Matrimony Baloney

Link To Today’s Strip

I guess we were all hoping that this wedding arc would just immediately end and never be mentioned again, but no such luck. (At first, I spelled it as “welding arc”, which would have been way better IMO). Even the actual wedding ceremony itself is just another excuse to pack the word balloons full of trite, moronic pop-culture references he’s already done to death a million times over. “Superheroes”…”binge watching”…if this “writing” was any lazier, it’d be dead. Cory, the one-time local degenerate scumbag who joined the military and came home a completely transformed man, is just another goofy “young” character, doing everything “these kids today” are into, like reading comic books and watching TV. He created an entire backstory for the character, then decided to just ignore it completely, which makes you wonder why he bothered in the first place. All this wedding arc really accomplishes is bringing BatYam’s Act III failures into clearer focus. In short, he stinks.

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27 Comments

Filed under Son of Stuck Funky

27 responses to “Matrimony Baloney

  1. Y. Knott

    This is one meticulous planning session! But it will all pay off when the actual wedding (currently scheduled for 2027) goes off without a hitch.

    • Gerard Plourde

      If only he showed that amount of diligence! As it is, this is the sum total of the effort he put into an arc he highlighted..

  2. Phillip Craig

    Panel 1 Rocky has kind of a Taliban vibe. Except a white face covering instead of black. I guess it doesn’t matter. She’ll be an obedient, boring slave to whatever idiocy Cory plans to pursue. It’s the Westview Way. Happy bingeing on whatever, you kids. Now go away forever, m’kay?

  3. J.J. O'Malley

    You know, the wedding of Limu Emu on those insurance TV commercials has more realistic dialogue than what Battiuk is subjecting us to here!

    • billytheskink

      Funky Winkerbean would improve dramatically if each panel was interrupted by a Limu Emu Liberty Mutual commercial.

  4. William Thompson

    Why would that vow matter? Those two goofballs wouldn’t binge-watch a show that they hadn’t already seen a dozen times.

  5. erdmann

    Unnoticed, Minister Malcolm quietly hums “Brazil.” In his mind, he is free, having escaped to the country with the woman he loves. We should all be so lucky.

  6. Banana Jr. 6000

    The only question left is how much more of this wedding will be about comic books.

  7. ComicBookHarriet

    I went to a wedding once where the vows were a bunch of comic book, movie, and video game references.

    They were divorced within a couple years.

    • Gerard Plourde

      Your comment reminded me of the story of Brenda and Eddie in Billy Joel’s “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant”. No comic books mentioned, but I sense the participants at the wedding you attended evidenced a similar immature vibe.

    • Bad wolf

      As the parable would have it, it sounds like they built their house on shifting sands. This stuff is all fine and amusing enough but none of it’s really built for the long haul.

    • Banana Jr. 6000

      Wow, it’s almost like you can’t build a lifelong relationship with someone on your shared love of Iron Man.

      I’m glad we’re starting to see some social backlash against this sort of thing. The stunt proposals are bad enough; actual stunt weddings are tasteless, and advertise the participants’ lack of maturity. It’s not surprising that they fail. And it’s even less surprising that Tom Batiuk thinks they’re cute and romantic.

      • ComicBookHarriet

        When my parents got married the preacher got the traditional vows they asked for mixed up with some hippie dippie couple who were getting married the next week. My dad said they were the dumbest vows he’d ever heard.

        For their 25th anniversary they had a renewal of vows using the ones they’d originally wanted, really small ceremony with just a preacher, my siblings and their surviving parents. And my dad was like, “Good. Now we’re finally married.”

        • be ware of eve hill

          The preacher mixed up your parent’s vows with vows from another wedding?! That’s inexcusable. I hope he didn’t accept his fee.

          We would have told the preacher to go get the correct vows. We’d wait.

          • Y. Knott

            Makes for a great story, though. And a good excuse for a follow-up wedding, 25 years later!

          • be ware of eve hill

            An inconsiderate preacher screwing up your wedding vows makes for a great story? Not for me. Oh, hell no! Not on my special day.

            You’re quite a romantic. It would make a fantastic excuse for a follow-up wedding, 25 years later.

            Unfortunately, unpredictable events happen. My brother was engaged to be married in a traditional wedding ceremony when both he and his fiance graduated from college. She unexpectedly became pregnant during the latter part of their junior year. They decided to go through with the pregnancy and were hastily married in a civil ceremony. They still had plans to go through with the traditional wedding ceremony later. Less than four months after giving birth to my niece and three months before the scheduled wedding date, my sister-in-law was killed as a passenger in an automobile accident. My brother has never remarried, anyone.

          • be ware of eve hill

            Damn it. I’m oversharing again.

            Webmaster,
            Can you please delete my previous post and this one too?

            I’m sharing too much family and personal info.

            Thank you.

  8. KMD

    Since it is apparently my fate in life to think about this wedding more than TB did, let me agree with Epicus Doomus about the “young” characters. They aren’t young. They’re not millennials or Gen Zers or even young Gen Xers. TB does what he always does and has characters that have interests that make sense for far older people. like Funky’s newly discovered love–in 2022 no less–of Bob Dylan and Jeff’s obsession with “Phantom Empire.” Outside the rare occurrence–as Kate Bush resurfacing on the charts has reminded us–younger people generally do not look back with fondness on the youth of other generations. That’s not a lesson TB would have needed to learn in the 70s or 80s.

    • Hannibal’s Lectern

      As one of those “far older people” (born in 1954, married in 1985), I disagree. The “interests” BatHack gives to his characters make no sense (at least in the context of wedding vows) to my generation either.

      This dialogue sounds like a forced attempt at a joke by someone who doesn’t actually “get” humor, or komix, or binge-watching.

      • Banana Jr. 6000

        You’re both right. Batiuk panders to his own preferences, which are both narrow-minded and out-of-date.

  9. Maxine of Arc

    Wow. I’ve been offline on vacation for the last week and a half, and we’re exactly where we were when I left.

  10. Banana Jr. 6000

    This vow is actually very insulting. This is really what lifelong commitment means to these two? Not spoiling each other’s TV shows? They were on active duty in the military together! They were shot at together! They watched their friends die in combat! Now it’s all movies and comic books? Are they regressing to childhood? (They’re in Funky Winkerbean, so yes, but does nothing compel them to aim higher in life?)

    In a competently written story, these “damning with faint praise” vows would be a hint that this marriage is on rocky ground before it even begins. To say nothing of the pointlessly long engagement. Or the even more pointless “planning weekend” that included no planning, for a wedding that started the very next week.

    • Mela

      Exactly. One would think that two people who had served in the military together, in combat no less, would take marriage and their vows a little more seriously for the reasons Banana Jr. mentions. Nothing wrong with a bit of levity because it is a joyous occasion after all, but for heaven’s sake you’re pledging your lives to each other. Show some dignity.

      • Y. Knott

        One of the best, most joyous weddings I ever attended was completely unconventional — it was LARP-themed, with everyone (and I mean everyone) showing up in some sort of fun costumed splendour. But there was dignity about it … while everyone was there to have a good time, the actual marriage part of it was treated with appropriate gravitas. You had no doubt for even a nanosecond that the couple really loved each other, took their commitment to each other quite seriously, and wanted to live their lives together forever. (Which they have done ever since, quite happily.) But the party surrounding all of this? Pure fun.

        This is the opposite of the Funky Winkerbean way, where the ceremony is not to be taken seriously … but the all the stuff surrounding it (comic books, the order in which guests are served food, comic books, gift registries, and comic books) is Utterly Sacrosanct and Holy.

  11. robertodobbs

    OK it’s been in 2 consecutive strips and I still can’t figure out what “we all need each other” means. This is about 2 people making promises to each other. Or is it some “it takes a village” thing? Is this a plural marriage? Shouldn’t it be more like “we all need someone?” Aargh.