Tag: Atomik Komix

There’s No Deprecation Like Self-Deprecation Like No Deprecation I Know

Link To This Thing

That’s right, I’m back for an incredibly rare and extremely courageous third week. I don’t give a damn about what those fancy doctors say, with their “degrees” and their “worrisome test results”, I’m doing it, dammit. Never you mind “why”. If I want to throw myself on a grenade arc for the sake of the SoSF staff, then that’s what I’ll do.

As always, the regret re: doing a third week began immediately upon seeing the Monday strip. More Boy Lisa AND Batton f*cking Thomas…sigh. Maybe if Batton spent a little less time softly making wry, self-deprecating remarks about how mediocre and obscure he is and a little more time working, someone might actually read his stupid strip. He’s one of the dreariest, least-likeable characters in the entire strip, minus maybe Linda, I guess. Why is he even there? He STILL works out every day in the Atomik Komix studio? What, Phil, Flash, Ruby and Pete aren’t already wry and self-deprecating enough for one office?

Fort Knox

Link to Todays’ Strip

I spent way too long a few months ago reading about the McDonald’s ad character Mac Tonight a few months back. I bring this up because Flash in the first panel sure looks like him.
I feel like anyone who would collect John Darling memorabilia (were there McDonald’s toys? or trading cards?) is the kind of person I’d want to avoid, but I’m not a FW character.

S.S. Skyler

Link to today’s strip

An artist can’t really draw horses that don’t look like donkeys. That’s today’s joke, and that’s just about all there is to today’s strip, apart from the fact that Skyler is already going bald. That seems to happen super early to just about everyone in this strip, but even by that standard Skyler seems pretty young.

Su-Su-Studio

Link to today’s strip

Well, now Phil’s just being a jerk. We saw last year that his studio is in a home near some palm trees, somewhere drivable from San Diego Comic-Con. Is that going to be Thursday’s joke? Does Kitch have to get into the car before she learns it’s a cross-country road trip? What does any of this have to do with Kitch’s initial goal of returning to the source of Dibbs Gallery’s Roy Lichtenstein prints? That was only two days ago.

Today’s strip reminds me of the infamous “Me Too on speed dial” strip, where Chester Hagglemore made Ruby Lith get into his car and go to his home for undisclosed reasons. (Spoiler: it was about comic books.) Now Kitch, a woman, has initiated a car trip to a man’s house. (Spoiler: it’ll be about comic books.)

It could have been interesting to re-create that situation, with the genders reversed, as an exploration of sexual double standards. But Funky Winkerbean isn’t nearly that ambitious. For which I am thankful, considering how badly it botched a simple “Me Too” reference. But they could have done this:

Together Again For The First Time At Last

Link to today’s strip

And there’s Atomik Komix’ lead art forger Darin, looking like a cat who’s just heard someone open a tin of Fancy Feast. But Phil Holt’s reaction is much more interesting.

“Slumming again?” Phil, you only joined Atomik Komix ten months ago. How often does this woman visit that you can say that? It can’t be that many times, because she buys comic book art, and Tom Batiuk didn’t obsessively catalog every step of the transaction process. The contract signing alone would take a week.

Kitch’s playful response suggests that she knows Phil, too. But how? From 2017 to 2020, Phil was pretending to be dead. Before that, he was doing caricatures for kiddie birthday parties. He was also shown to have a home somewhere that clearly wasn’t Ohio. Flash Freeman, Phil Holt’s closest companion as far as we know, hadn’t seen him since he stomped off with The Subterranean in the 1950s, and spoke of Phil rather negatively. 

But Kitch seems to know how toothless Phil’s “grumpy” act really is. And she’s right. There are at least five old people in the Funkyverse who are much worse than Phil. Harry Dinkle, Ed Crankshaft, Lillian McKenzie, Mort Winkerbean, Melinda Budd.

To make another movie comparison: this is the “you two know each other” scene. A new character enters the movie; an existing character greets them in overly familiar way; and someone says “you two know each other?” One of them says “yes, we were in the Army together,“ and exposition is achieved. This interaction appears to be setting that up. But it probably isn’t.

Tom Batiuk is just filling the word balloons with whatever meaningless drivel he thinks will let him get on to the comic books, which is the only thing he wants to talk about. But he’s inadvertently implying that Kitch and Phil have a history, and that this is going to be relevant to the story. 98% of the time in Funky Winkerbean, it’s not.