The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank but Holly’s response is gentle, not the default Funkyverse smirk.
When you look at Harriet’s semi-hysterical fawning, Linda’s self-centred misery, Jess’s paranoia, and Cayla’s numbness (plus the couples we never see together at all), Funky and Holly seem to have a pretty decent marriage.
Maybe that’s why TB has decided that Funky is the character to have brutal semi-suicidal depression.