So apparently for every good idea Pete comes up with, you have to listen to two useless, shitty ones? Another “great name” for this new Elemental might be The Ordinaire…she’s just another buff Batom broad clad in a generic, formfitting superhero onesie. Why couldn’t she be a heroine who’s composed of water, and who needs a watertight suit to encase her, a la Doctor Atmos? A life sized, humanoid, water filled balloon animal would make for a truly original Sunday comic book cover (which, bet on it, we’ll be getting tomorrow.)
Even though Pete couldn’t afford an engagement ring, if and when he and Mindy ever do get married and start a family, at least he’ll be rich in “Dad jokes.” Webster’s defines these as “wholesome joke[s] of the type said to be told by fathers with a punchline that is often an obvious or predictable pun or play on words and usually judged to be endearingly corny or unfunny.” The key word there is endearingly: Dad doesn’t have to interject “…wait for it…” before striking a “har-dee-har” pose to sell the weak punchline.
Son of Stuck Funky 
How the hell is Pete’s remark supposed to be funny? I mean, it IS supposed to be funny, right? I assume one of the villains for the Inedible Pulp is Comic Book Critic.
We’re going to get a cross-over with Rip Tide, aren’t we?
Maybe Rip and Oceanaire could mate and bring Snorkel Boy to life. He’d only be able to traverse shallow water, like ponds and inlets at low tide and such.
And, being shallow, his mundane identity could be Pete Ratbastardo, mold-mannered cartoonist
Any relation to Sgt. Orville Snorkel of *Beetle Bailey*?
As mentioned earlier in the week, it’s “interesting” how the women on the AK staff have no input on this new female superhero at all. Would it have killed TomBan to have Mindy or Ruby dream up “The Oceanaire” instead of Pete? Or are they too busy with Wendy Windbag or whatever her name is?
Captain Swash Buckler? A “ghost pirate”? Wouldn’t she be doing battle with polluters and whalers and narco submarines and such? BatYam has the imagination of a child…a slow-witted dullard of a child.
“Buff Batom broad”…LOL, yep, he definitely has a “type”, doesn’t he? Maybe all those hours spent hiding in the attic with his comic books was somewhat less “innocent” than previously believed.
Hell, it would be nice if more female characters in the Funkyverse were drawn like this…At least this “Batiuk broad” has a defined bustline and some lipstick for once
Yeah, Batiuk has a “type”, all right. Notice that her left arm seems to be missing.
So…Sunday “Oceanaire” cover? Is everyone waiting with bated … or ha-ha, should I say “baited”… breath?
I swear, this is a totally legitimate comment and I am not a disguised Tom Batiuk, author of “The Complete Funky Winkerbean, Volume 10”, which would make a great Christmas gift.
Sheesh- why not just “Commodore Pirate Mann”?!
Wow, all these incredible characters created by the AK bullpen! You wonder how the fans can afford to buy all these comic books and keep up with them. They must have a dedication that makes fans of other franchises look like slackers. Maybe we never see any AK fans because they’re buried under the company’s output.
And that ladies and gentlemen is the highest paid creator in the comics world… Yep, pulling in a high six figures annually and that’s just his base salary…
But he’s writing for an audience of one. The entire AK enterprise is just Hagglemore burning his money to play at being a comics mogul. It doesn’t have to make an actual profit any more than Marie Antoinette’s Hameau de la Reine had to make agricultural products.
Oh. So that’s why they made the water elemental a woman. They wanted to get their jollies drawing her “flotation devices.”
Phil: There she is. Mistress of the D-cup… I mean deep!
Back in September when the Subterranean was first introduced, didn’t most of us just assume the water elemental would be Rip Tide, Scuba Cop?
I know that’s what I assumed. They mentioned Scorch as the fire-based heroine back in September, and I was sure that a pair of Silver Age fossils like Flash and The Late Phil Holt would follow the super-group tradition of one token female per team roster. Who knew the old fogeys would be so progressive they’d skip over the obvious water candidate and opt for an Eric Stanton dominatrix armed with an aquatic Q-tip?
In other developments, Mopey Pete is still an annoying and unfunny twerp.
See Bill Wilingham’s Elementals, in which the fire and water elementals (Morningstar and Fathom) are female, while the air and earth elementals (Vortex and Monolith) are male.
Most super-hero teams today have two girls or women in their ranks, perhaps in preparation for a pop Bechdel Test.
It’s strange to recall that that the last years of the original Justice Society of America (1948-51) included Wonder Woman and the Black Canary…and no one seemed to give it much of a thought. (Except maybe Joan Williams Garrick, who looked a little green-eyed monster as her Flashy spouse recalled “the lovely Black Canary’s” participation in the last JSA case. See *Flash* #129, page 5, panel 5.)
Of course, for the first half or so of her JSA appearance, WW was only listed as the team’s secretary (even though she could mop up the floor with pretty much everyone save the Spectre, Dr. Fate, or Green Lantern) and never took an active part in their missions.
The one-woman-in-the-group aspect returned with the Silver Age: there’s only one JLA/JSA team-up in which Wonder Woman and Black Canary both appear as JSAers, the 1969 one, in which the Canary’s husband Larry Lance dies and his distraught widow joins the JLA. (Because they needed a token woman in light of their Wonder Woman giving up her powers and taking a leave of absence. Why Denny O’Neil did that rather than bringing in Zatanna I’ll never know.)
John Broome, who wrote the later JSA stories with Diana and Dinah, had only one woman in his Atomic Knights stories in *Strange Adventures,* and Marene Herald never got to do very much until the final adventure. (Beyond basking in her love for Gardner Grayle, the group’s leader.)
It’s only with the Legion of Super-Heroes that DC had multiple heroines, and even there the ratio was something like five men to three women.
The Late Phil Holt. I like that. We should be playing up that aspect of Phil’s character much more than we have. Let’s try out some names.
The Late Phil Holt
Phil Holt Who Used to be Dead
Phil Holt Who Rose From the Grave
The Reanimated Phil Holt
The Undead Phil Holt
The Not Quite Dead Yet Phil Holt
The Formerly Dead Phil Holt
The Phil Holt Who Would Not Die
Phil Holt Part Deux
Phil ‘Hell Can Wait’ Holt
Zombie Phil Holt
Mopey Pete, by no means, should have ever have been let out of the house without his mother’s permission.
Cheers
My father, John Darling, who was murdered.
Our daughter, Halle Dinkle, who moved to Italy.
The Late Phil Holt, who was dead.
Phil Holt, who is so absentminded he forgot he is dead.
Wow, she looks like my spin instructor. Batty must go to the same gym as I.
“I know! Let’s call our group of four heroes the Fantastic Fo–what? What do you mean, that’s taken? Oh, I’ve got it–the Quality Quartet!”
“Quality Quartet” sounds very Simpsons.
Batiuk’s decked the halls on the funkywinkerbean.com homepage with a nostalgic Xmas strip from ten years ago, featuring a still-senile Mort, a still-sullen Cory, and Funky’s disappeared or deceased AA sponsor, Wade.
And remarkably, it’s still way more current than his “cast photos” that feature characters who haven’t appeared in the strip in fifteen years.
At least nothing is misspelled this year. Two years ago, the website left a strip about “Christams cards” up all season:
Was it last year when his Christmas image was a blurry shot of lights and possibly a chair?
You mean this:
Is it just me, or does her pose seem weird? It looks like she’s preparing to sit down but her legs are positioned unevenly.
Gerald, that one might be on me: I cropped and edited the image in the post. Here’s an actual screenshot:
(Still looks odd, though.
Still looks odd, though.
Right. The full picture looks like the intent is to show her striding up a hill, but the positioning of the upper part of the leg on the lower elevation looks anatomically wrong for that.
Also, the artwork doesn’t look like Ayers’ and certainly not like TomBa’s.
Actually, it looks like the bad guy just said “Try not to fart this time, Oce-o” and she’s thinking “Oh yeah?”
If you know a BETTER pose to try and liquify your crotch from, I’d like to see it!
I want to destroy Panel 3 Pete.
Calling Pete’s idea “bad” is giving it way too much credit. It’s more what skeptics call “not even wrong.” It’s worse than bad; it’s so incoherent that its quality can’t even be evaluated. How in the hell did Pete get from “water elemental” to “ghost pirate from the past” to “captain swash buckler?” No two of those three concepts go together. (Hell “Oceanaire” doesn’t fit in any better.) He’s obviously very proud of this idea; how was it supposed to work in his mind? I really want to know. Flash’s response should be “umm…. what?”
if and when (Pete) and Mindy ever do get married and start a family
I’ve been trying to figure out what on earth makes this relationship work, other than poor writing. I think it’s that Mindy is an even worse case of arrested development than Pete is. And she’s definitely more stupid than he is.
But Mindy is attractive, and would certainly have better romantic options than broke, clueless Pete and his engagement tiger. She went to college, where she would have been an MRS degree waiting to happen, but came back with no attachments. She also has no ambition, direction, or interests. What did she even study in college? She lucked into her job, a typical Westview Mafia hire. Her relationship with her grandfather, Ed Crankshaft, is clingy and juvenile for someone her age.
And that’s why I think she’s attracted to Pete. She doesn’t want to become an adult, and Pete is never going to make her do that. They can just hold hands, play house, exchange cheap tacky gifts, and base their lives around comic books like the middle school couple they are.
Them getting married or having children makes no sense to me. Their relationship is built around their mutual desire to avoid adulthood. Which is Batiuk is probably going to make it happen.
Mopey needed a woman, because Batiuk probably felt that he needed to be rewarded for his author avatar/nice guy personality. And Mindy allows him to bring Crankshaft and her idiot father into the strip, which he seems to think makes him clever or something.
Never mind that this appears to be Mopey’s first romantic relationship in his life, and that he just fell into it and it developed rapidly. He saw her at a reception, engaged in some stupid banter with her, and she almost immediately decided that she’d enter into a lifelong relationship with him, even with his incel vibes.
And of course they’re going to have children, because once they get married, Batiuk will no longer have anything else for them to do. He’ll do this despite the fact that he obviously dislikes and regrets that he introduced Skyler into Dorkin and his idiot wife’s lives eight years ago.
Oh, I’m sure that’s Batiuk’s thought process. Pete’s a “nice guy” and “the highest paid writer in comic books” even though he is demonstrably a talentless, selfish piece of shit. I just have to come up with my own headcanon sometimes, to make sense of what goes on in this comic strip. It’s like Harriet’s “Cayla is using Les as a meal ticket” explanation for why she puts up with his endless moping about Lisa.
The real question is, when will Mindy die from cancer?
All of my friends at school grew up and settled down
And they mortgaged up their lives
One thing’s not said too much, but I think it’s true
They just get married ’cause there’s nothing else to do, so
I’m just sittin’ on a fence
You can say I got no sense
Trying to make up my mind
Really is too horrifying
So I’m sittin on a fence
— Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, “Sittin’ on a Fece”
Haven’t we had enough of Atomik Komix? Get to the tease at the top where our stand in is mugging Les!