beckoningchasm
September 12, 2021 at 10:36 pm
Interesting that the only color we see on the photos is blotchy red. Are these photos of shooting victims?J.J. O’Malley
September 13, 2021 at 10:37 pm
…[A]ll the photos appear to black and white with occasional splotches of red. Was Fun…er, Holly taking pictures at a screening of “Schindler’s List”?billytheskink
September 13, 2021 at 10:24 am
Given all of the red smears on the photos…I’m guessing most of these “old” photos date back to Holly’s days as a red-and-white clad high school majorette…
December 3, 2013
Kudos to the above-quoted snarkers whose beady, nitpicking eyes were drawn to the red splotches in nearly all of Holly’s photos. Those are all great (and funny) guesses, but apparently the pictures depict teenage Holly engulfed in flames.
The flaming baton gag dates back to the Act I days, and it is amusing to imagine it going horribly awry. It’s a little less amusing to imagine it causing disfiguring burns. And it becomes horrifying when we learn that her mother’s response was to schedule Holly’s yearbook photos accordingly. Also, disfiguring burns aside, Holly needn’t be so modest about her “skill” with a flaming baton. After all, she was still good enough, years later, to show a Xenon warrior just how it’s done.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Yeah, it’s one of those old Act I gags that doesn’t really work in an Act III context. That’s the thing about jokes, when you stop telling them for a while, you forget how.
And it’s not just an Act I vs Act III thing. Even within Act III, the juxtaposition of what we’re supposed to take seriously and what we’re supposed to laugh at is absurd.
And I’ve noticed it’s always women whose suffering is given short shrift. The petty, juvenile problems of men are explored with extreme seriousness and length.
Unless the man is Bull. Crazy Harry getting music recommendations he didn’t want got more attention than Bull’s untreatable illness.
It’s like if an aging rock band decided to release a greatest hits album, but re-recorded all the songs with their shitty new lineup.
Boy, that Holly sure was a majorette! And her flaming baton trick often set things on fire. Back when she was in high school. She was a majorette. Did I tell you the time she set something on fire? Because she was a majorette. Who did a flaming baton trick. In high school. Where things often caught on fire.
They’re gonna do this all week, folks.
Hey it could be worse, Holly. You coulda got your NOSE BIT OFF BY A SAIGON WHORE!
( If you get this reference, I love you.)
A single sentence saying “a battle with cancer ultimately ends with a draw” has as much insight on the subject than what The Author has taken to say in the past decade and beyond.
Disagree? Quote something uniquely poignant that he’s said about the subject, and tell us how long it takes for you to think of it. Go on.
Pour one out for the Legend Norm MacDonald. That particular insight on Cancer came from his stand up special “Me Doing Standup.”
Wait, Norm died? Ah jeez…what a loss. Guy was one of a kind.
I had a post in mind when I first visited the website this morning. Reading of Norm’s passing somewhat put me off, and I decided to wait until after work. Now I forgot what I was going to post. Oh, well.
Anyway, a toast to Norm. I thought his SNL Weekend Update segments were the best of anyone’s. Norm had an iconic voice that was easy to identify. Whether it was Pigeon on Mike Tyson Mysteries or Yaphit, the gelatinous alien on The Orville. One of my favorites was when Norm voiced a weary Death on an early episode of Family Guy.
Nice to see you on SOSF, Jack. I missed you when you left the FW discussion on Comics Kingdom. You were one of a handful of readers who read/posted/upvoted in the evenings.
Cheers.
Norm’s demise genuinely makes me sad. No smirk.
Holly’s mom’s joyful expression is really weird. She looks like some scary animatronic thing from “Return to Oz.”
Yes dear *smirk* you kept on being a self immolating failure and we kept having you do it over and over again *smirk* and you just kept along with it just because *smirk*
But she got to have her moment of triumph in that Sunday strip there, so good for her. Good thing they let random people on sets of AAA budget films and let them interfere with the shoot. You see, that’s a quarter inch from reality because
Norm’s fight, by his definition, ended in a draw.
I’ve lost loved ones to cancer, and it’s hard, but I have the memories of their lives and the knowledge that I love them. That’s kinda why Batty annoys me so much; it’s all pathos with no real feeling/consequence.
This was supposed to be a reply to none. Well RIP Norm MacDonald anyhow.
They should have named this comic strip “Syndication Poison”.
“It’s hard to find a picture of me when I wasn’t recovering from burns!”
Holly talking about her teen years or Tom Batiuk since the creation of Son Of Stuck Funky?
Holly’s destructive baton twirling was funny in Act 1 because, like Wiley Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons, it wasn’t to be taken seriously. Treating it as real in Act 3 makes it as creepy as Les’s desk-mounted machine gun.
Yeah, it’s kind of sick, isn’t it?
Where is this leading???
I’d say down the sewer, but that’s actually where this “arc”is coming from.
It’s leading nowhere. Batiuk just wanted to take a week off by reminding us of a recurring joke in Act 1. There’s been literally no other point to this week.
In the remaining days, he might be able to squeeze in what an overbearing harridan Holly’s mother is. That’s the sort of thing he likes doing when he’s coasting.
You know, at least Teen Holly had a goal and she stuck to it and kept practicing until she got it right. Has anybody else ever been seen applying themselves toward a goal without having it handed to them on a plate? (see Les being chased by Hollywood, Summer reintroduced as a basketball star- though I suppose her constant absence could be explained as being at practice- literally everything happening at Atomik Komix…)
Giving up is practically a virtue in this world. “Oh, the doctors got my diagnosis wrong, I think I’ll just die instead.” And then be worshipped long after I’m dead, like some kind of low-rent Christ figure.
Or that stupid-ass Eugene and Lucy story from Crankshaft. These people constantly let their lives be destroyed by tiny, easily surmountable obstacles. And on some level, they seem to enjoy it. They’re the living example of cursing the dark instead of turning on the light.
There’s another example featuring Holly–her quest to complete Cory’s Starbuck Jones collection. Seems like every single “rare” issue was simply given to her gratis.
You remind me of the great *Peanuts” strip (September 9, 1965) in which Linus and Charlie Brown discuss lighting a candle versus cursing the darkness. While Charlie Brown shares Linus’s view, he notes that not everybody does.
And we end with Lucy denouncing “You stupid darkness!’
(For some reason, in my mind, Lucy sounds like Rene Artois from the Britcom “‘Allo, ‘Allo.” It must be because Rene, when caught in a compromising position by his wife, invariably began his explanation with “You stupid woman,..”)
Adlai Stevenson (whose son just passed away) invoked the lighting a single candle image upon the death of Eleanor Roosevelt. Is Lisa the Eleanor Roosevelt of our time?
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/peanuts/images/f/ff/19650909.gif/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/600?cb=20131128163218
Aaahhh, that’s the stuff. That’s just good, isn’t it?
I had to strip off the stuff after “.gif” to view the file.
That is a classic Peanuts. Good stuff.
Tom, if you’re reading this: repeatedly getting serious burns as a teenager, and having no scars as an adult is as close to a quarter inch from reality as 1) Burning down Los Angeles with no visible consequences
2) Letting some high school English teacher who wrote a book about his wife’s cancer be involved in every aspect of the making of a Hollywood movie
3) Talking chimpanzees who kill people with guns
Which is another layer of sickness in the Funkyverse. Some serious problems are treated as jokes (Holly being a burn victim), other serious problems are treated inconsequentially (Becky losing an arm and never batting an eye about it), and trivial problems are treated as massive existential crises (Funky’s minor cataract surgery, practically any strip Les is in). But there’s no clear pattern to any of it. It’s not “Rape of the Lock” where the seriousness of it itself the joke.
The first Ace Ventura movie is the only thing I’ve ever seen whose tone was as jarring as Funky Winkerbean. I don’t know what that movie was supposed to be before Jim Carrey came along. It’s actually very unpleasant. The case is an actual murder case. Of a person, not an animal. It later involves a missing (implied murdered) girl, kidnapping, mental illness, transsexuality, police corruption, and other nastiness. But it’s not like Mouse Hunt or A Series of Unfortunate Events, where the unpleasantness is part of the fun. The humor and the story just don’t go together.
Who is Holly’s father?
Because given her tendency to blow things up, it’s either Crankshaft, Crankshaft’s grill, or Michael Bay.
Who is anybody’s father in that generation? I can think of three mothers – Becky’s, Holly’s and Jfff’s, and they are all awful, with Jeff’s being outright (untreated) mentally ill.
Oh! Lisa’s father (not mother) showed up to ask forgiveness once she was non-responsive.
Becky, Holly, Donna and Rachel are mothers themselves, of course, and all seem like nice enough people, but Funkyverse kids have fallen down the memory hole, so they don’t really count.
Les is supposed to be Summer’s father, but considering how he handles himself, there’s no way he was an adequate parent to her. She must have been raised by someone else.
Remember that Lisa was concerned more about how her death would affect HIM, and not their 5 year-old daughter.
Batty appears to have a strong aversion to portraying elderly couples.
You ever notice when Batty creates an elderly male character, they’re always widowed? For example, Ed Crankshaft and Mort Winkerbean are widowers. In Crankshaft, Batty killed off Ralph Meckler’s wife Helen because of Alzheimer’s. In fact, if remember correctly, Helen already had Alzheimer’s when she was first introduced. Has George Keesterman ever been shown with a wife? Nope.
It’s the same with all the single elderly ladies. The bus garage’s Mary and Lena in Crankshaft are single. Jff’s mother was a widow. Lillian MacKenzie is an old maid.
In Funky Winkerbean Ruby Lith, Flash and Phil are all portrayed as unmarried/no longer married. Melinda Budd too.
Any older couples in either comic besides the Dinkles?
Seems like Batty has a weird fascination of single older people. Watch your back, Kathy Batiuk.
Senior Citizen: Hello! My wife and I would like to buy a home in Westview.
City Official: We can’t admit both of you. Which one of you will be dying?
As far as I can recall, we’ve never seen either of Les Moore’s parents. They must have dropped him off in a basket at the Westview fire station and fled the country.
Ha ha – I lived my youth in constant pain Ha- ha
Really there is something wrong with this guy if you play something like this for real and yucks at the same time.
At risk of being redundant: this strip exudes obtuse cluelessness.