Tag: Emily

Meeting the Four Hundred

Les just continues to mock Batton in today’s strip. Sheesh, whadda jerk! Apparently newspaper cartoonists were the original social distancing champions, which you probably would be seeing memes about if you were Facebook friends with one. Unfortunately, gags this terrible are not a rare sight in Funky Winkerbean…

Emily or, uh Amelia… whichever one wears pink and doesn’t act like what TB imagines a Hot Topic shopper to be, asks a perfectly reasonable question for a “kids these days” kid. Seriously, it is a good question and it demonstrates a knowledge of what a comic strip is, how it is distributed, and its primary measure of success. Batton, of course spins this perfectly fine question into a self-pitying humblebrag so deftly that even Les seems impressed. Newspapers may be dying, but his comic strip is in EVERY SINGLE ONE of the ones that remain! What’re you gonna accomplish in your life, Blondie?

The Thousand Panel Stare

Kids don’t read newspapers or newspaper comics these days… Boo hoo, so sad, this generation is killing the papers and the cartoonists, blah blah blah yackity smackity… Sorry, don’t care. I’ve heard it all before, and in better comic strips to boot.

Today’s strip is bland, rote filler in a dumb, overplayed story arc, but… that second panel. Chuck Ayers artwork since taking over duties in Funky a couple years ago has taken a good step back from the solid work he did for many years in Crankshaft I would argue, but the second panel in today’s strip is a genuinely excellent piece of cartooning. The beady eyes, the nonplussed expressions, the unrealistic density of students packed into every millimeter of the panel… you can practically hear the crickets chirping in background of this non-reaction. It is an extremely rare and truly good thing to see in Funky Winkerbean. What a pity it isn’t in the service of a better joke.

TB does it, why not you, Batton?

Kidz these daze and their cellular doohickeys! Always on ’em. Amirite? Amirite? Eh? Today’s strip knows what I’m talking’ about! Leave ’em alone in a classroom with no direction and they just start tap-tap-tapping away on their smartyphones. It’s nothing like it wuz back in my day when we’d get in fistfights and beat lunch money out of the weird kids.

By the way, Les’ opinion on the value of comics sure has changed over the years…

FW5-27-72

Early Dawning, Sunday Morning

Link to today’s strip (eventually).

Sunday’s strip was not available for preview…and boy, writing that makes me feel like a Tom Batiuk character, saying the same thing over and over and expecting it to be funny…eventually!  As Fearless Leader noted yesterday, I think I’ve had the most “strip not available” entries of all time (a situation which forces me to pull things from my spinnerets to post, and thank you all for indulging me thus).  Still…the most something–it’s an award!  I am Number One!

But the situation makes me scared that I ticked off some Elder God, and as punishment I’m going to show up as a character in the strip.   Can you imagine a more horrible fate?  I bet if you proposed this to Dante, he’d have turned pale and said, “Whoah, dude, I only imagined nine levels of Hell.  You’re like, ill or something.”

But fate is what it is.  Still, I promise if that happens, I’m going to go right up to Les and ask him, “Do you read Sutter Cane?”

As for the Sunday strip, I imagine we’re going to see the Bleat crew wrap up their “podcast” and “newsprint” coverage of the fair, using more video footage of various fair goings-on.  After all, the Dark Twin promised “the dark side” of the fair, which–oh, who am I kidding?  That part of the story was forgotten as soon as Tom Batiuk pulled it out of his spinnerets.  Thinking things through takes time away from reading Flash comics.

Speaking of comics, tonight ends my session in the agony booth; tomorrow, the lovely, talented and very well informed Comic Book Harriet takes the center seat.   Please join me in wishing her luck as the long-threatened “Funky-Crankshaft” crossover feature commences.   As for me, I…well, I await the Yellow Sign.

The Les You Know-Part 6

Link to today’s strip (eventually).

Saturday’s strip was unavailable for preview, but we all know we’re going to get another Kids Today Are Terrible lesson.

It’s funny (in a peculiar way) how Les has spent an entire week telling the kids what a newspaper is, and this hasn’t dissuaded him at all from his plan of having them write for one.  Of course, has he really gone into any details of what the kids should be writing about–their experience at the fair, the stories of the folks running it, an overview of events…no, apparently “You’ll write for the paper” is all the instruction he intends to give.

Now, I haven’t seen the strip, so it’s possible that Batiuk’s baiting us, and that Saturday’s egg will be jam packed with informative and insightful content.  But, you know, trolling people for five days sounds stupid, not to mention “informative and insightful content” takes actual work–something Batiuk seems loathe to do.

I guess we’ll all find out together!