I tried to come up with some thoughtful commentary here. But I just cannot get beyond the fact that Crazy Harry is mooning over what is ostensibly an eleven (and a half!) year old boy in a space helmet.
How I (Hel)met Your Mother
Tag: Montoni’s
Helmet Head
Hello again dear readers, I hope everyone’s having a wonderful summer so far.
Having to snark on fresh Funky for the first time since December of ’22 is already getting to me. And it’s only Wednesday. But it gives me a chance to reconnect with you all, the long-suffering readers and unsalaried but dedicated team members. I mainly lurk on SoSF lately, but it does me good to see comments from old regulars and more recent commenters. Deepest thanks to comicbookharriet and Banana Jr. 6000 for crafting stellar content, allowing Epicus and me to rest on our meager laurels. And an extra tip of the SoSF straw boater to the aforementioned bj6K for tipping us off (“You guys aren’t going to believe this shit”) to this first installment of Funky Winkerbean’s Untold Tales.
This Week In Act IV: More Montoni’s
Guess what?
After an internal discussion, Son of Stuck Funky has decided that we will do regular updates again.
Because Crankshaft has officially become Act IV of Funky Winkerbean. We’ve been tracking it that way for awhile, and this week seemed like the right time to make it official. For me, this week was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And I was the first to advance the idea of doing regular updates again, so maybe I’m the most sensitive of our team members. But they’re all on board with it!
That Was The Week That Wasn’t
Look at last Sunday’s strip, and then look at today’s strip.
It follows almost perfectly, doesn’t it? The story could have skipped this entire week. When it wasn’t redundant, it was confusing. Yesterday’s auction scenario now seems like a bizarre non-sequitir as we flip back to Summer’s insipid story. And next week apparently won’t be about either of these things.
I have to give today’s strip credit for moving the story along. The strip could have easily spent a month unpacking all the repetitive backstory Summer is hearing about today. Maybe her author arc won’t take as long as I thought. Batiuk probably just wants to get Summer her book tour, movie deal, and Nobel Peace Prize for Literature faster. But I’ll take the positive side effects where I can.
There’s still a lot to complain about, though. The intellectual bankruptcy of Summer’s stupid “oral history” is on full display. She asks her father’s friends about things that aren’t remotely history-worthy, and which she should already know anyway. Harley the janitor, a character so irrelevant that Linda and Kablichnik talk about him like he’s not there, gets his second mention in three days. Dinkle and the Eliminator get two panels each, even though the strip rehashes both stories constantly. No doubt this dross will be enough to make Summer the greatest historian since Pliny the Elder.
Is she interviewing people during the auction? I know I asked why she and Harry weren’t at this event, but isn’t this kind of rude? And how are you going to have a conversation while this is going on the background?
And with that, my guest hosting shift is up! This was one confusing fortnight in the Funkyverse. Though I had a blast, as always. My esteemed colleague BillyTheSkink is on deck.
Knox Landing
Mitchell Knox will obviously want the picture of John Darling, Jessica’s father who was murdered.
erdmann
Maybe Mitchell Knox will make some outrageous bid on the John Darling photo that will be enough to bail Montoni’s out of whatever supposed financial straits they’re experiencing.
bobanero
I wonder whose photo they’re removing to make room for Summer’s. John Darling’s? Somebody call Mitchell Knox!
be ware of eve hill
Winners, please come to the pay window!
A lot of you predicted this development, and today we get it as the “memorabilia auction” starts. This is the kind of detail Funky Winkerbean never gets wrong. Characters fluctuate between being dead and alive, and their surnames randomly change. But it would never forget the memorabilia preferences of a comic book artist!
Beyond that, this scene raises so many questions. What’s in all those boxes? It looks like framed pictures and rolled-up posters. Is Funky selling memorabilia that wasn’t even good enough to put on the walls? “Now up for sale, this historically relevant artifact we took off our history wall to make room for a third picture of Tony Montoni. The bidding starts at $10,000.”
How – and why – did Montoni’s con Lillian out of her tiffany lamp? That anecdote has more story potential than anything we’ve seen all week.
Where are any of the regulars? Where’s Les, who wanted to buy the sign? Where Summer, who’s supposed to be recording all this history before it’s lost forever? Where’s Crazy Harry, who spent so much time at Montoni’s he forgot to do his job?
Is “Ferris Wheeler” the best punny name Tom Batiuk can come up with anymore? He doesn’t sound like an auctioneer, he sounds like a carnie played by Matthew Broderick. At least “Amicus Brief” got his profession right. And when I’m holding up Amicus Brief as an example of how Funky Winkerbean used to do something better, there’s a real problem.
I feel like I’m watching Funky Winkerbean deteriorate in real time. It can’t even be bothered to follow up its own self-serving story points, which it just introduced last week. Did Tom Batiuk forget he has to make Summer famous? Or does he think he did enough already?
The strip’s laziness, lack of focus, and emphasis on all the wrong things, are getting worse.
Son of Stuck Funky 