I’m pretty sure a sales fundraiser in which you wind up with a garage full of unsold merch is kind of a bust, no? What exactly is Classic Dinkle’s plan here in panel 1? Even if a polar vortex were to descend on Westview tonight, and linger through Christmas and New Year’s, no poultry (especially organic) would still remain edible. Those “Sam ‘n’ Ella’s” turkeys would soon be living up to their name. If “next year” means “next Thanksgiving,” then the premise becomes even more absurd.
Tag Archives: Batiukmobile®
Pizza Forfeiture
The ICE agent snacking on the pizza represents the cold soulless hand of an unfeeling bureaucracy and so forth. Sigh. Obviously Adeela needs to get in touch with The Gang in order to straighten this unfortunate kerfuffle out, but her phone is bricked, so I dunno. It’d be way funnier if they really did ship her off to Iraq on the 8:15 out of Columbus but I seriously doubt she’s going anywhere except (sigh) back to Montoni’s, where she’ll make some sort of weakly wry quip about how she’s still better off in Westview.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Supermarket Sweep
Computers…can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em. The “facial recognition software” at the supermarket (!) targeted poor, poor Adeela, who apparently looks JUST LIKE the OTHER Adeela in Westview and yadda yadda yadda “we’re just doing our jobs as dispassionately as possible” and so forth. So it’s off to the Westview House Of Detention, which I imagine looks just like the Mayberry jail, only with comic books and pizza. Crappy comic books and cold pizza, natch.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
You Should Never Have Opened That Door
And today the pace hits absolute zero. Something HAS to “happen” now, as we’re at peak entropy (Batiuktropy). The laws of comic strip physics simply will not allow BatTrudge to drag this scenario out any further.
Coming tomorrow: a rare Sunday single panel strip featuring an Adeela silhouette saying “hello?”.
Monday: “Hello?”
Tuesday: “Hmmm. There doesn’t seem to be anyone here. It’s dark and scary. I will proceed further.”
Wednesday: ICE agent silently watches.
Thursday: ICE agent: “Hold tight, team, she’s almost….”.
Friday: “HOLD IT RIGHT THERE SCUMBAG!”
Saturday: shocked Adeela.
Sunday: “What is this that is happening to me?”
Prove me wrong, Mr. Pulitzer Nominee sir, prove me wrong.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
The Night The Lights Went Out In Westview
It’s like that scene in “Goodfellas” near the end where Jimmy tries to lure Karen into a shady storefront under the pretense of giving her boosted clothes so he can presumably kill her. Only way dumber and with terrible dialog. And pizza. I mean didn’t Adeela grow up in the most dangerous country in the world? Surely she’s not dumb enough to fall for THIS old gag…is she?
And why do the cops need to set up this elaborate ruse to ensnare Adeela in the first place? Couldn’t they have just raided Montoni’s, busted the place up, tased her and dragged her away? I mean look at her, she’s pretty much a female Funky in a hijab, it’s not like she’s going to run away or get very far if she does. But here they are, setting up a whole pizza sting operation, complete with tails and fake storefronts. What was the plan if Cory or Our Other Delivery Guy showed up? The plot holes are more like gaping plot maws now, creating their own inexorable story-sucking gravity and swallowing all common sense and plausibility.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Suspense…(sigh)…Builds
Good Lord. No one else tells stories like this. No one else has ever even considered it, in fact. He telegraphs exactly what’s going to happen days in advance then takes for-f*cking-ever to get there. If she just says “hmmm, looks empty, I’d better call them” in the first panel the story is suddenly going three times faster. But our pal BatHak simply doesn’t do things that way. If he ever made a movie it’d be thirty hours long AFTER editing.
And it’s not like we’re gaining any insight about the character here, as she’s just thinking out loud for some reason. Those word balloons really should be thought bubbles.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Deep (Dish) Cover
“Adeela exited Montoni’s carrying a pizza for delivery. She walked through Montoni’s front door toward the delivery car. The car had a Montoni’s decal on the door. Adeela opened the door and placed the pizza inside the delivery car. The ICE agent watched from the shadows. He used his phone to alert the other agent about Adeela’s departure.”
Right there, that explains the lack of Pulitzers. Once again BatNard has written a story that consists entirely of plot holes. Oh, and padding…a shit-ton of padding. They can’t just go and arrest Adeela, they have to go through a whole logic and continuity-defying process first, for no other reason than to make the goddamned story longer. Remember, this is Adeela’s very first delivery, thus the ICE agent either a) got really lucky, b) bugged Montoni’s or c) has a mole on the inside. Maybe Rocky finked Adeela out in an attempt to get more screen time.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Westview: Silent Hill Edition
Wow, look at that background in panel one! It’s going to be great when Pyramid Head shows up and starts butchering everyone. I’m going to take back everything bad I’ve said about this strip!
Ha ha, not really. Anyway, here’s another Funky Winkerbean “story” in which speculation far outstripped reality. Imagine, you folks talking about affairs and house-building! You should’ve seen yourselves! Don’t worry, I’m not making sport of you, as I fall into the same trap pretty much every time. Sigh.
A question for those of you more knowledgeable than myself. Adeela seems like a fairly devout Muslim–aren’t there strictures on the company that Muslim women can keep? Isn’t being with a man who is not in her family (and a married man at that) forbidden?
I know that women driving was restricted (until recently) in places like Saudi Arabia, so she’s clearly bucking that trend. So, why continue with the hijab, then? (I know the answer to that one–it’s so Batiuk can claim diversity by using the most superficial traits.)
Credit where it’s due: I like the drawing of Rachel in panel two. That is a genuinely good rendering of Rachel’s expression–someone who is clearly not happy, but is willing to listen.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
I Got a Rock
Given the fact that Jeff nearly died during his trip, his reunion with Pam is…sort of lowkey. Very obliging of Pam, though, to feed Jeff his straight line. As promised, here is that neato rock that Batty pictured on his blog. Jeff’s souvenir appears a lot bigger than the one brought back by Batiuk, and this is a good thing, because in unseen Panel 8 Pam will use it to bash in Jeff’s head.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Passive Patricide
Is there any character in this strip as thick-skulled as Mindy? She’s been standing outside the Bedbug Hotel with Pete long enough for Masone to drive from the Channel Island Harbor Marina (The nearest marina north along the coast from Malibu) to, judging by the view, the Hollywood foothills.
I know Comics Curmudgeon has been going nuts trying to parse out the geography of this arc, but here’s my take on it:
So, of course, given this map, it was entirely reasonable for Mindy and Pete to stand and wait for the minimum of two hours it would take Masone’s Starbuckmobile to drive BACK THROUGH THE FIRE to pick them up after dropping off Marianne and Les.
Only for Mindy to then remind her friends that her dad was hiking in Griffith Park.
Pete is smiling in relief in panel one, and suddenly worried in panel two. So unless he has the attention span of a goldfish, Mindy is only bringing this up now. And she seems at a complete loss as to what to do next. So she’s going to let her fiancee and his pal decide if and how they should alert emergency personnel. Or is she expecting them to go charging through the brushfire themselves?
Truly, dumb as a box of sponges. Because a box of rocks at least has some weight.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
