Tony’s back in today’s strip you all!
TONY! IS! BACK! Ring the bells! Toss the confetti! Kill the fatted calf!
Yes, he’s back! Wearing the same shirt he had on when he left for “God’s waiting room” back in October, no less. And carrying the same suitcase, because… he lives at Montoni’s?
Also, Rachel is handing out invitations A WEEK before Wally’s graduation? Miss Manners ain’t gonna like this… I know I don’t.
So long Atomik Komix! Not sad to see you go.
Today’s strip moves us on to the greener pastures of… *sigh* Montoni’s.
Yep, nephew cousin Wally is having one of those newfangled January college graduations. He is also too cheap to spring for (recently-increased) postage it would seem, having Rache hand-deliver invitations and putting the savings toward paying Wally Jr’s ransom.
Meanwhile, uncle cousin Funky is wistfully wondering when Wally, who began high school the year after Funky graduated from college, became an adult. Probably sometime during the the time he joined the military, became a POW, got married, volunteered with a minesweeping organization, adopted a child, had another child, became a POW again, spent over a decade in captivity, came back to the US, got a job at Montoni’s, started going to college, got a service dog, got married, and qualified to graduate from college.
Montoni’s…the wedding venue of choice for couples who just don’t really give a f*ck anymore. A “99% success rate”??? So Montoni’s has hosted 100 weddings and only one of those unholy unions failed? THAT seems unlikely. As difficult as this is to believe right now I’m actually hoping they get back to the Big Alumni Reunion Band thing or whatever it was, as at least that wasn’t entirely predictable. I like how Rocky still has absolutely nothing to say and no input to offer regarding her own wedding, which would be wildly unrealistic in any other setting but makes perfect sense in the Funkyverse. Obviously she saw her inevitable future and gave up long ago, much like TomHack’s readership did back in ’84.
I wasn’t around, in Funky Winkerbean terms, when “Darrin Opens A Letter” famously played. As such, I’ve only seen it in the archives here–everything at one go, rather than stretched out over days.
The pacing there seems positively riveting and action-packed compared with what we’re presented with now. Yes–Funky is going to take an entire week to send a text message.
In fairness, unlike the Darrin story, this one at least doesn’t involve Les or Lisa in any way. That puts it about 50 points ahead. Just like the Darrin story, though, this one lacks anything resembling a punchline, or humor of any kind. Par for the course these days.
The signs are in; this is going to be a s-l-o-o-o-w week. Today we have another sit-com level gag, although I think even the laugh-track would refuse to perform for this one.
I can see how this one was constructed–Holly’s last line is supposed to be the punchline, and Batiuk just worked backward from there (assuming I can use the word “worked”). But Funky’s dialogue in panel one, and particularly the emphasized word “you” seems to imply that Funky’s the one doing all the texting, while Holly’s riposte–again with “you” emphasized–implies that she’s been doing all the texting. Which is it?
I mean, if you cannot establish a simple premise (who does all the texting) in a single comic strip without stepping all over said premise, well, then it’s no wonder continuity, character and history are such a tangled, unaddressed mess in this strip.
I do appreciate the attempt at humor, though. It’s not funny, but the fact that there’s a joke lurking in here is at least an improvement worth acknowledging.
Son of Stuck Funky 
