Kancer Komix

Previously on Funky Winkerbean:

I don’t know about you, reader, but I was so sure that yesterday’s postmortem, backhanded “I love you” to Cayla would serve to finally close a number of plot threads: the existence of the Lisa tapes, Les’ perpetual grief, and even Cayla’s second-class second wife status. I expected today’s strip to be a wacky Sunday throwaway: a Scapegoat football gag, perhaps, or hijinks with Cody and Owen, before Monday we maybe check in with Pete and Darin in Hollywood.

But Lisa’s not done with us, folks. And while I am loathe to deliver spoilers, and try to dissuade my fellow authors from doing the same, I must warn you: this goes on into tomorrow and this week. The story of a woman who, faced with a lingering, wasting, terminal illness, feels compelled to spend her last days on this earth recording messages for those she will leave behind. Lisa on Les: “He’s filled with great wit…” Certainly Les thinks this to be so. The rest of us see a pretentious douchebag. No wonder he misses this woman so.

For what it’s worth: Batiuk continues his laxity when it comes to using the photo album corner visual cue to depict events in the past. Could he be signaling to us that Lisa is in fact, somehow, still alive???

She Lives, Sort Of

Link To Today’s Strip

And today we re-define “rock f*cking bottom” in the Funkyverse. Sheer self-indulgent, self-referential garbage, as aggressively awful as any individual FW strip I’ve ever seen. Once again the Great Author hauls out Lisa’s corpse and reminds us that she was nothing short of a saint, the grand martyr, always putting others first. “How special he is”…blurrrgh, pass the vomit pail please. Just revolting.

I do like how she looks a little like Wally in panel three. That’s what oncologists refer to as “stage seven”, I believe. This piece of idiocy might have made a LITTLE sense if it happened back when Les and Cayla first began dating, but now it’s merely another pathetic BanTom “victory lap” centering around that godforsaken cancer arc that he just won’t quit gloating about. Look at the effort and detail he put into making Lisa look as ill as possible, just totally disgraceful. What sort of person would enjoy something like that? It’s absolutely ghoulish, the work of a complete madman who’s thrown away the last eight years of his career patting himself on the back over a sub-mediocre and totally depressing piece of faux-profound drivel that did nothing but disturb and disgust people who were merely trying to enjoy the comics page. If he had any decency at all he’d retire right now and spare the world from having to endure any more of his pathetic depressing hackery, as he’s obviously completely out of ideas. I guess rehashing a Lisa memory that doesn’t involve her on her deathbed is just too much work for him these days.

And we haven’t even gotten to the “For Les” DVD yet, which promises to be even MORE repugnant and nauseating than this piece of garbage is, as difficult as that is to believe. I wonder if she donned her wig for that one like she did for her Summer videos? I seriously doubt that, though, as Les probably likes to remember his beloved wife like Batiuk does, with the cancer hat and death sweater, all gaunt and pale. I’m surprised he didn’t draw a chemo IV bag in the background too, just to drive his sick and twisted vision home with authority. The whole idea of a sick and dying person recording a video for a theoretical person she didn’t know and would never meet is so utterly idiotic it could only come from this lunatic’s felt tip, no one else on the planet would even consider doing something like this. This is exactly the sort of crap that drove me away from this strip for years at a time, what a piece of cringe-inducing claptrap, just shamefully terrible in every imaginable way.

And next time around I’ll tell ya how I REALLY feel. Stay tuned for Our Fearless Leader coming up next, until next time Stay freaking Funky!

Leeese-ter Eggs

Link To Today’s Strip

OK, color me baffled.  I have no idea what THIS is supposed to be but that last panel is definitely shudder-inducing for a whole wide variety of reasons. Lisa is back and this time, it’s with a vengeance! Seriously though, having her suddenly popping up all over the place again is definitely not a good sign. In all likelihood, this will merely be some drippy Lisa sap aimed at whatever lucky gal managed to reel in Dick Face after her very tragic drawn-out death, but then again you never know with this BanTom guy.  And hopefully the “For Les” DVD features Lisa explicitly telling Les that he is under no circumstances to ever write a book about her, as THAT would be funny. Which of course means that you can safely rule it out.

Why doesn’t he just tell her what’s on the stupid tapes instead of being all weird and cryptic about it? What the hell are “practice tapes”? WHOSE “senior year tape”, Summer’s or Lisa’s? I guess it’s supposed to be for Summer, but was a separate tape for each year of college really necessary? Seems like overkill and honestly, a bit domineering too. I wonder how long they go on for? Does she cover the bases right up to retirement? When he first introduced these VHS tapes I thought oh no, he can conceivably mine these tapes for Lisa material forever and damned if it isn’t happening right now.

But all this idiocy is totally overshadowed by Batiuk’s greatest artistic achievement in quite a long time: that disembodied, lifeless Summer head with the AV cables sticking out of her neck. They really should be connected to a copy of “Lisa’s Story”, as it IS the only thing keeping her alive right now. But nonetheless, it’s a chilling image.

So Crazy in Glove

Looks like His Craziness is tackling the Digital Lisa project starting with Volume One, Tape One: the Lisa we see onscreen still looks pretty hale and hearty. “I want you to have these so you’ll remember me…” Because if I don’t spend huge chunks of the precious time I have left on this earth delivering rambling lectures into a camcorder, I’ll be forgotten?

File this whole setup under “Batiuk Aims for Heartwarming and Hits Creepy.” Harry’s face is wayyy too close to the monitor in panel one, perchance to appreciate the enhanced quality of his baked videotape. And the white gloves, what’s he slipping these on for? “This calls for white gloves! And some lube…”

Digitally Yours

bad wolf
September 6, 2015 at 10:45 pm
Hmm, i wonder where this is leading?
Chance Summer will talk Les into moving on with his life: 1%
Chance Les will talk Summer into maintaining weird obsession: 99%

Yeah, lest you start thinking that Batiuk or his characters were ready at last to move on…Summer’s not tossing those tapes, oh no; she’s preserving them digitally! Wouldn’t want wee Skyler Fairgood to go through life without his ghostly grandmother’s guidance.