Eisner Awards – Page 3 – Son of Stuck Funky

Whistling Dicksie

Well Darin and Jess are already drunk, and are hanging all over each other like two kids necking at the back of the old Valentine Theatre. Jess has lost a finger. In fact all the hands are extra hideous today. And Cayla is missing a neck. What a treat!

Les has absolutely no grounds to be ashamed of a friend making a scene, but it’s nice to see him miserable anyway.

Something I had never really noticed until I was examining the last panel is how the Funkyverse house art style generally doesn’t include lip tint. Normally it doesn’t stand out. But Jess today, with fully detailed lips, really should have them colored nice and pink or red, as would befit a lady at an awards show. instead she has a terrifying flesh colored pucker on her face, like she has an asshole for a mouth.

Cayla has an asshole for a mouth too. But his name is Les.

Self-Defrecating Humor.

Link to Today’s Comic.

Today’s strip is merely an inverse retread of yesterday’s strip, and commenting about Les being an insufferable twit has become an exhausting refrain. So instead some notes on the art.

In Panel one Cayla has a gross lobster hand deformity and seems to be putting her finger directly into her drink, no doubt slipping herself a mickey.

Darin and Jess have identical poses and smiles, which REALLY ups the creep factor between the two of them. Are we sure they’re not actually half-siblings? I wouldn’t put a little statutory indiscretion beyond Jess’s father, the talk show host, John Darling, who was murdered. Lisa could have been paid off to pin the deed on some jerk she got blackout drunk. Explains how she afforded law school.

Darin’s jacket is the same color as Cayla’s skin. I’m sure a Freshman Social Sciences major could write a seven page paper about the subtle metaphor of white male privilege clothing and protecting itself with by adopting the exterior trappings, the skin, of persecuted classes of society. But I think the colorist just was really really lazy today and only used six colors.

In the last panel, Les’ massive hand couldn’t really be attached to either shoulder as drawn. Instead it seems to extend directly from his crotch, pointing upward. A huge, disgusting, awards erection.

The Power of Negative Thinking.

Link to Today’s Comic.

Wow, this is the exact same philosophy my dad takes with sports. He will run his favorite team down and ‘bet’ on the worst outcomes all secretly in the hopes that this ‘anti-jinxing’ will tip the odds in his favor. It’s kind of endearing when my dad does it, because my dad isn’t an asshole.

Give Cayla points on being well aware of the weird, facetiously self-deprecating, magical thinking of her husband. She knows what a smug depressive he is, and so far she’s stayed with him anyway. Maybe she has some kind of really fringe sadomasochistic fetish about being with an insufferable twat.

Crazy Harry’s opera glasses are an interesting touch. The art yesterday didn’t seem to indicate the room was that massive, so Harry must be blind as a bat.

Wry or Twee? That is the Question.

Link to Today’s Comic.

Today’s strip was also not available for preview, but if it isn’t an painfully unfunny normie vs nerd joke I’ll be very surprised.

Beckoning Chasm had an interesting thought yesterday, that I wanted to examine further and get your opinion on:

“Two years ago, I would have bet money that Les would lose the award to something obviously lightweight and brainless (and popular). It would give Les a chance to bemoan how works of depth and subtlety are never rewarded for their excellence.

Now that the strip has gone full-on wish-fulfillment, I honestly would not be surprised to see him win.”

This strip used to be an endless parade of failure, but in the last few years it has more unwarranted rewards than Judge Parker, with a few medical issues tossed in now and then to remain ‘topical’. So what does the StuckFunky Commentatorverse think? Does Dead St. Lisa get the prize?

Eisnerian Gothic

Link to Today’s Comic.

I would make some kind of comment on Caucayla not knowing the location of the awards because Wimmin Amirite? But apparently Les previously didn’t even know the award existed.

I’ve been to San Diego for a Botcon once in the summer. It was really nice coastal climate, and not any hotter or muggier than Midwestern summer can get. And since when has CauCayla been heat intolerant?

The second panel is pretty great though, with Darin fleeing from a conversation still taking place while Les and Cayla do their best impersonations of Queen Elizabeth, with a wave goodbye more wooden than Cigar Store Indians. Cayla has a halo around her head…perhaps a first miracle on her own path to sainthood?

This art is really starting to annoy me though. Everyone’s face has become interchangeable. You remember when Cayla had a broad nose and Darin had a beak? The artist sure doesn’t. He has two noses to use, C-shaped or L shaped, and he barely remembers which character gets which. Batiuk can’t be bothered to push Burchett for consistency of character design in a strip worshiping comics as an art form next to opera in importance.

Compare with yesterday’s Crankshaft with art by Davis. Look at that detail! He carefully drew the wedding picture on the wall as a totem of the romantic creature in Ralph that the drive-in waitress has reawakened in him.

All Les and Cayla get on their wall is the avant garde, “Grey Rectangle Against Grey Background.”