Tag: ceiling tiles

Tone It Down

I wonder if the school still pays the cost for Dinkle to attend the OMEA. Oh wait, in today’s strip it’s just “Music Educators Conference”. I wonder if the OMEA didn’t pay enough to be featured on a sign every day this week. Or maybe Batiuk thought it would be nobody would know “OMEA” was a music thing, and they wouldn’t be able to appreciate the hilarity without knowing that.
Apart from the weirdness of the sign, just the format itself of today’s strip confuses me so much. Batiuk does this regularly, where one character makes a “joke” and another character reacts with fury to tell them it’s not a joke. I don’t understand it at all, because it doesn’t add a thing to it. The only thing I see as a possibility is maybe that Batiuk does it to portray anyone who doesn’t appreciate “wordplay” as a jackass? Because I can guarantee he doesn’t have a problem with puns, since 99% of the content in Crankshaft is Crankshaft getting words confused.
I’d also like to know the set up of this joke-did Harry just randomly walk up to someone he saw talking and tell him this?

My Dinkle-ing, My Dinkle-ing…

Twenty Twenty One may be just getting blessedly underway, but Our Winter Band Banquet is drawing to a close. I’m praying for Covid to finally reach Westview, Ohio soon, so that all those dopey, knowing smirks will be obscured by masks. Continue reading “My Dinkle-ing, My Dinkle-ing…”

Krabby Petey

Banana Jr. 6000
December 4, 2020 at 12:36 pm 
…The joke is so mild and so botched, and the reaction is so ridiculously oversold, that the strip should be funny for how misguided it is.

Does anyone else think that Darin in the last panel looks like he was drawn by MAD’s Maddest Artist, Don Martin?

Tom Batiuk has frequently expressed, in his work and in interviews, that even though we call them “comics,” they don’t necessarily have to be “funny.” “I don’t see why a comic strip can’t carry the weight of substantial ideas,” he once said. But even a storyteller like Batiuk must cleanse the palate with the occasional standalone gag, or even a week’s worth of them. Everything about Pete’s “holiday joke” is lame, and the smugness with which he delivers it is just off the charts. Of course, the response is a hearty HA! HA! HA! from all but one of the Atomik staff.  At first, it looked to me as if Chester was the one admonishing Pete to “stick to writing drama,” which would make sense as he’s Pete’s boss. Naturally, as his fiancé, Mindy must come to Pete’s defense. But nobody knows better that his real soulmate, Darin, that flighty, distractible Pete needs help with focus. And anyway, his jokes suck.

Something that does not suck is the way Beckoning Chasm goes to work on Funky Winkerbean with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch, and his authoring stint begins with Monday’s comic. Stay safe and well and happy, people. –TFH

Ultima Thulame*

*(Pronounced “Too Lame”)

Link To The Sunday Strip

What’s with the “pronounced Tor” gag there in panel four? Another sly dig at Hollywood? In order for something to be an “inside joke” someone else needs to get it, so I don’t know.

So poor, poor Klabichnik is annoyed and frustrated by his sub-cretinous students…there’s a theme FW rarely touches upon. It might make more of an impact if it wasn’t the punchline of every single FW teacher/student gag, but then again probably not.