The Helmet of DEATH

Link to today’s strip.

Is that the helmet that Bull was wearing when he died?  That seems like a remarkably tasteless gift, to be honest.

Of course, Buck’s line is rather tasteless as well–“I was one of the guys who gave your husband the CTE that killed him!”

I guess “tastelessness” is a characteristic; it’s certainly better than the boredom and uninteresting trivia we’ve been served thus far.   But you’d think Tom Batiuk would reach for something a bit more positive.  Hey, remember when he used to be funny?  Those days are rapidly receding in the rearview mirror, soon to be forgotten by all.

It makes me wonder why he decided to do this comic strip in the first place.  Did he really want to take uninteresting stories and stretch them to tedious length?  Because that’s exactly what he’s doing.

I honestly don’t know what the point is to any of this.  And really, I could say that about any Funky Winkerbean strip from the past few years, come to think.

The Buck Stops There

Link to today’s thing.

Hello, folks; BChasm back in the Box.  Shout-out to Comic Book Harriet, who as always did a stellar job of entertaining and educating us…things l’Auteur Glorieux feels are now beneath him.  Well done, especially with such poor material to work with.

Speaking of being back, guess who has returned?  That’s right, it’s nobody’s favorite smirker, Buck Somethingorother.   You remember, the guy who couldn’t resist smirking wryly to both Linda and Bull while reminding them about the latter’s impending death.  And speaking of impending death, Buck is getting his!   “I’m afraid that the news isn’t that good, Buck” says Doctor Flattop,  “You’re a character in Funky Winkerbean.”  Now, I may be stupid, and this strip may be making me more so, but I thought Buck played football.  Isn’t “layup” a basketball term?  Shouldn’t he say, “You always gotta throw the penalty flag, don’t you?”  I guess once you’re a sporto, you’re required by cosmic law to make only sports-related metaphors, even if they aren’t your sports.

I’d really like to know what’s going on with Doctor Flattop’s head.  In panel two, it looks like there’s a second head emerging from the back of his skull.  Is it Voldemort?  Because that could be an interesting development.

Oh, I’ve just killed it.  I used the forbidden word, “interesting.”

And On The Seventh Day, The Joke Rested.

Link to today’s strip, when it drops.

As usual, Sunday’s strip wasn’t available for preview. Which is just as well since I was getting tired of making lemonade out of absolutely nothing.

I will admit. I had a private, personal, chuckle at yesterday’s strip. Not because it was good AT ALL. But because I was a percussionist in high school. And at the time there were waaaay too many percussionists at our school. During marching season we had enough drums and cymbals and pit instruments to go around, but once concert season rolled in there would only be three or four musicians needed for every song. So the rest of the percussion section was left sitting on the floor in the back of the band room chatting quietly, texting on our primitive stupid phones, doing homework for other classes, or flat out taking a nap.

Our director, while very good in almost every other way, just let us decide who got what part, and the few who were passionate about percussion would by mutual agreement take the difficult stuff like timpani or bells every time. It got to the point where the scrubs were drawing straws and playing rock paper scissors to see who didn’t have to get up and count rests for half a song to ring a triangle or smack a wood block. The rest of us would just rather lay around doing algebra homework.

So yeah. If anyone wasn’t going to sprout into a mighty musical oak tree, it was CBH on her tiptoes trying to play one of the four chime notes in the entire 20 minute medley of music from Lord of the Rings, and missing.

Beckoning Chasm takes over on Monday, and I’m looking forward to it! I’m sure his deep thoughts and penetrating insights will entice us to dig ever deeper into this bland yet somehow fascinating universe built from the existential dread of a white bread Ohio septuagenarian scraping for meaning as he nears the end of his career and life.

Stay Funky Everyone!

Don’t wanna work, (just want to bang on the drum all day.)

Link to today’s strip

And here we finally have the point. Delivered with all the beauty and grace of a newborn giraffe with inner ear problems trying to stand. He’s trying to pander to his band teacher ‘fans’, with Hallmark card greetings, but the message is first muddled, and then outright destroyed.

1.) Squirrels bury nuts to eat them later. Some squirrels even bite off the tiny seed leaves if they find sprouted acorns in order to preserve their food supply for longer. So I guess teachers plant ‘seeds’ in their students hoping to profit off of them later, and it is only an accident if some of those students grow from the experience.

2.) Becky’s percussion section this year is so stupid they will never amount to anything. She expects nothing from them, and so nothing will grow from them later. After saying teachers renew the world by growing the mighty forest of young minds, we are shown teachers joking about dum-dum kids they’ve deemed beyond their help.

3.) Becky blames the sun for stupid drummers.

4.) Batiuk thanks Scott Lang, Ant Man, for this entire nightmare.

Zeno’s Janitor.

Link to today’s strip

We come closer and closer and closer to the point, and yet we never arrive. Because there’s always one more lame rodent pun to make. At least I have a faint, unenthusiastic, hope that this week we’ll actually have a dull dud of a conclusion. Though last week watching Funky panic over nothing like a deer on meth was more fun to look at. It was stupid, but it was weirdly energetic.

This week makes a little more sense, but all for the worse. We only have Becky, and Dinkle, and Mr. Janitor Man. Mr. Janitor, who stares at the floor with a soul crushing grimace, somewhere between pain and boredom. Inching his way past the band room one agonizing day at a time, sweeping up the trash.

This week, we are all the janitor.