As always, it’s extremely intimidating following up the amazing ComicBookHarriet, but I’ll do my best. And so, the latest retelling of “a girl used to play arcade games” is continuing on. It still stretches any credibility that Maddie (who has to be over thirty at this point) never once heard about this before. Or that she never wondered what the weird helmet that was apparently just sitting around in the attic for decades was. It’s also kind of funny that Donna doesn’t have it on display or in a shrine, given that “used to be the Eliminator” is literally her only character trait.
It’s extremely sad how the younger generation of Summer and Maddie only exist now so the older generation has someone to recount the Act I strips to. Maddie wanted to see Donna wear it because it was her helmet, that she used to wear and has a history with. There’s no point in Harry wearing it. Apart from it just being kind of hilarious that after weeks of “girls can do everything guys can”, we have “actually, we can’t wear this helmet, so a guy needs to wear it for some reason”.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Wow, for a second there (Donna’s Funky face in panel 3) i thought this was another of CBH’s photoshops.
Crazy Harry not only has a full head of hair but also a full beard. This isn’t really the best character to run this gag with.
As an old guy with a fairly full head of hair and full beard, who also rides a motorcycle, I can only say… this is not going to end well.
Oh, and one of the rituals for the First Ride Of Spring (after the bike and gear have been sitting in the garage for a few months) is to clear the bugs and cobwebs out of the helmet. A Shop-Vac™ is your friend here. A lid that’s sat for a couple decades probably requires at least a visit to the local coin-operated car wash, and preferably a steam cleaning.
This is definitely not going to end well.
Why would Maddie want to see Crazy Harry in the helmet? He’s not the one who used to wear it. That makes no sense.
If Crazy Harry puts on the helmet, will he be mistaken for a woman? I seriously doubt it unless the helmet has some kind of magic quality to it.
What a cop-out. The helmet will fit over Donna’s hair just fine. She just doesn’t want to mess up her hair.
I’d think Maddie would want to try it on.
Oh, let me guess. Crazy Harry puts on the helmet, and it gets stuck. Hilarity allegedly ensues.
Emphasis on “allegedly.”
Again, speaking from experience, it is pretty close to physically impossible to get your head stuck in an open-face style helmet like this one (a full-face helmet, like the one Donna was shown wearing in her “biker” days, is another matter). This, of course, will not stop BatYam.
Batty never lets reality stand in the way of his stories. He speaks from inexperience.
Batty: Don’t confuse me with facts, my mind is made up. I’m a storyteller.
No spoilers, but it’s SO MUCH DUMBER than that. Allegedly.
SO MUCH DUMBER than that, eh?
OK, how about the helmet fits Harry, and there’s a fully operational Defender arcade game in:
1.) the Klinghorn’s basement?
2.) storage at Montoni’s?
3.) Destination unknown. Road trip!
There’s dumb, there’s dumber, there’s dumbest, then there’s a huge gaping chasm of stupidity, then an ocean of idiocy. Then there’s this story.
Because the story apparently needs Harry to put the helmet on. Any series of words that accomplishes that is good enough, even it completely contradicts itself. It’s called writing!
I would also point out that even if Harry were bald, this wouldn’t let an adult man’s head fit into a 12-year-old girl’s helmet/ But that would just be pedantry at this point..
I’m still confused about how Harry wearing the helmet will show Maddie what her mother looks like in it. Mr. Batiuk, this. Makes. No. Sense.
I confess that I’m curious to see where Batty is going with this.
BJ6, your comment made me think of this:
Of course, TB ain’t no Faulkner.
It’s not her hair as much as the fact that her head appears to have doubled in size since the original strips.
“If Crazy Harry puts on the helmet, will he be mistaken for a woman?”
Look at his expression in the last panel. He’s already getting that heavy-lidded, submissive expression typical of a female Worstviewian interacting with a male, and he hasn’t even touched the helmet yet. Obviously the things is an alien artifact with the power of gender-flipping. The bigger question is whether this artifact also has the power to instill video game prowess–was Donna ever seen racking up huge scores on the Defenders [sic] machine after the Big Reveal?
Someone with a lot less hair you say? Thus begins the search for Roland’s dad…
And Crazy isn’t even bald, in fact he probably has the most remaining hair of any of the Act I regulars. So it’s a REALLY lazy gag.
This isn’t lazy. It puts a huge amount of effort into making no sense.
Batty could have retconned that Donna had leukemia and was bald as a kid due to the chemotherapy. Also, what happened to Maddie’s teeth?
Given what we learned about Maddie last week, I’m guessing this helmet arc is somehow leading up to her coming out to Harry and Donna. (Apologies if this has been brought up already. Last week got really busy and I missed the big reveal when it posted.)
And I see I was completely taken in by CBH’s masterful April Fool’s post.
1. It’s funny because that helmet is too small to fit anybody besides a toddler…
2. So what happened to Donna’s motorcycle helmet and leathers? Did she actually ride a motorcycle back then or was that disguise just part of her act?
3. What the hell kind of weirdo Civil War cap is that girl wearing?? Even if she’s wearing it ironically, it’s really really bad…
3a. Personally, if my mom revealed to me that she was once elite at a video game, my first questions would be how she got to be so good, was she good at any other games and why she stopped gaming… But for whatever reason Maddie and Harry seem preoccupied with seeing some dumb helmet…
3b. And exactly what the hell kind of helmet is that supposed to be anyway? Looks like a part of a Halloween costume? Can you imagine how hot and sweaty that helmet would have gotten during the hardest parts of the game?
4. Are Cindye and Cayla the only Funkyverse women (of a certain age) who can’t evolve into doughy frumpy hausfraus as their final form?
5. We still haven’t heard the first real explanation about why she pretended to be a boy… Because she wasn’t making any statement about gender norms or social politics by beating all the top boys at video games if, you know, everyone back then just assumed she was a boy… And waiting until a good 12-15 years later to make her “big reveal” at Montoni’s defeats whatever point she was trying to make…
Wearing a space helmet to a video arcade would hinder one’s performance, I would think. Especially on Defender, which was difficult and demanded precision.
Maddie’s hat is supposed to be reminiscent of the field cap Crazy Harry wore in Act I. She replaced the green ballcap (also a reference to her dad) she wore when introduced in Act III with this exact cap nearly 14 years ago (!!!). While obviously similar to a Civil War-era kepi, I think both Crazy’s and Maddie’s hats were supposed to be more modern military-style field caps (perhaps most popularly worn by Fidel Castro, but common in militaries around the world and once a pretty inexpensive and easy find at American army surplus stores).
I agree that it appears to resemble the U.S. Army’s current Patrol Cap, colloquially known as a “PC” (not to be confused with the colloquial term for non-Apple hardware).
Good thing that hat is supposed to evoke some kind of father-daughter connection with Harry since I would have assumed she was adopted with that firetruck blaze red hair which clashes horribly with Donna’s platinum blonde locks and Harry’s dark brown man-bun…
I have always heard them referred to as fatigue caps.
You kids might not realize that in the 60’s and early 70’s lots of hippies wore military clothes with peace signs on them. Some were bought at surplus stores and some were earned the hard way. Especially popular were the wool CPO shirts worn as a light jacket. Mine is probably still packed in a box in the attic (right next to my space helmet).
ian’sdrunkenbeard,
That’s what they were called when I was growing up too, but my son is in the Army National Guard and the term is now PC. (Maybe the abbreviation FC was controversial?)
Random observations:
Back in the day, girls were not allowed to play video games. This law was strictly enforced. Donna evades this law by wearing helmet-like headgear that includes a… snorkel?
This helmet is far too small for any of these adults to wear, so they choose Harry, who has by far the biggest skull and as much hair as the two ladies. Because, of course, SOMEBODY has to put it on, right?
It’s perfectly normal that adult Donna has the proportions of a very well fed two-year-old.
Better than Corey Winkerbean who has been aging backwards since graduation.
If anybody, it should be Maddie putting it on, seeing as how much smaller she is than her mother in panel 2.
This is another thing that Batiuk fucks up. The kids in this strip, even though they’re adults, are all substantially smaller than their parents. Even if we’re generous with Batiuk and claim that 3RL years is equivalent to 1FW year, Maddie’s still 21 years old. (That this would make Funky being over 65 even more problematic is another issue) If it’s 1RL year to 1FW year, Maddie’s 28. And yet her mother dwarfs her as if she’s still about 10 years old.
As said though, this is a typical Batiuk screwup. Cory is substantially smaller than his mother, despite him supposedly being a full grown man. Summer may be taller than the average member of her generation, but she’s still got the body of an 11 year old boy. Keisha’s substantially smaller than her mother, but in fairness, she’s always been portrayed as smaller and shorter than her colleagues. Rana and Jinx are smaller than their parents, but that could be explained by them being adoptees, although that still shows that Batiuk made the choice to make them smaller when given the opportunity.
You can’t expect consistency like this on things in this strip where it actually makes sense. But one thing you can count on is that Batiuk’ll have a 25-30 year old child be substantially smaller than their parents.
I’m still gobsmacked that we are enduring a second week of this nonsense that should have logically taken place when Maddie was in grade school.
Speaking of “gobsmacked,” you know who could wear that helmet? Jada Pinkett Smith! Amiright?
Also, didn’t Donna have just as long or longer hair during her “Eliminator” days? Now she sports the same bland, shoulder-length do that her “dumpy housewife” counterpart Holly wears. minus the unicorn horn.
I imagine that Westview has a published book of “acceptable” haircuts.