Today’s 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.
As it happens, yours truly had occasion to visit a bona fide comic store today to get a secret Santa gift for a coworker. This guy happens to be a comics fan who incidentally seems reasonably mature and well-adjusted. So at lunchtime I took me to NYC’s Midtown Comics. I was really tempted to ask if they had any Starbuck Jones, but the staff was pretty busy and surely had no time for my foolishness. Still: comic books (and other wares) were clearly on display and available for perusal and purchase. And nary a chullo, goth chick or dead skunk head in sight.
Yes, in case you missed 
Son of Stuck Funky 
