Son of Stuck Funky – Page 652 – Son of Stuck Funky

Push The Button, Frank

I don’t follow sports, so I have no idea which team is represented by the button on Funky’s hat. (Almost wrote “hate” there. Whoops!) Whoever it is, it must not be a team that Tom Batiuk likes because–duh–he’s adorning Funky’s hat and not Les’. Simple logic. Besides that, what team would want their insignia highlighted by appearing in Funky Winkerbean? No team, that’s who.

Speaking of Les, isn’t it just amazing that there’s Les, same age as Funky, looking thirty years younger, and wearing a regular old running outfit too–not festooned with layers of clothing to protect his delicate fat from the onslaught of winter, like someone we could name.

Funky’s expression in panel two seems to show him melting, like a man made of mashed potatoes softening up because too much butter was added. While he shifts from panel to panel, unable to hold a coherent form, Les, lovingly rendered as always, smirks punchably. His face looks like a taunt to everyone unfortunate enough to bother with this comic strip. Go ahead, punch as hard as you like, go so far as to break your monitor, Tom thinks. I’ll keep drawing more and more Les faces. Tom smiles to himself. Because the only person I hate more than Funky is you, dear reader, you denier of prizes.

Once More, Without Feeling

Link to today’s strip.

Greetings, everyone, BChasm back for another round reporting on the World’s Most Miserable Midget Opera. So… yeah… on one of my previous jaunts I way over-praised a “Funky at the gym” week, thinking Hey there’s jokes and that while none of the “jokes” was great, it was at least a development worth pursuing. Apparently I got the idea wrong, and that made Tom Batiuk furious, as mad as bees even, and since that time, the Malevolent Old Ones who oversee Westview have never let me live that down. While I don’t regret what I wrote, I’ve stepped more cautiously since and the true meaning of “Funky at the gym” has since become obvious.

The main thrust of the “Funky at the gym” weeks has not, I repeat not, been to allow small slices of humor to appear in the strip. No, the main purpose here is to emphasize that Funky is a fat slob of a loser, who years ago dared to think himself better than Les Moore, and for that he will be a fat slob of a loser forever. No exercise will ever dim his paunch.

Which is really said when you think about it. Funky started the strip as a happy-go-lucky teenager, sort of like “Zits” I guess, with the usual wacky conflicts between him, his teachers, parents and friends. Then, the sky grew dark and everything changed.

His punishment at the hands of his creator has really been thorough, and thoroughly mean-spirited. I mean, I was going to make a joke about the artwork in today’s offering, saying “Hey, look, in panel one, Funky is holding in his breath so much that his head actually deflates, but he can’t keep it up and it expands again in panel two!” but I don’t think I have to. When Tom Batiuk doesn’t care about a character to draw him consistently between two similar panels, jokes about that character kind of miss the point.

The shirt off your Batiuk

After teasing Bull with a free t-shirt on Tuesday, the EMU crew finally gets around to giving it to him in today’s strip. Bull is smart enough to thank them on behalf of the class, because there is no way the class is thanking these two shmucks after being belittled all week, not even for the free t-shirts (that they apparently have yet to receive). The EMU football jersey worn by a young, shaggy-haired Bull in the title panel bears a remarkable resemblance to the SMU jerseys from the same era. Coincidence? Maybe, but the football program that received the “death penalty” seems very Westview-appropriate.

Thanks for putting up with me for the past two weeks, you all make the comics page that much better. The great beckoningchasm takes the reins tomorrow.

One last Emo bit, presumably about what Becky and John Howard plan on doing when they finally escape Westview:
I was staying in Florida at a motel called The Three Palms, run by an older couple… one of whom was missing a hand.
– Emo Philips

Legere librum autem picturae, manducare panis cum liquamine atque caseus

Hodie Hauserit (Today’s Strip)
Shout out to Google Translate for giving cartoonists and bloggers alike the ability to communicate in a dead language using surely incorrect grammar.

Show of hands, who remembered that EMU was Bull’s alma mater? Just you in the back? You realize we all know you are lying, right?

Actually, EMU was mentioned as Bull’s alma mater in recent memory, back in March of 2012. Apparently, they not only changed the school motto since Bull went to school there, they changed the name of the whole school from Eastern Midwest University. Still, on the scale of retcons this strip has seen, this is practically perfect continuity. In fact, this Tuesday’s strip featured another very nice call-back to those 2012 strips, Bull’s interest in free EMU t-shirts.

Daily Emo paraprosdokian (Greek and Latin are the same thing, right?):

“I sense a rising anti-intellectualism in this nation, don’t you?
The other day I was hanging floss out on the line to dry, this guy comes to our house says ‘I’d like to read your gas meter.’
I said, ‘whatever happened to the classics?'”
– Emo Philips

Friday, Feb. 20

Today’s strip was not available for preview, but I’m sure it will involve the following, in some order:

– panel of EMU reps setting up a college-oriented gag
– panel of students reacting to said gag
– panel of school sign touting Saturday’s 8:00 PM winter concert

Emo’s daily opinion, on college education:

“I think today’s college students are some of the most intelligent, perceptive people… in their age group.”
– Emo Philips