Montoni’s…the wedding venue of choice for couples who just don’t really give a f*ck anymore. A “99% success rate”??? So Montoni’s has hosted 100 weddings and only one of those unholy unions failed? THAT seems unlikely. As difficult as this is to believe right now I’m actually hoping they get back to the Big Alumni Reunion Band thing or whatever it was, as at least that wasn’t entirely predictable. I like how Rocky still has absolutely nothing to say and no input to offer regarding her own wedding, which would be wildly unrealistic in any other setting but makes perfect sense in the Funkyverse. Obviously she saw her inevitable future and gave up long ago, much like TomHack’s readership did back in ’84.
The Gazebo Is Not A “Destination”
Early Act III Cory had a personality. A sullen disagreeable personality but a personality nonetheless. But that was a long time ago, during that weird period when FW was still basking in the Pulitzer (nominee) afterglow and BanTom was still doing his Act II-style serialized “stories”. Here in 2018 The Corporal is just another annoying wryness drone with a strangely-rendered head, buzzing in and out of the strip every few years to crack wise and further some glacially paced plot line that’s been going nowhere for a solid two or three years now. Just marry the two of them already, why does their engagement need half a decade to play out?
Why’d he even bother with bringing Cory back at all? This strip is lousy with little-seen characters who offer nothing when they pop up out of nowhere every three years, I seriously doubt anyone would have missed Cory any more than they miss, say, Summer or Jinx or Cody or the field goal kicker. It’s all so pointless and random. But at least we have another (sigh) wedding arc to look forward to in two or three years, followed by the inevitable Pete and Mindy comic book (sigh) wedding which should be on the schedule in 2022 or thereabouts. Oh boy.
No Pizza Mind
Man, Wally and Rachel must be livid right now. Despite working there for a combined one hundred years, their boss totally overlooks them and hands over temporary control of Westview’s pizza supply to the moronically grinning Corporal and his stupidly smirking sidekick Rocky instead. Of course The Corporal responds to this huge honor and massive responsibility by immediately resorting to imbecilic wordplay, the sort of thing that would have caught him a serious beating (at best) back during his Army days. No one respects Funky at all, possibly because of insanely stupid decisions like this.
Seriously though, in Westview pizza is like a public utility and ANY disruption in the pipeline could lead to throngs of malnourished comic book nerds doubling over with crippling hunger pains, something the town fathers are woefully unprepared for. Picture hordes of starving young comic book thugs ransacking homes and freezers looking for a Mama Celeste to tide them over..if you can stomach the thought, that is.
The Ups And Downs Of Being Funky
In a strip where elderly Alzheimer patients cut albums in Memphis and surf the web like pros and people take sixty-plus year breaks in their careers, this whole daffy premise is pretty tough to swallow. It’s astonishing how little Holly and her mother think of Funky, which is supposed to be the joke here I guess. He can’t even count on his own wife to have his back, as she has no qualms at all about forcing him to close up shop and take a four thousand mile round trip with his mother-in-law, which would be valid grounds for divorce in at least forty-nine US states but unfortunately for Funky, not in Ohio.
Poor Funky, the FW character you always laugh at, never with. Every single other character in the strip is a wry wisecracking wordplay machine, snidely smirking after another unbearably clever pun or smart-alecky remark, but never Funky. Funky just shuts up and takes it, week after week, year after year, decade after decade, all because he was the “normal well-adjusted” kid in high school and BatNom will never let him live it down. The guy survived crippling alcoholism and an even more crippling car crash to become the local president of the chamber of commerce and the only most successful businessman in town. He’s convivially and generously hosted and/or catered literally every single major social event the town has ever seen, he’s employed a bevy of family members and pals at his restaurant and he’s acted as a kind and patient landlord too.
His reward? To be kicked and kicked again, over and over. His family doesn’t respect him at all, his friends mock him, he suffers from a litany of health woes and he’s fat, old and physically repulsive. The guy who writes this thing never stops heaping abuse on him and (oddly enough) it just makes it impossible for me to truly hate him like I hate Les and Lisa and Darin and Dinkle and Pete and Holly and Cory and Summer (whoever she is) and Chester and Mason and Cliff and Becky and Cindy and Vera and Crazy and Owen and Cody and Nate and Cayla and that bus driver (I forget his name) and the other characters (except Buddy, as I really love that dog).
Let that be a lesson to all those kids out there just now discovering FW (guf-faw) for the first time: don’t peak in high school. Pick a thing (dork, stoner, “it” girl, baton twirler, jock) and f*cking run with it because living down your high school identity will be the most important thing you ever do. Also, invest in comic books and whatever you do do NOT get involved in the pizza industry, although eating it three times a day is fine. See, there’s actual educational content in this strip, you just have to wade through forty-plus years of crap to find it.
And The Bland Played On
The good news: no comic books!!! The bad news: mail is still playing a pivotal role in the strip.
Let’s take a moment to talk about shitty storytelling. Holly has apparently just opened her invitation to the Big Band Alumni Reunion Event (sigh), which oughta be a real barn-burner by the way. Yet somehow, despite just finding out about it, she knows that a) her mother was also inexplicably invited, b) she wants to attend and c) she wants them to drive to Florida to pick her up. Which opens a whole host of mysteries best left unsolved, which they no doubt will be.
I don’t remember Holly’s mom being a character in the strip at all, which seems to indicate that the “goal” here is a) more “adorable old coot” humor and b) another excuse to trot out Holly’s Act I flaming baton trick persona, neither of which has generated a lot of clamor among FW’s (chortle) fan base as far as I can tell. Anyone who’s had anything whatsoever to do over the last forty years has forgotten all about Holly’s baton silliness and if FW contained any more “adorable old coot” gags it’d come with a year’s supply of Coumadin. Unless this Big Band Alumni Reunion Event (sigh) is just another excuse to have the loathsome Dinkle wobble down Act I Memory Lane yet again, which seems sort of likely given the premise here.
Son of Stuck Funky 