Les: Was [Lisa’s journal] hard to read?
Summer: No… It’s funny, insightful…
This strip… It’s sad, pathetic…
I’m puzzled, snarky…
That is I’m skeptical, confused…
Summer: The only sad part was getting to the end and realizing that Mom wasn’t going to be writing in it anymore.
Really‽ That was the only sad part‽
Snarkers! Let’s help Summer remember the other sad parts!
Ouch! I just got narrative whiplash! For a strip that usually proceeds with the pace of a slow IV drip, it’s really unexpected to go from zombie prom, back to football for a day, and the very next day to Lisa’s Legacy Run. Has our favorite auteur suddenly decided to add cinematic flash cuts and literary techniques like simultaneous parallel subplots? Or is he just doing something incomprehensible like the time he teleported Les off of Kilimanjaro for a day to name Funky’s car?
Ah, Westview! Think of the tropes we’ll see today!
¼-inch from reality.
Check! Lisa’s Legacy Run, an event that briefly leaked out into reality, exists no more in Real Ohio, but persists like sciatica in Funky Ohio.
Being a “reality-based comic strip that depicts contemporary issues affecting young adults in a thought-provoking and sensitive manner.”
Check! Cayla’s daughter and Lisa’s daughter are back from college, to help organize the race. In October. During midterms, I’d guess. Of course, we don’t know what’s been going on in these young women’s college lives, because all we’ve seen of that is them moving into a dorm room. You know: the most interesting, most sensitive thing young people do in college—move their stuff into a small room.
Cayla’s existence subordinated to Lisa.
Check! She’s literally holding Lisa’s name before her.
A falling leaf.
Check! Can you find it? Panel 2, center of window pane. It’s tricky, because the auteur and the colorist couldn’t be bothered to discuss how the falling leaf should be red or yellow, not green.
Hi! As the great Steve Martin once said (approximately): “I know it sounds insincere to say, ‘Hey! It’s really great to be here!’ But hey! It’s really great to be here.” I hope I shall snark entertainingly during my guest stint!
I’d hoped yesterday’s strip was a one-shot, but it looks as if this week we’re going to watch Cayla instruct Les in how to use his new tablet. I predict one of the days, Les will show us his weary-face and say, “With paper and pencil, I never had to wait while ‘important updates’ were installed.”
Other than that, I don’t know what else to say about this strip. Whenever Les appears, Tom Batiuk seems to have taken every effort to iron out any possible items of interest, so that criticism becomes meaningless. Good luck to the rest of you!
Hello everyone, BChasm back for week two of my guest-hosting stint, on what we in the guest-hosting-stint business like to call “hump day.” And let me first offer an apology for the promisingly lurid title of this post, which seems to portend things of interest happening in the strip. Ha ha, this is Funky Winkerbean, interesting things need not apply!
This entry’s title comes from a 1964 movie starring “Coffin Joe” that, in the true spirit of Westview, I’ve never actually seen. But it contains the word “midnight” so it also becomes my clever way of saying that, once again, a preview of today’s episode was not available before press time.
I don’t like leaving everything to the last minute, so in order to “get started” on content I don’t yet have, I thought, well, I’d better “get started” anyway. Writing about something without having material at hand, or doing any research? Where have we seen that before?
Once the actual content is available, I may add what I laughingly call “insights” to this post. Or maybe not! Should I be lucky enough to fall over dead, however, I’m providing some generic comments that will work no matter what Monday’s strip might contain.
Oh, that wacky Owen! Thank you for your service, Harry Dinkle. Yes, Funky, the weight of the world is certainly keenly felt. DSH John, you sure make history come alive! Get your sad on, Wally. Becky and Bull, yes, students today can be quite the problem! Watch out for the Lord of the Late, Pete! You, uh, sure like old things a lot, Crazy. Jessica and Darrin, um, die in a fire? Les, I’d like to throttle you senseless and then beat your corpse bloodless.
UPDATE: Well, as a joke, today’s isn’t too bad. It sure looks like Les wants to take an actual bite out of his Apple in that last panel.
Ah, this, this is always a sad moment: the moment when we say “Goodbye” to a character we’ve come to know and love. I mean, aside from the “know and love” bit, and the fact that we were never given time to come to care for this HarryLes amalgamation. Here he was given to us, and now taken away prematurely, before his true, inner loathsomeness could be allowed to flower, before we were given a chance to hate his every appearance. Why, yes, it is just as sad as all those times we wept over those Disney characters when they were slaughtered, or married off, or adopted, or (give me a moment to stem the tide of tears) hired at Sprawl Mart.
Son of Stuck Funky 