Batman – Page 5 – Son of Stuck Funky

Please DON’T have mistletoe.

I stayed up late waiting for this strip to drop. And thank Dead St. Lisa, we are no longer having ‘the talk.’ Instead Holly and Funky are entertaining their only two repeat customers.

And, actually, today’s strip is amusing enough, and does point out an actual weird lyric in a famous song. (There is a historical explanation,, but it’s within character for the Funky Bunch to not know it.) It isn’t a completely dead tradition though, I remember one Christmas where, on the tree, were envelopes with cash inside. Pretty good presents on that tree that year.

I have a feeling that Holly would hate me though. As a child that grew up on way too much MST3K, my logic sensors are primed to sniff out any tiny inconsistency and snark on it. What I’m saying is, I’m really relating to Funky in today’s strip…and isn’t that a terrifying thought.

There’s No Thumb Big Enough For This.

Link to Today’s Comic.

Count on Batiuk to take a relate-able peeve, hatred for kid sidekicks, and present it in such a way that we all feel both offended and annoyed.

I’m a Transformer’s fan, I know how bad the little kid sidekick can be. I’ve lived through Daniel Witwicky for Primus’ sake. One of my best friends couldn’t enjoy Reboot, (the greatest cartoon of all time, I said it, fight me,) because Enzo grated on her nerves like jalapeno sandpaper. Her unbearable pain was hilarious to witness, and gives me a model of how this could have been presented better.

But TommyBats decided to frame the innocuous punchline in a box of unfortunate implications, by turning Pete into the most overbearing mansplainer since Mark Trail. If Chester had just come up with the sidekick on his own, then Pete could have complained without the specter of mysoginy haunting the exchange.

Interesting to see that Mindy has not only been rendered a silent object by Pete’s temper tantrum, she’s beginning to fracture into some kind of Cubist, Surrealist monstrosity.

Dr DUMB

Dead Skunkhead is back from ComicCon and he’s eager to show off his latest purchase; a needlessly huge statue that’s going to scare the daylights out of Becky every day for a few weeks until she gets used to it being there. From the sounds of things in today’s strip John didn’t exactly get Becky’s blessing.

No more kids!? That’s a little dark. Did they have kids to begin with? Forgive me for using track but kids in Westview are props pulled out during turkey sales and whenever someone is moving into the apartment above Montoni’s.

Dopes on a Rope

You know what’s not really funny? Piracy. Not like “Download a bad copy of Secret Life of Pets” type piracy but actual open seas piracy. I’m guessing the Chinese know how to deal with the menace. One little blast of a firehose in today’s strip and these two are fish food.

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.