Tag Archives: leaves

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!

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Leaves Of Ass

Link To The Always-Amusing Sunday Strip

Unless this is some kind of Sunday fake-out, it would appear that the John Darling handgun arc is finally, mercifully, over. That was weird. So anyhow, today BatYam aims his always insightful and cutting wit at leaf blowers, and how much they suck. Real topical there, Pulitzer (nominee) Boy. I could point out that Funky obviously hired the landscaping crew because he didn’t feel like raking the leaves himself, thus making him quite the hypocrite, but whatever. It’d totally kill the melancholy, depressing vibe he was going for here, and Lord knows I wouldn’t want to do that.

I assume that’s a young Cory there in panel four, which means that scene/memory probably took place during the time skip, which definitively proves it did in fact happen. Or maybe not, I don’t know.

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Credit Fraud

Today’s strip concludes (we hope and pray and hope and wish) this latest visit from the Ghost of Distress Past. Her Royal Wryness. The VHSaint herself.

  • Special thanks go out to Summer for being a prop with no impact on the story whatsoever, she has already collected her prize of appearing in a full 3 panel strip this week (panels will not necessarily be consecutive).
  • Special thanks also go out to Les for having such an insatiable ego and such milquetoast friends and family that he will continue to receive the unearned praise he has been given for decades now.
  • And extra special thanks go out to Crazy Harry, who demanded nothing but 18 panels of our precious time in return for his brilliant idea of pretending Isaac Asimov invented the concept of recording video using already obsolete technology.

On the subject of 18 panels (well, 16, thanks to a couple of 2 panel strips), this new Lisa tapes origin story actually takes up more column inches than the entire original origin story AND depiction of the recording of the tapes! That took just 16 panels in four strips. For all its faults, Act II got to the point…

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Silverfiche

OK, which one of you yutzes bet Tom Batiuk that he couldn’t put together another strip about Bernie Silver’s senior pictures? I suppose we have you to thank for today’s strip

The good news is we can all boot up our Packard Bells and our MS Paints and join Bernie out in Tinseltown, where we’ll be paid handsomely for our rudimentary green screen skills (citation needed). Here’s a blank Bernie to start with:

Now go forth… The possibilities are endless!

History!

Sports!

Economics!

The deaths that built Gordon Lightfoot’s house!

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Ch-choke On ‘Em!

Link to today’s strip.

Okay, so, I actually found today’s punchline pretty funny. It’s wordplay that actually works–referencing the “net” in both the virtual and real worlds.

Which is why I don’t think Tom Batiuk came up with this one. It’s too clever by half. I think this is yet another clever witticism he overheard and thought, “Well, I’ll just steal that.”

Admittedly, it would have been far more effective as a daily three or four-panel strip, with all the Dinkle Worship in the opening panels stripped away, but of course Batiuk has to hype Dinkle’s Rose Bowl appearance. Because of course he has to. He HAS to. There’s nothing else left.

And honestly, I’ve never been happier to type the following words: that’s it from me, folks, my two week stint is over and done, and I am going to collapse into a comfortable chair and watch movies where band directors get horribly disembowled and have to watch as their still-beating hearts are forced into their faces.

I’m not sure there are such movies, but I’m working on one. Be patient.

And as for pity, please put in a big order for Epicus Doomus, whose time in the chair has at last approached. I can already hear the lamentations, which is my cue for buggin’ out of here. Happy trails!

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