Tag: Cory (Off-screen)

Passing The Batom

Funky’s succession plan is coming together in today’s strip, which is a good thing I think, seeing as he lately can’t remember that Wally already works for him.

Rachel, frankly, should be furious with this nepotism. She has worked at Montoni’s since the Clinton administration, surely she knows nearly everything there is to know about the place. Shouldn’t she be considered for a management position? Is it because she doesn’t have a college degree and Wally is about to receive one? Perhaps that is why Funky ultimately ignored Wally’s request to apply for the manager position that Durwood vacated in 2015.

But Funky had no real qualms about letting Cory and Rocky run Montoni’s back in August, when he and Holly drove to Florida. Cory has no college degree, he joined the military right out of high school (where he struggled) and his only experience at Montoni’s was busing tables and dressing up in a pizza costume. Rocky’s experience is likely similar, sans pizza costume.

This is especially galling because Funky, even armed with his business degree, worked his way up to being co-owner of Montoni’s by starting as… a delivery boy. Rachel facing down Funky’s nepotistic patriarchy is a much better female-focused awards-fishing story arc than last week’s bit with Mindy critiquing comic book character clothing. It is almost amazing that TB didn’t realize it… almost as in not really.  Because comical books.

Also, Cory and Rocky are moving to Seattle after their wedding, as the young people do, so we have that to look forward to come 2022.

The Holly See

Good Monday morning all, billytheskink here, back for another two week tour of deconstruction.

Of all the many places on this terrestrial ball, where would you most like to be on a Monday morning? If you answered “why, waiting for someone in the Cleveland-Hopkins International airport terminal Mr. theskink, where else?” then today’s strip is definitely for you!

While this strip is seemingly innocuous, would it really surprise any of us if Holly mistaking every male-female pair of soldiers at the airport for Cory and (I’m guessing) Rocky was the launching point for a “very special story arc” about Prosopagnosia?

Move Toward The Light

Link To Today’s Strip

Hands up, everyone who didn’t see this coming a mile away.  Let’s see–that’s one, two, three–OMG, you people are going to have to see me after class if you have any hope of passing the mid-term.  Or that kidney stone.  I’ll let you choose which is less painful.

Of course, if, in a strip from next week, Cory returns home and, before it can land, that helicopter blows up, why, that would be great and I would personally buy Tom Batiuk a beer.   Of course, odds of that happening with the sacred cast are probably as close to zero as you can get without squinting.

Now if, as some have speculated, Rocky ends up dead or maimed, well…she’ll fit in nicely with Kerry, Carla, that biker dude who sold comics, and the rest of the anonymous horde who only serve to illustrate the troubles of the Funky Winkerbean cast in a greater arena before disappearing into their respective hells.   IE, it might be used to briefly illustrate a point, but then they and their sufferings will be shuffled quietly off-stage, never to be seen again.  After all, Les Moore, after all.

And before you ask, yes, I was going to call shenanigans on Holly’s surprise, since her cellphone probably flashed “Cory Winkerbean” when it rang, but…then I thought, perhaps Cory is using someone else’s phone.  Or perhaps the Winkerbeans never store anything in their contacts, or use different ring-tones, or any number of other stupid reasons why I hate writing about these people.  It is, after all, evil technology(R)(C), use of which is prohibited.

The wrap-up, here, of this arc (I am being optimistic) illustrates one of the major problems this strip has–it’s so static.  Nothing ever really changes.  Oh sure, Khahn moves away, Dopey Pete moves away, Cindy moves back…but those are all relatively trivial.  Since the death of Lisa, Tom Batiuk seems to have decided that this strip is just going to drift along on weak wordplay, smirks and depressive smacks to the head until someone in quality control notices what they’re paying for.  I guess payments for Funky Winkerbean are like the paychecks for Milton from Office Space.  Someday, someone will fix the glitch.

Perhaps I’m just someone bummed out because my favorite character, the Pouncing Darkness, is brutally dispatched over the course of today’s offering.  Farewell, Darkness!  I’ll–I’ll never forget you!  And I’ll vote for your Pulitzer!

Monday, March 10th

Link To Today’s Strip

Greetings, folks, BChasm back for another round.  I found myself a bit startled when Epicus mentioned that I was next in line, and as the panic set in, I wondered if I could schedule some emergency surgery, or join the army, or something…but no, duty calls, and the Moon is a harsh mistress.

Today’s episode was not available for preview, so we can all speculate until the wondrous onset of midnight, when all will be revealed.  Will it be more of Cindy’s woeful career, or another quest for an issue of Starbuck Jones, or will both these recent plotlines be abandoned to bring us something else?  One thing you can say about Funky Winkerbean is that it’s really pretty unpredictable.

It’s just unpredictable in a really, really lame way.  What way beckons from the pallid rim of midnight?

Let’s find out together.

UPDATE:  And it looks like those who had Cory in the Dead Pool are about to get their payoff!  Maybe.  Whatever resolution this new arc will have, it will be better in the imagining than in the actual.