Tag: Darin

Off you go, into the mild new blunder

Mr. Director (Martin Johns) doesn’t even feign disappointment in today’s strip, as Pete and Durwood officially quit the Hollywood jobs they never much actually did. In fact, he seems thoroughly excited to be rid of these two sacks of misshapen rocks.

It is one of the most understandable moments in recent Funky Winkerbean history. You can see the relief washing over him, finally losing these two deadweights without having to incur any pushback from Mason. I expect it is like the feeling when an awful coworker, one who could never get fired because of a relation/connection to upper management, decides to leave. Mr. Johns is one of the least disagreeable shmucks in the recent history of this comic strip and I’m almost happy for him today.

Pete and Durwood… Atomic Comics… movie rights… CME’s sudden shortage of Cecile B. DeMille-era director’s chairs… Don’t care.

Cinday, April 10

Today’s strip was not available for preview, which I’m sure suits Cindy and her allegedly flagging beauty just fine, so I’m going to do what I pretty much always do when there is no strip to preview… post an old strip.

I wonder what was going on in Funky Winkerbean on this date back in, oh… let’s say 1991.

FW4-10-91

Cindy was grounded for two weeks due to her poor grades and couldn’t go to the mall (the horror!), so when her grounding finally ended the mall threw a celebration for her return. Westview’s mall hasn’t been seen or mentioned in years (last appearance: Father’s Day 2012, maybe?). With the struggles malls are facing nationally, the general economic climate in Westview, and the apparent fact that no-longer-a-resident Cindy was responsible for a significant amount of their business, I think it is safe to say it has long since been shuttered.

Grim And Bear It

Link To Today’s Strip

Ha ha ha ha. TOM BATIUK, of all people, is doing an arc about how Chester dislikes “grim and gritty” comic book titles. What balls. After turning his once-lighthearted and humor-based comic strip into a litany of death, cancer, amputation and an endless cavalcade of human misery, he’s doing a “story” centering around how “dark” modern comic books are. Two words…”f*ck” and “you”, Tom. I’ve never seen a comic book where the lead character’s parents roundly reject her as she agonizingly dies of cancer, nor have I ever seen one where a trombone prodigy loses her arm in a car accident or one where the once-happy-go-lucky titular character drinks himself into thoughts of suicide either. Leave it to Tombat to inadvertently insult himself in his own strip. What a maroon.

So why did this require a cross-country trip? They couldn’t have had this discussion over the phone? So basically BatNard wasted five entire weeks on this just so he could work a few fictional Batom Comics “props” into the artwork for his own amusement. The self-indulgence is off the scale here and nearly approaches “Lisa’s Story” degrees of head-up-own-assed-ness.

We’re Jambing…I Hope You Like Jambing Too

Link To Today’s Snore

“Door jamb”??? That’s not a “door jamb”. Sigh. What can you even say about such a stupid and blatant piece of time-killing tripe like this? Maybe BatTrudge has a secret fantasy about an extremely wealthy FW fan who got rich after selling his paperback FW collection and now lives in a FW-themed mansion full of FW-related trinkets, like the soda machine from King Features main office or the label from the bottle of prescription cough syrup Batom slammed before he dreamed up this steaming pile of hogwash. It’s about as plausible as this stupid premise is. I’d be willing to wager that this strip represents the very first time the words “door jamb” have ever been used in a comic strip, unless Crankshaft or Mary Worth had some home remodeling done recently.

Whenever he does one of these idiotic vertical strips I always picture the guy trying to fit it into that day’s comics page, banging his head on his desk and shaking his fist skyward while screaming “BAAATIIIIUK!!!!!”. That’s two of them in just a few weeks, which is two too many IMO. If you really need to kill all this time perhaps a (ahem) “re-assessment” of your “writing” abilities needs to happen (fat chance).

“Holy door jamb”…sigh again. It’s not even a joke. Pete whispers to Boy Lisa…”this guy has Batom in the belfry”…yes it’s a terrible, terrible pun but still 1000% better than…this. Coming tomorrow: Pete gets to use the same urinal Phil Holt used back in the day and Boy Lisa helps himself to a few rolls of official Batom Inc. toilet paper that Chester swiped when he was looting the Batom offices. This segues neatly into a three week long discussion about how the old timey hand-cranked pencil sharpeners were just SO MUCH BETTER than these modern electric ones they force us to use nowadays.

Chester Has The Runs

Link To Today’s Strip

Big deal. I have a “complete run” of Blue Oyster Cult’s early work but you don’t hear me gloating about it. I hate it when BatNard wallows in his own self-indulgent crapulence like this. How many goddamned universes full of undeveloped characters can one comic strip creator have?

Well, at least we now know why there isn’t any Mrs. Hagglemore, as his mansion walls are literally lined with female repellent. Batty never fails to find new and innovative ways to remind regular FW readers about his cleverness, like those stupid sidewards Batom Comic covers are something we all look back on fondly or something. He wishes. The only one I really “remember” is the SJ wedding one featuring the space penis, although I try to forget it each and every day. Just so you know, no SoSF guest host is going to come out of this totally unscathed, I’m living proof.