Slager
October 1, 2013 at 1:16 am
Huh, I worked on an amateur short film called “Zombie Homecoming”. It wasn’t very good.
Yes, in case you missed yesterday’s strip, they’re doing a zombie homecoming, and Owen finds the eerie theme so enticing that he’s tempted to attend his first homecoming of his five-year high school career. No prizes for guessing who Owen will wind up asking do be his date, but if TB really wanted to explore a same-sex storyline…nah.
By the time I laid eyes on today’s strip, you snarkers had pretty much hit it outta the park, so I’ll just sit back and let y’all run with it!
Okay, the fact the team is terrible aside, today’s strip got me thinking: Do they even make clothing for amputees?
The first thing I stumbled on was a Zazzle site, maker of fine coffee mugs and keychains, that showcased amputee humor. A lot of people far finer than I am have lost limbs for a variety of reasons, and it’s refreshing they seem to have a sense of humor about it. Still, I just can’t imagine pinning up a sleeve every morning. Why go through the trouble?
Ah well, at least the pinned-up sleeve is someting consistent in this strip.
Above the post update:
Well, I’ve been wrong before. And I’ll be wrong again. Farewell, Jim, and godspeed.
Original post:
Friday’s strip was not available for preview, so while we wait I’m going to point out a couple of things.
1-unless something happens today, this week featured a pretty unique storyline: no one smirked. Let me repeat that: not one single character, in four days of a storyline wherein the cruelty of fate, taxpayers and school boards was loudly and repeated lamented, smirked. That has to be some kind of record. Of course, as noted, no one has seen today’s strip, it could be a regular smirkageddon.
2-this strip continues the trend that’s been going on for months now in which nothing ever gets resolved, except through exhausted defeat. I’m trying to think of the last time any of these characters took positive action in attempt to combat the entropy that closes around them like a strangling cloak. All I can remember is Owen and Cody building a robot…which was almost immediately destroyed. Most of the rest of these arcs have people determinedly doing nothing in order to stymie their opponents (the Frankie story). The last time I wrote in these pages, Les, Cayla and Funky sat down to have lunch. They never even got to eat. (Someone might mention the Dinkle Anniversary party as a counter-example. I’d point out that we never saw Harry do any of the things he was supposedly doing to prepare, other than talk to Funky. Instead, it was talk, talk, pun, talk, complain, talk, pun, talk, done.)
It’s one thing to have bad jokes, or bad insights. At least those are attempts. Having nothing, just having characters state their troubles, then give up and wander away…even badness is more “something” than that. The lack of anything in this strip is what makes it so hard to read, and so exhausting to try and come up with anything to say about it.
Maybe that’s Tom Batiuk’s plan all along; he hopes to starve criticism not by feeding it poison, or by not feeding it at all, but by feeding it those chemicals that bond to the digestive system and make it impossible for nourishment to be absorbed. Like…like that’s how they killed the Tribbles in that Star Trek show! If that’s his grand plan, I’d love to see the end result he hopes for: a comic strip free of critics so he can do…what, exactly?
Let’s hope today’s entry proves me wrong and is the first shot across the bow of a renewed Funky Winkerbean. I am not, of course, holding my breath. If you are, please let me know your record.
Hey look, it’s Cody and Owen, who’ve been attending WHS for at least five or six years already, sweating their way through another horrible and joyless summer band camp just like we’re suffering through another horrible and joyless summer band camp arc! Mind blown. Much as with Becky, one has to wonder why they keep voluntarily participating in an activity that apparently gives them no enjoyment whatsoever. Again, kind of like us! Whoa. The fabled Westviewian masochism must be contagious.
One also has to wonder why Owen would elect to wear a wool cap with ear flaps in the middle of August, or why Cody doesn’t remember Becky losing her shit last year, or the year before that, or the year before that, or the year before that and so on. So in short, it doesn’t appear that either of these two dimwits will be graduating anytime soon. On the plus side, though, they’ll be able to legally buy their own alcohol soon, which should make the ride home from the prom a little more interesting provided that FW remains “true to form”. Owen really does have that “future FW fatality” look about him, doesn’t he? And Cody….yeah.
I have to believe that even the most easily amused band directors would think twice before clipping this strip and taping it to the band room door. Especially the ones battling any sort of mental illness which, based on the knowledge of band directors I’ve gleaned from reading FW, means all of them because teaching band is the most difficult and thankless job there is and everyone who does it is insane. Right?
Son of Stuck Funky 
