Tag: Harry Dinkle

Low Blow

Today’s strip reminds me of an episode of 50s/60s “animated” series Clutch Cargo, “The Ghost Ship”. The episode starts off with Clutch’s ward Spinner wondering aloud if the fishing boats in the harbor ever move.
A rare moment of self-awareness in an “animated” show that consisted almost entirely of still images (with creepy filmed lips placed on top of them) or a pure coincidence? I leaned toward the latter but was never 100% sure.

Similarly, I’m pretty sure today’s panel 1 is unintentional, but not fully sure. It could be a sly call back to that time in late Act II when Harry’s hearing loss forced him to hand his baton over to Lefty, meant to poke at us beady-eyed nitpickers who have noted on many occasions that TB completely ignored this maudlin mess once Act III began. I concede that is possible, but likely? Ha!
TB ignores precedents set in his own work and retcons things more often than Tom Armstrong draws Marvin soiling himself.

Poor Carl, he was doing so well when we last saw him on Christmas day. I admire his dedication to playing the trumpet

Thursday, June 30

I am happy sorry to say that today’s strip was not available for preview.

Instead, please enjoy a trite Throwback Thursday Funky Winkerbean strip!
What was going on in the Batiukverse on June 29, 1996? Only one of the Funky Winkerbean-iest strips in the history of ever!

It’s everything that has made this strip what it is since the middle of Act II except for cancer and comic books, all masterfully worked into just 3 panels:
Lisa, Les, Les being insufferable, a woman being unfathomably interested in Les, writing, Lisa, Montoni’s, bricks, John Darling, Lisa, smirking, Les smirking, Les’ face being punchable, Les’ face being punchable while smirking, and even LISA.

Ugh-mblebrag

Oh, of course today’s strip is going to drag the Bedside Manor band back into this. I had my fingers crossed that something else would happen, but really, who didn’t see this coming? Hopefully we’ll get the lucid Mort Winkerbean this time.

I hope the Bedside Manor ensemble’s ill-fated record deal involved a lot of Sousa marches, or at least a slow-paced take on The Ballad Of The Green Berets, because they’ve got less than a week to rehearse. Looks like Dinkle’s about to write a check that his baton can’t cash.

The background characters almost make up for it all, though. Almost.
Let’s see… we’ve got Wooly Willy, Hawaiian giraffe-man, the no-neck dad from “Dustin”, and a blonde smart enough to hide her face so she can always deny having been an extra in Funky Winkerbean. I would much rather be dropping in on their conversations.

Back To Square One

Oh good, TB doesn’t have Lefty lollygag in explaining her community band problem in today’s strip. Yeah, it’s a stupid problem and it could have easily been explained in yesterday’s strip, but we also very well could have spent a week getting to this point. Unfortunately, I expect we’re still spending a week with these two.

Ah, the national community band competition… a great American 4th of July-ish tradition. Yes indeed, it’s up there with Coney Island hot dog eating contest and the international stingray decoration show and that thing Jimmy Smits used to host on public television.

In the reality that is recorded on the internet, I was able to find two things comparable to Lefty’s competition, but nothing exactly like it:

Note your cuts of meat

Hello folks, billytheskink back for another round of kicking off our daily deconstruction of the Batiukverse. As always, I hope to facilitate a strong discussion by highlighting key aspects of each comic and offering a basic analysis to be exapnded upon in the comments. When today’s strip sends that plan off the rails in a few seconds, I will likely resort to comparing the characters to various basketball players from the 1970s or reciting the specs of vintage Macintoshes.

Harry Dinkle is hosting a barbeque, which is a new thing for him… I think. Probably a new thing, given how overdone those hamburgers look. The phrase “Harry Dinkle barbeque” sounds like a setup on a hidden camera show aimed at 7-year olds. What a Harry Dinkle barbeque entails however, making poorly-timed complaints about the community band, sounds like a setup on a hidden camera show aimed at nobody.

Anyways, did you know?
– That the Macintosh IIfx, released in 1990, ran at an impressive 40 MHz and would remain the fastest Macintosh in existence until the release of the Quadra 840av in 1993. Originally priced at $9,900, the Macintosh IIfx cost roughly as much as a new, base model Ford Tempo in 1990.
– That Harry Dinkle did not become the “World’s Greatest Band Director” until after he changed his last name from Dinkl?