Tag: Les

Diplame-a

Well, with today’s strip, Wally has officially beaten Summer across the Kent State graduation stage. And so has Buddy. And Kay Kyser too. Sheesh…

Wait, Kent State? I thought Wally was taking classes at a community college. Granted, I have an uncle who calls Kent a community college. He went to Miami (the Ohio one) though, so his opinion is a little biased.

Also, be sure to check the throw-away panels today for a rare glimpse at Becky’s left arm back when it was still attached.

Thanks for reading my two weeks covering TB’s flotsam. SOSF hall-of-famer and hall-of-namer beckoningchasm will take the helm tomorrow.

Cousin Effect

So long Atomik Komix! Not sad to see you go.

Today’s strip moves us on to the greener pastures of… *sigh* Montoni’s.

Yep, nephew cousin Wally is having one of those newfangled January college graduations. He is also too cheap to spring for (recently-increased) postage it would seem, having Rache hand-deliver invitations and putting the savings toward paying Wally Jr’s ransom.

Meanwhile, uncle cousin Funky is wistfully wondering when Wally, who began high school the year after Funky graduated from college, became an adult. Probably sometime during the the time he joined the military, became a POW, got married, volunteered with a minesweeping organization, adopted a child, had another child, became a POW again, spent over a decade in captivity, came back to the US, got a job at Montoni’s, started going to college, got a service dog, got married, and qualified to graduate from college.

Summer’s Finally Over

Link To Today’s Strip

Summer is back in town, presumably “from college”, for the annual Falling Of The Leaves as is customary in Westview. Seeing good ol’ Summer there with her ever-so-twee hair and her trademark gritty hoodie brings back fond memories of how much I detested that character way back in the dark early days of Act III. She was around all the f*cking time with the basketball and the wry wisecracks and the Lisa gobbledygook, it was awful.

Summer was a major player there for a while but after she got the flu and won the Big Game he shipped her off to KSU and that was pretty much the last of her, she hasn’t had an arc to herself in years. Perhaps he just became enamored with his new up-and-coming crop of characters like Cliff and Chester and Phil Holt and post-Alzheimer’s Mort or maybe it was because he can’t write for a female character unless she’s feeding her husband straight lines, but whatever the reason Summer got kicked to the curb in what’s turned out to be one of (only) Act III’s more pleasant developments.

I’m deliberately ignoring the dialog, Les & Cayla’s already inexplicable and credulity-shattering courtship and marriage needs no further embellishment. God I hate that disembodied Les head so, so much. Seeing Les and Summer together like that really annoys me and brings back a lot of FW memories I’d rather keep buried. In fact this one could be my most hated strip of the year so far.

Early dawning, Sunday morning

Link to today’s strip.

As usual, Sunday’s strip is not available for preview and I’ve got too much to do tomorrow to wait up for it.

I’m of two minds–on the one hand, it sure seems like we were building up to something starring Cliff Anger…but we haven’t really built anything enough.  I mean, one mention of “Butter Brickle” hardly constitutes a leaping-off point for a Cliff Anger comic book tribute cover, but then this is Funky Winkerbean so absolutely anything is possible, as long as it isn’t even slightly interesting.

The second, and I think more likely possibility is that we’ll have something unrelated to the previous week.  For example, it’s been a while since Funky and Les have gone running, and the fact that Les is in California shouldn’t be a barricade to this strip.  Or we might get wacky Bernie Silver Chess Club antics, with all the wackiness scientifically removed.   Who knows?

Ah well.  We’ll all find out together, and our yawning will be such that it will wake the land!

Eating Their Turds and Whey

Link to today’s strip.

Whoops!  Late to the party on this one, but I got involved in a project of my own and neglected the time.

Not much to say about this one.  The artwork continues to slide into the abyss, the dialogue is idiotic, and Rich Burchett shows us something in that last panel  (almost wrote “penal”; these hosting stints, lemme tells ya…)

I mean, look at Cliff’s face in that last panel.  “Oh?  Think I’m not planning on getting my cheese dip on?  Really, Vera?  Wow, are you in for a surprise!”

Overall, again, it’s people sitting around discussing things that we have not seen and we’ve not been given a reason to care about.  Eating food that looks, honestly…well, it looks largely like bowel movements.  Which, given the overall bent of this strip, makes perfect sense.  It also makes those vaguely flesh-colored cubes that show up now and then in Mary Worth look edible.

It’s kind of silently nauseating in its own unique way.  And it’s another step away from what people want in comic strips.  And it makes me feel that the 50th anniversary will be something to see, though I can easily imagine Batiuk presenting something ultra dull.  After all, it’s the Funky Winkerbean way.