Author: ComicBookHarriet

Link to Today’s Comic.

See everyone! Funky fixed himself a cup of cocoa. You can now all stop complaining about Funkyverse females being subservient beverage providers. Because the fact that the women brought cocoa was the real issue here, and not the fact that lacking a Y-chromosome relegates you to a background fixture serving as a bland chorus of reacting to men.

I’m really really really tired of writing about Mort Winkerbean. Especially about Mort Winkerbean the ‘Alzheimer’s’ patient who now can magically talk, walk, reason, and remember past events. I had a grandma who had Alzheimer’s, and believe it or not, Mort stories 10 years ago captured a hint of the pathos involved with having relatives with dementia.

Which makes seeing Mort magically resurrected a huge f**k you to the audience he was earlier pandering to. If I could tell Tom Batiuk one thing, it is that it is infinitely more offensive to magically cure a ‘disabled’ person that you created to abuse for a ‘topical’ storyline designed to milk other people’s pain for your profit and praise, than it would be to just have them hit by a bus.

Link to Today’s Comic.

We finally get to the Holly that’s been gracing the header this week; and she accurately depicts how I’m feeling about having to wring some humor from an entire week of passive paternal cockblocking. I mean, I’ve used Hasbro products to cockblock before, sure; but it take seconds to show men a room with hundreds of tiny action figures all staring right at the twin mattress. The ‘sleepless’ mood is gone much quicker than four days of tired people whining about Monopoly.

Can we get Batiuk some plotting Viagra? He has severe protractile dysfunction. He saws away at the same joke for an eternity, never progressing, until all excitement is lost and the story limply stops. The next Monday Batiuk changes plots, like changing the subject after an embarrassing silence.

Regarding the art today, Mort is grabbing his inner thigh while leering aggressively. Funky’s horror is justified. Even if his flesh-colored eyeline suggests he is more shocked by how shittily drawn the dice on the board are.

Link to Today’s Comic.

On Tuesday StuckFunkian commenter Charles had a great take on this week’s premise. “You know, Funky could avoid all of this if he simply tells Mort ‘You’re not having sex with my mother-in-law in my house.'”

And Charles is exactly right. For a man who just had a fairly frank discussion with his dad about safe sex, Funky is now going to painful lengths to tiptoe around the issue. Just give your dad a stern look and say no. I mean, your mom apparently learned this skill long ago, or you would have more siblings.

I did learn this week from commenters that I’ve been playing Monopoly wrong my entire life. But apparently even a correctly played game averages two hours. If it was 10 PM when they started, it’s now approaching midnight. Two more games would put them at between 3 and 4 in the morning. That’s late for normal adults on New Year’s Eve. And Mrs. Budd seems pretty tired already. You’re fine Funky, let it go. Unless your dad plans to force himself on a sleeping woman, the only action anyone is getting up to tonight is with Rosie Palms and her five lovely daughters.

Let’s end with a criticism and compliment.

Criticism: A ‘best of three’ series only works when you have two players or teams.

Compliment: Mort’s face great. Multiple fine nuances of cockblocked.

Link to Today’s Comic.

When I saw today’s strip, I told myself, ‘There is no way on this green earth Crankshaft hasn’t used this joke.’ And I was right. I quickly found at least one instance from June 2010. I would not be the least bit surprised if he’s used this joke dozens of times. See if you can find one yourself.

So Mort is now Sexy!Crankshaft. Which fits the Batiukian model of hundreds of characters with about six shifting stock personalities, only differentiated by their hobbies or personal traumas. And any character’s ‘fundamental’ nature in danger of being changed completely strip to strip to suit a joke. Bland Sardonic, Bland Nice, Bland Neurotic, Kooky Egotistical, Kooky Stupid, and Kooky Old Crank. The six faces of Funkyverse.

Today we have Bland Neurotic playing Monopoly with a Bland Nice and Two Kooky Old Cranks.

Link to Today’s Comic.

It’s ten o’clock? And these two elderly people are still awake? My suspension of disbelief has been shattered. People over 80 go to bed by 9:00 at the latest. Period. And shouldn’t Mort be sundowning? After all nearly 2 in 5 patients with Alzheimer’s…oh, who are we kidding. Bill Bushka is currently more disabled than Mort here. Smoking has cured Mort’s Alzheimer’s and he now lives in Bedside Manor simply to hang with his rock band and shag all the Manorisms groupies.

Is there a speed Monopoly? My cousins and I used to play Monopoly for a while every Thanksgiving, but we only ever actually finished a game once. The last two players were locked in a monotonous monetary battle to the death for ten hours. In my experience, Monopoly isn’t a game you win or lose at, it’s a game you play for a while and then quit, and whoever quits with the most money feels like the winner, and whoever quits poor soothes their bitter resentment by telling themselves that if they had stuck with it a little longer they could have won. Monopoly is just like life.

The purpose of Monopoly isn’t to play it. The purpose of Monopoly is to sell it hundreds of times over via cool ‘branded’ sets; like Star Trek Monopoly, with properties to buy Vulcan and Romulus; or the Canada edition, with player pieces of a moose, a beaver, and a hockey player.

Maybe they’ll be playing Millennial Monopoly, where you win by accruing experiences rather than money, and you can land on a thrift shop, your parent’s basement, or a weeklong meditation retreat. The game sounds closer to depicting contemporary issues affecting young adults in a thought-provoking and sensitive manner than the last eight years of Funky Winkerbean strips.