Tag: Cory

First Thing You Learn Is That You Always Gotta Wait

Link to today’s strip.

So, Funky and Holly are off to a “super clinic” which, in the limited research I did, is a place where they focus less on treating disease and more on maintaining health.  Given that they are two of the unhealthiest looking people in the strip, this is probably a good idea, but it’s also a given that Funky would rather eat donuts than exercise so I’m not sure why he’s concerned about his health at all.

This episode is a very good example of a three-panel strip being stretched past the breaking point to fit it into a Sunday slot.  Tom Batiuk could easily have used some of those panels to explain the context beyond “annual physicals.”  An “annual physical” sounds like something a local doctor could do–why are they flying to Dallas for this?  Why Dallas in particular?  Gotta get to that 50th, I guess.

Is Cory still living with them?  I guess so.  Being in the army must have hardened him to withstand the tub of misery and failure that is Funky; I’m pretty sure I couldn’t stay in the same house with that guy.  The negativity would make me wish my health would deteriorate rapidly.  If he is living with them, wouldn’t he already know about this trip?  You know, like, several weeks ago they could have told him they were going to be out of town, he was going to be on his own for a few days, things like that.

Actually, I can fully believe that no one in this house talks to anyone else.  It just seems out of whack to be the normal state.

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…sorry about that.  This strip is so boring I fell asleep and knocked my head on the keyboard.  Say, do you suppose that’s how Tom Batiuk comes up with his jokes?

Is Hatchet Face A Pre-Existing Condition?

Link To Today’s Hatchet Face Extravaganza

Good God that panel two Cory drawing is just an atrocity. If you showed me that drawing out of context I’d have absolutely no idea who it was supposed to be. He takes the time to shade Funky’s cheeks (because he’s fat and out of shape, you see) then draws a series of hatchet faces that could level a decent size wooded lot in minutes. I mean wow, it’s almost sort of spectacularly over-the-top in its own annoying way. It’s like a stroll through the axe department at Home Depot, except more angular.

So not only is Funky a fat guy in deteriorating health, he’s also surrounded by people who joke about his imminent death right to his face, even as he’s attempting to address his health through exercise. No encouragement, no pats on the back, just cheap mean-spirited gags about life insurance policies and a whole lot of obnoxious smirking. He goes outside and life punches him in the face, then he comes home and the family kicks him while he’s down. He’s a lot like Al Bundy, minus the jokes and the insane lust for revenge. I mean they’re literally goofing on him over the prospect of him not surviving this moronic race they’re forcing him to participate in, it’s sick.

What Are Fiends For?

Link To Today’s Unfunny Episode

Blech, the Corporal looks especially imbecilic today. One has to wonder what he may have been exposed to over there in Afghanistan, although in fairness to the US military and the Afghan people his symptoms look an awful lot like those of a serious pizza and comic book overdose. “I need a fruit cup and a real book…stat! We’re running out of time! OH NO! PATIENT IS SMIRKING!!! WE’RE LOSING HIM!!! CODE DUH….I REPEAT, CODE DUH!!!!!!”.

So Fatso is going to run in some sort of marathon relay race for a charity of Cory’s choosing, which should lead to a lot of wheezing, heart attack symptoms, crushed ankle bones…you know, good ol’ FW style hilarity. And halfway through the race TomBat will suddenly pull another arc switcharoonie and treat us to a week or two worth of Wally getting a new lunch box or Les staring at a tree stump or something else that has nothing to do with anything. Then in August or September we’ll get to see the gang carting Funky home or to the ER with those sub-moronic grins plastered all over their misshapen faces as if something “humorous” has happened. I can (sigh) hardly wait.

Legacy Of Stupidity

Link To Today’s Thing

Or you could return the Lisa’s Legacy money you stole, Corporal. The town is in an advanced state of urban squalor, the high school is barely funded, obese middle-aged people are everywhere…isn’t there ANY other worthwhile cause in that hell-hole? Might I suggest the “Paying For Funky’s Funeral Fund?” or maybe a little something for Cayla after all of Akron attacks and bludgeons that smirking jerk with the annoying headband? Lisa’s legacy has already left enough scars on the FW landscape: that f*cking cancer book, piles and piles of videotapes and journals, Darin, Summer…she’s done quite enough, thank you very much.

My problem with Cory isn’t that the Army turned him into a lean, fit, exceedingly polite young do-gooder, it’s that they turned him into an impossibly bland lean, fit, exceedingly polite young do-gooder. And it all just suddenly happened overnight too and to this point NO ONE has mentioned it even in passing. The surly, misanthropic, sneering young punk of early Act III came home completely transformed to an astonishing degree and it’s attracted no attention whatsoever. You’d think that somebody would say something, right?

Funky Winkerbean: The Anchor, Man

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All that time he spent defusing bombs and dodging death over in Afghanistan didn’t do a whole lot for Cory’s cognitive thinking abilities, as he appears to be considering including Funky in some sort of relay race deal, which is a bit like entering an obese donkey in the Kentucky Derby. I liked old Cory better, at least he wasn’t just another predictable Pollyanna do-gooder with a dumb grin on his face 100% of the time. Now though…ugh. If the guy was any more bland he’d be completely invisible.