Today’s episode is about people feeding birds. Uh…
So, notice how in Tuesday’s strip, Ghost Lisa was carefully pulling out handfuls of bird seed? Here, Summer just cuts to the chase and dumps the whole lot in.
I guess this is to contrast Lisa’s more formal methods with the rebellious attitudes of Summer. I guess this is also to fill space in the newspaper.
Um, I like the footprints in the snow. That’s a nice touch. Can I go now?
Son of Stuck Funky 
And there you go. It’s official…Summer IS still attending KSU. Summer went off to college in 2012, so she’s in her ninth year now, which surely qualifies her for all kinds of things if and when she finally graduates, which is obviously not a given. You’d think that the school, not to mention her father, would be at least somewhat concerned re: her lack of progress by now.
Just consider all of the new Act III characters who didn’t even exist back when Summer first left for college. Mason, Buck, Phil Holt, Flash Freeman, Ruby Lith, Chester Hagglemore, Cliff and Vera, Mindy (in the Funkyverse), Skyler, Marianne Winters, Adeela, Batton Thomas, Rocky, Bernie…it’s quite a list and far from comprehensive. See, I always figured that a “Summer Graduates” was a no-brainer June Sunday strip, but somehow it’s eluded him. It just seems so obvious, doesn’t it?
At one time I would have said that time isn’t meant to be passing in the strip at the same rate as in real life. Which would make sense. It would explain why Skyler is still somewhere around four years old, for example. Lots of comic strips have a week’s worth of strips taking place on the same day. But that argument can’t work anymore since he brought in the pandemic. (Which is over in the Funkyverse, apparently.) So, once again, TB would seem to have painted himself into a corner. Maybe he’ll explain that Summer is working on her Masters degree.
Maybe Funkyverse time is like Jeremy Bearimy in The Good Place.
For me this was his biggest mistake. He gave some thought to the characters before his Big Jump, but then wasted them all with a real-time progression and then dumped that once his characters aged out. So instead of getting Summer’s graduation and (yes it could have happened) then her own family (dating/marriage/children) we got faded third hand copies off the character mimeograph. Glasses and Chullo ended up being there for twice as long as Summer’s generation and they never developed into characters at all.
Marriage to Cayla and Summer leaving… that’s where i lost it, and while i dip in and out again even now, it’s too late
In the time since Summer left for college, by my memory Les has published a sequel to Lisa’s story, a prequel, AND a graphic novel, there was an aborted, half-assed attempt to make Lisa’s Story into a made-for-TV tearjerker movie on Lifetime (or a sleazy softcore skin flick on Cinemax depending on your interpretation of the producer’s comments), Les had a freaking heart attack at his high school reunion, Pete Rattabastardo wrote the scripts for the blockbuster Starsuck Jones trilogy which grossed billions worldwide, then he founded his own boutique comics publishing house in downtown Cleveland, her old coach and mentor Jerome Bushka FINALLY delivered that long-awaited first ever Ohio state championship for Westview in football and promptly retired for “unspecified” health reasons then died less than a year afterward in a car accident which totally wasn’t suicide, her dad got another chance to make a Lisa’s Story movie, but this time with an all-star cast and a $100 million budget which had the dubious distinction of completely flopping before it ever got released despite being based on a nationally known bestselling book, and oh yeah about 35% of the greater Los Angeles region got burnt to a crisp from some stupid wildfire which almost certainly killed thousands and displaced a million residents and the topper was her own father Lester Freaking Moore, in a display of heroism above and beyond the call of duty in complete disregard for his own life pulled Marianne Winters, **THE** current hottest and sexiest starlet in Hollywood out of a burning condo and he didn’t even get so much as a handjob in gratitude from her…
You’d think Les and Summer would have a LOT of stuff to talk about and catch up on besides a goddamn bird feeder, wouldn’t you??
Good rant. And you’re right: for what’s supposed to be a realistic “slice of life” storytelling world, it cares about all the wrong things.
And of course Summer couldn’t be bothered to attend Coach Bushka’s funeral…
I don’t know what’s worse: that Mrs. Ewing is talking to a nearly 30-year-old woman like she’s home from her first semester in college; or that Summer is such an underachiever that this is actually appropriate.
Or that Mrs. Ewww-wing has been feeding the birds? Will this discovery spoil Les’s planned book Lisa Is For the Birds?
Damn you, time loop!
“No…I’. Just taking courses online over the winter”
It looks like Summer Moore is actively seeking to unseat Zonker Harris for the Perpetual Undergraduate Student Award.
Bluto Blutarsky: “Nine years of college, down the drain? I’m impressed!”
Yeah, Bluto only made it through seven.
And yet he became a U.S. Senator.
And married a beautiful woman, too! Almost as pretty as Cindy!
And you know what, it might not be a bad running gag to have Summer endlessly drag out her education, much to Les’ chagrin. But it’s too clever for FW, plus he’d have to write jokes, so it’ll never happen.
TB sort-of tried to suggest it was a running gag that Summer changed her major every year(?), but he forgot that a running gag needs to follow the Rule of Three, not the rule of Once and Forgotten.
Just taking courses online over the winter BREAK? Winter TRIMESTER? What is she talking about? Gah
So Les and Summer had a talk about who would fill the birdfeeder while she was home. And it was determined that Summer would handle that particular chore. Good to know.
Summer appears to be dumping the birdseed directly into the birdfeeder’s trough and it’s spilling over onto the ground. I guess she isn’t bright enough to realize you need to lift the roof to pour the birdseed in.
It’s obvious that Summer got her brains from her mother AND father.
———————–
Les was the one yammering about filling the birdfeeder. Why isn’t he the one filling it? Was all of this talk about Lisa and the bird feeder a passive-aggressive way to get Summer to do it for him?
C’mon, Les. At least demonstrate the proper way to fill the birdfeeder to Summer. Slacker.
——————————
Introducing Mrs. Ewing. Yet another overweight middle-aged woman who can play lineman for the Cleveland Browns. C’mon, Batty. Not all middle-aged women are overweight!
How was the all-you-can-eat buffet, Mrs. Ewing?
The bird feeder in the third panel appears to be filled with popcorn. I’m sure the squirrels will appreciate it. 🐿️
It’s not just a birdfeeder. It’s a solar popcorn popper!
“So, are you home now, Summer? I remember the day you left for college; I still had black hair back then.”
Also…”I see you’ve taken up the family bird-feeding chores?” Really? Someone fills a feeder once and that’s a topic for discussion (Yes, I know it’s leading up to Old Lady Ewing being pseudo-Lisa, but still…)? Apparently Batiuk thinks so and plans to stretch it out for a few more days, Go figure.
Wow. It’s truly impressive how Batiuk consistently finds the dullest, least interesting way to jump from one stupid idea to another. Last week, it was The Tale Of Two Guys Yapping About Comics, Part XVII. Then came The Tale Of Les Who Talks About Lisa, Part DCCXXIV: The Mysterious Affair Of The Ghostly Feeder Of Birds. We now apparently jump to The Tale Of Summer And Mrs. Ewing, Who Deliver Exposition About Things That We Already Knew Or Aren’t Important (Part I of a scheduled XXIII-part series).
I’m genuinely in awe of how utterly self-absorbed yet simultaneously completely un-self-aware one must be in order to write like this.
Did Mrs. Ewing exist before today?
Seems like she may reveal herself to be the ghostly bird feeding person. Has she been seen anywhere else?
I’ve never seen her before. Any other Batiukstorians recall her?
I guess we can rule out ornithology as her major. Or her minor.
She’s studying for a doctorate in pizzaology.
Not good enough to work at Montoni’s, which requires at least an MBA or an architecture degree.
Obviously, Lisa’s ghost made sure the seed went into the feeder correctly.
Living at home and taking online classes during basketball season? I guess TB hasn’t remembered that Summer went to Kent on a basketball scholarship in years, and she’d be out of eligibility now anyways, right? Quite a fall for someone who was once one of the handful of women on the planet who could dunk a basketball.
Or maybe the NCAA finally found out that Summer is actually former ABA All-Rookie teamer John Roche, who exhausted his eligibility at the University of South Carolina in 1971.
The resemblance is terrifying!
Uh… Summer Moore looks all of five feet nine inches at the most… She should have gone viral nationally for easily being the shortest woman to throw it down… And Guinness World Records should have been contacted.
Nevermind the fact that if Summer has hops like that U.S. Olympic Track and Field would be calling for her services on the high jump, triple jump, long jump, pole vault and who knows what else…
So am I to understand she never slammed it home in her entire career at Toledo? That would have gotten her on SportsCenter easy!!
Also, she would have had the coaches from UCONN, Tennessee, and Baylor camping out in her front yard.
The shortest woman I know of to dunk a basketball was Charlotte Smith. She was 6’0.
I played high school basketball. I was 5’10 and could… touch the net.
How is Summer home taking courses online for the winter when she’s a scholarship basketball player and its the middle of the season?
And there is no such thing as winter classes….just fall semester and spring semester. And by the way, KSU has been back to in person classes, so wasn’t isn’t summer living down there?
That’s a great observation. https://www.kent.edu/academic-calendar calls them Fall, and Spring, and Summer. Different universities/state college systems have different names for their semesters. It’s a real indictment of Tom Batiuk that he makes a mistake about the details of something he aggressively inserts into his “realistic” storytelling world.
Lol, like she would still be eligible to play? I think you can only be on the team a max of five years, and that’s IF you didn’t get significant playing time in one of those years.
Les is paying every dime for her ninth year of college, OR she has a job we don’t know about.
Hey, wrapping Christmas presents is one of the top paying jobs in Westview.
You have it right: five years, including one “redshirt” year where you can play very little. There are some exceptions (military service, religious mission, injury, transfer), but none of them would apply to Summer. The NCAA gave all its players a free year of eligibility because of COVID, but we all know how inconsistently COVID was treated in the Funkyverse.
Unless she is channeling Linda Blair in the first panel, Ayers drew Summer’s head on backward.
I’ve read that athletes have to be flexible but that’s ridiculous. Summer has the head-turning range of an owl.
Maybe she’s related to the Family Circus melonheads, who regularly rotate their heads to an Exorcist degree
Based on her attire (minus the pink bucket hat), I’m going to go out on a limb and identify the heretofore unknown Mrs. Ewing as the “Phantom Feeder”.
And the fact she looks nothing like Lisa.
It’s good a call that the latest Flintstones character to grace this strip is Mrs. Ewingstone.
It’s good a call that the latest Flintstones character to appear in this strip is Mrs. Ewingstone.
“My dad and I were just talking about the bird feeder!” No, Summer, you weren’t. Your dad was fantasizing about his long-dead wife still being alive. And like every other time he does, you just stood there and let him do it. Stop indulging this sickness.
And while you’re at it, you could take a little more interest in how this man has twisted your mother’s life story for his own purposes. I can only conclude that in-state tuition – which you need a lot more of due to your complete lack of academic progress – is enough to buy your complicity. Fuck you, Summer.
So today we have the biennial update on what Summer is up to (and how many years has it been since Keisha has been seen?). It’s no surprise that she’s doing the same thing she was doing 9 years ago. For someone who used to be a major character, her life has certainly taken a downward spiral. I guess TB has been too busy focusing on important characters like Phil Holt, Flash Freeman, Ruby, Masone, Cliff, Adeela, Ghost Lisa, and Zanzibar the murder chimp to bother with developing any of the characters that the readers really care about. It’s kind of sad, really.
In the real world, Les would be grilling his daughter about her post-graduation and career plans… Because I don’t care — Even in the most flexible and generous Funkyverse timeline, Summer has to be a senior by now (and since she isn’t playing hoops, let’s call her a 5th year senior.)
And silly me I thought Summer would be a natural shoe-in to fill Jerome Bushka’s role as Westview High’s coach-in-residence, but that would cause no end of reader confusion since Summer and Becky look 95% alike…
But then I remind myself that this isn’t the real world, which means Summer will only “graduate” from Toledo about the time a job vacancy pops up at Montoni’s Pizza…
Yet another Funky Winkerbean strip I don’t understand.
Summer isn’t home but she’s taking courses online? Huh? Where is she logging on? The university? 😵😕😖
Yeah, I had to read it three times for me to realize that neighbor lady meant “home permanently”. As in graduated and ready to live the rest of her life in Westview, I suppose.
I see everyone’s been visited today by the Downvote Fairy, probably frustrated over his or her inability to get their bizarre comments past our diligent screeners Sorry, Scoob!
Has anyone worked out the parameters of the Phantom Downvoter? It seems to be done without reading, just hitting whatever comments are available, since even comments that acknowledge when TB does something in the okay range can get hit.
It’s a CK regular who was repeatedly asked to stop posting lurid slash fiction involving the FW creative team. One of only two people to get the banhammer in this blog’s 11 year history.
This Lisa-loved-the-birds schtick reminds me of the Mary Worth Gram-liked-colours thing.
Am I the only one who saw the “Lisa’s ghost” figure in a hooded jacket from the back and got vibes from the ending of Don’t Look Now? (1973, Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie)