After a whirlwind week in the Big City, the old friends sit on their park bench like bookends…and bitch and moan about life. Please explain, if you can: who are the “greedy, amoral morons” who have ruined Funky’s life? It was barely two years ago that he was the cover boy for Pizza World magazine. Now his empire is down to just one store. And the reader is expected to believe that this is the fault of anyone besides the inept, ill-tempered, unlikeable jerk whose cost-cutting, penny-pinching management style ran the business into the ground?
Or maybe said “morons” are really those who hate on TB’s Pulitzer-worthy “writing”? It isn’t the first time that the author has used his strip to take us Philistines to task…
The sign on the door says it all: Out of Business. Funky and Les bid arrivederci to the New York store. But in a final “F you” to the landlord and to all New Yorkers, before locking up, the boys have left every faucet in the place wide open…note the water just beginning to seep out at the bottom of the window in panel 2. Take that, City of Broken Dreams!
Well, look who came back to “help”. Where the @#$% have you been?
I’m on Funky’s side this time: I was gonna get on him for responding to Les’ “big news” with the usual dreary negativity. But he brought Les along on this trip for help and probably moral support, and off goes the Delicate Genius to take a meeting with his wacko “agent” while Funky is left, alone, to schlep more boxes. Les’ schmuckiness star continues to ascend.
billytheskink
April 15, 2010 at 9:01 am I really hope this week doesn’t end with Apple Annie giving Les that lost manuscript and him being happy about it.
Merry Pookster
April 16, 2010 at 9:00 am [A]ny bets on Apple Annie giving Les his lost manuscript in the next couple of days.
O.B. Dan
April 17, 2010 at 1:14 am Annie hands it over to Les, who is so amazed and delighted he forgets to punch the bitch’s lights out for holding back on it so long.
April 18, 2010: the day that Funky Winkerbean completely lost any sembelance of linear, logical storytelling, and in the process sent a big “kiss my ink-stained ass” valentine to us, the readers.
Oh no she didn’t: By the way, here’s the manuscript you lost. I have been holding onto it lo, these many years. Sorry, but the last four chapters are missing; I used ‘em for asswipe. Bam, closure. The rest of the panel is taken up with little vignettes supposed to fill us readers in on the whole entire chain of events from the last ten years. Except, I thought that’s what the last three days’ strips were doing. Now the reader is expected to sort thru these postage-stamp size scenes and put them in order.
So Crankshaft did spend some time living on the streets? He sure looks it, as Summer Less pointed out. Where are his huge glasses? What clue is he getting from seeing Annie’s bio in a Playbill that must be 25 to 40 years old? Did Fallen Star get published (we see a hardcover copy), attributed to Les, making Annie a successful agent without her client ever knowing about it? Is this not the laziest, most inept, slapdash attempt at storytelling the comics have ever seen? Batiuk (and you too, Armstrong) present to the readers this steaming, senseless mess of a story, and the readers are expected to grin thankfully, just as Les does when he finally gets his stolen masterpiece handed back to him.
“That’s right, Mr. Les: Woody Allen! And Elia Kazan, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott effin’ Fitzgerald…Billy Wilder, too! Who do ya think gave him that line ‘All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up’? Apple Annie Apple, tha’s who.” Les: she was suffering from schizophrenia, detached from the real world. Crazy as a rat in a coffee can. The closest thing to a writer that she “made the acquaintance of” was you, you gullible bastard.
Son of Stuck Funky 