Montoni’s – Page 17 – Son of Stuck Funky

That’s A Good Boy

FW’s most beloved character (by far) is finally back! No, not that bizarre Wally impostor, whoever he is. Of course I’m referring to Buddy The PTSD Service Dog, who’s as fuzzy and lovable as ever. It’s about goddamned time too. That’s a good, good dog!

Mysteries abound in today’s somewhat peculiar installment. Did Wally always wear those scholarly glasses? Why aren’t Wally’s male classmates smothering Buddy with love as well? Why is Rachel so insecure? Didn’t Batiuk use this exact same gag at least once before? So people still say “co-eds” in this day and age? I really don’t know, but I do know that these idiots are a breath of fresh air after two hundred consecutive weeks of Pete, Boy Lisa and f*cking comic books, that incredibly clunky line of expository dialog in panel one notwithstanding.

Reach Out And Punch Someone

Link To Today’s Strip

Ha ha, look, a callback to a recent arc! You remember, the one where Holly was all upset because Cory never answers her calls! Remarkably, it’s still exactly as funny as it was the first time. Even funnier is the wary look on Funky’s face, good thing they left Mr. Weisenheimer in charge instead of someone qualified. Nice going, fatso.

So I guess they’re really taking this trip to Florida. Holly and Funky in a car together for six days…(shudder). That’s considered torture in some countries. Not this one, though. At this rate the Alumni Reunion Band thing could take years to play out. Then again, tomorrow’s strip could feature Funky and Holly talking about the trip and the reunion in the past tense and honestly I wouldn’t even bat an eye. After yesterday’s strip, a two-week car ride arc is the least of our problems, as a senior citizen marching band arc appears to be, uh, looming, let’s say. Sigh.

Those eyeballs in the corner really freaked me out until I realized it’s just the Montoni’s logo in the window. The sudden attention to detail really threw me off.

The Gazebo Is Not A “Destination”

Link To Today’s Strip

Early Act III Cory had a personality. A sullen disagreeable personality but a personality nonetheless. But that was a long time ago, during that weird period when FW was still basking in the Pulitzer (nominee) afterglow and BanTom was still doing his Act II-style serialized “stories”. Here in 2018 The Corporal is just another annoying wryness drone with a strangely-rendered head, buzzing in and out of the strip every few years to crack wise and further some glacially paced plot line that’s been going nowhere for a solid two or three years now. Just marry the two of them already, why does their engagement need half a decade to play out?

Why’d he even bother with bringing Cory back at all? This strip is lousy with little-seen characters who offer nothing when they pop up out of nowhere every three years, I seriously doubt anyone would have missed Cory any more than they miss, say, Summer or Jinx or Cody or the field goal kicker. It’s all so pointless and random. But at least we have another (sigh) wedding arc to look forward to in two or three years, followed by the inevitable Pete and Mindy comic book (sigh) wedding which should be on the schedule in 2022 or thereabouts. Oh boy.

No Pizza Mind

Link To Today’s Strip

Man, Wally and Rachel must be livid right now. Despite working there for a combined one hundred years, their boss totally overlooks them and hands over temporary control of Westview’s pizza supply to the moronically grinning Corporal and his stupidly smirking sidekick Rocky instead. Of course The Corporal responds to this huge honor and massive responsibility by immediately resorting to imbecilic wordplay, the sort of thing that would have caught him a serious beating (at best) back during his Army days. No one respects Funky at all, possibly because of insanely stupid decisions like this.

Seriously though, in Westview pizza is like a public utility and ANY disruption in the pipeline could lead to throngs of malnourished comic book nerds doubling over with crippling hunger pains, something the town fathers are woefully unprepared for. Picture hordes of starving young comic book thugs ransacking homes and freezers looking for a Mama Celeste to tide them over..if you can stomach the thought, that is.

Nuclear Whiner

Link to today’s strip.

I’ll admit I found today’s strip amusing. What’s interesting is that Tom Batiuk actually took the trouble to build to this punchline, both by portraying Holly as increasingly anxious and angry, and by using yesterday’s strip as a direct lead-in to today’s. The payoff is nice; it shows Holly being self-aware enough to know she was overreacting, and it de-escalates things (for now). It also shows that Mr. Batiuk is (or was, as this week was likely made up of old standby strips) capable of creating something that is at least funny.

The pacing is still off–it would have been better to cull the “fat-fingering” episodes and reformat this arc as a single Sunday strip–but it’s been obvious for some time that Tom Batiuk is just running out the clock. Ya can’t make that ol’ 50th by being briefer, after all. Still, the week showed some nice craftsmanship; the humor, instead of coming completely out of the blue like most of his “wit,” was planned in advance. Bravo.

The craftsmanship in the artwork is 50/50. The drawing of the scene is quite good, showing some nice perspective and giving a sense of “place.” The characters, on the other hand, are rendered as slap-dash, sketchily-defined blobs–and I’m aware that they are slap-dash, sketchily defined blobs; it would just be nice to see some consistency panel-to-panel.

It would also be nice to see the non-author avatar characters drawn with a bit more sympathy. Holly looks like she steps on puppies for fun, and Funky looks like someone exhumed him from a shallow grave somewhere. But none of that will change; it’s also obvious that Tom Batiuk just loathes Funky with all his heart. Still, there’ve been worse weeks here; considering we had no Les and no comic books, I’d put this episode in the “plus” column.

Congratulations Mr. Batiuk.