Oh, yeah, Pete you really got played! She wrapped you around her little finger, Pete, and twisted you into agreeing to do something you were reluctant to do! And she did this using her feminine wiles of…asking nicely.
Good grief.
I’m sure this is another one where Tom Batiuk thought up the witty remark in panel three and thought, “That’s too good to waste” and so into the trash compactor, I mean, comic strip it goes.
The artwork, never a strong point with this strip, is especially bad today. In addition to the coloring gaff which gives this post its title, look at Dullard’s face in panel two. He looks like Mr. Potato Head, if he was a large banana instead of a potato.
Son of Stuck Funky 
All I see are two former bros (who quite possibly had a gay tryst in the past) teasing each other over who is the bigger pussy-whipped lapdog…
And Darren doesn’t have a square inch of masculine high ground to stand on after that whinefest over his wifey seeing him in eyeglasses…
“LOL bro, your old lady totally conned you into helping those old comic book codgers at Comic Con, dude.”
“Yeah bro, she like totally manipulated me with her female wiles and stuff, dude. She’s like, so much more cunning and duplicitous than I am, man.”
“No doubt, dude. I’m like already married to a woman so like it’s so funny to see another guy get totally played by a girl without even knowing it, bro.”
“Yeah dude, we’re men so we just say what we mean but, like, they have all the sex so we’re like powerless, bro.”
One could ask why Mindy needed to “play” Pete at all, but of course that would spoil the gag, which is apparently “women amirite?”…yet again. In an ideal Funkyverse the story would have already progressed to the point where they tell (sigh) Flash and Ruby that they’ll be honored or something at Comic Con, but then the story would only be eight weeks long instead of sixteen and we can’t have that. So wry gender-based banter it is.
This is so blah that I’d almost rather have a Dinkle strip. Almost.
Just wait… that’s all I’m saying.
Good lord. I’m tempted to downvote you for even suggesting that we reopen Hell.
No doubt it will soon be time to bring Les back and find out what’s going on with Lisa’s Story. Then we’ll probably all wish we could watch Pete and Darrin sitting around doing nothing some more instead. Or even Dinkle abusing the old ladies and bragging about how great he is.
Pete, there are Drosophila Melanogaster larvae in high school biology labs right now that you are NOT the evolutionary equal of!
Please tell me there’s not going to be another sideways comic book cover tomorrow, this time saluting Atomik’s new duo, The Dependables.
And yes, I’m really disappointed that Pete Rattabastardo, one of the biggest names in the industry and future inductee to the Comics Geek Hall of Fame, didn’t take a few good minutes to gently explain to his fiancee that ComiCon doesn’t work that way… I mean, he had a literal and professional obligation to set the record straight and his ballsack shriveled like a raisin… Not a good sign for the upcoming nuptials when the communication gap is as wide as the Grand Canyon.
Uh.. but wait! He still can fix this, right? Mindy is off-panel but it’s not like she just walked out of the office during work hours… Tell her to put the hotel reservations on hold, bring her back to the panel and just explain it to her!
When my wife wants me to do something she just comes out with it and asks me, funny that
That’s a coloring mistake? You mean Pete doesn’t use his thumb to pick his nose?
Counterpoint to Durwood’s statement in panel 1:
No, it wasn’t.
And the strip amazingly hits a new low by diving unprompted headfirst into the well of misogyny.
Can you dive into that in which you already wallow?
Like a submarine descending the Mariana Trench.
For the punchline to be effective (that is what Pete’s line in panel 3 is supposed to be, right?), shouldn’t it somehow tie back to Dullard’s line in panel 1? Shouldn’t it have something to do with music, or musical instruments or playing or being played? What does Pete’s being a throwback to some manner of pre-intelligent life that has taken on a broad approximation of the human form have to do with anything?
I also was very confused with this. It feels like a randomly generated assortment of panels. Possible better third panel? “What can I say? She’s great with her fingers.”
But I’ll give them this, the ART certainly shows Pete as a broad approximation of a human. He looks like the human avatar of a three-toed sloth.
Over in the Comics Curmudgeon comments, “jroggs” suggested that this might be a callback to Monday’s ape talk.
If she’s really such a manipulative bitch, why hasn’t she twisted him into setting a date for their wedding? I assume she’s still stupid enough to want to become Mrs. ReynoldsRap.
“My fiancée and I do not belong to the same species.” This is a healthy relationship. Yes.
Funny, I thought she played him like a lute, but I’m tone deef.
“SAY, Darin! Why the L O N G face?”
Forget about Darrrrrrin, Pete looks like he’s been doing bong hits with Flash Freebird for a couple of hours.
You want to see some great art, head on over to Mary Worth. Brigman has been knocking it out of the park lately. Scantily clad white trash females, white trash criminals and white trash housing. Magnificent!
The loving detail she puts in when rendering white trash hovels is particularly inspiring. Here we just get bricks, there we get smashed blinds, stuffing leaking out of furniture, unidentifiable stains on the walls. I can literally smell the stale warm beer mixed with nicotine! I’m nominating Mary Worth for a Pulitzer.
Oh and no long preachy blog posts about how the strip tackles all these deep issues, quarter inch from reality…blah blah blah.
The combination of Brigman and Moy has been gold. While I had a lot of affection for Uncle Joe Giella, Brigman brings so much drama to the soap. I will never forget the cruise ship arc.
God, I’d bleached that cruise ship storyline right out of my memory… I don’t remember why I hated it so much, but my rants about it should still be accessible over at that other website
I’m partial to that part of the “Estelle dates Wilbur” arc where Wilbur gets astoundingly drunk to make it through a double date with his ex and her new young hot boyfriend, leading Estelle to question their relationship (and by “question their relationship”, I mean “have nightmares about Wilbur-headed babies”).
That was priceless.
Yeah I liked Joe’s work and was skeptical of Moy/Brigman. Not anymore!
Seeing a drunken Wilbur with Pad Thai noodles falling out of his pie hole and onto his shirt was the best. But yes, Esme and the cruise line was another favorite. And today’s unexpected Brony! Yes! (I feel they owed us after the crappy dogs are great arc…but they easily made up for it.)
I read MaryWorthandMe but never comment because—and I think it was you Harriet that brought this up—Moy/Brigman are laughing with us and having fun with the strip. They aren’t chasing Pulitzers, and so there is really nothing to comment on.
Ok, back to the misery of FW….sorry for the distraction.
And the Brony! My God the Brony!
I’ve been loving reading Mary Worth the last couple of weeks. Girl from the wrong side of the tracks puts a Doctor into her thrall and steals his Rolex. Great arc and artwork.
Yes! What an unexpected bonus. You never have fun like this with FW or Crankshaft.
Hey, Batiuk gave us a talking murder chimp. What more do you want?
…oh, you have a list?
…how many feet long?
I’ve put most of it out of my mind, but my recollection was that Zanzibar was a talking murder chimp for one single, solitary panel.
And this is how Pete treats his evolutionary superior whenever money is involved:
You’re a piece of shit, Pete.
He was a lowlife shit years before fame, wealth, his dream job and his contractually obligated soulmate trophy wife got dropped on his ugly assed pockmarked face like a cartoon anvil … I’ve always called him “Rattabastardo” for a reason.
I want to collect all the strips of Pete being an asshole, and put them into one collection. Same for Dinkle, Funky, Les (though Les will be a multi-volume series), and pretty much every other character. Funky Winkerbean‘s awfulness would be a lot more apparent if it wasn’t always shown chronologically, where it gets buried in the 90% filler strips.
THAT’S the context of the “engagement tiger”? He proposed by passively-aggressively complaining about how she ruined his plans for a better proposal? And she was happy with that? Good grief.
And I don’t even understand Pete’s plan in the first place. If a ring was so critical to his idea of a proper engagement, shouldn’t he have bought it already, or waited until he could buy one? When you are actively planning to tell your girlfriend “I don’t have a ring for you yet, but I’ll buy one soon”, does it really matter that much if “soon” is a little longer than you expected? Or was his plan to sneak out of the fairground while Mindy was in the restroom, drive over to the jewelry store, buy her a ring with the money in his pocket, and drive back?!
That’s exactly how it ran. Even better, Mindy had just challenged Pete to win her a stuffed animal at the ball toss, which he completely failed at.
And you’re right, it makes absolutely no sense. Even worse, the engagement has barely been acknowledged since then, and; they don’t act like an engaged people. Mindy even called Pete her “boyfriend” once, as if he’d been demoted. So yeah, they’ll probably be marching down the aisle at Comic-Con as The Thing and Alicia Masters, or whatever.
It should be noted that “he completely failed at” winning the stuffed animal for the entire day they were at the fair. No rides, no exhibits, no fair food…just Pete proving over and over what a loser he is, and Mindy being enchanted by it.
“I hate HTML tags” – Garfield
Nevermind the fact that Pete was absolutely swimming in money after the Starsuck summer blockbuster grossed 6 billion dollars globally… And because Batiuk loves to hope we forget how rich his character are, I know for a fact that Pete and Darren also got a piece of that sweet sweet movie merchandising revenue after designing some toys and action figures. **AND** by that point Chester already made his ass the highest paid dude in the Comics industry.
Pete’s low rent faux-middle-class cheapskate ass should have taken Mindy to Hawaii or St. Kitts or New Zealand or Argentina to propose instead of the goddamn county fair… And Mindy should be asking better of her obscenely rich fiancee, but there’s that whole “naive childlike dumb blonde” trope again…
I do have to wonder what his envisioned intent is behind how the reading audience is supposed to receive Pete.
Pete’s visual depiction with the small baggy eyes and typical lurching posture makes him appear tired, meek, and meager. Pete’s typical mentalities are that of defeat or being absurdly childishly sullen. Pete seemingly stumbles into productive inspiration more frequently than generating it himself.
Is he supposed to be likable? What redeeming qualities is he supposed to have? I would grant that even the author himself realizes that he can’t have all non-antagonists be perfect people, but I can’t imagine him spending so much time to develop and use a character which seems to be, to put it mildly, a hapless jerk.
Tom Batiuk has no concept of non-verbal storytelling. The other characters have all said in word zeppelins that Pete’s a wonderful and talented guy, so Pete’s a wonderful and talented guy. End of discussion. Never mind what he actually does.
There’s a brilliant moment in the movie Braveheart. After Queen Isabella returns from meeting William Wallace, evil king Longshanks asks her “what sort of man is he?” She calls him a mindless barbarian, which pleases the king. But the audience knows this is a lie. In the previous scene he spoke three languages, argued eloquently for his people, and took offense at being called a liar. And Sophie Marceau’s performance really sells it. Her delivery of these lines is a masterpiece of passive-aggressiveness. Through tone, delivery, gesture, and context, this scene told a completely different story than what the characters were saying. It told the audience that her loyalties were changing, and she was now willing to defy the English rulers.
And that’s what Tom Batiuk doesn’t get. The actions of his characters tell a different story than what he tells us to think of them. “Great guy” Pete Reynolds is a thin-skinned, selfish plagiarist who couldn’t get laid in a women’s prison if his dick shot pardons. Les is supposed to be a Byronic hero, but he’s an obsessed sicko who couldn’t write his way out of a paper bag. Dinkle is supposed to be that wonderful old crazy teacher, but he’s an abusive prick. Funky Winkerbean thinks it’s a bastion of treating women with respect, but it’s the world Elliot Rodger dreamed of living in.
Today’s strip has a creepy incel vibe to it. Perfect for an arc honoring women in the workplace.
Let’s put Pete’s missing thumb to use in a better story:
Man, once again asshole Darin shows what a shitty friend he is. He’s undermining his supposed best friend’s relationship with the woman he’s going to marry. What was the point of this? It just introduces rancor and suspicion into their relationship. Mopey can’t do something nice for Mindy, especially if she asks, because then he’s pussy-whipped. Clearly Darin thinks Mopey should have told Mindy to go fuck herself.
So the next time Mopey thinks to do something kind for Mindy, he’s going to pause and reconsider, because according to his best friend, who’s married to a woman Mopey used to covet and therefore knows more about these things than Mopey, that makes him a sap and a sucker. After all, Mindy’s only asking him as a means of manipulating him.
Speaking of couples and, by extension, families, where is Jessica “My Father John Darling Was Murdered” Fairgood? And has their son Skylar started his college search yet?
I too was wondering if Jessica has managed to sublet their Los Angeles apartment and moved back to Ohio, because I don’t remember that being mentioned off-hand. It’s only been about 3 years, after all.
Amusingly, I believe that was their situation for over a year regardless, which would suggest that Jessica wouldn’t need to sublet because their lease would have expired anyway. But of course, she and her idiot husband aren’t known for their good judgment, especially where housing is concerned.
It’s not even that… Mindy on a whim came up with an impulsive, vague, overly simplistic, infantile and outrageously unfeasible idea that ‘solves’ an issue which was never a freaking ‘issue’ to begin with. And she offers ZERO details, nor any kind of conceptual framework of what ‘honoring’ the two dinosaurs would look like to Pete… And as I noted yesterday, either she’s too dumb to literally breathe or she didn’t bother to spend 30 seconds to think about her grand scheme because of 1. Logistical issues and 2. The fact that while Pete can probably call some friends of former colleagues he isn’t the freaking Green Lantern who can make anything happen through the power of will. Nevermind the fact that there are more important things to nag your network of friends and industry professionals for…
And Pete who clearly sees the difficulty of such an unusual request should have actually SAID SOMETHING instead of thinking with his peener.
Jesus Fuckin’ Christ; she didn’t even offer to HELP at all(!) and was merely content to drop the whole can of worms in her fiancee’s lap, kiss his forehead, wash her hands of the whole situation and happily skip away. It’s just weird that it never occurred to her to ask her goddamn billionaire boss to throw some money and influence around, but that’s not the Funkyverse way, I guess.
These past two days have ticked about 50 boxes over at TVtropes with the stereotypical vapid, naive blonde dreamer girlfriend and the too-eager-to-oblige boyfriend who always gets sweet talked into biting off more than he can chew… But don’t worry, Chester or Masone or Cliffe or Bill Clinton will swoop in to pull some strings and save the day, and once again Pete will keep the credit for himself…
Oh, I certainly think there are legitimate objections that Dorkin or anyone else, including Mopey, would be able to raise regarding Mindy’s request. But he doesn’t do that. Dorkin just bullies his best friend that doing a favor for his fiancee makes him a contemptible pussy-whipped loser.
In a more realistic scenario (ha!), this could conceivably introduce marital discord between Mopey and Mindy before they even get married, but of course, in this story it’s nothing more than stupid jocular teasing by an idiot with no recognition of any greater implications.