The absolute bottom of the outtakes folder has been reached…or has it? I mean egads, man. Talk about a lifeless outing. There’s nowhere left to go from here aside from “equally stupid”…ideally, that is.
Stay tuned for a SPECIAL GUEST SUNDAY POST!!! Then I’ll be back for another thrilling week of, well, you know.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Something I’ve been pondering: if you took a big pile of “in context” strips like this one (ones that only make sense within the context of that week’s arc) and you just randomly shuffled them up and just ran them in no particular order, how long would it take before someone noticed? I bet he’d get away with it for years before anyone aside from us caught on.
Anyhow, the fat rude jerk gets his comeuppance today, which is always sort of nice, I guess. In fact IMO every FW arc could hypothetically be improved by having the lead character suffer an injury in Saturday’s strip. Like, for example, if the big Wally/Adeela arc ended with them falling down some stairs or the last Atomik Komix arc ended with Boy Lisa being disemboweled with an antique Rip Tide-Scuba Cop letter opener or something. See what I mean? You’re smiling already.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
“You know how in auto racing the cars draft behind the car in front of them to lower the wind resistance? Well, I thought it’d be quite funny if I applied that principle to a treadmill in a gym!”. And on that fateful day a gag was filed away and, many months, years or decades later, that gag was finally hatched in the form of today’s strip. Obviously we all know what he was going for here but taken in the context of Funky’s refusal to take his exercise routine seriously it comes across as sort of crass and somewhat alarming, as Funky doesn’t appear to have any concern at all for anon-o-exerciser’s safety or well-being as he idiotically lumbers behind her on a running treadmill machine, all for the sake of being a wisecracking jackass at FG’s expense. Look at her in panel three, he’s aged her twenty years overnight with his antics.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Muscles firing? That’s barely a one alarm blaze right there. More of the same today…Fitness Girl gamely attempts to motivate a fat miserable sweaty Funky as he incessantly complains. It sort of (ahem) wears thin after a while.
Speaking of which, here’s another idea I’m throwing out there gratis…”Lifting Plates Is How I Ended Up Like THIS!!!!”, a paperback collection of every single “Funky exercises” strip ever. Just imagine visiting your favorite bookstore and seeing Funky’s sweaty alarmed mug staring back at you from between the “Family Circus” collections and the random Archie’s Comic Digests. The perfect gift for the reader with forty-five seconds to kill. I know it’s perverse and all but still, I wish some sort of “complete” FW existed somewhere, if for no other reason that for reference purposes. I’d really love to set aside an hour and just plow through the entire run in one sitting, just to see how coherent (lol) and/or entertaining it actually is as a whole.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Bad wordplay reigns supreme today (shocking, I know) as Fitness Girl continues to feed the Funk Man more straight lines, a trend I assume (sigh) will continue for at least the rest of the week. If we’re lucky. I likewise assume it’s only a matter of time before Batiuk draws a “correlation” between “curls” and “curly fries” (he can have that gag free of charge, BTW). I keep sort of hoping that Funky and Fitness Girl wind up running off together and Montoni’s goes under after Wally refuses to come out from under the back booth but I dunno, it seems like a longshot. Although he could (and has) do a lot worse. I’d really like to know a lot more about FG…who’s she married to, what kind of pizzeria and/or comic book store does he (or she, as the case may be) own and operate, how did his (or her) first wife die…you know, the FW basics. Although that’s probably asking a lot from a guy who hasn’t yet fleshed out characters he’s been using for forty-plus years.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
It’s almost hard to believe that the same guy responsible for last week’s atrocious jokes was also responsible for this terrible-yet-not-quite-as-bad gag, isn’t it? Apparently our old friend Fitness Girl isn’t just a trainer but some sort of all-purpose Fitness Guru. I honestly don’t care either way, as I’m still basking in the post-Adeela era, like someone who’s crawling out of a bomb shelter on a dismal drizzly day and is just thrilled to have survived at all. And besides, seeing Funky in physical pain is oddly satisfying, like when you look at the cricket you just whomped with your shoe. It’d be WAY more satisfying if it were Les but I suppose you can’t have everything.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
First of all, let’s all take a moment to salute everyone on the SoSF staff, especially those who endured that SEVEN WEEK Wally fiasco. May we never speak of or have to type “Adeela” again.
Yep, we all needed a break after THAT debacle. Normally a “Funky goes to the gym” arc would have me reaching for the cyanide gun but right now it’s like the first really nice day of spring, all full of hope and invigorating. That will wear off by tomorrow, mind you, but still. This is FW and you take your pleasures where you find them. So the eternally fat Funky is at the gym with Fitness Girl, complaining about something and etc. No tornado sirens, no PTSD, no stilted dialog…by God it’s almost downright PLEASANT. It’s all relative, as they say. Sure, it’s ridiculous how he keeps working with a trainer he hates and how he never loses any weight but who cares, anything is a welcome change after seven weeks of Wally’s nonsense.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Is today’s strip the first time Funky has gotten a positive reaction from Fitness Girl? Heck, is this the first time Funky has gotten a positive reaction from anyone in years? I think yes to the former but obviously no to the latter (see Thursday’s strip). Still, this strip usually holds Funky in such contempt that today feels like the first time someone has returned a smile to him in ages.
Giving her video of him working out is kinda creepy though. Where’s Rachel when you need her?
Fitness Girl could have used Rachel in 2014 too…
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Yes readers, Funky is still fat, sweaty and grossly incompetent. I wonder if he wrote all of these “Funky at the gym” strips all at once on some dreary November morn right after returning from the gym. There’s just too much continuity there with Fitness Girl, it’s just not like him.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Paul Jones
December 27, 2014 at 1:39 am
Great. Not only is he a glutton who uses regionalisms like sitting on my mind, he’s turning into Ed Crankshaft.
Take away the ballcap and glasses and yes, you do begin to see a bit of a resemblance. Of course, thanks to the time gap ‘twixt Centerville and Westview, no one would mistake the old-beyond-his-years Funkman for the now-decrepit Ed Crankshaft.
With a new year starting in a couple of days, the Funkman carries on his Sisyphean struggles versus his weight. Yesterday we saw him buying new running shoes, and today he puts the bathroom scale through a punishing test.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
