Take The Vow With Son Of Holly, Fa-la La La La, La La La La

Link To This One

Good God, man. While this may seem like a typically stupid and innocuous FW gag, it’s not innocuous at all. It’s actually one of the worst gags ever written by anyone, ever, and BatYam ought to be ashamed of himself for having dreamed it up in the first place.

First, you have the joke itself, which (as far as I can tell) is that the minister the happy couple found online speaks only in technology references, because he’s an “online” minister. But the thing is, he isn’t “online”, he’s right there. You can go online without becoming “online”, which seems like something you shouldn’t have to point out to anyone, regardless of how rooted in the past they are. It’s just a TERRIBLE joke on that level alone.

But then, on top of this already-abysmal gag, he uses “Bill Gates” and “Twitter” as his “online” references, as they both have something to do with “internet” and “computers”. And I mean yeah, they do and all, but it’s REALLY a weak, weak reach. If he said “by the powers vested in me by my local ISP, Megalith Cable” or something like that, it’d be a little closer to being a joke, albeit barely.

Then, the icing on the cake. It’s Summer, the young, with-it child of technology explaining the reference to Cayla, the old, out-of-touch fogey who always struggles with this internet thingie. And then there’s Boy Lisa’s absolutely baffling presence, too. Seriously? HE’S Cory’s best friend? He couldn’t even draw up some random anon-o-army guy to be Cory’s best man?

This one stinks on ice on every possible level. In fact, I’d go as far as to say this one, right here, is one of the one hundred worst FW strips of all time, maybe even bottom fifty. Just look at that terrible post title I resorted to using today, I am NOT a man who shies away from a terrible, lousy, no-good gag every now and again. But this strip is aggressively bad, the kind of bad that just grabs you by the shoulders and screams “LOOK HOW SHITTY I AM!’ right in your face, and in my opinion there’s just no call for that.

Matrimony Baloney

Link To Today’s Strip

I guess we were all hoping that this wedding arc would just immediately end and never be mentioned again, but no such luck. (At first, I spelled it as “welding arc”, which would have been way better IMO). Even the actual wedding ceremony itself is just another excuse to pack the word balloons full of trite, moronic pop-culture references he’s already done to death a million times over. “Superheroes”…”binge watching”…if this “writing” was any lazier, it’d be dead. Cory, the one-time local degenerate scumbag who joined the military and came home a completely transformed man, is just another goofy “young” character, doing everything “these kids today” are into, like reading comic books and watching TV. He created an entire backstory for the character, then decided to just ignore it completely, which makes you wonder why he bothered in the first place. All this wedding arc really accomplishes is bringing BatYam’s Act III failures into clearer focus. In short, he stinks.

The Gospel According To Stan

The moment we’ve all waited for for years is finally here! No, not the wedding, I mean Funky Winkerbean characters talking about comics.
So according to Marvel, Stan’s Soapbox ended in 1980. I really have no idea how old anyone in this strip is supposed to be, but I’m guessing Rocky and Cory are around their mid-twenties to early thirties. So that means in their wedding vows they’re quoting something that ran in comics either two or three decades before they were born. Even if Batiuk has to indulge his compulsion to make every single one of his character’s life revolve around comics, would it have been that hard to find something that would make sense for these two people? Were they only allowed to read twenty and thirty year old comics as children? I am grateful they’re not cosplaying, at least.
I tried searching for this full quote, and I couldn’t find it. The passage I did find ends with the line in the first panel, and I couldn’t find anything at all related to Stan Lee when I searched the other lines. So I’m really not sure if only the first line (which is from a discussion of not having your characters be pure good or pure evil) is from Lee, or the other lines are as well and just somehow aren’t anywhere online.
I do kind of like Crazy Harry’s totally unwarranted smug expression here. Like it’s the coolest thing in the world that someone is quoting Stan Lee in their wedding vows. And does Donna honestly expect him to be able to recognize random uncited quotes from scriptures? Because there is nothing at all in Harry’s background that would make me thing he could do that at all.
I really don’t think this is a great selection to read for your vows. Basically the only time I hear the phrase “rainbow bridge” is referring to a pet dying. And nirvana is commonly interpreted as the end of rebirth and existence itself. Never mind, it’s actually perfect for this strip. All that’s missing is a Lisa quote and a falling leaf.
And on the subject of not doing things alone, Epicus Doomus will be taking over tomorrow!

Funky Likes Food

“Who cares about my son getting married, I’m hungry!“. Get it, everyone? Funky is fat, and apparently doesn’t give a crap about his family. Did Batiuk just skip right over the actual ceremony, or is everyone just posing for the photos beforehand? If that’s the case, then Funky isn’t eating any time soon.
I really hope Funky is blurting this all out really, really loudly, just stealing all the focus onto himself. I also like that Holly ask to ask for clarification about Funky’s comment, rather than just assuming the wedding is his dream come true, like any rational person would.

Missing the Bullseye

So, did Donna just now notice that they didn’t bring a gift? Did she just tell Crazy Harry that Rocky and Cory had a registry at “Bullseye” (it’s so strange the brand names that Batiuk is okay mentioning) and then never follow up again? When they were getting ready to leave, nobody thought to mention “Hey, do you have the gift?”. I’m not really sure what about Crazy Harry makes him seem like the guy you’d rely on to shop for a wedding gift.
This does make it day four of the two weeks (so far) in this wedding arc where the gag is all about modern technology. At least it’s not comic books again. I’m a little shocked the gag isn’t just “Hey, I brought them something better- a copy of the Superman and Lois Lane wedding special!”.
It’s amusing how on Monday Harry totally forgot smartphones were a thing, and now he’s casually placing same day wedding gift orders.  I also find it really, really hard to believe that same-day delivery is available in a town like Westview. I do hope that the delivery person arrives right in the middle of the exchanging of vows, loudly asking where Crazy Harry is.