Montoni's – Page 49 – Son of Stuck Funky

Bull? Crap.

History is made in the Funkyverse today as Montoni’s features an actual PAYING CUSTOMER! Yep, money and everything! Will Funky frame the bill and hang it up next to that band box thing? Does the drawer on the cash register even work? A funny touch there would have been to have Funky hold the bill up to the light to see if it’s real.

Small Town High School Extra-Curricular Activities Are A Nightmare For All Involved Month continues today as Bull hops on board the complaint train with his sad-sack-sorry little tale of woe. Poor, poor Bull has to somehow find the time to go through the motions TWICE this coming school year, first manning the helm for his perpetually horrible football team and then guiding the Summer-less (and thus irrelevant) Ladygoats during the upcoming basketball season. Oh the grim burden these gym and band teachers carry upon their shoulders (or shoulder, as the case may be). That school board should be ashamed of itself for forcing that beloved, obese and tremendously incompetent moron to do a little actual work for a change. No, I mean it…look at him. The work very well may kill him.

So does Annie only grace the girls’ basketball team with her presence when they just happen to have two all-time KSU-bound WHS legends on the squad, or was that just (ahem) a coincidence? Annie: kindly old basketball sage or spotlight-hogging front-runner? And, simply because I never run out of things to complain about with this strip, what of the boys’ basketball team?

Ring of Shame

The second most surprising thing about today’s strip: Montoni’s has a modern touchscreen point-of-sale system. you’d expect to see an old-time ch-ching! cash register behind the counter.

The real story here is how Rachel “I’m only a blonde on Sundays” O’Conner cleverly finagles a real engagement ring from her dishwasher fiancé. Fashioning a ring out of Wally’s I.O.U. initially seemed sweet and spontaneous. Now she makes it clear to Wally that she intends to wear that damn thing on her finger every day, informing every Montoni’s customer who asks “What’s this?” that Wally didn’t buy her a ring.

Let’s Knot Go There

MKay
August 4, 2013 at 1:22 pm
Mop the floor at Montoni’s! It’s time for another society page gala!

merrypookster
August 4, 2013 at 11:55 pm
Better hurry and book Montoni’s

bobanero
August 5, 2013 at 8:35 am
Oh Boy!! Another Montoni’s wedding reception coming up…

“Funky’s going to want us to get married at Montoni’s, you know…” Thankfully, though, today Wally surprises us all, finally showing a little backbone and even some admirable restraint. Among the perfectly justifiable responses he could offer: “Who gives a fuck what Funky wants?” “Have our wedding in the pizzeria where we both work? Like I’m not humiliated enough by having to give you an I.O.U. instead of a ring…” Instead, our hero cooly dispenses some geeky t-shirt wisdom.

Not the Retiring Type

I was thinking about doing that, Crazy, and still am…’til then, though, I’m grateful for the work of awesome guest authors like Beckoning Chasm. Thanks for filling in the last two weeks, BC!

– TFH

“So she makes me come here [to Montoni’s] every day.” We know the feeling, Funkman: over the last three months, the majority of strips have been set in the pizzeria, a.k.a., the Chapel of Love, a.k.a. Center of the Funkiverse. Since today’s strip won’t be online until midnight, as a “treat” I’ve scanned the strip from my newspaper.

I looked through the rest of the funnies to see how other cartoonists use Photoshop for their Sunday strips. No doubt they all use it at least to color the panels, and a few more employ Photoshop to add small touches like background gradients. Doonesbury and Get Fuzzy are a little more judicious in their use of digital enhancement: used sparingly, it gives the panels a little extra depth. Tom Batiuk, or whoever colors his Sunday strips, pulls out all the stops, and the result is scenes that appear artificially (and dimly) stage-lit. Observe the two-tone highlighting on Funky’s big head. Where’s that blue light coming from? Have hours lapsed between the daytime first panel exterior shot and the interior shot in panel 2? Interestingly, over at Crankshaft, Chuck Ayers has a much lighter touch with the shading.

You Know You Know

Link to today’s strip

Boy, that first panel–yeah, Funky, Les needs more encouragement that he’s the greatest genius of our age…you know? Wait, did I say “genius?” Of course I meant “ass.”

Speaking of which: who’s the blonde in panel two? It’s not Rachel, since she (usually) has red hair and hers is less than shoulder length. Do we have a new character?

Probably not. Pretty much all the new characters introduced in this thing disappear right after they’re introduced. Aside from Chullo and Glasses, all the high school kids were shed last graduation day, and have barely been seen since. Tom Batiuk doesn’t seem to like new characters; they serve a plot point, then disappear. Take Blonde Waitress, here. Her plot point is to show that, just below her elbow, there’s another customer at Montoni’s, so take that, all you beady-eyed nitpickers!

Well, Tom, I don’t like any of your old characters, and even if I did, you seem hell-bent on making them unlikeable. Take Crazy Harry for example. I liked him because he seemed to have a positive attitude toward things he cared about (admittedly, Tarzan comics, but still). There was a strip about a year or so of the young Crazy surrounded by Tarzan books which was genuinely good, and really reflected a “sense of wonder” that stories can embody. So I thought Harry was kind of cool…well, Tom Batiuk can’t have that. So Harry was made just as obnoxious as everyone else. If any character is to be liked, by gum, it’ll be Les Moore or it’ll be nobody…which it is. Eventually the whole town will be populated by Les-clones, probably hatched from pods in Cayla’s garden. Lestables.

When I started my sidekick stint here, I was hoping to get a Les arc–the guy’s so damned punchable and pathetic, I figured the jokes would just fly from my fingertips. I should have known better, though–Tom Batiuk has become very protective of Les, and the arcs in which he plays a central role have been carefully set up so as to deny most of the potential for sarcasm. The story this week has been, basically, Funky tells Les that he, Les, is a genius. Les agrees. Cayla sits in admiration of Les. The reader vomits.

Of course, I think Tom Batiuk has become pretty protective of almost all of his characters. I’m trying to think of the last time that any of them made a simple mistake. The only example I can think of was last year, when Funky accidentally left a CD in his leased car when he returned it. Notwithstanding Chullo and Glasses, who are the only characters played for laughs (and I’m being charitable), can anyone think of mistakes made by the main cast?

I have to admit, I can’t get over Funky’s line in panel one (I would have used a different finger, though). “Wow, you are such a brilliant, talented, handsome man, Les…you know? Well? Well…did you know that? If you didn‘t know that, can I get credit for telling you? Please don’t wish me into the cornfield, Les.”