Son of Stuck Funky

Link to today’s strip

How exactly is Funky looking at Holly in panel 2? His shriveled left eye seems to be staring right at the bridge of his own nose. But his cosplay is on fleek. A near dead ringer for Joe Pesci’s Harry from Home Alone. True the hat is the wrong color, but the vacant yet angry expression is exactly the same.

Of course Holly is probably referring to Hurricane Irma. But that’s not the only option.

She could mean Irma, Wisconsin, USA, an unincorporated community that Mrs. Budd wants to live closer to so she can attend St Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Or she could be frustrated that Irma, a Danish supermarket chain, has stopped shipping internationally so she wants to move somewhere with a larger Danish expat population in hopes of finding a store carrying her favorite brand of Spegesild.

Maybe she wants to be closer because she has IRMA Intraretinal microvascular abnormalities, a component of diabetic eye disease.

Maybe she’s upset because she heard rumors that Irma Records, an Italian record label, was about to drop Michael Buble’s friend, Matteo Brancaleoni, and needs emotional support.

On the subject of emotional support, maybe her past is coming back to haunt her. She could be suffering from PTSD from participating in Operation Irma, a series of airlifts of civilians during the Siege of Sarajevo.

She’s even old enough to have survived the sinking of the SS Irma, a Norwegian merchant ship sunk in controversial circumstances in 1944 by the Royal Norwegian Navy.

Since we’ve already had one storyline on swinging seniors and protection, maybe Holly’s mad at IRMA, the International Rectal Microbicide Advocates, an international non-profit organization which promotes awareness of rectal microbicides and reviews and encourages research into the safety of personal lubricants for anal sex, especially as pertaining to preventing AIDS. Maybe Funky’s Mom gave Funky’s Dad HIV after living it up with the senior crowd at the Miami Bum Boat Club.

But if I could pick one myself, I hope Holly means 177 Irma, a 43 mile wide asteroid currently located in the asteroid belt. I would choose this in the hopes that Mrs. Budd is only moving in so she can spend her last few weeks tormenting her son-in-law before a wayward 177 Irma careens into Earth driving the human race extinct.

Link to today’s strip

So an unpleasant elderly woman demands to move in with her middle aged child? A plot line so timeless that Tom Batiuk has used it already. Did he miss Rose from Crankshaft so much that he decided to move a surrogate Rose to the flagship? How long until the elder Mrs. Budd is stabbing comic books and reminiscing on spatula spankings?

This strip is really about 50% recycled Crankshaft at this point. Elder antics abound, and the majority of the cast is aged 50-90 and drawn as an even 75. And it only highlights how much better Crankshaft is. I’m not saying Crankshaft is good but it is usually tolerable and occasionally amusing. Some of that has to do with residual ‘zany’ ideas being allowed there, like Crankshaft scaling a massive icicle with hatchets.

I think the real difference is the titular protagonist. When your main character’s explicit stock state is a grumpy, ignorant, sour old man, then it’s in character when he’s stupid or mean. But it hints at hidden depths when he’s thoughtful or kind. Like washed out, discount, diet Archie Bunker.

But when your main character is supposed to be a relatively intelligent, socially conscious, everyman, then he’s bland when he’s acting like himself, and just infuriating when he’s an asshole so dense and full of shit Miralax couldn’t clear him out.