Tag: Mason Jarr

Cinday, April 10

Today’s strip was not available for preview, which I’m sure suits Cindy and her allegedly flagging beauty just fine, so I’m going to do what I pretty much always do when there is no strip to preview… post an old strip.

I wonder what was going on in Funky Winkerbean on this date back in, oh… let’s say 1991.

FW4-10-91

Cindy was grounded for two weeks due to her poor grades and couldn’t go to the mall (the horror!), so when her grounding finally ended the mall threw a celebration for her return. Westview’s mall hasn’t been seen or mentioned in years (last appearance: Father’s Day 2012, maybe?). With the struggles malls are facing nationally, the general economic climate in Westview, and the apparent fact that no-longer-a-resident Cindy was responsible for a significant amount of their business, I think it is safe to say it has long since been shuttered.

Femur? I barely know her…

Hey party people, billytheskink here wishing Son Of Stuck Funky a very happy 8th Birthday! Has it really been eight years? Feels like eighty reading this strip…

I was going to say I was here from the beginning, but apparently I wasn’t. Not in the comments section anyways. Nevertheless, I was a Stuck Funky regular who made my way over not too long after that first post and I’ve been here ever since. The community here has been one of my favorite things on the internet for each an every one of its eight years of existence. Big thanks to TFH, Epicus, and everyone who has taken on the duty of decency that is cutting this strip down to size.

Oh yeah, there’s today’s strip to look at. *Yawn*. Cindy is still insecure… and now she is blind, as a kissing Mason’s razor-sharp features have gouged out her eyeballs. Please add “enjoy it while it lasts” to the list of things no one has said about Funky Winkerbean in 25 years.

All the King’s Horsesh!t

Link to today’s strip.

I’d like to think that scream of terror in the last panel is someone snapping from the sheer disregard of continuity.  “This theater” was responsible for none of what you claim for it, Mason.  You, Pete and Cindy were the ones who brought Cliff out of his self-imposed hermitage.  Vera just happened to show up at the Silver Grille.  (I guess she had one of those decoder rings before she was engaged with one.)  And I know it galls you to admit it, but you met Cindy because of Les Moore.

Once again, Tom Batiuk seems to be making it up as he goes along, disregarding his own history while he expects his readers to have an encyclopedic knowledge of every minor character who appeared for a panel or two.   It’s amazing how those two contradictions don’t collide and annihilate the whole strip.

Speaking of a panel or two, it’s sure unfortunate that Cindy had to run off between panels one and two.  Because I don’t know who the Hell that’s supposed to be in the second panel; it looks very little like Cindy.  I mean, she’s not even wearing the same dress.  I guess, maybe Cindy tripped and looked foolish doing so, so the people in charge said, “Quick, we need a hot blonde who doesn’t look anything at all like she’s fifty years old!”

Either that, or the new artist is definitely getting Funkyfied–“Hey, whatever fills the panel, man.”   Gotta wonder if, when he told his fellow artists that he’d landed the Funky Winkerbean gig, there was this long, uncomfortable silence, followed by expressions of sympathy, pity, and many hands on the shoulder with the words, “We’re there for you, man,” and “You’ll get through this.”

Decoder? I barely know her…

Tough luck, SOSFers. Not just because you’ve read today’s strip, but also because today’s strip is particularly rant-worthy and I may well be the weakest ranter on this site. I am sorry, I just cannot do it justice. I’ll lean on our commenters to give this strip what it deserves.

I do have an editorial comment, though, and it doesn’t involve Funky in a coma this time. Among the few printable things that have been said about this whole unending Starbuck Jones movie arc is that it is “wish fulfillment”. It is an apt description, of course, as nearly everything about Starbuck Jones comes across as what TB wishes would have happened to his own creations. However, there is no reason that wish fulfillment can’t be entertaining.

Sally Forth just spent a whole month at a (very) fictional Japanese movie monster theme park, something I’m sure unabashedly nerdy SF writer Francesco Marciuliano very much wishes was real. However, Marciuliano uses his fantasy to tell a story and crack jokes that are relatable to readers whether they are kaiju-obsessed or not. You may not know what a Gamera is, but you probably get jokes about taking family vacations and waiting in line at theme parks.

TB’s Starbuck Jones business, meanwhile, requires a tome of Batiuk blog posts and a glossary of Hollywood terms to understand, and a miracle to find entertaining. It seems to be perpetually patting itself on the back for being such a big deal in its own allegedly realistic universe, thrusting long-standing characters into Hollywood’s orbit for seemingly no reason other than to show that they are great enough to be involved in Starbuck Jones things.

I would say that my wish would be that we could leave Starbuck Jones, Hollywood, and the Valentine Theater behind… but that undoubtedly means more of Les. I can’t win. None of us can.

Dead Putz Society

Everyone is severely intoxicated in today’s strip, right? Those glasses everybody has been carrying around have surely been filled and emptied many times by now, yes?

Because I don’t really know how else to explain this. The exaggerated hand gestures, the jumping on tables, the applause, the addressing of a group of full-grown adults as “kids”… Heck, alcohol may not really be enough to explain this. Not even something as dumb as Funky still dreaming in a coma back in 2010 effectively covers this ridiculousness.