Tag Archives: jogging

Summer Is The New Les

Were you looking forward to a light-hearted week with the Pizza Box Monster? Well, you’re not getting it. It’s time for Summer’s Story! We might as well start calling it that, because Tom Batiuk couldn’t telegraph his intentions any harder.

I realize that Batiuk uses Funky Winkerbean to indulge his frustration that he hasn’t won the praise he thinks he deserves, by lavishing it on his many self-insertion characters. But how many times does he need to do this? We’ve already seen Les and Lillian McKenzie get the deluxe treatment. The Atomik Komix team gets a ton of it as well. Several other characters, like Dinkle and Holly, have written books. Why do we need another story where someone becomes an author? Why does he need another story where someone becomes an author?

Continue reading

55 Comments

Filed under Son of Stuck Funky

Credibility Gap

It’s been a long time since I laughed out loud at Funky Winkerbean, but Les’ question in today’s strip cracked. Me. Up. It’s been ten whole years since Les and Cayla dropped off Summer and Keisha at Kent State. Even for someone doing “graduate work,” ten years is a stretch. Is she still on a basketball scholarship? I don’t recall even seeing her in a Kent State uniform. So has Les been paying her tuition? I doubt Summer is contributing anything, as the only job we’ve seen her doing is wrapping gifts at the mall two years ago (when the girls were “wrapping up [their] college careers,” according to Cayla).

For someone who’s always bragged about progressing his characters in “real time,” storyteller Tom Batiuk has always taken liberties with the timeline. In this, FW’s Jubilee Year, he’s finally given up trying, casting off any semblance of temporal continuity; most notably by aging his core characters by at least five years to have their fiftieth high school reunion coincide with the strip’s own fiftieth anniversary (pay no attention to Crazy Harry’s time travel arc from last spring which suggested the gang were still in high school in 1980).

You win, Tom Batiuk. This is the last time I’m going to bitch about your nonsensical time constructs, and the last post I’ll have to write for a while, as tomorrow, Banana Jr. 6000 starts a 2 week shift, and I just know he’s rarin’ to go!

56 Comments

Filed under Son of Stuck Funky

Un-A-Track-Tive

Link to today’s strip

Look at that first panel, it just screams “I have nothing here”. And whaddya know…he doesn’t. Unless you consider today’s bit of woeful wordplay to be “something”, which I do not. Still though, after two weeks of marching band gags I’m willing to accept this one even in spite of Dick Facey’s loathsome presence. What a dick.

And that’s it for me, fellow snarkers…stay tuned for the Funk-tastic snark stylings of billytheskink, who hopefully manages to avoid the onslaught of band gags that haunted me this time around!

10 Comments

Filed under Son of Stuck Funky

Not Your Stepping Stone

It looks like we get one of this strip’s patented jogging gags in today’s strip. Looks, however, can be decieving.

No, I would not classify today’s gag as a jogging gag. It is haplessness gag, a staple of Act I reconfigured to fit the age of the strip’s main characters. Back in Act I it was Les and Dinkle’s pupils who were most often the butt of such jokes. Now in Act III, Funky has assumed Les’ former role, his pitiful sole can’t keep from stumbling over the same little rock over-and-over as he tries and fails to get some much-needed exercise. Les has kind of assumed Dinkle’s role, lording his perfection over the morons surrounding him. Act I, however, was sometimes self-aware about how irritating Dinkle’s behavior was. Can we say the same about Act III?

It also looks like Les, who gave Durwood “the bum’s rush” yesterday so he could get to work on his new/old Lisa project, is procrastinating again. This look is not deceiving.

14 Comments

Filed under Son of Stuck Funky

Funky Winkerbean: The Anchor, Man

(ZZZZZZZZZZ)

All that time he spent defusing bombs and dodging death over in Afghanistan didn’t do a whole lot for Cory’s cognitive thinking abilities, as he appears to be considering including Funky in some sort of relay race deal, which is a bit like entering an obese donkey in the Kentucky Derby. I liked old Cory better, at least he wasn’t just another predictable Pollyanna do-gooder with a dumb grin on his face 100% of the time. Now though…ugh. If the guy was any more bland he’d be completely invisible.

16 Comments

Filed under Son of Stuck Funky