Meh. This is exactly the kind of trite, sappy drivel you’d expect from such an arc. Time keeps on slipping slipping into the future and all. Very cute and very observant. I was unaware that Westview had a merry-go-round. I assume it’s right next to a roller coaster that only has drops and a waterslide slickened with the tears of Westviewians, but an assumption is all it is.
Tag Archives: Cory
Q: Is He Best Man? A: He’s Boy Lisa
Earlier in the week, I touched on how utterly bizarre and insane it is that Boy Lisa, of all people, is Cory’s best man. Nothing could possibly explain this, as there’s just no way it could be possible, but there he is, waving goodbye to his dear ol’ chum Cory and that girl he married. Interesting how Boy Lisa, Licensed Cartoonist, made the poster all about Cory and not the bride, but given what we know about Boy Lisa’s marriage, that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Way back before he became Boy Lisa, Darin was a fairly major Act II character, more or less the WHS “new generation” male lead. Along with his girlfriend Jessica and his best pal Pete, Darin was involved in all sorts of zany WHS hi jinx and shenanigans. I can’t remember any of them now, but trust me, something happened. Then we discovered he was adopted as an infant and everyone immediately knew he’d end up being Lisa’s surrendered love baby from THAT whole thing. And sure enough, five or ten years later, Darin met Lisa, his birth mother, not long before she died. And when they met, Lisa grabbed Darin by the forehead and transferred some of her superpowers to her long-lost bio-son, including bland geniality, and, well, bland geniality. And henceforth he was known as Boy Lisa.
Right after that, Boy Lisa and Jessica got married, went to college, and became Big City MBAs. Or at least he did, as Jessica’s backstory is less important, what with her being a girl and all. So that went on for five or seven or fourteen years or thereabouts, at which point This Economy f*cked Boy Lisa over, pretty hard in fact. So he packed up his robin’s egg blue car and returned to Olde Westview Towne, where he showed up unannounced at the door of his long-lost bio-step dad and bio-half-sister (avoiding his adoptive parents for reasons unclear), asking for a place to stay.
Les agreed, then got Boy Lisa a job at (surprise) Montoni’s, where he became some sort of pizza app developer and breakfast pizza pioneer. Then he discovered he had an adoptive half-sister, did the illustrations for Les’ cancer graphic novel and knocked-up his wife, although I’m not sure in what order that all was. Then Pete offered him a cushy storyboarder gig on the “Starbuck Jones” movie and he took off for Hollywood, minus Jessica, who stayed home and attended to her various womanly duties. Then he came back and ended up riding Pete’s coattails again, this time snagging a job at Atomik Komix, where he toils to this very day.
And this brief recap of his entire character arc makes it seem WAY more eventful and interesting than it actually was. In my opinion, his number one strip highlight was when he sneezed all over Summer right before the Big Game, as the illness somehow activated her natural grit and brought home the basketball title to WHS for the very first time. Or it might have been when he threatened Frankie and Lenny that time, although that was more Jessica. Anyway, it’s a really, really bland legacy when you look at it objectively, or even if you don’t. If Boy Lisa was Halloween candy, he’d be those terrible Necco wafers no one likes.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
A Smother’s Love
So maybe you thought that whole Keisha/Maddie/Summer thing might be going somewhere…well, guess again, snarker. Rule Number One: if it seems too involved, complicated and/or interesting for FW, it definitely is.
Obviously he was going for “cute” here, but, as usual, he landed squarely on “icky”, again. We’ve seen nothing in the past that would indicate that Holly is a psychotically overbearing mother, but she is today, because it’s funny, at least to one person. Now, in fairness, someone who doesn’t read the strip every day might (I said “might”) softly chuckle at this hackneyed premise, but when a regular character acts completely insane like this without any warning, it’s mostly just confusing.
And lest we forget, Cory is around twenty-eight years old, he was engaged for like seven years, AND he was a bomb disposal technician in Iraqistan, so I’d be willing to bet he’ll have no problem with navigating his wedding night without his mom’s help. And there’s the icky part, right there. This is yet another one he should have chucked into the “no” pile.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Take The Vow With Son Of Holly, Fa-la La La La, La La La La
Good God, man. While this may seem like a typically stupid and innocuous FW gag, it’s not innocuous at all. It’s actually one of the worst gags ever written by anyone, ever, and BatYam ought to be ashamed of himself for having dreamed it up in the first place.
First, you have the joke itself, which (as far as I can tell) is that the minister the happy couple found online speaks only in technology references, because he’s an “online” minister. But the thing is, he isn’t “online”, he’s right there. You can go online without becoming “online”, which seems like something you shouldn’t have to point out to anyone, regardless of how rooted in the past they are. It’s just a TERRIBLE joke on that level alone.
But then, on top of this already-abysmal gag, he uses “Bill Gates” and “Twitter” as his “online” references, as they both have something to do with “internet” and “computers”. And I mean yeah, they do and all, but it’s REALLY a weak, weak reach. If he said “by the powers vested in me by my local ISP, Megalith Cable” or something like that, it’d be a little closer to being a joke, albeit barely.
Then, the icing on the cake. It’s Summer, the young, with-it child of technology explaining the reference to Cayla, the old, out-of-touch fogey who always struggles with this internet thingie. And then there’s Boy Lisa’s absolutely baffling presence, too. Seriously? HE’S Cory’s best friend? He couldn’t even draw up some random anon-o-army guy to be Cory’s best man?
This one stinks on ice on every possible level. In fact, I’d go as far as to say this one, right here, is one of the one hundred worst FW strips of all time, maybe even bottom fifty. Just look at that terrible post title I resorted to using today, I am NOT a man who shies away from a terrible, lousy, no-good gag every now and again. But this strip is aggressively bad, the kind of bad that just grabs you by the shoulders and screams “LOOK HOW SHITTY I AM!’ right in your face, and in my opinion there’s just no call for that.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Matrimony Baloney
I guess we were all hoping that this wedding arc would just immediately end and never be mentioned again, but no such luck. (At first, I spelled it as “welding arc”, which would have been way better IMO). Even the actual wedding ceremony itself is just another excuse to pack the word balloons full of trite, moronic pop-culture references he’s already done to death a million times over. “Superheroes”…”binge watching”…if this “writing” was any lazier, it’d be dead. Cory, the one-time local degenerate scumbag who joined the military and came home a completely transformed man, is just another goofy “young” character, doing everything “these kids today” are into, like reading comic books and watching TV. He created an entire backstory for the character, then decided to just ignore it completely, which makes you wonder why he bothered in the first place. All this wedding arc really accomplishes is bringing BatYam’s Act III failures into clearer focus. In short, he stinks.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Funky Likes Food
“Who cares about my son getting married, I’m hungry!“. Get it, everyone? Funky is fat, and apparently doesn’t give a crap about his family. Did Batiuk just skip right over the actual ceremony, or is everyone just posing for the photos beforehand? If that’s the case, then Funky isn’t eating any time soon.
I really hope Funky is blurting this all out really, really loudly, just stealing all the focus onto himself. I also like that Holly ask to ask for clarification about Funky’s comment, rather than just assuming the wedding is his dream come true, like any rational person would.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Sweet Dreams, Rocky
This comic has a long tradition of inappropriate smirks that don’t fit their context, at all, and Cory’s in the third panel really fits in with that. I’m really not sure what it’s supposed to mean. Is it “haha, my wife is making a big deal over nothing at all, unexpected nudity is no big deal”, or “hahaha, she’ll never be able to sleep again, so I guess I’ll be getting lucky every single night, thanks Dad!”? Be careful with that smirking, Cory. The way your strip is drawn, you’re going to look exactly like Funky in no more than 5-10 years.
Honestly, instead of asking if Rocky’s okay, Cory should really be concerned about Funky. Given the look of terror on his face yesterday, I’d say there’s a really good chance he’s in the middle of a heart attack right now.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
#superlonghashtagsdefeatthewholepoint
And today we’re back with another installment in Tom Batiuk’s “modern technology stinks” series. I really would like more details about what’s going on here. Did the five of them just record a podcast right there, while they were standing around? Why did Cory and Rocky wait until they were with their parents to do these things, which they didn’t need their parents for and they clearly had no input in?
I’m always amused by how petty Batiuk’s gripes with technology are. This is basically exactly what hashtags are meant for, and it’s a great use for them. To react “oh no, people uploading pictures of one of the best days in your life in a way that you can easily find them, Skynet has won, why couldn’t we have stopped with dial-up and Netscape” is a really weird take. (Not sure if it’s as weird as a week long rant against song suggestions, but it’s close).
This does not seem like a great hashtag, apart from just being way too long and using up most of your characters. I’m sure we can come up with better ideas. Mine is #mrandmrsrhodessincethereisnowayiambecomingrockywinkerbean.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Winkerbean-in-law
Oh yay, we finally get to meet Rocky’s mom, Carla! I’m sure she’ll quickly become a beloved recurring character, and surely doesn’t exist entirely for this “sin-in-law” joke. Holly’s face is looking especially rough in the second panel. I don’t know if it’s because she’s weary at the prospect of at least another week of bad sitcom level wedding tropes, like I am.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Cory Smirkerbean
Where exactly do Cory and Rocky live? I assume they still live in Westview; if not I’m surprised we didn’t get a “Cory moves away” arc. If they do still live in Westview, I’m confused at why they’re spending the night at the Winkerbeans. It’s allowing the same “you can call me Mom” material I’ve seen any time someone meets their future in-laws on a sitcom, which is something.
At first I thought Rocky calling Holly “ma’am” had to do with her army background, but if that’s the case I feel like the strip should make that a little more obvious.
These kind of storylines always make me a little sad, because it sure seems set up to be the kind of thing where the fans are happy to see their favorite couple finally tying the knot, but I have the feeling 90% of the people reading this don’t remember who Cory is, and 99%+ don’t know who Rocky is.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Son of Stuck Funky 