Tag Archives: Batiukmobile®

by | March 7, 2020 · 10:30 pm

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!

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by | February 18, 2020 · 10:15 pm

Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now

Maybe Chester recently learned he’s only got a few weeks to live? Why else would the one they called “the Chiseler suddenly acting so generous? If we’re talking about this particular cover, by “rights” it belongs to neither of them: Ruby admitted to having smuggled it out of her old place of work. I guess posession is nine tenths of the law.

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by | February 17, 2020 · 10:15 pm

Stranded in a Limousine

“First time in a limo, Ruby?” “In a limo this small.” How squicky is today’s strip? Only when Chester’s tiny Town Car pulls up to the gates of his mansion does Ruby realize that they’ve taken a detour. Rather than just explain his “reason for stopping here first” (preferably before they get there), Chester turns even more creepy than usual, sitting thisclose to Ruby in what is supposed to be a big car. The sight of his O.J.-like black gloves do nothing to put her at ease.

spacemanspiff85
February 17, 2020 at 12:59 am
I really wonder if Batiuk overheard something about Me Too in the news about a year ago and thought “Inappropriate workplace advances? I bet I can get a week’s worth of strips out of that!” and thus this strip was born.

There are tons of ways that TB could have wrought a chuckle out of this setup without invoking #MeToo. But he goes there, naturally, and in the most hamfisted way imaginable: as if  the #MeToo movement had a switchboard with operators standing by to take your call.

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by | February 16, 2020 · 10:15 pm

Rhino in Name Only

Banana Jr. 6000
February 14, 2020 at 6:09 am
Oh, God, there’s going to be a third week of this, isn’t there?

No one, @Banana Jr. 6000, is more appalled than is yours truly. All but the first two days of this month have been taken up with this lame-ass Atomik Komix fantasy.

So everyone here read Chester’s question as “Have you ever tried RHINO?”, right? And then tried to parse this as an acronym for Riding Home With The Owner? RHWO (or RHWTO to be precise). Does he spell out the acronym, or is he asking “Have you ever tried ‘Arrhuwoh‘?” This is another Batty staple: having a character utter a pun or wisecrack that only makes sense in writing.

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by | November 28, 2019 · 10:09 pm

Am I My Mother-in-Law’s Keeper?

Yeah, Holly’s all smiles today, but all week she’s done nothing but kvetch about her mother leaving the house a mess and maxing out the DVR. Funky, meanwhile, is considering renovating the guest bathroom for the old gal. OK, he could have phrased it a little better, but Funky expresses genuine concern for Melinda. His attitude towards his mother-in-law has softened considerably in the year since Melinda decided to make her stay permanent, but it’s not enough to spare him the old side-eye from the missus.

Programming note: Saturday’s, Sunday’s, and Monday’s strips are all unavailable for preview. I’ll post placeholders, but you’ll have to hold your snark til midnight EST.

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by | November 16, 2019 · 10:59 pm

Pigging Out.

Today’s strip, when it drops.

As usual Sunday wasn’t available for preview. And I’m too worn out to wait for it to drop.

Ironically, I spent the afternoon and evening at my very first college football game. Iowa vs. Minnesota. It was an absolutely awesome time. Iowa fans were so excited when they won they rushed the field, as the ecstatic team held aloft Floyd of Rosedale, still safe in Iowa’s care.

Floyd of Rosedale is an 80 year old bronze pig the winning team gets to keep for the year. It references the time when the governors of Iowa and Minnesota bet an actual live hog on the outcome of the 1935 game.

What I’m saying is football is a, weird, exciting sport, with rich history and traditions. If enjoying the game today was also spiting Tom Batiuk’s horrible CTE arc, then I enjoyed it twice as much.

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by | October 9, 2019 · 11:30 pm

Please no more Lesday, October 10

Today’s strip was not available for preview. I considered waiting for it become available to post, but with the possibility of more Les on the table… I am sorry but I am not willing to burn the 11:00 PM oil potentially posting about a despicable character in a despicable situation.

However, true believers, just so I don’t send you to the comments section empty-handed… here, in honor of the late Jerome Bushka, is Bull’s very first appearance in Funky Winkerbean:

FW5-3-72

Oh, sorry, that’s the first mention of Bull, May 3 of 1972, in classic TB tell-don’t-show style. Here’s his first appearance, on September 23 of 1972 (Wait, why doesn’t Funky have CTE too, being a football sporto?):

FW9-23-72

And the first time he appears and is named, on September 26, 1972 (Until 2013, this was the canonical reason Fred Fairgood was estranged from his daughter Kerry. No, really!):

FW9-26-72

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