Here’s a rather unusual Christmas Eve tradition that comes out of nowhere: serving Westview’s homeless a sumptuous Christmas dinner…of pizza. Yellow pizza, pepperoni not optional. Would it kill Funky to put out a tray of eggplant parm, and maybe a nice salad?
May I ask my veterans and service people in the audience: does Cory have to wear his uniform while he’s home on leave? Did he leave any civilian clothes in his bedroom, or just his comic book collection?
Just how far did they go to get that Christmas tree? It was nighttime when Cory surprised his ‘rents at the tree lot. Now as they bring the tree inside it appears to be daytime. I’m also wondering if this is the first time in forty-one Funky years that Holly’s name has been used in a Christmas-y pun.
So Batiuk’s annual e-card showing Funky and Ed Crankshaft fighting over the last tree in the lot was just a mere bit o’ whimsy. While I’m a sucker for those heartwarming “Soldier on leave surprises family” videos, all I keep thinking about when I see today’s strip is camo-clad Cory, newly minted killing machine, stealthily stalking his parents between rows of Douglas firs, waiting, just waiting for the right moment to make his presence known…
Th’ hell? Is Cory dead already? Funky and Holly rummage through his room (just as he left it, snif) and Holly speaks of him in the past tense.
While Cory’s room is actually fairly tidy, what’s a “total mess” (as usual) is the continuity. A month ago we saw Holly include this rare volume in a package that she and Funky were sending to Afghanistan (the rest of that week showed—in flashback—Holly acquiring the comic from “Rocky’s” mom). Now she reaches under the bed and files Starbuck Jones #7 in Cory’s box of Silver Age comics. Perhaps it returned through the same wormhole that enabled Les to check out Funky’s new car in the middle of the Kilimanjaro arc.
A couple weeks ago, TB equated Les’ endless struggle against writers’s block with “war“. Today, a flaming baton gets likened unto deadly explosives.
Remember “Holly Budd”? Westview’s majorette who wore a fixed smile, and her majorette uniform, round the clock. In addition to being positively deadly with a fiery baton, she was the good-natured vehicle for “dumb blonde” jokes, when you still could get away with that kind of thing in the newspaper funnies. Did Holly Budd die in the flaming baton mishap witnessed by Dinkle in panel 2? Because the dumpy, morose housefrau who is Cory’s (step-?)mom resembles her not at all.
Son of Stuck Funky 
