Hiking boots? Who needs hiking boots?
No one in today’s strip seems to. Mason and Cindy have sauntered up the side of Mount Lee in loafers and ballet flats respectively. In fact, nary a bramble nor briar has scuffed Mason’s chinos or Cindy bare legs. I drastically overestimated Marianne’s ninja skills.
Also, Marianne is fine. Mason is a confirmed drama queen. Another Funky Winkerbean story arc winds up being all sizzle and no steak. Carry on. I
So here’s today’s strip.
Too easy, Cindy. Too easy… but OK, I’ll bite.
stu·pid – /ˈst(y)o͞opəd/ – adjective
adjective: stupid; comparative adjective: stupider; superlative adjective: stupidest
1. Taking a trip with your attractive co-star without telling your fiancée.
“Why don’t I just give you a lift home?”2. Failing to notice that a hatchet-faced man is conspicuously tailing your car or parked a few yards away, recording you with his smartphone.
“Your daughter is a great actress, Mrs. Winters.”3. Rushing off to find a missing and possibly imperiled person yourself upon deducing their likely whereabouts, rather than informing the police who are already looking for said missing and possibly imperiled person.
“I just realized where we can find Marianne!”synonyms: Mason, Mason Jarr, Mason Jarre, Masone, Masone Jarr, Masone Jarre, and so on an so on..e
Well, Cindy is certainly asking the right person.
Today’s strip was not available for preview. It probably involves Mason and Cindy driving toward Marianne’s location, which Mason is either still teasing or half-explaining to Cindy. Maybe they will have already arrived, with Mason continuing his train of thought from yesterday’s strip as if they had just gotten in the car instead of taken the 30 minute drive that getting to the Hollywood sign requires. Maybe we’ll cut back to Marianne (Ha! no we won’t, not until sufficient drama has built). I’ll lean on our commenters to take the stuffing out of this one.
I would, however, like to focus on something commenter Charles said yesterday:
Instead, Mason has chosen to dash off like a 1950s football player posing for a promotional photo and give no specifics about Marianne’s presumed location. Makes you wonder if he really wants her found.
I think he wants her to be found on his terms. He wants to be the hero and the center of attention. He doesn’t want some dumb flatfoot getting credit for saving her.
Makes him a good successor to Les, in fact. This sort of reprehensible act designed to lionize himself is just the sort of thing Les would do. I wrote about Batiuk potentially bringing in a Dinkle V2.0, but in fact, Mason is Les V2.0.
I took a look back at the last time this strip teased a suicide, the infamous Susan Smith story arc from mid-1995. Was it any better than this current story arc? Well, yes and no. Yes, because it involved a teenage social outcast who had a well-established and unhealthy infatuation with a teacher rather than a popular actress with a background as deep as a tide pool… and no, because that teacher was Les. Also no, because TB was using those wavy borders I griped about all last week improperly even back then, when cutting from Les and Co. to Susan looking sad in a different setting.
Anyways, Charles’ point about Mason’s hero shtick being just the kind of thing Les would do is dead on. It is, in fact, exactly what Les does upon discovering Susan unconscious in her bedroom, literally saying “I can get her to the hospital quicker myself!” That’s nothing though, when compared to Les’ immediate response to Susan’s horrified mother, who was reasonably planning to call 911:
A certain universal New Yorker cartoon caption comes to mind…
There have been three instances in this comic strip where Marianne has spoken multiple consecutive complete sentences. THREE. All occurred within a week of each other back in early October. Mason was present for all three. One involved Marianne talking about how great working with Mason is and in the other two she talked about how her single mother dreamed of being an actress and now lives vicariously through her (and also that the Hollywood sign holds a special importance to her). This makes up the bulk of us readers’ interaction with Marianne.
One particularly astute commenter last week (I wonder who that was…) pondered whether or not Mason would remember this conversation with Marianne and rush off to save the day. Today’s strip answers that question with a resounding “yes”.
It begs more questions though, particularly why Mason did not relay his realization to the police officer who was standing right next to him in yesterday’s strip. You know, the police officer with the radio, who works for the department that has officers sitting in running cars minutes from Marianne’s presumed location… might be a good guy to tell.
Instead, Mason has chosen to dash off like a 1950s football player posing for a promotional photo and give no specifics about Marianne’s presumed location. Makes you wonder if he really wants her found.
Today’s strip tells us literally the same thing that Friday’s strip did. Marianne’s fate will remain a mystery for another day… that day quite possibly being Christmas Day. We are in color again, but I’m not quite getting that infomercial tonal shift feeling I described a few days back.
I feel it my duty to point out that a story about an actress who is driven to suicide (possibly) by cyberbullies is not “hardboiled” It’s pretty much the exact opposite of hardboiled, actually. It can be many other things: sad, appalling, educational (or in TB’s hands: implausible, maudlin, and preachy), but a word meaning “tough, cynical, unsentimental” as hardboiled does? No.
Us beady-eyed nitpickers may notice that Tom Lyle’s signature offers additional proof that TB works a year ahead, not that we really needed it.
You can see the conception of this comic book cover on the official Funky Winkerbean blog
Son of Stuck Funky 
