Tag: Crazy Harry

Cinco de mayo pizza special overshadowed by band box’s día de muertos

In today’s strip, we learn that Funky’s inept efforts to maintain the band box at Montoni’s have killed it. That’ll put a damper on the Cinco de Mayo festivities surrounding the pizza special advertised in Montoni’s window. You know, Cinco de Mayo, the world’s most pizza-oriented holiday.

My research into the band box a couple years ago revealed that the real band box at Akron’s Luigi’s has similarly deteriorated.

Bonus: See Tom Batiuk’s sole second IMDb role (complete episode): Cardinal Adventures #6: Terror in the Pines. Things to look for:

  • Early on: one of the characters name-drops Les, Cayla, Summer, and Keisha.
  • Mr. Batiuk is one of the better actors in the production
  • Everyone—I mean everyone—including the 19-year-old protagonist, gets their news from newspapers. Printed ones, on actual paper.
  • Whenever you see a newspaper, you see the comics page.
  • Astonishing video-editing.

No Good Deed Goes Un-Comic Booked

Link To Today’s Strip

So Holly somehow topped Chester The Chiseler’s $50,000 bid in order to repay John for helping her to acquire a bunch of Starbuck Jones comic books for nothing? And now John owes Holly at least $50,001 for the favor? Welcome to BanTom’s whacked-out comic book-centric fantasy world, where happiness is bagged, slabbed, tagged and longboxed. There’s no need to point out the gigantic logic holes here, as the entire thing is a huge logic hole. I don’t mean this story specifically, I mean the entire strip.

Get a load of Skunky’s unbridled joy upon learning that he now owes Holly a cool fifty grand. Why, he’s just like a kid whose parents put themselves into crippling debt to buy him a candy store! I certainly hope Holly hides the vodka and firearms BEFORE she informs Funky about this rather implausible development, or we’ll be re-visiting Act II before you know it.

And, uh, what happened to Dick Tracy? It’s like the big crossover never even happened, which in a way it kind of didn’t, now that I think about it. Oh well, at least it didn’t involve Les in any way, thank God.

Whole Lot Of Dumb

Link To Today’s Strip

So which premise is more unlikely? That Holly could somehow scrape together $50,001 to spend on comic books she didn’t even know about until earlier that same day or that the detective that cracked the case that eventually made the comic books available to be auctioned off in the first place would hang around for that auction AND hand-deliver the comics to the auction winner whom he doesn’t even know? If you answered “both”, congrats. I know I’ve been pounding on this theme all week but seriously, someone over there at Batom Inc. HQ really needs to tap TheAuthor on the shoulder and snap him out of this bizarre comic book fantasy reverie he’s in, as it’s getting out of hand. It’s almost as if depicting DT delivering boxes of comic books was his goal and he wrote the “story” around making that scene happen. And that’s just f*cking weird.

Coming next week: the long-rumored FW/For Better Or For Worse crossover finally begins. Over in the FBOFW-iverse, Funky hits Farley the dog with his car just as Michael opens his rejection letter from comic book writing school at the same moment his gay best friend’s grandfather dies at his sister’s shotgun wedding. Meanwhile, the Pattersons visit Westview and debate the merits of Silver Age vs. Golden Age comic books while eating pizza. Or, alternately, they eat comic books while reading pizza, as if there’s any difference anymore.

Fifty Shades Of Lame

Link To Today’s Strip

For a vaunted and feared comic book chiseler, Chester kind of lacks a working knowledge of how auctions normally work. He’s not “chiseling” correctly either. And there’s no need to shout, the auctioneer is standing right there to the left of the panel there, Chester. In typical FW fashion, our “heroes” show up for an auction lot containing a trove of rare and valuable comic books with a whole fifty bucks scorching a hole in their pockets. Good plan there, guys. Thankfully they’re able to shrug off their idiocy with a wry remark and those “deadpan” expressions, which no doubt sent BanTom to the floor of his studio with a massive laughing fit right after he dreamed this bit of nonsense up. Well, I guess it’s marginally better than not amusing anyone whatsoever, right?

FW routinely botches even the easiest of premises, but this one might mark a new low. The guy gets an opportunity to use an “iconic” (much more so than any FW character at any rate) comic strip character in his daily strip and instead of doing anything that’s even remotely different or entertaining he decides to make it all about a f*cking comic book auction. It’s mid-week and DT isn’t even there today! Why even bother with DT at all if this is all you have? He’s a f*cking detective, TB, have the guy go find Becky’s mom or Harry’s missing kids or your sense of humor (provided there’s enough time for that last one, that is).

Grand Theft Humor

Link To Today’s Strip

Special thanks to TFH and the SoSF staff for everything they do!!

BanTom suddenly abandoning a premise he spent weeks setting up is certainly nothing new in the Funkyverse, he does it all the time. It’s called “writing”. It’s also annoying. But I forgot all about Mason Whatshisface as soon as I tried to decipher today’s brain-damagingly bizarre strip. The Jumbler? Finley’s Pharmacy? Holly pretending to be surprised by the sight of those two morons doing everything but working? What the f*ck?

Then I heard from the crack SoSF research team who informed me that within that massive wall of expository jibber-jabber lurk a few Dick Tracy references, which means that the long-rumored and much-dreaded Dick Tracy super mega crossover arc may be upon us…RIGHT NOW! For those of you not familiar with pop culture fads of the 1940s, Dick Tracy is a comic strip detective of some kind who regularly does battle with comically-named foes like The Jumbler (no doubt named for his propensity toward never properly organizing his comic books). I’m hoping this arc somehow involves Westview’s super-villain Dick Face, the man who paralyzes his foes with rage and disgust. “Watch out for the park bench, Mr. Tracy, it’s a trap!!”.

And once again Holly comes across as a total imbecile. I mean obviously they’re going to a police auction to bid on a huge lot of vintage comic books because of course they are. Duh. They’re not eating pizza or loitering around in that creepy store, so where else would they be going? To the library? The bank? To buy new clothes or fitness equipment? Home to their wives and families? Not bloody likely.