Tag: Morton Winkerbean

Say “Ensemble” One More Gosh Darn Time

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Mort’s BAND, Mort’s GROUP…does it always have to be an ensemble? Every week he picks a new word or phrase and just beats you over the head with it all week. Mattress, trilogy, signing and now ensemble. Oh yeah, “my mom” too.

As usual BatWhat creates a decent enough premise with reasonable comedic potential, then inexplicably steers it straight into the ground nose down, full speed ahead. Suddenly Holly is telling ancient old Dinkle marching band war stories for some reason, my guess being “intense author malaise” or “devoid of ideas” but who knows, maybe he seriously believes that someone, somewhere might find this entertaining on some level. He apparently just can’t do a Dinkle story without slipping into this weird euphoric reverie over the “good ‘ol days”, the very same good ol’ days he made a conscious artistic decision to move away from “back in the day”. What a nut.

LOL seriously though, back to the strip. It certainly looks like Holly’s well on her way to a one-way ticket to Bedside Manor herself, as apparently she’s forgotten that Funky attended the same high school she did. In fact the entire strip is named after him. And I’m sure he heard all about the big Rose Bowl parade appearance, both at the time and ten thousands times since. But I guess it was just easier and faster to pretend that Funky needs some background on this Dinkle fella than to write a plausible conversation a normal person might have. And that’s really what it’s all about, is it not?

All in all this one is so mind-warpingly stupid it can’t help but make me wonder what he was being distracted by when he half-assed his way through the last few word balloons of 2017. Something on television? Staring out the window at the ceaseless winter snowfall? Pizza? Lisa? Whatever it was, he obviously put less than nothing into this drivel.

Bore Ensemble

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Uh yes Funky, this was adequately covered in yesterday’s strip, but THANKS for re-establishing that for us. We wouldn’t want to forget a key plot point like that. So not only do they not know that Mort & company traveled to Memphis, they don’t even know that the despised Dinkle was the mastermind behind it all. I would imagine that Funky would be more amazed about his Alzheimer’s-afflicted dad’s incredible mastery of the trombone (and flawless mug-handling skills) than by hearing about that fool Dinkle, but who the hell knows. Funky does look a lot less fat today, I have to admit, which could be a very good or very, very, very bad thing in the Funkyverse. I’m just chalking it up to shitty artwork for now until the results of the biopsy come back.

O Little Town Of Memphis

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Merry Christmas to our SoSF guest hosts and commenters! Without YOU it’s all just masturbation! Have a great holiday!!

Man, Funky sure is aging (even more) poorly…the New Guy added a solid ten to fifteen years to his already-decrepit character. Soon he’ll just be a skeleton…a big fat skeleton. Obviously it’s seems HIGHLY unlikely that his father went all the way to Memphis to record a CD without him knowing about it but by the standards of the Funkyverse it’s sort of believable. I mean just last week some guy bought “Lisa’s Trilogy” as a Xmas gift for his dead wife, so this seems rather innocuous in comparison.

“Greetings From Memphis”…wow what a shitty title, they only recorded in Memphis, they don’t live there. “Hits From The Oxygen Bottle”…”Over The Hills And Warfarin Away”…”Nights in White Pravastatin”…”(Let’s Get) Physical (Therapy)…”Stairlift To Heaven”…”Code Blue Christmas”…”Fractured Hippy Shake”…”Like A Rolling Kidney Stone”… “Stray Cataract Blues”…”The Grandkids Are Alright”…”(Do You Remember) AM Talk Radio”…”Every Assisted Breath You Take”…”Walker This Way”…”We (Medi)Care A Lot”…now THOSE are titles befitting the Bedside Manorisms. “Greetings From Memphis” will just confuse people, or it would if anyone actually cared.

Totally Unaware One Moment, Rockin’ And Rollin’ The Next

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A not-altogether un-chuckle-worthy Sunday effort, although it’d be funnier if The Author hadn’t spent YEARS on depicting Mort as a total vegetable. What was the point of that long-forgotten, completely depressing and ultimately meaningless Alzheimer’s arc? Morty is one of the strip’s more likeable characters, he could have been indulging in this sort of wackiness all along but nope, he had to “address” yet another “serious issue” instead. Just like when Cory returned home as a totally upright paragon of virtue, these FW characters don’t even notice these incredible changes in their families and friends, preferring to wryly shrug and roll their eyes over these miraculous transformations.

The Drill Bores

Link to today’s strip.

Here’s a song you’ve heard me sing too many times lately–well, here it is again.  Today’s strip was not available for preview.

I’m sure it’s more celebration of Dinkle, more childish wish-fulfillment, but maybe we’ll get Funky jogging or a comic book tribute.

No matter what, I can guarantee this:  it will be boring.

Batiuk seems unable to take any kind of criticism.  When I first started doing this, my idea was to be helpful; to point out why things didn’t work, how to make them work, which things did work, and so on.  But I’m guessing Batiuk doesn’t want to listen to anything but undiluted praise–the kind he got, I guess, for killing off Lisa.

So now he’s in a situation where the only people who read his strip…is us.  He’s bored everyone else away.  And since he hates criticism and refuses to change, he’s going to defeat us in the only route left to him:  to refuse to have anything of substance.  If there’s no meat, no one can complain about the cooking.  Look at November–aside from treating a character (from a different strip!) cruelly, it was all about raising money.  Watching people offer to sell things without actually showing an exchange.  The upcoming trip to Memphis promises to be at least as dull, if not quite so predatory.  It’s the way the drill always works out–you think, “Say, this might be promising” and it never is.

It seems like a heck of a way to run a hamburger stand, but then he’s the one pumping this garbage out.

And with that, I am outta here.  Stay tuned tomorrow when the fantastical David O returns to entertain you.  In this strip, he’ll be the only one who does.