Locked And Bloated

Link To Today’s Strip

Well you definitely won’t laugh,

Or be entertained

Reading this thing is rotting my brain

Tom Batiuk is coming to town….

As always special thanks to TFH, the real brains behind this nutty operation! If you only knew what’s involved in making fun of this dopey comic strip…

It’s an extremely rare Sunday-into-Monday arc this week. He only saves those for the really groundbreaking stories. The idea well must have been running pretty dry when he dreamed this one up. I’m (sigh) roughly the same age as (sigh) Funky is supposed to be and I think about high school once a year, if that, on average. But Funky is still having gross sweaty fevered dreams about something he hasn’t done in thirty-five years, even though he has way, way, way more than enough post-high school trauma to draw nightmare fodder from. Perhaps he’ll decide enough is enough and drive his car off a cliff, although we’ve all seen his car and it seems unlikely that it’d go fast enough to do much damage. Still, though, it might be pretty amusing anyway.

In my decrepit 1980s-era high school, the first thing we did on the first day back was kick the locker door at the bottom, after which it’d just open with a kick and a pull. They weren’t exactly top-of-the-line lockers. The convenience far outweighed the lack of security. That’s what the gym lockers were for, as they were these big iron prison-issue things. People (ahem, cough cough Tom Batiuk) like to look back nostalgically and pretend everything was “better” way back then but in reality we were all surrounded by junk. Everything was really crappy and cheap and don’t let any cartoonists tell you otherwise.

Dream Academy

Being late/running late is a very common theme in dreams…Being late in a dream as an image of finding it difficult living up to your own demands or the demands of others…When we dream that we are late or that we are about to be late, it is often because we are fighting a battle to achieve more than we can actually handle.

https://michaelrolsen.com/dreams-late-mean-dream-interpretation-late

It’s a pretty common dream, all right, so give Batiuk points for being relatable for once. I know I’ve had dreams of this type. The naked-in-public kind of dreams, too. Batiuk and Ayers do a pretty good job at giving this scenario a dreamlike feeling. The hallway appears infinite, and eerily empty. And while this is almost a universal dream premise, I bet Tom Batiuk hasn’t had this dream in ages. At this stage of his career, the only demands he probably has to meet are to submit one comic strip per day. It doesn’t have to be especially well drawn, or funny, or make sense, or follow a narrative. Just a piece of content, to fill space on a newspaper comics page or on a website.

Well, my two week long nightmare of having to deconstruct FW every day is ended, and on deck is guest emcee Epicus Doomus! Take it away!

I Can No Longer Shop Happily

Rusty Shackleford
November 30, 2019 at 2:10 pm
Just where are they going for the weekend?

My hunch was that the Funkman and the missus might be flying to Dallas for their annual physical, as we saw them do nearly 2 years ago, but they’re not due until January. Guess they’ve gone off on a shopping trip. Is this a Sunday one-off, or will we be treated to a week-long clothes-shopping arc, like the one we endured with Les and Cayla last February? Let’s hope not!

Am I My Mother-in-Law’s Keeper?

Yeah, Holly’s all smiles today, but all week she’s done nothing but kvetch about her mother leaving the house a mess and maxing out the DVR. Funky, meanwhile, is considering renovating the guest bathroom for the old gal. OK, he could have phrased it a little better, but Funky expresses genuine concern for Melinda. His attitude towards his mother-in-law has softened considerably in the year since Melinda decided to make her stay permanent, but it’s not enough to spare him the old side-eye from the missus.

Programming note: Saturday’s, Sunday’s, and Monday’s strips are all unavailable for preview. I’ll post placeholders, but you’ll have to hold your snark til midnight EST.