Son of Stuck Funky

Low Blow

Today’s strip reminds me of an episode of 50s/60s “animated” series Clutch Cargo, “The Ghost Ship”. The episode starts off with Clutch’s ward Spinner wondering aloud if the fishing boats in the harbor ever move.
A rare moment of self-awareness in an “animated” show that consisted almost entirely of still images (with creepy filmed lips placed on top of them) or a pure coincidence? I leaned toward the latter but was never 100% sure.

Similarly, I’m pretty sure today’s panel 1 is unintentional, but not fully sure. It could be a sly call back to that time in late Act II when Harry’s hearing loss forced him to hand his baton over to Lefty, meant to poke at us beady-eyed nitpickers who have noted on many occasions that TB completely ignored this maudlin mess once Act III began. I concede that is possible, but likely? Ha!
TB ignores precedents set in his own work and retcons things more often than Tom Armstrong draws Marvin soiling himself.

Poor Carl, he was doing so well when we last saw him on Christmas day. I admire his dedication to playing the trumpet

Friday, July 1

Sorry folks, we’ve got one of those occasional instances where today’s strip is not available for preview twice in a row.

So to fill some space in lieu of my typical 20/20(0) insight on today’s new strip, we’ll once again hop in to the WABAC Machine. This time we’re traveling back 30 years (or is it 40 in strip time? maybe 44?) to July 1, 1986. Wonder what was going on back then?

Dinkle? Really? What a terrible coincidence…

Or is it? The story arc for the week of the 4th in 1986 involves Dinkle learning that the Westview High School marching band has been chosen to perform in New York City for a 4th of July celebration. This necessitates coming up with a replacement band for the Westview town square performance on the 4th. Dinkle, naturally, choses the only other “band” in Westview at the time, Crazy Harry’s air guitar group. On top of that, John Darling AND Crankshaft also show up.

Looks like TB is going back to the well in 2016.

Thursday, June 30

I am happy sorry to say that today’s strip was not available for preview.

Instead, please enjoy a trite Throwback Thursday Funky Winkerbean strip!
What was going on in the Batiukverse on June 29, 1996? Only one of the Funky Winkerbean-iest strips in the history of ever!

It’s everything that has made this strip what it is since the middle of Act II except for cancer and comic books, all masterfully worked into just 3 panels:
Lisa, Les, Les being insufferable, a woman being unfathomably interested in Les, writing, Lisa, Montoni’s, bricks, John Darling, Lisa, smirking, Les smirking, Les’ face being punchable, Les’ face being punchable while smirking, and even LISA.

Ugh-mblebrag

Oh, of course today’s strip is going to drag the Bedside Manor band back into this. I had my fingers crossed that something else would happen, but really, who didn’t see this coming? Hopefully we’ll get the lucid Mort Winkerbean this time.

I hope the Bedside Manor ensemble’s ill-fated record deal involved a lot of Sousa marches, or at least a slow-paced take on The Ballad Of The Green Berets, because they’ve got less than a week to rehearse. Looks like Dinkle’s about to write a check that his baton can’t cash.

The background characters almost make up for it all, though. Almost.
Let’s see… we’ve got Wooly Willy, Hawaiian giraffe-man, the no-neck dad from “Dustin”, and a blonde smart enough to hide her face so she can always deny having been an extra in Funky Winkerbean. I would much rather be dropping in on their conversations.

Back To Square One

Oh good, TB doesn’t have Lefty lollygag in explaining her community band problem in today’s strip. Yeah, it’s a stupid problem and it could have easily been explained in yesterday’s strip, but we also very well could have spent a week getting to this point. Unfortunately, I expect we’re still spending a week with these two.

Ah, the national community band competition… a great American 4th of July-ish tradition. Yes indeed, it’s up there with Coney Island hot dog eating contest and the international stingray decoration show and that thing Jimmy Smits used to host on public television.

In the reality that is recorded on the internet, I was able to find two things comparable to Lefty’s competition, but nothing exactly like it:

First is the Sousa Foundation’s Sudler Silver Scroll, which is an award for community bands but does not involve a live, competition show.
Second is the Music for All National Concert Band Festival, which isn’t a competition at all and has the decency to take place in March instead of around the 4th of July, the show date for which pretty much every community band in the United States was founded.