When he came up with today’s strip one year ago, not even Tom Batiuk’s febrile, I mean fertile, imagination could have conceived what we’d be calling “the new normal” today. Unless BatAyers diverge from their famous, self-imposed 12-month lead time, expect Covid to rear its ugly head in Westview sometime in early spring.
Tag Archives: Fire
Lestember: Earth, Wind, and Fire
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Lestember Mourn
It’s late summer in the Hollywood Hills. They are standing in the still-smoldering aftermath of a massive wildfire. And Cindy’s got her arms wrapped around herself like she’s freezing. I guess it’s an attitude of shock and/or grief. Les, to his credit, tries to comfort her. Or, he’s using the opportunity to paw Cindy’s bare shoulders while Mason stares distractedly at a charred bit of paper.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Wake Me Up When Lestember Ends
I’ll tread lightly here, in case someone’s personally experienced the aftermath of a wildfire. It does not look like fun. Batiuk hasn’t treated us to any reference photos of the hot zone, so I’m assuming that BatAyers queried Grandpa Google for some pics. Of 1945 Dresden. Or that Twilight Zone episode with Burgess Meredith.
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Gimme a Ticket for an Aeroplane
I put all my energy for this post into the remixed comic above. I’ll let you guys do what you do so well. Here’s today’s real strip.
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Saved by the Cave
It took all of a month, but at last the Point Dume Fire is finally out. And Jeff is alive. And Skppy is a real boy, and Murania really exists as a city thousands of feet below the earth’s crust. Thus winds up an arc that Batiuk teased last month (with Dan Davis’ much more competent artwork) in Crankshaft. You might also recall a Sunday four years ago when Batom Comics editor Brady Wentworth dragged his staff (retro Darin and Pete) to a Phantom Empire screening for some inspiration.
Today’s strip is likely the last we’ll see of Murania. Batiuk and Ayers could have spent a little time showing Jfff and his youthful alter ego Skppy exploring the fantastic underground city and interacting with the Queen and her subjects. But after all the buildup, the climax has Jeff meeting the queen on Friday and then waking up oustide the cave on Saturday. And as far as what we got to see of the underground city:
Banana Jr. 6000
August 26, 2020 at 8:08 am
Murania just looks like The Jetsons moved to Detroit.
If you want to see a place that looks even worse than Detroit, this week we get a look at what the fire did to Masone’s place in the hills!
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Jfff’s Not Ded
Mela
August 26, 2020 at 11:22 am
…Jeff is not going to die in a cave. Comic book nerds and sci-fi geeks do not die in Funky Winkerbean.
The part of the blind firefighter will be played today by Ringo Starr
Face it. It would have been cruel even by Funkiverse standards for Pete to invite his prospective father-in-law all the way to California only to have him die in a fire. Looks like Skppy’s survived too. Who’s paying his airfare back to Ohio?
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Maybe This is Heaven
William Thompson
August 26, 2020 at 1:31 am
Even money that Queen Tika will be played by the actress-queen who had lunch with Les. It’s a dead certainty that she’ll smirk at her guests and offer them hot chocolate.
A big missed opportunity for Batiuk right there. The Mauve Queen’s ostensibly Elizabethan attire looked much more sci-fi than those renfaire rental robes that Queen Tika’s wearing. Wikipedia calls her “the icy, blonde, evil Queen Tika,” but in today’s strip she comes across as downright friendly (aaaand, brunette).
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TikaTalk
For cryin’ out loud, boys, Her Majesty’s eyes are up here! If Nancy creator Ernie Bushmiller had drawn today’s strip, there’d be bold, dotted lines going from their eyes directly to Queen Tika’s rather modest bosom. You guys haven’t been out in the desert that long! Meanwhile, old Jff, “real” Jff, wears the same frightened expression that’s been on his face since the smoke and flames started closing in. This queen and these friendly, helpful robots most likely will be revealed to be figments of his boyhood fantasy, come to life! Shouldn’t adult Jff be the one wearing the excited grin?
*Congrats to Y. Knott for coming up with the winning nickname Skppy for Jff’s boyhood alter ego!
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I am the God of Hell Fiyah
Some optional reading for you, in the unlikely event you have nothing better to do than wait for today’s strip to drop after midnight EDT.
Readers, earlier I touched upon recent changes at the syndicate’s website that make it impossible to view some strips ahead of time. I won’t bore you with the behind the scenes, nor do I wish to once again run afoul of Batiuk’s lawyers, and so I’ll spare you the minutiae. Simply stated, we here at SoSF use a weird trick to peep each day’s strip a couple days ahead of time. If we didn’t, our dedicated team of writers would have to stay up very late to compose each day’s analysis. I know very many of you live outside the GMT-5 time zone, and/or are night owls, so we’re happy to let you all have at each day’s Funky as early as we can bring it to you. Here on the east coast, when I check SoSF I see dozens of comments. Lately in fact, we’re getting more comments, and a rash of former lurkers turned eloquent and valued commenters. The volume of traffic is not anywhere near what you’d find at the Comics Curmudgeon or Comics Kingdom (both which I know many of us read and comment upon). But this little comics snark blog over which I’ve presided for the past ten years is the funniest and friendliest online community I’ve ever known.
And we intend to keep bringing you Son of Stuck Funky at least up until FW hits fifty years on Sunday, March 27, 2022, or whenever Mr. Thomas Martin Batuik puts down the Funky Felt Tip. Kindly note, however, that for the first ten days of each new month, each day’s strip won’t appear online until after midnight. After that first week and a half, we start getting strips in dribs and drabs. And Sunday and Wednesday strips are never accessible ahead of time.
So now you know why you sometimes find a “today’s strip is unavailable” link. It’s also why we’re switching up the author rotation a bit: myself or Epicus will take turns covering that first week and a half of new strips. So that no guest author will ever again get stuck like poor spacemanspiff1985 getting stuck with a week and a half of nothing to write about (and Spiff did an outstanding job as he always does). Look for a placeholder post with that magic link that should take you to the latest fresh Funky hell, at midnight or shortly thereafter. Subsequent days will be covered by the rest of our awesome, unpaid staff in ten- or eleven-day stints (instead of the former two weeks).
As always, my most humble thanks to Team SoSF and to everyone here who faithfully reads and/or comments.
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