Holly – Page 38 – Son of Stuck Funky

Plan B

Huh. Usually when someone graduates from school, that person is the one asked “What are your plans?” Not here, though–for some reason, Holly’s curious about what Rachel is going to be doing, now that…nothing has really changed for her?

Although from Rachel’s answer, it sure sounds like she’s planning on quitting Montoni’s, now that Wally is a dishwasher with (presumably) a degree in architecture*. And she’s going for a certification to teach art…oh God, she’s going to start working at Atomik Komix, isn’t she?

*Since both Wally and Adeela were attending the same class just prior to graduation, I’m going to assume that this was some senior-level architecture course. It’s possible that the class was a required class that neither of them bothered with before senior year, but most students tend to knock those out early so that senior year is spent concentrating on one’s major. It also might have been a course that both took for “fun” but “fun” seems to be a foreign concept in Westview. I suppose it could be any random class, but really, a degree in architecture for a dishwasher is the kind of fate that just screams “Wally.”

Yellow Alert: Someone’s Happy

Link to today’s strip.

So, either Wally is just now being hired at Montoni’s, despite all the history to the contrary, or Tom Batiuk thinks “Welcome” means “You’re still working here, in the same position, but now you have a degree.” And well Tony might add, “A degree you’ll do nothing with, of course, except increase the amount of depression in your life, in that you’re now a dishwasher with a degree.”

I think I’ve figured out a possible reason for Batiuk’s utter lack of continuity: he hates this strip as much as the rest of the world does, and it’s painful to go back and re-read it. All he’s doing is pounding them out until that 50th.

I have to say, Funky’s exercise routine has finally paid off. I don’t think he’s looked this trim in years. Or maybe Ayers gets paid by the number of fat-asses he has to draw, and Batiuk has a budget in place for 2019.

After thinking about it for awhile (a phrase I hate wasting on Funky Winkerbean) it bothers me the way Tony is drawn. Based on Wally and Adeela’s elbows, I can sort of see where the tabletop should be, but somehow Tony looks too tall. So either they’re sitting in kiddie chairs, which would be par for the course for Wally, or Tony is standing on a box.

Why is it that no one involved in the creation of this strip gives a good hot damn about its presentation?

Auld Lang Wry

Link To Today’s Strip

Mother-in-laws….amirite? I mean come on. What’s a fella to do? One dame at home is plenty and I already have a dog to fetch my pipe, slippers and tumbler of scotch, thank you very much. What an old bag and so forth. And now the Copa is proud to introduce…Mr. Henny Youngman!

So another three hundred and sixty-five FW strips are in the bag. It sure looks like a lot when you spell it out like that. I mean you can say the same thing about any Act III year but man, 2018 was a real shit pile, even by FW standards. Exactly four things happened in FW in 2018.

Pete and Boy Lisa left Hollywood and began working for a whimsical Ohio-based komix book company. Mindy later joined them. They presumably still work there.

Wally, who may or may not be over the worst of his PTSD, invited his apparently estranged daughter Rana to Thanksgiving dinner. She accepted.

Bull’s rushing record was broken.

Funky’s mother-in-law visited Westview for a band competition and may remain there until she dies.

Pete and Boy Lisa’s unholy alliance with Chester was by far the dominant story arc of 2018 but even so, after all that time and all that toil he’s still only at the “they work there now” part of the story, which is exactly where it’ll resume and exactly where it’ll end next time as well. And what did we learn about our old pal Wally during his nearly two month long forced march of an arc? Well, apparently he’s “almost” about to graduate and he “seems” to be “doing better”, which is hardly news. He did invite his apparently estranged and seldom-seen daughter to dinner, though, which is where the story left off. Yup, that’s some real compelling character development right there.

Pervert Mort made a late run there at the end but the RRRRRRRR thing in the Wally arc was probably the single dumbest FW moment of the year in my opinion. 2018’s SoSF Most Reviled Player award (the “Les Moore Award”) goes to Les Moore, obviously, although the overall lack of Les was 2018’s sole bright spot. Pete and Boy Lisa are co-runners-up, though. It’s easy to forget now but that AK idiocy went on for freaking months.

Grave Concerns

Link To Today’s Strip

Impending climactic doom, neglected old gravesites hiding the bones of dead friends…Happy Holidays from your friends at Funky Winkerbean and King Features! Man, this Melinda sure is a barrel of laughs. You already know how I feel (and vice versa) regarding Author Guy’s reliance on adorable old coot humor so I won’t go into that again, but they’ve been popping up like mushrooms in the strip for the last few years. Cliff, Vera, Phil Holt, New And Improved Morty, his pals at the home and now Melinda. The average age of the characters in FW must be up around seventy or eighty by now. Even if it were funny (and it isn’t) it’d still be weird, especially when you realize he already has another comic strip that’s jam-packed with zany and depressing old coots. Which is already one too many.

They Have Hotels In Florida Now

Link To Today’s Strip

Holly’s look in panel three really says it all. I’m assuming that The Corporal is approximately twenty-three or twenty-four years old. He defused live bombs in Afghanistan and he is currently engaged to a mute woman. Yet for some reason he’s almost infantile today, blubbering about “visiting Disney” which, to my knowledge, has never “happened” in the strip. And Cory, bless his pointy little head, never came across as being a Disney World kind of guy either.

IMO the way everyone just completely ignored Cory’s miraculous transformation has been one of Act III’s more annoying (recent) developments. For a few years there Cory was the strip’s “bad guy”, an incorrigible scowling hoodlum who (gasp!) stole from Lisa’s Legacy, always had his hair in his eyes and had no use for anyone, generally speaking. Then he comes home and he’s suddenly Opie Cunningham but no one seems surprised in the least. It’d be like if Summer suddenly re-appeared with long curly hair and a jaunty sundress.