Huh. Old Harry Dinkle is here. Good old Harry Dinkle, once the Greatest Band Director on Earth, now retired, is hanging out with his successor, the Greatest One-Armed Band Director on Earth. It’s probably quite useful for Becky to have constant access to Harry’s wealth of knowledge, experience, and wisdom. It’s quite a favor old Harry’s doing for the much younger woman.
I wonder what he expects from her in return.
So, it’s Battle of the Bands Gets Rained On season! Woo hoo!
I can’t really muster the enthusiasm required to express shock that today’s strip features a lame pun. I would have, but our auteur decided to have the punster ask if his audience got it. Get it? Batominc, you sucked all the humor out of your own comic strip by belaboring the point. Get it? You won’t show us any real action at the Legacy Run, but this you’ll pound into the earth.
It’s like you took a joke and repeated it until you got hoarse. Talk about beating a dead horse! Get it? Hoarse—horse? I slay me!
OK, so panels 1 & 2 were boring. Let’s move on to panel three. Ah! The horror! Oh! The humanity! The woman in the magenta dress has smirked so hard that she developed a severe Tessier 7 facial cleft. (Note to the squeamish: do not do a web search for that phrase.)
My fellow snarkers have beat me to the punch on this one. Whew indeed! I might add, wow.
Look at Cayla’s face in the panel where she’s thinking “If Lisa were here?” and the following, “Whew!” panel! Yes, gaze upon Tom Batiuk’s vision of a woman.
She is weak, dim-witted, and worthless on her own. Only her relationship to Les Moore enables any worth to devolve upon her. She is the luckiest woman on earth to have hooked up with the greatest auteur the world has ever known.
Feh.
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift,
nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet
riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but
time and chance happeneth to them all.—Ecclesiastes 9:11
We returned, and saw that the race was not to the fat and sweaty, nor
does the colorist know what color to make the cheeks of an overheated
fat guy. Yea, verily, we returned, and—what? The race is already
over‽ I told you you’d be incredulous about how this ends.
Time and chance happeneth to them all, but it would have been nice to
see some of the action. Now I know our favorite auteur is all about
telling and not showing, but this is ridiculous. Talk about cutting to
the chase: Batominc cuts past the chase.
Worst of all, Funky didn’t die.
Now let’s do Funky’s biblical scorecard:
| Virtue | Funky’s score |
|---|---|
| Swiftness | NO |
| Strength | NO |
| Wisdom | NO |
| Understanding | NO |
| Skill | NO |
| Quick or Dead | Quick, but suffering |
On Westview’s curve, that’s an A+.
The falling lard falls on his buttocks
Like the fall leaves of red and gold
I see your lips, they’re cyanotic
The glass of wine you used to hold
(with apologies to Nat King Cole Jacques Prévert & Johnny Mercer)
What’s this‽ It looks as though Funky Winkerbean has collapsed before the race has even begun, because of course he has.
Les: Is Funky okay?
The Universe: Of course he’s not, you fool! Did you think you could drag his obese, sedentary arse out of that pizza parlor once a month and turn him into an athlete? I’ll kill him and all of you, if it’s the last thing I do! Mwahahahahah!
Not to spoil anything, but you won’t believe how this ends. No, really: you simply won’t find it believable. The verisimilitude is quite literally incredible.
Update 11 October 2013:
Nat Cole? Jacques Prevert!—gleeb
Son of Stuck Funky 