Tag: Funky

Sunday BatNom Fun Day

Link To Today’s Anticlimax

Many years ago, back during the legendary “Lisa Dies” ultra-mega arc, BatWad did a Sunday strip featuring Lisa receiving some sort of radiation therapy treatment. If you happened to miss that arc, it didn’t work. Anyway, I was patronizing a local NJ convenience store (Wawa) at some ungodly hour of the night/morning and the Sunday newspaper supplements and comics had just been delivered and were all stacked up outside. That FW Sunday strip was right on top, plastered all over every one of those bundles and I remember thinking “the average person is going to assume that FW is the work of some sort of total madman and they’ll be correct”.

That random FW Sunday strip memory segues nicely into this one, particularly the randomness. The Sunday strips are nothing but totally random, there’s never any rhyme or reason to explain why they exist or why they’re running when they are and nothing ever happens during any of them either. He’ll do a two week arc where both Sunday strips involve that arc, then he’ll do a two month arc where none of them have anything to do with anything at all.

So that’s what we’re pretending “Cory” looks like now, eh? Nice to see BatNom easing him back into the fray and not saddling him with any kind of character development or updates or anything. That way when we see him again in 2021 he’ll still seem fresh. And I am assuming the pizza delivery guy is supposed to be Wally, although who the hell really knows anymore? Nice to see those college courses really paying dividends career-wise for Buddy’s favorite human, as just a few years ago he was still toiling away in the (shudder) kitchen.  If it isn’t Wally, kindly disregard.

It’s always funny when a FW character suddenly reappears after a long absence. Darin and Jessica showing up at Les’ house out of nowhere, Khan (or Kahn) showing up at Les and Cayla’s wedding, that time Jinx offered support for Jessica’s ill-fated documentary film making dreams, Bull’s placekicking daughter and so forth. Every so often he just feels compelled to let his readers know that these characters still exist in some sort of off-screen Funkyverse which is no doubt way, way more entertaining than this one is.

 

The Purity of Fandom is Never Tainted by the Coin of Commerce.

Link to today’s strip. Note: Comics Kingdom has finally awakened.

First of all, let me apologize for recycling a phrase for a blog post title, but I must confess I liked that phrase so much that I thought it deserved a bit of immortality.  Surely, if Tom Batiuk can resurrect the moronic whimsy he concocted when he was ten years old, I can re-employ a phrase from just last week.  Especially when mine is so much better.

Sunday’s strip was not available for preview, probably because it’s terrible and extra time would just mean extra critiques.  My guess this time is that we’ll remain with The Story of Chester Hagglemore, Bounder and Cad, Volume Eighteen, but every time I guess at these things it’s like Bullwinkle trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat.   Except Bullwinkle was funny.  This strip…not so much.

So, here’s a nice painting of the seashore.

Speaking of funny, thus ends my time in the Cylinder of Despair; taking over, starting tomorrow, your master of ceremonies will be Epicus Doomus.  His posts are guaranteed to be funnier than this comic strip.  While admittedly that’s not much of a stretch, Epicus definitely brings the entertainment…while certain cartoonists we might name adamantly refuse to do the same.  Hail Epicus!

In A Mirror, Glumly

Is TB is trying to tell us something in today’s strip? “I guess it’s OK to keep going” has been the unofficial motto of this strip ever since he realized that 50 was only 15 more than 35, hasn’t it?

Whether TB had a bout of self-awareness or not, this strip is a confession of poor effort. The parts are all there? Sure, we’ll go along with that. Pity they were never any good, though.

That’s it for the stint of this humble garden lizard. Comic Book Harriet takes over tomorrow, and we shall all see whether the good ship Funky stays in the doldrums of Dinkle or finds some newfound rocks upon which to run aground.

Every Day the Paperboy Brings More

And I recommend that you
Stop watching the news
Because the news contrives to frighten you
To make you feel small and alone
To make you feel that your mind isn’t your own

Morrissey, “Spent the Day in Bed“

So Funky’s rationale for staying sober is that, even if he drank all the alcohol in the world…in the whole world…that the “insanity” of life would continue. Isn’t that setting the bar (no pun intended) a little high (still no pun intended)? Couldn’t he just drink enough to stay drunk and not care so much about the world? If he finds the news each day to be so upsetting, why doesn’t Funky just stop watching the news each day? Once again Batiuk attempts to tackle a serious subject and buries himself and the rest of us under “the weight of substantial ideas.”

Extinction Tourism

PharmDawg
January 3, 2018 at 11:22 pm
If this was an AA meeting, somebody would have stopped Funky mid-sentence by saying, “In keeping with our singleness of purpose and our Third Tradition which states that ‘The only requirement for A.A. membership
is a desire to stop drinking,’ we ask that all who participate confine their discussion to their problems with
alcohol.”

Comment of the week right there, folks. Of course, what we’re seeing is not an AA meeting, but what Batiuk thinks an AA meeting is like. Hence, we see people drinking coffee (which does happen) and smoking cigarettes (which is not allowed indoors in most places, including Ohio).

Of course, no list by Batiuk of What Ails the World would be complete without a mention of climate change, and everyone’s complicity in same: “We’re sending cruise ships…” Watching glaciers melt, or grass grow, or paint dry would be far more interesting than wading through a week of this dreck.