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.
Tag Archives: Cory
They Have Hotels In Florida Now
Holly’s look in panel three really says it all. I’m assuming that The Corporal is approximately twenty-three or twenty-four years old. He defused live bombs in Afghanistan and he is currently engaged to a mute woman. Yet for some reason he’s almost infantile today, blubbering about “visiting Disney” which, to my knowledge, has never “happened” in the strip. And Cory, bless his pointy little head, never came across as being a Disney World kind of guy either.
IMO the way everyone just completely ignored Cory’s miraculous transformation has been one of Act III’s more annoying (recent) developments. For a few years there Cory was the strip’s “bad guy”, an incorrigible scowling hoodlum who (gasp!) stole from Lisa’s Legacy, always had his hair in his eyes and had no use for anyone, generally speaking. Then he comes home and he’s suddenly Opie Cunningham but no one seems surprised in the least. It’d be like if Summer suddenly re-appeared with long curly hair and a jaunty sundress.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Snowbird Sanctuary
Well, it may be the 26th and all but yuletide festivities are still in full swing over at Winkerbean Manor aka The House That Tony Built. Apparently Holly’s mother has been staying there this whole time, as that whole “band reunion” thing appears to have been nothing more than an excuse for Holly’s mom (does she even have a name?) to make Funky’s depressing life even more of a living hell. Despite it being a pretty tired old trope (mother-in-law gags are as trope-y as it gets) I was not altogether un-amused by Funky’s reaction there in panel two, nor by his sidewards comma eyes in panel one for that matter. Maybe it’s my misguided Christmas cheer, but IMO this is at least a baby step up from seven week PTSD arc or watching a befuddled amputee bumble around haplessly for a week, so there is that. I mean sure, it isn’t “good” by any measure but given how abysmal 2018 was overall, I’ll temporarily take it.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Mort-uary Madness
Holly’s thousand yard stare into the middle distance is absolutely haunting today. If she actually managed to look at her son, she would realize that he seems to have de-aged about ten years.
It’s also seemed strange at first that Funky has pulled up a wooden chair rather than sit on the couch with his father. But then again, I wouldn’t want to be sitting on anything contiguous with my father’s loins when discussing carnal matters. Also Funky is probably afraid of getting crabs.
Looks like the rest of the week will be this conversation between two doughy-faced doppelgangers barely differentiated by hair color. Yay. My booze budget will be through the roof.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Uh-O-Hio
Thankfully, today’s strip see’s the end of Funky and Holly’s ridiculous and pointless road trip. Unfortunately, panel 3 seems to be foreshadowing a fate worse than Montoni’s pizza for dinner… alumni band practice, no doubt involving Lefty and Dinkle. This relatively innocuous strip is, unfortunately, a likely calm before the storm.
Sometimes with this strip, you think there can be nowhere to go but up. That is NEVER the case, though. Never allow yourself to think that this strip cannot get worse. It has too deep bench of characters and recurring settings that you fear seeing to ever expect improvement, the immortal Dinkle and his non-retirement being chief among them.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Going With The Flow
Another rather listless outing, but on the plus side they’ve finally picked up Holly’s mom, which means this arc is at least half (or maybe a quarter) over. Hey, I’m just trying to find the any upside here. On the downside, just think of all the airplane bathroom gags he passed on here. So many missed opportunities.
Sweet merciful Ohio, what a miserable two weeks, eh? It flew by like bunion surgery it did. Stay tuned for the return of billytheskink beginning tomorrow, let’s all hope the BanMan “skips ahead” to something a tad more, uh, “interesting”, like the looming band reunion or maybe the looming wedding. Ah, who am I kidding? It’s gonna be comic books and we all damn well know it.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Reach Out And Punch Someone
Ha ha, look, a callback to a recent arc! You remember, the one where Holly was all upset because Cory never answers her calls! Remarkably, it’s still exactly as funny as it was the first time. Even funnier is the wary look on Funky’s face, good thing they left Mr. Weisenheimer in charge instead of someone qualified. Nice going, fatso.
So I guess they’re really taking this trip to Florida. Holly and Funky in a car together for six days…(shudder). That’s considered torture in some countries. Not this one, though. At this rate the Alumni Reunion Band thing could take years to play out. Then again, tomorrow’s strip could feature Funky and Holly talking about the trip and the reunion in the past tense and honestly I wouldn’t even bat an eye. After yesterday’s strip, a two-week car ride arc is the least of our problems, as a senior citizen marching band arc appears to be, uh, looming, let’s say. Sigh.
Those eyeballs in the corner really freaked me out until I realized it’s just the Montoni’s logo in the window. The sudden attention to detail really threw me off.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
