“I thought you were dead.”
Says Bernie in today’s strip
“Nice to meet you too.”
Bernie, Bernie *sigh*
It’s Phil Holt that’s the dead guy
Turn in your nerd card
It’s a fair guess, though
Batom Comics was founded
65 years back
That’s without time jumps
So Flash must be 90 plus
Did time stretch his face?
Thatsnought’s creepy smile
Over Durwood’s chicken scratch?
It’s a rictus grin
Pete, what’s with that face?
Keep your hands where we can see
Please please please please please
The overestimation of Pete and Durwood’s market value we saw yesterday continues in today’s strip, though now it is Durwood and Pete who are doing the overestimating.
$10 to draw Thatsnought Hewmore into a Sophomoric Sightings panel?! That’s piracy! Durwood draws a couple of unknown titles for a startup comics publisher and is exhibiting at a Free Comic Book Day event, nobody is there to spend money at all, much less on his limited artistic skills. Durwood should be glad-handing customers as much as possible in hopes that they’ll even consider thumbing through next month’s issue of The Inedible Pulp.
Pete’s offer is a bit better, partially because he’s charging less but mostly because he’s sitting next to Les. In contrast to Pete’s attempted $5 grift, Les is trying to unload copies of Lisa’s Story at (presumably) the suggested retail price of: HA! No.
Much thanks to Spacemanspiff85 for taking the helm over the past two weeks, and for having a screen name that always reminds us of how good the world of comic strips can be. I am sorry I cannot claim that “billytheskink” will make you think of anything good, but I will do my level best to cover the rest of this role effectively.
Looks like time jump #4 happened in today’s strip, because apparently May 4 is here now… and hatchet-faced white men abound! This Sha-Na-Na reject is about 25 years too late to the world of post-Silver Age comics speculation, as if copies of Rip Tide: Scuba Cop and The Scorch are headed anywhere but the bargain bin.
Also, Lisa’s Story is a graphic novel again, maybe…
So I can’t really tell what’s going on here. It seems like an attempted retcon, since Funky’s talking about all the stuff they used to pretend the computer would do, which high schoolers pretending this kind of stuff about a computer seems weird. But then you just have Funky mentioning the computer making claims about his existence. So was it sentient, or not? If it ever was then it’s basically a slave, which is troubling.
If Holtron was a sentient computer in the seventies, how is reprogramming it to respond to voice commands any kind of improvement. I can picture Batiuk asking his wife “Wouldn’t it be funny if Holtron was an Echo?”, his wife responding “Who or what is Holtron?” and him calling her a macaque and storming off to the garage.
What is Harry expecting to happen? You can’t really ask Echo or Siri to find a living person for you. The best part about this strip is that you could’ve changed the last panel so it heard him perfectly clear, and it would work even better.
“There’s nothing on the web about Funky Winkerbean.” Basically true.
Um, is Atomik Komix publishing a comic book about Funky? That seems insane for a lot of reasons. And really like something that should’ve come up in the strip. But it’s just Batiuk pushing his own products again, so whatever.
Coming up tomorrow-Billytheskink!
Today’s strip wasn’t available for preview, so I’m just guessing that involves a now very awkward appearance Stan Lee dropping by Atomik Komix and promising to do a signing at Komix Korner.
Does anyone doubt that the entire purpose of this week was this “gag” right here? “Haha, I can have a crane company named after someone named Crane! It’d be hilarious. Hmm . . . what’s a plausible reason why someone in this strip would need a crane . . . I guess I could have Funky lifted out of his house because he’s so fat. But no, I’ll save that for the finale . . . I’ve got it! Comic books! Someone could need to lift something heavy into the comic book store!”
If someone sent Batiuk a copy of “The Mammoth Book of Corny, Slightly Punny Names” I have a strong feeling he’d use it as material for the rest of his strip. Stuff like this is what would be a background Easter egg in a Pixar movie that most people wouldn’t even notice. But Batiuk tends to put it front and center and repeat it over and over. “Get it?! It’s funny!” What are the odds we’re going to see “Buster’s Crabs” at least once the next time there’s a Hollywood arc? And Crankshaft is doing a bowling story so I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing “Margo Lanes” over and over. I also look forward to the next couple of weeks, when they hire the “Frasier Crane Co.” to remove Holtron from the Komix Korner and the “Niles Crane Co.” to put it back in Atomik Komix (how did they not have any issues getting it down the multiple flights of stairs in that building?).
Son of Stuck Funky 
