Author: oddnoc

In Which Cindy Has Lied to Her Teenage Self

“But you’re a star TV news anchor and everything!” teen Cindy exclaims to old, worn-out Cindy in today’s strip. “How can you not be happy?”

Last time I checked, Cindy was a former local news anchor, who had previously been a has-been national anchor, and who was now the news anchor for a semi-professional blog in Los Angeles. So the conversation these two selves had moments ago wasn’t exactly accurate, if you receive my meaning.

Paging Le Chat Bleu

Today’s strip poses the existential, time-travel-convoluted question “Am we happy?”—or is that “Are I happy?”

Clearly Cindy will never have read The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, which you’d think would be required reading at Westview High, were it not for the ban on happiness of any kind, and probably the school levy failing.

Although… Cindy ought to be happy, given that her female existence has been validated by Mason Jarr, a man, coming into her life.

“And Im Livinia, the only girl in this strip but what women’s lib doesn’t know won’t hurt ’em!”
Just ask Livinia what the worth of a woman is! (Detail from inaugural FW strip, 27 March 1972.)

Mason arrived in Cindy’s life inexplicably, I might add, but needn’t, because everything in Funky Winkerbean is inexplicable. You know what else is inexplicable?

  • It’s still the evening of July 5. Talk about time paradoxes!
  • The older versions of the characters don’t remember this event (except possible Crazy Harry).
  • The older versions of the characters offer no useful advice. Here’s a thought for title character Funky Winkerbean: “Hey, kid, you don’t know it yet, but you’re an alcoholic; please don’t ever touch the stuff!” (Alternatively: “Kid, my advice is to start drinking heavily!”)
  • Young Funky doesn’t recognize old Funky from the Starbuck Jones–cellphone girl incident.

So… Cindy is going to be the latest character to be revealed—mirabile dictu—to suffer from depression, or self-doubt, or impostor syndrome. Why isn’t Le Chat Bleu there to taunt her?

Beam me up, Crazy!

In today’s strip, the War on Limbs resumes. To wit:

The circled regions are supposed to be the same elbow joint of a teenage boy.
The circled regions are supposed to be the same elbow joint of a teenage boy.

Young Crazy is crazy indeed if he would voluntarily step onto a transporter platform. The car has something like a 0.02% chance of killing you each time it moves you around. The transporter kills the original 100% of the time.

By the way, comic books are “cool.” Working in a comic book store is high-fivin’ “cool”. And so it goes.

Also, those are feet. By Grabthars Hammer, those are human feet!
Also, those are feet. By Grabthar’s Hammer, those are human feet!

After that horror, stepping into the transporter doesn’t seem so bad.

Mr. Clean, the band box man!

If he can’t fix it, no one can! In today’s strip, we finally meet Mr. Clean. Oh, sure, we thought his name was Keith, but drawings don’t lie.

To keep the townsfolk from organizing a posse, Funky tapes up a scrawled sign: “The BAND is in rehab.” But I say no, no, no, no, no.

It’s nice to see Funky Winkerbean featuring so prominently in the comic strip that bears his name. He appears as often as Snowball, his car.

Here endeth my stint as your guest snarker. Thanks to TFH and the rest of the SOSF crew for making it easy!