Tag: Jessica

There's Moore Where That Came From

Tom Batiuk: If you could see my drawing board now. I’ve got a project that’s going to come up starting the end of the year and it’s really cool…Cory is in Afghanistan and [Holly’s] looking to complete his comic book collection…So she’s going to complete his collection of Starbuck Jones comics…I have seven covers that I’ve had guys create for me and it’s such a kick.

Tom Batiuk Talks ‘Funky Winkerbean’, comicbookresources.com, Mar 19, 2013

Too bad Batiuk didn’t bring in a pro to create a cover for Les’ first book: it looks more like the cover of a book report by a fourth-grader.

Sidetracked, Derailed, Jinxed, Puzzled

August 8, 2011 strip

“…derailed by some other projects“? You mean you didn’t see her Dinkle doc, “Harry Dinkle: A Life…and Deaf”? Or her film about service dogs, “Some Buddy to Watch Over Me”? The only documentary “project” we’ve seen Jessica working on was videotaping Les and Cayla’s wedding (and she fucked that up). In any case, you’d think that telling the story of the late father, whose name she invokes at every opportunity, would take precedence over other “projects”.

Father Figuratively

Funky Winkerbean is a reality-based comic strip that depicts contemporary issues affecting young adults…

Unfortunately, the young adults in this case are Darin and Jessica Darling Fairgood. Their “reality” involves starting a family while he’s an MBA assistant-managing a pizza parlor, and she’s a documentarianne whose project about her father has been stalled for two years. Speaking of stalling, today’s strip does nothing to move this story along.

Priorities!

Epicus Doomus
April 25, 2013 at 10:53 pm
[N]ote how once again the premise (“Jessica is pregnant”) IS the entire “story”, not merely a launching point for something more…

And the “story” enters its second week. “So are you two planning to look for a house? Or do you intend to live in a succession of seedy apartments in run-down neighborhoods, like Fred and I did?” Such trivial matters will have to wait: Jessica’s decided, now that she’s pregnant with her first child, it’s the perfect time to get started on that John Darling documentary, one of the things that brought her and Darin back to Westview two years ago.

Good Days and Batiuk Days

Tom Batiuk doesn’t care about stroke victims. The discussion of Fred’s day-to-day existence  is relegated to the Sunday “throwaway” panels up top (which don’t appear in all newspapers). The former Westview principal exists these days merely to generate cheap pathos or cheaper marble-mouthed speech gags. TB is much more concerned with his special “Coda to Lisa’s Story”.

“I’ll be happy if we can just be half the parents you and Dad were.” Way to set the bar, Darin. Never mind that Fred wasn’t even half a parent to Kerry, the daughter he wasn’t even allowed to see, and the older half-sister that you (and we) only recently learned about.

Back at the motel, the world’s nosiest desk clerk continues feeding straight lines to the mystery man, who is revealed to be none other than Frankie, clean-shaven and slavishly copied from the model sheet.