Son of Stuck Funky – Page 365 – Son of Stuck Funky

There’s Always Someone Around You

And another strip unavailable for preview. Of course, that’s typical for Sundays so no surprises there. I dare say, if I may be so bold, that it has been quite some time since we last saw Funky and Les running. Or we might just get more Dinkle.

Anyway, for my first time back in the chair in a while, let’s recall the wonders we witnessed recently during my stint: Wally got a pizza party and Dinkle looked for food. When your strip is just jammed full of action and adventure like that, you should certainly expect the awards to roll on in! You’d also expect people to buy your books, not only for themselves but as gifts for others! I mean, who wouldn’t want a boxed set of Dinkle’s entire Claude Barlow witlessisms? Sure, maybe the Norms would balk, but they’re not on award committees so they can be ignored. And ignored with gusto!

Well! That’s it for me, at least for the present. It’s time to hand off this cold, damp slice of pizza off to the Stunningly Suave SpacemanSpiff85! He’ll focus his fearsome frap-ray blaster on the festering fools who fill Funky‘s foul fiefdom–for a fortnight!

Thank you all for your indulgence! And now, exit–stage right!

Tracking the Rand Curdy

Link to today’s strip.

Boy, the folks running the OMEA are damned efficient! Compare the background of yesterday’s strip to today’s. They’ve managed to put up a huge number of booths and banners in a matter of seconds! Yesterday’s box of crap at the far right has been expanded into a nicely arranged table. Talk about can-do! Imagine how many band mattresses those guys could sell. Probably hundreds in just an hour. Oh, wait–they’d have to sell them in Westview, wouldn’t they. Well, they could probably sell at least one, right? And maybe come back alive, most of them? Sorry for sending you guys into that city–and I already knew it was infested with zombies, too. My bad, guys. Oops. Won’t happen again, you have my word.

On the other hand, this conference has been going on for several days, and they’re only just now getting around to setting up these booths. (Perhaps one of these booths was the one that had pizza! Mystery solved.) Okay, so…they’re very efficient once they start, but also lazy and unmotivated to start on their own. Well, no one will ever fault this strip for being too consistent.

As for this stupid app, weren’t they championing something similar a few years ago that could keep track of trombone sections? Yesterday they were dismissive of this thing, but throw in candy sales and their eyes goggle. Becky even gets to shove her pinned sleeve into frame, she’s so excited.

*Shrug.* As mentioned, no one will ever fault this strip for being too consistent. “Hey, Batiuk, loosen up! You don’t have to remember all the details, like things that have already happened, last names, and stuff like that. It makes you look like a beady-eyed nitpicker. You don’t want to look like a beady-eyed nitpicker, do you? No one gives awards for that.”

Shrinky Dinks

Link to today’s strip.

As February dawns, the first strip of the month is not available for preview, but let’s be honest–Batiuk’s not going to cut away to something different, not when he’s got Dinkle to shove in people’s faces. Those seemingly endless weeks where he craps out those terrible, terrible Claude Barlow witlessisms should be proof of that.

Yesterday, he wailed and moaned that he couldn’t find free food. What could it be today? Perhaps…his ass, with both hands?

I wonder if Beck will get any lines…so far, she’s only spoken on Sunday, and it was, of course, nothing but praise for Dinkle. So, she’s really already played her part. All that’s left is a praise reprise.

(GAH, sorry folks, that was almost Batiukian…surprising how easily one slips back into this stuff…)

Along With His Sense of Humor

Link to today’s strip.

Oh, poor, poor Dinkle. He can’t find the free pizza, so his breakfast was cheese and candy. I may just burst into tears over this development.

Three days of this crap and Becky hasn’t had a single line. Looks like she was in the middle of a conversation when Dinkle just roared in and shut her down. Of course; Dinkle has to be the center of attention at all times.

And Batiuk’s really going out of his way to deny her any dialogue. You’d think she’d be the one talking about Dinkle’s Deficiencies, but no, it has to be some random passerby. Which makes sense in this world–after all, Dinkle is known and beloved by the entire high school band community, past, present and future, so of course they’re all up on his current state. I hear there’s even a newsletter, with a circulation of several hundred thousand.

What’s really surprising is that no one has taken him in hand and led him to the pizza table. But…I guess that might imply that there’s someone wiser than he, who knows where the pizza is, and Batiuk cannot have that. So, I further guess this means that no one has been able to find the pizza table. Because there can’t be anyone better than Dinkle in anything. Why, he even schools them in how to whine like a baby!

PS: The “Rand Curdy?” in the masthead made me think of Monty Python’s “Lemon Curry?” So there’s an extra laugh.

How they Dinkle, Dinkle, Dinkle, in the icy air of night!

Link to today’s strip.

Today’s strip was not available for preview, but we all know it’ll be Dinkle droning on about something unimportant, or something else equally unimportant. And it will involve terrible, underthought wordplay somehow. And people will smile at Dinkle, like “Oh my gosh, that is so true!” You have to wonder if Batiuk is equally as bored creating this stuff as we are reading it. And he’s still got, what, five years to go? That sure seems like an awful lot of wry rejoinders to carve out.

Why is Dinkle even here? He’s frickin’ retired. But Batiuk just loves this character, possibly even more than Les. Les is the bestselling author he always wanted to be, Darrin is the comic book artist he always wanted to be, John has all the comic books he could possibly want. All understandable (if a bit off-putting) aspects of Batiuk’s desire that things in the past went differently.

Dinkle, on the other hand, just seems to be this father-figure mentor, a dispenser of wit and wisdom. (Yes, there should be quote marks around a lot of that.)

Apropos of nothing, I think one of the reasons we see less and less Burchett is that he wasn’t getting considered for other projects. Publishers would say, “Hey, the latest thing you’ve done is Funky Winkerbean, and the artwork in that is terrible. No thanks.” But if he can draw the fictional comic covers here (which admittedly are quite good–artwork-wise), he has something of quality to show to prospective editors.