Act III began with so much promise for Summer Moore. As the daughter of what had become the strip’s ostensible lead character and his holy bride — the focal points of the Most Important Stories Ever — most would assume that Summer would naturally fall into the role of being the focus of the new generation. In a sense that is indeed what happened as of all of the so-called Funky Kids she’s clearly the one who up to this point had gotten the most attention… but that’s mostly because of how little Tom Batiuk seemed to care about them. She got her place as the centerpiece of the high school stuff almost by default and even then, by this point she had begun fighting for that position with Owen and Cody, characters that clearly resonated more with Batty as they were the requisite Funky/Les duo.
Outside of basketball stories taking place in the winter, Summer’s presence is mostly just that; present. A character who hangs around but doesn’t do much of anything. For her final year of high school that’s really not going to be changing all that much. Her knee having exploded earlier in the year, by the summer it looks to be mostly healed as she’s back to shooting hoops with Keisha in a set up for a week of already tired “Les meets weirdos at a book signing” strips.
She does at least make fun of him upon his arrival home, however.
She also gets to be a sounding board for Les’ complaints about how Hollywood is mucking up the Lisa’s Story adaptation.
With the ghastly gold digger exiled from both Westview and the strip, there’s nothing standing between Cayla and the man of every woman’s nightmares. Les decides that it’s time to do the most important thing he’ll need to do in his post-Lisa life which means a fancy dinner at Montoni’s and sitting Cayla down on Lisa’s bench to tell ask her if she’d be willing to be his favorite runner-up. Cayla, of course, gleefully accepts and they arrive back at Les’ wondering how to spring the news on their kids. But of course the “rents” don’t realize that Summer and Keisha are eavesdropping on them like 8-year-olds.
In celebration of his new engagement, Les gets invited to the cookout and spends labor day with Cayla’s family. Summer gets half-assedly drawn in the background of a couple of panels but the main event is getting to see Les hit in the face with a softball.
Summer also gets to show up kicking off the requisite Lisa’s Legacy week which by now is beginning to feel like something Batty includes more out of obligation than interest.
Fall and the start of the new school year also brings with it one of Batty’s favorite stories: school levies! And surprise surprise, the ignorant clods once again voted it down so now the raises of Linda Bushka, Jim Kablichnick and the other two teachers at WHS are in jeopardy. But not just that, funding for athletics have been gutted too. Bull had earlier tried getting around this by implementing a “pay to play” scheme for the teams but that’s not enough and with the failure of the levy, it’s announced that the sports programs are being shuttered.
To add insult to injury, Les and Cayla decide to “cheer up” their kids by feeding them some Montoni’s slop.
But while everyone else mopes, Funky decides to do what characters in this series very rarely do and take some initiative. It turns out that he’s the head of the local Chamber of Commerce and he’s not about to take this problem lying down.
His genius idea is to hold a raffle and go around to local businesses so that they’ll offer prizes for it. I’m not really up on how all of this stuff works so I’m not sure if a raffle would actually be enough to subsidize an entire school’s athletic programs for the year which I assume would be in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollarydoos. But I suppose that’s why Batiuk is the somehow reasonably successful cartoonist while I’m snarking on his comic strip for free.
Funky gets to work and by “gets to work” I mean we get a couple of days of a travel agent pawning off onto him a trip to climb Kilimanjaro that they weren’t able to get rid of in something that is totally not foreshadowing.
Come the day of the big raffle, Les is naturally there to buy a ticket and Bull is there to, in a roundabout way, call him a loser. That’s how I’m interpreting it at least.
But TB is the master of dramatic irony so of course Les does in fact win a prize and what prize does he win? Why that Kilimanjaro trip! Beacuse like a master bowler, Batty sets ’em up and knocks ’em down. Les being who he is, he’s not exactly thrilled but Summer, being who she is, is excited.
But good news, Funky’s raffle scheme somehow worked and the season is saved. Summer gets her final season after all!
TB, being the master storyteller that he is, decides to wrap up this year of tribulation for Summer with some levity by having Bull rile her up a bit about her rehab.
It’s also Dopey’s birthday so Summer decides to rile him up by giving him AARP membership; LMAO. And of course St. Lisa has a tape for just this moment as well. Why she’d have a tape for a random birthday instead of a milestone one is beyond me but Lisa’s going to do what she’s going to do and inserting her desiccated visage at inopportune times seems to be her final act of revenge on the world and the people in it.
But with all the rehab, all the effort to save the sports programs, the Lady Goats begin the season with a losing streak potentially flushing everything down the crapper.
But Summer realizes there may be a solution and tells Bull of a mythical figure: someone who, prior to his arrival, managed to actually bring a championship to Westview. None other than Ann Fairgood, her half-brother’s adoptive mother.
Why Bull wouldn’t know this considering he was a student at Westview while Ann was a teacher and coach is beyond me but by this point we know that continuity for Batty basically only exists when the immediate story calls for it to. Whatever, he goes to the Fairgoods’ home to talk to Ann and brings her in to give a motivational speech about her own history.
But when she suggests some plays he decides to go one step further and name her the new assistant coach. This winds up paying off, unsurprisingly, and the Goats snap their losing streak.
With this, the Westview girls proceed to turn things around and tear up the (regional? conference?) tournament.
By knocking off Big Walnut Tech they’ve made it to the state championship game in a rematch from two seasons prior against Our Lady of the Cedars.
But alas, TB throws in a swerve when on the way to the game it turns out that Summer has become ill.
Yes indeed, in deciding to pull from reality Batty decides to reach 15 years into the past and equate Summer with the greatest basketball player ever by recreating the famous “Flu Game” from the 1997 NBA Finals where a violently ill Michael Jordan dominated and hit a legendary shot in the closing moments.
In the closing seconds, Summer takes a hard foul and it’s up to her to sink the free throws.
She takes the shot. Tension builds…
But of course, she did it! The Lady Goats are your new state champions!
One teeny-tiny problem though: this is not how basketball works. There’s no such thing as a “walk off free throw” as there would still be some time on the clock and the other team would have been able to either inbound or rebound (assuming Summer misses the second shot) and try to heave it for a miracle if there was enough time to do that. The game isn’t going to end then and there just because Summer hit a free throw even if it was effectively over. And the worst part? Batty knows this because there’s a strip prior to this where Les admonishes Bull about how there are no walk off free throws. So Batty is disregarding a basic rule of the sport that he himself acknowledged some weeks prior just for nonsensical drama.
If this is what he wanted to do, why do the free throws in the first place? Why not just have Summer hit a buzzer beater? This is not hard and yet he makes it more difficult than it needs to be by not taking five seconds to think about if what he’s writing actually makes any sense.
Anyway, having coached Summer to a championship and rehabbed her knee, Bull does one more solid and presents her with a highlight reel of her high school play that she can send off to colleges. A nice enough gesture although with Summer being such a highly regarded player wouldn’t she have been scouted and approached by recruiters long before this point anyway?
In April, the two tracks of high school that Batty has been working with finally come together when Summer shows up to save Cody from getting pounded by Wedgeman. Much like every high school generation has its loser male geek duo and its vapid popular girl so too must it have its loutish bully and Wedgeman is the current one in the line that goes back to Bull and Stoneironmarblehead Morton. And just like the vapid popular girl, it’s diminishing returns in terms of his characterization i.e. it’s nonexistant beyond “is a bully.”
Cody, of course, falls in love with her and can’t help but see Summer as Wonder Woman who I assume is also Tom Batiuk’s own waifu.
Thus starts a rather nonsensical storyline for the next few weeks where Cody decides to send an anonymous text to Summer declaring his love for her and, can you believe it, she sends an anonymous text back! How Cody would have her number to even do this I have no idea. Owen, though, spends the whole thing acting dismissive and when she fails to show up for a promised date at Montoni’s (of course) the ruse is revealed. See, it was actually Owen sending those texts to Cody the entire time because he was also in love with Summer and he wanted to I guess disappoint Cody so he’d have her all to himself? I don’t know, none of it makes sense.
But Cody is undeterred and decides he’s just going to tell Summer how he feels in person. However, he sees her talking to Chad and decides to slink away in disappointment even though she’d turned down Chad’s request for a date.
Of course there’s one final twist as someone sends Cody an anonymous text declaring how much they like him. Because of Owen’s stunt Cody dismisses it oh ho it turns out it was a real girl who really does like him. This is of course just an ending stinger and is never again followed up on.
Truthfully, that’s really about it for Summer’s importance during the waning days of her time in high school. The next big storyline is Roberta’s protest over a gay couple being allowed to attend the prom and Summer does seem to be the instigator in starting a counter demonstration against it.
But aside from that she otherwise has nothing to do with the story which is mostly about Nate giving a big speech about how there will be no discrimination at his school. Then Becky’s father tells his wife to shut up and that’s effectively the end of Roberta Blackburn’s time as an antagonist in the strip. The most notable thing about the storyline — besides the milquetoast way that Batty presents his stance — is the biggest unsolved mystery in Funky Winkerbean — who was behind the castle?
During the prom there’s a couple of strips where a person — of who only an arm can be seen — thanks Nate for what he did for “me and students like me” while declaring that they’re not ready to come out just yet. All while Nate looks like he couldn’t care less. Seriously, why does he look so bored?
So who is Nate talking to? We can really only use process of elimination to narrow it down to a few options. Given that the character is hidden that would obviously imply it’s a known character, otherwise why hide their identity? Of the seniors, the only notable male from this generation is Cory who for reasons of “marries and later has kids with a woman” doesn’t fit; also the person looks shorter which implies it’s probably a girl.
Given the light skin that also rules out Keisha. It probably can’t be Rana given later developments that would make her being gay, although not impossible, very unlikely. So you’re left with three options: Summer, Maddie and Jinx.
Summer did very briefly date a boy early in Act III but at this point that seems like an abberation. But on the other hand, the sporty short-haired tomboy also being a lesbian seems to be such a trite stereotype that it might even give Batty second thoughts. Maddie is (supposed to be) the eccentric girl who marches to her own beat but she’s also effectively a non-character.
Jinx was there for the start of this story and is the one who announced that Nate and his wife were voted prom king and queen. Based on that I’d say there’s a reasonable chance it could be her, you know clumsy hinting from Batty and all. But who knows?
Maybe later strips can be read in a way to make you look back on this and think it was Summer or Maddie. Maybe they’re all gay. Or maybe that hand poking out from the castle wasn’t a real character and was just the representation of gay teenagers which seems like the kind of cop out Batty would do. But unless someone ever asks him directly or he does another Untold Tales (fat chance) we’ll never know.
We can speculate until we’re blue in the face but seeing as we’re likely never getting an answer we may as well just move on. In the final few weeks of school Summer and Keisha receive invitations get evaluated by, where else, Kent State. Things go well and they both receive athletic scholarships thus putting a bow on the last lingering bit of their high school storylines.
And with that done it’s now time for them to die graduate.
Which is immediately followed up by yet another cancer tape.
Just where will Summer’s heart take her? That’s for next time in what will be, for a long time, Summer’s last hurrah.
Because by the middle of next year Summer’s appearances are going to dwindle drastically. She will continue to pop up for the odd appearance or week once or twice a year post-2012 but once Batty shipped her off to Kent State he was also effectively putting her into semi-exile as his interest shifts more and more to comic books, Hollywood and characters like Darin, Pete and the yet-to-be-introduced Mason Jarr(e) and in the exciting world of elderly geekery, there’s neither time nor place for a jock who doesn’t fawn over the latest MCU flicks and Star Wars movies.
“Let’s fix that!” strikes me as a mantra for the latter half of Act III Funky Winkerbean. As this 50-year old comic strip approaches its twilight, Batiuk is busy retconning (and/or outright forgetting) established themes. Bull never really beat Les up; he was actually protecting his nerd friend from the real bullies. Yeah, the kids all picked on Wicked Wanda, but as adults they would be made to seek her forgiveness. 
