Life is a dismal horror from which you can never escape – Page 3

‘Sometimes dead is better.’

Happy May, Funkysnark Fans! Comic Book Harriet here, ready to push us through another couple weeks of this horror show, much like the shambling hulk that pushed the cart through the haunted murder attraction in House of 1000 Corpses.

Prepare yourselves for…. Strip of 1000 Smirks!

Many thanks to Spaceman Spiff for guiding us through two weeks of some of the weirdest storytelling to come out of Funky Winkerbean for a while now. It was like each day brought us another level down deeper into another tangent of meaninglessness. Never has a story that begins with a man buying doughnuts for alcoholics and ends with him nearly dying to save a CD player been told with such astounding lack of passion or sense.

Now we’re back to the Dinkle pandemic that has been sweeping this strip for the last year. We’ve had nearly 50 days of Dinkle since November (the traditional start of Dinkle season.) This is my third shift in a row where I’ve gotten Dinkle arcs. First he was teaching piano lessons, then he was substitute teaching, and now I get my chance to get in on the ‘Dinkle scores a choir harem’ action.

But maybe the Dinkpocalypse is coming to a close soon. Today we get an exciting celebrity cameo: the undead hell cat from Pet Semetary, Winston Churchhill. I, for one, am eagerly anticipating Dinkle getting his scrawny arms ripped to shreds like chicken drumsticks.

Getting the runaround

Did you know President Bill Clinton likes to jog? I sure didn’t, at least not until today’s strip… and when I say “today’s strip”, I mean “when he was first elected President”. Does TB think calling him “President Clinton” is not enough of an identifier for readers or did he just recently start watching a DVD box set of 1990s Saturday Night Live episodes?

What’s with all the Eeyores in the first panel? Funky just dialed up BILL CLINTON on a whim, got the former POTUS to answer directly, and was told by the man himself that he would help. Why is Rachel even questioning this?

Better yet, why am I questioning this? Any of this? It’s been a fool’s errand for decades.

De-10-tion Center

Amicus continues to Amicus in today’s strip, quoting last year’s newspaper headlines almost verbatim… Big kudos to commenter Banana Jr. 6000 for uncovering Breef’s past appearance in Crankshaft back on Monday. The “Lionel Hutz of Westview” is not only less entertaining than the beloved Simpsons character (obviously), he also appears to somehow be even less competent at practicing law than the intentionally idiotic Hutz.

Writing facial recognition software in the Batiukverse has got to be the ultimate fool’s errand. While I was not able to find any source for Amicus’ 20% of the time figure here in real life internetland, in Westview I would think the figure would be well above that. WAY well above that.

Get the Buck outta here!

We can only hope today’s strip is the awful coda to this awful story arc about these awful people.

This is why you turned down Buck’s advances, Linda? Not because he was being incredibly creepy and distasteful? Not because you are still mourning your husband who committed suicide not even 6 months ago and don’t feel like jumping into any relationship? Not because you know absolutely nothing about him beyond his high school football career? Not because the only thing you two demonstratively have in common is your late husband?

I agree with Linda on one thing, though. I can’t go through this again, either.

Die or Die Not, There Is No Try

Today’s strip takes a pre-dick-tably maudlin turn. Like we didn’t all know “Les tries to sullenly undermine this dumb movie thing” was going to be the gist of this story arc.

Even if I wasn’t short on time to write this, I’m wouldn’t archive dive to prove that Lisa did or did not say what Les is claiming at some point in time… because I can quickly and easily point to a time when she pretty much said the exact opposite.