This comic has a long tradition of inappropriate smirks that don’t fit their context, at all, and Cory’s in the third panel really fits in with that. I’m really not sure what it’s supposed to mean. Is it “haha, my wife is making a big deal over nothing at all, unexpected nudity is no big deal”, or “hahaha, she’ll never be able to sleep again, so I guess I’ll be getting lucky every single night, thanks Dad!”? Be careful with that smirking, Cory. The way your strip is drawn, you’re going to look exactly like Funky in no more than 5-10 years.
Honestly, instead of asking if Rocky’s okay, Cory should really be concerned about Funky. Given the look of terror on his face yesterday, I’d say there’s a really good chance he’s in the middle of a heart attack right now.
Sweet Dreams, Rocky
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Son of Stuck Funky 
So Rocky goes through combat without a problem, but seeing the unclad Funky leaves her shell-shocked? How does that work? Does he have Osama bin Laden’s face tattooed on his belly?
Lady, you should more concerned that your husband-to-be is folding Mopey Pete’s shirt.
Didn’t Funky wear a shirt like that in Act I? Paging Dr. Freud, paging Dr. Freud….
Rocky doesn’t seem to have a father… So perhaps she has trouble separating love of a man as HER father, love of a man as a spouse, and love of her spouse as the potential father he may become…
Electra complex coming right up!
With Batiuk it will be something more disgusting. Call it the Electra simplex.
Yeah, it’s like Cory is thinking “heh heh, yep, I’ve been there man”, which only creates more questions. Uncomfortable, disturbing questions. All week we’ve seen Cory making facial expressions that seem totally out of context. The Cory character has become so faceless and so bland it’s like they don’t know how to draw him anymore.
Rocky looks like she’s just seen
a ghostPhil Holt…Still can’t get past how Ayers is drawing Cory with a wider, square head now. Making it harder to believe this is the same rascal who was stealing charity money.
Are we sure it isn’t possible that they somehow recast a comic strip character? It’s like that guy from Bewitched all over again.
I put my vote in for a long-game reveal that Cory was replaced by a look-alike while in the military. Think about it – he came back a middle-class straight-arrow, after enrolling pretty much as an alternative to juvie. He returned by surprising his parents at a Christmas tree sales lot – how did he know they would be there? He sold his comic-book collection!
The substitution would even be a callback to the plot twist Pete R— created for the Amazing Mister Sponge comics.
The remaining questions: is Rocky in on the swap, or is she an innocent victim? And is pseudo-Cory an enemy agent or an alien?
The only problem with you hypothesis is that after stealing the charity money and being called out on it, Cory pretty much went straight for the entire end of high school. He was maybe still a little petulant, but did he get in trouble again? I don’t think so.
Also, if you replaced any Westview resident with an evil clone, the evil clone would be an obvious improvement.
“Charity money”. There’s no way creepy Les wasn’t pocketing every cent and thinking of his fellow Cancerdeathvillians as chumps.
Rocky, have you never heard of a little thing called “shrinkage?”
I mean, if you can put up with seeing Cory naked, you should be able to handle anything.
Cory’s had full body shrinkage since about 2014.
I think Cory McSmugmug’s Panel Two expression is meant to convey a bemused “Meh, so it’s only my stepdad’s family jewels that she got a gander at. It’s not as if he’s my biological father! Then it would be weird!”
By the by, am I correct in guessing that Sunday’s strip will feature Funky trying to return the favor by “accidentally” walking in on Rocky in the shower, but it will turn out to be her mom instead? Isn’t that how these things go?
In 2030, Kent State University will offer Vol 26 of the “Complete Funky Winkerbran: Renovation to Revolting” covering Funky and Holly renovating their home to the horrible shower scene. Or as TB will call it, reno to revo.
It’s amazing how seriously we’re expected to take this. Rocky is an Army war veteran, is used to serving and living with mostly males in rough quarters, but is traumatized by two seconds of one man’s crotch that was hidden behind a towel?
And yet, that isn’t the joke. The joke isn’t that Funky’s naked body is so gross that it broke a character we know to be tough. The lack of commitment in yesterday’s artwork is part of that problem. There’s a classic Beavis and Butt-Head episode that does this joke properly:
Tom Batiuk is allergic to tone. He NEVER gets it right, not even accidentally.
Batty just posted some Rocky and Cory strips on his blog in order to provide some background. Not sure what he was thinking, these strips explain nothing. He needs to hire CBH to run his blog!
This one doesn’t even make any sense:
So… he misses having to get on a plane before he has to hug his mom? I don’t get it.
This one’s kind of in bad taste, in light of his half-brother’s crippling PTSD:
And Rocky goes straight from active duty in a war zone to her boyfriend’s house in Westview? Doesn’t even visit her own family first? We know she has one; her mom is in this week’s arc. Another brick in the wall.
What isn’t incoherent or tasteless is soul-crushingly banal. This bag is heavy. I need a shower. It’s good to be home. It’s as if Batiuk’s trying to prove how boring these characters are. And how little he cared about that racism story, which also invoked obscure characters he didn’t feel the need to blog about at all.
Yes, just stupid all the way around. Ah they saw the fall leaves while driving, how quaint. That took the sting of war away.
Oh FFS you’re supposed to be a grown assed woman, Roxy… How many fat pasty out of shape nekkid dudes did you see in your time with the Ohio National Guard?