This one is way more disturbing than an arc about an elderly jazz group jamming with a church choir has any right to be. Morton (now 100% Alzheimer’s-free) is in full horndog mode again and has a baffled Lillian in his gun sights, with all sorts of perversity on his mind. There’s a hint of malice on his face here that gives this one a bit of an uncomfortable and gross twist and completely undermines the G-rated old coot cuteness BatHam was probably going for with this one. I haven’t seen a suggestive leer like that since Frankie left town.
That Lillian head swivel is possibly one of the most hallucinogenic moments in Act III history, at least since Les argued with that talking imaginary cat. Although the talking alcoholic murder chimp was pretty trippy too, in it’s own way. And check out Morty’s schozz in panel three. That’s a honker and a half right there. And you don’t typically see a lot of ninety year olds hauling around a gut like that either. But I digress and besides, things are already revolting enough already without dwelling on the art work.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Weird how Frankie was a horrible perverted sleaze-bag for what he did to Lisa, but with Mort it’s all LOL guffaw. Sometimes I imagine Tom Batiuk’s conception of his own strip looks like Lillian’s panel two head.
I feel like thinking Batiuk thinks about his strip beyond “what’s the bare minimum I can do to get paid, and how fast can I do that” anymore is giving him a lot of credit.
Ah, I see Mort’s long-in-remission dementia has kicked back in. ‘Bout time.
Weren’t you the one that said you’d like to see papa Winkerbean horndog Lillian the other day?
Enjoy. The rest of will be losing either sleep or our breakfasts.
Do you guys have some kind of a prize for J.J.? Cocoa with Batiuk or something?
Why, errrr…no, that wasn’t me. That was my cousin, T.J. O’Malley. I had nothing to do with today’s strip, and you got nothin’ on me, Hill.
Yeah, okay. I’ve got a biiiig mouth.
Barnaby Baxter and Jane Schultz insist that it was Orville, misusing the fine Havana magic wand.
I think you’re in the clear, O’Malley. @Gerard Plourde gave the Morty Winkerbean/Lillian hookup prognostication credit to @newagepalimpsest in another thread. @newagepalimpsest happily jumped on the grenade for you. 👍
Don’t blame J.J. O’Malley. You’re the jinx.
Aren’t you the one who snidely commented something the other day about Lillian being relegated to a background character? A status her character richly deserves?
Well, here you go. A major push for Lillian. After ninety years a man is finally attracted to her. Enjoy!
Jinx!
(Sheepishly looking away) Um… Er… No. I don’t think so.
You must have me confused with somebody else. 🤥
A “hint” of malice? Panel two looks like a rape scene.
It’s an odd artistic choice. Morton is supposed to be an adorable horny old coot…or so I assumed. But now, just out of nowhere, he’s suddenly a sinister pervert. It’s bizarre.
I keep wondering about how the Batiuk-Ayers communication works. Like, how much, if any, art direction does Batdick give Ayers? For this strip, did he say, “Make Mort look like a rabid rapist preparing to plow Lillian’s brains out against her will?” Because that’s what it looks like.
Or does Batdick just say, “Whatever, Motherchucker. Just draw it so that I get that fucking Pulitzer they forgot to give me before.”
“And make Lillian look like she’s just now realizing all the exits are blocked.”
That Playboy logo on Mort’s trombone case is such a stupid little detail that is attempting to masquerade as a clever little detail.
Oh and the trombone case as depicted in the third panel **TOTALLY** isn’t a phallic symbol… (Yes, that would be 100% intentional by the artist)
I wouldn’t mind so much if they weren’t, you know, in a church rehearsing for a funeral.
Lillian, there’s only one way to save yourself! Go to the loft rail and leap to your death! Pretty please, with Montoni’s cheese on top?
Yeah, Mort looks like a sexual predator here, and amazingly, it’s not the first time he’s looked like one when he’s hitting on a woman, which makes it all the more appalling. I’m not sure what made Ayers think angling Mort’s eyebrows in a way that makes him look angry also somehow makes him look seductive.
And the Playboy bunny logo on his case makes it even more disgusting. He’s lusting for her, imagining them doing it right there, thinking about what she might look like with her clothes off. The man’s totally tone deaf.
Kudos to newsgepalimsest who called this plot line last week:
“I do think Funky’s dad will hit on Lillian, because ‘Funky’s dad is horny LOL’ was a loathsome storyline, so we are sure to keep seeing references to it for years to come.”
I bow to your prescience.
I wish that I’d used my apparent precog powers to buy a lottery ticket instead, but thank you!
Look how much worse this gets if we just swap the second and third panels:
What’s sick is how much this looks like an actual Funky Winkerbean strip. This is exactly the kind of wordless, shocking third panel that Batiuk loves.
I mean, open that mouth a little wider, give her some terrifying tentacles or wings. Suddenly she’s a eldritch monster or deity of destruction. An appropriate partner for Mort.
Nobody deserves to be leered at like that. As much as I hate Lillian’s guts, I feel bad for her here.
Sad thing is that I think that’s the point. I don’t think this is setting up some kind of relationship between Mort and Lillian (why is Batiuk fascinated with this troll anyway?). I think the “joke” is going to be how uncomfortable Mort’s leering makes Lillian, which we’re supposed to laugh at since Lillian is terrible and thus deserves it.
I was thinking Lillian will be charmed by Mort. Just like every woman in Westview is charmed by every vile, romantically incompetent man who approaches them. Hell, compared to Les, Funky, and Mr. “Engagement Tiger”, Morty’s overt rapeyness is downright refreshing. At least he gets to the point.
I mean, Batiuk did once use “Lillian is too old and ugly for anyone to want to rape her, so she’s silly to be afraid of it” as an actual punchline in Crankshaft, so what you’re describing wouldn’t be that surprising.
That Tom Batiuk can get away with tasteless rape jokes is a tribute to his irrelevance. Public figures like Bobby Knight got in national trouble for making similar cracks more than 30 years ago. In today’s Internet culture, where people like James Gunn get fired over dumb tweets they made years ago, there’s no way this man should still have a platform.
His getting away with jokes like this also makes me think that there’s someone at the syndicate that publishes his strips that’s getting paid for a job they haven’t shown up for in years.
Uggggggggh. No no no no no. No. The man looks like a wolf who just spotted his next meal. This is just gross.
I don’t know whether to blame Batiuk or Ayers for this one. I think it’s possible for a character to be a charming flirt without seeming predatory, though it is a fine line. I could imagine this dialogue working with a different set of artwork (if we define “working” as “not creeping me out”).
I’m no expert on the sexual behavior of people in eldercare. I’m just sharing a few of my experiences.
Apparently, some elderly residents are rather randy. I remember an occurrence while having dinner with my father when he was in an independent living facility.
A man entered the dining room saying “hello” to many of the ladies. He’d put his hands on their shoulders and pat their hands. The man had the air of a real Casanova.
My father said:
There’s Fred. Watch this, Francine is going to arrive a minute from now.
Francine was another resident not married to Fred. Sure enough, a minute later, Francine entered the dining room. Dad mentioned the two of them usually had relations before dinner. They’d leave the apartment together but Francine would hang back for a minute so people wouldn’t think the two of them had been together.
I talked to a nurse. She said there was more sex going on than in a college dorm. She said Francine wasn’t Fred’s only partner.
A few years later I visited Dad when he was living in a memory care facility. Sadly, Dad was in rapid decline due to Alzheimer’s.
There was one poor man who kept barging into Dad’s room and tried to exit the building through Dad’s bathroom. There was another man who kept trying to take stuff out of Dad’s bedside table. Another man would walk in look around and walk out. There were no oversexed men that I witnessed in that building.
I guess Mort’s Alzheimer’s is in complete remission. I sure wish he could have shared his secret with Dad.
As I said the other day, Batty cured Mort of his Alzheimer’s simply because the Bedside Mannerisms needed a trombone player.
Not offensive at all, Mr. Batiuk.
There must be someone selling Viagra at Bedside Manor illegally. Somebody is supplying Morton with blue pills and it’s not a doctor!
But it’s cute see, cause over in Crankshaft she is fretting over how she looks on camera and that was 10 years ago, or the same time as FW which is 10 years late…ah, whatever, both strips suck.
I saw that today. The way Batiuk keeps doing these “crossovers”, I’m pretty sure it’s intentional. “If you read Crankshaft, you’ll see that Lillian thinks she’s ugly, but if you also read Funky Winkerbean, you’ll see that Lillian thinks she’s ugly, but a man wants to do her anyway! That’s called writing!”.
Yup, way, Way, WAY too much Lizard Lil this week! When I first saw today’s “C-Shaft,” I thought the blonde was one of those creepy pre-teen twins that hangs around the bookstore and was aged up to match their FW high-school appearance, but then I saw it was Mindy. Funny how all the blondes in the Funkyverse wind up looking alike.,
I can only think that TomBa has been reading Chickweed Lane again.
I think he’s been smoking Chickweed.
The only difference between Batiuk and McEldowney is their fetishes. They even have the same pretenses to high art.
1. Someone tell this mook that the Playboy bunny logo stopped being cool and edgy back in nineteen-seventy-something…
2. CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE REMIND THESE IDIOTS THAT THEY’RE PREPARING FOR A FUNERAL PROCESSION AND IT’S NOT PARTY SWINGER TIME?
3. It’s funny because despite being in a house of god, all Mort can think about is getting his dick wet…
I’m still not sure anybody’s told them it’s a funeral, and there’s been no sign that anybody, including the writer, knows there’s supposed to be a procession involved.
No, it’s funny because of the very idea that extremely elderly men in a nursing home could even function sexually at all, given their age, their infirmities, and the many many drugs they’re on.
But presumably creeps like Mort get more jollies out of menacing and “dominating” women, making them extremely uncomfortable, than they ever did from actual sex.
Gross.
Kudos to Lillian for her impersonation of the multi-faced Hindu deity Brahma.
All day I’d been thinking that Lillian’s creepy face reminded me of something, and I finally placed it: a boss in World of Warcraft with multiple faces called the Devourer of Souls. Which, given how she treated her own sister, would also be a perfect title for Lillian.
Is that Funky in panel one? Are panels two and three taken from “Tales from the Crypt”?
So Lillian goes out not with a whimper but with a bang.