Tag: Christmas

Scrooge McSuck

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I don’t ever recall seeing the Montoni’s office before. The layout of this place, and the entire town really, just endlessly fascinates me. Was it always there or did Adeela include it during her big renovation? Ah, you forgot that she was Montoni’s official pizza architect, didn’t ya?

Anyhow, given that a) the cheese is a vital, vital part of pizza and b) at least a dozen people work there, one can only conclude that there was quite a lapse in the Montoni’s chain of command AND that Funky is as inept at managing as he appears to be at everything else. One can also conclude that right now Funky’s mozzarella dealer is anxiously pacing around his office, occasionally glancing through his window at the nine semi trailers full of cheese he’s sitting on right before the huge Westviewian Christmas pizza rush. That really is a sad, sad attempt at shoehorning the “holiday season” in there, I mean take that reference out and this thing could run in March or June or whenever, as failing to place a cheese order isn’t especially a seasonal premise.

Facing the Music.

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Went on a weird journey for today’s post. At first I was just going to point out bad art. Like Dinkle touching his face with a tiny little prop hand. Then it occurred to me that Dinkle has touched his face in shocked contemplation no less than three times this week, which is gross and not something you want to be doing during cold and flu season.

But I stopped when I noticed that Becky mentioned practicing music for the Christmas Concert…because Westview doesn’t have a Christmas Concert. They have a Holiday Concert, so as to not offend those who do not celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, and/or a night where the undead soul of a fourth century Turkish bishop breaks into people’s homes. I had vague recollections of an entire Holiday Concert arc dealing with Principal Nate becoming a somehow more exaggerated prototype of South Park’s PC Principal. So I dug into the archives, and sure enough there was an arc from December 7th through the 13th in 2015.

My trip took me farther back, because I decided to review some of the tired old Band Turkey gags, and I discovered that Dinkle himself assisted Becky in selling something other than turkeys back in 2014.

Then I looked up, and right there, November 2014, I found the arc where Bull had been offered a college coaching position, only to have it snatched away from him when the college’s first choice called back. And I was stunned to see that, five years ago, Batiuk thought to include a strip where Bull and Linda include their children in life decisions. Probably the last time Jinx has spoken in strip.

Reading that arc again, after everything, had me genuinely sad. And also kind of grossed out. Because Batiuk wrote Linda as incredibly horny back then.

Clari-not

Was not expecting today’s strip to be a standalone gag, but I guess we should be grateful for some respite from Bull’s swan song. And it’s been a while since my high school band days, but we didn’t start practicing Christmas music until football season was almost over. Speaking of football, we’ll get back to Bull’s plight on Monday; the good news is that your guide will be Epicus Doomus!

Auld Lang Wry

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Mother-in-laws….amirite? I mean come on. What’s a fella to do? One dame at home is plenty and I already have a dog to fetch my pipe, slippers and tumbler of scotch, thank you very much. What an old bag and so forth. And now the Copa is proud to introduce…Mr. Henny Youngman!

So another three hundred and sixty-five FW strips are in the bag. It sure looks like a lot when you spell it out like that. I mean you can say the same thing about any Act III year but man, 2018 was a real shit pile, even by FW standards. Exactly four things happened in FW in 2018.

Pete and Boy Lisa left Hollywood and began working for a whimsical Ohio-based komix book company. Mindy later joined them. They presumably still work there.

Wally, who may or may not be over the worst of his PTSD, invited his apparently estranged daughter Rana to Thanksgiving dinner. She accepted.

Bull’s rushing record was broken.

Funky’s mother-in-law visited Westview for a band competition and may remain there until she dies.

Pete and Boy Lisa’s unholy alliance with Chester was by far the dominant story arc of 2018 but even so, after all that time and all that toil he’s still only at the “they work there now” part of the story, which is exactly where it’ll resume and exactly where it’ll end next time as well. And what did we learn about our old pal Wally during his nearly two month long forced march of an arc? Well, apparently he’s “almost” about to graduate and he “seems” to be “doing better”, which is hardly news. He did invite his apparently estranged and seldom-seen daughter to dinner, though, which is where the story left off. Yup, that’s some real compelling character development right there.

Pervert Mort made a late run there at the end but the RRRRRRRR thing in the Wally arc was probably the single dumbest FW moment of the year in my opinion. 2018’s SoSF Most Reviled Player award (the “Les Moore Award”) goes to Les Moore, obviously, although the overall lack of Les was 2018’s sole bright spot. Pete and Boy Lisa are co-runners-up, though. It’s easy to forget now but that AK idiocy went on for freaking months.

Grave Concerns

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Impending climactic doom, neglected old gravesites hiding the bones of dead friends…Happy Holidays from your friends at Funky Winkerbean and King Features! Man, this Melinda sure is a barrel of laughs. You already know how I feel (and vice versa) regarding Author Guy’s reliance on adorable old coot humor so I won’t go into that again, but they’ve been popping up like mushrooms in the strip for the last few years. Cliff, Vera, Phil Holt, New And Improved Morty, his pals at the home and now Melinda. The average age of the characters in FW must be up around seventy or eighty by now. Even if it were funny (and it isn’t) it’d still be weird, especially when you realize he already has another comic strip that’s jam-packed with zany and depressing old coots. Which is already one too many.