pizza boxes – Page 2 – Son of Stuck Funky

That’s A Tall Order.

Welp, anyone who guessed Cory Winkerbean over the last few days, I’m sorry but we have to cross him off our list. He’s appeared in the same panel as the Pizza Monster, so now has a better alibi than dead characters, like Bull. We’ve had inexplicable resurrections numerous times, but only one instance of quantum superposition.

Twice as much Crankshaft as anyone could want or need.

Not that I thought Cory was a likely candidate. Though he might have strong means and motive, we can rule him out for the simple reason that Cory Winkerbean is the smallest adult in this strip (ever since that actual dwarf stopped hanging around with John circa 2011.) Cory may be a former military man in his mid twenties, but he has the appearance and build of an old-timey malnourished newspaper boy.

To be fair, both spend a lot of time hearing about disasters.

And while yesterday we confirmed that the Pizza Monster could not be someone fat, he also cannot be someone short. Even given the artistic license of comic body proportions, the dramatic angles used in the framing, and the fact that the pizza box head could be taller than the wearer, if we use the shoulders as a measuring stick the Pizza Monster Person has to be as tall, if not taller than Funky.

SCIENCE!

We can also tell from their ankles and footwear, that the Pizza Monster never wears shoes that would significantly increase their height.

snd feet pics, plz.

In the often sloppy art of this sloppy strip, it is hard to gague how tall people are by measuring them against objects, but in my exhaustive research I’ve discovered that there does tend to be consistency on which characters are drawn taller than others when multiple characters are standing in a panel.

The comparison seems to be: Tony < All Other Women < Summer < Les </= Wally </= Funky < Mason < Darin.

Funky is portrayed as a tall guy. Wally is usually drawn about equal if not a hair shorter, with Les another notch lower. Mason and Darin are taller. I would feel safe crossing off our list of suspects any character shorter than Les Moore. So, Pizza Monster’s gender mindscrew last year notwithstanding, I am confidently crossing off the list all women. Though the idea of Cindy borrowing Traffic Helicopter 1 to prank her X-man has it’s allure, let’s be real, she wouldn’t be caught dead in pure white sneakers, even if her face was obscured.

So, we’ve narrowed Pizza Monster down to a tall, slim, limber, lighter skinned man. We’ve got several suspects left, and as commenter Suicide Squirrel pointed out yesterday believable motives for this prank are varied enough to make it hard to narrow down based on the crime itself.

Motives:
1). Funky’s increasing agitation. It’s fun messing with the fat man’s head.
2.) Robbery.
3.) Montoni’s staff getting revenge on Funky for unfair working conditions and/or low pay.
4). Revenge on Montoni’s for their rancid cardboard pizza.
5.) Revenge for the Great Westview Salmonella Outbreak of 2018.
6.) It’s Halloween.

But I’m sure we’ve got more clues to find if we just look closely enough. The dossiers and profiles in the comments yesterday were creative, thoughtful, fun, and wacky….everything Funky Winkerbean isn’t. If you’re not reading the comments of Son of Stuck Funky you’re doing this wrong.

A few commenters yesterday quipped that this dumb, lazy, illogical storyline doesn’t deserve this level of analysis. And they’re completely right. This material probably doesn’t deserve the consideration we’re giving to it. But there are only so many times you can write a blog post saying: “This just isn’t funny. Boy, Tom sure is lazy and self-absorbed.”

So, I try to limit criticism like that to the strips where it is most effective; not more than a couple times a shift. I would get tired of writing it, you would get tired of reading it, and this wonderful little place would die. It’s why the rotation of writers is so gosh darn important.

Every couple weeks, one of us poor saps gets locked in a room with a big stack of whatever wisps of brittle, old barnyard bedding Batiuk saw fit to rake together and shovel out. And we’re told, ‘make something of it.’ And while no one would really blame us if we just flopped down a took a nap, we all set to spinning anyway. We spin poems and jokes, analysis and observations, vitriol and sarcasm. And I usually end up selling out to the twisted little man named Grandpa Google, hoping he’ll give me some gold.

The straw does not deserve to be spun into anything. It’s straw. It’s a filthy mass of tangled and broken stems, something that hasn’t been alive in years, all puffed up with air. But this blog is all about digging through that to find the kernel of something maybe interesting hiding underneath, and growing that seed into the madness you’re now witnessing. It’s exhausting. Sometimes you fail. It’s why we all take the burden in shifts. But it’s worth it. Because when it works, it is a wonder to behold: straw into gold.

I saw so much gold in the comments yesterday. Beautiful, glorious, shining nuggets of hilarity. And it makes all the spinning worthwhile. Spin on, you crazy diamonds….spin on.

Squaring the Circle, Cylindering the Cube.

Link To Today’s Pointless Strip.

Yesterday we ruled out some possible Pizza Monsters based simply on having an ironclad alibi, and we got some interesting guesses in the comments based on the evidence. Today I want to take a deeper look using geometry…see if we can cross a few more names off the list.

First of all the dimensions of an average large pizza box are as follows.

Now lets look at the dimensions of the Luigi’s Pizza Monster. It is made up of at least two different sizes of pizza boxes though they seem to have a similar height.

So the Luigi’s monster would be, at a very minimum, 66 inches tall…and probably a little more. Somewhere between five and a half and six feet tall.

More importantly, this monster is only about 18 inches from front to back, even though it is 32 inches wide. Assuming a human torso is roughly elliptical, and using the equation to find the area of an ellipse. A = πab. With a as the minor radius of 9 inches, and b as the major radius of 16 inches, we get an area of roughly 450 square inches, and an estimated perimeter of 80 inches, However, that is an ellipse twice as wide as it is deep, most people with an 80 inch waist would not be that flat. Unless they were some kind of horrific softshell tortoise human.

🎃Elle-O-Ween🎃 on Twitter: "FLORIDA SOFTSHELL TURTLE (Dec 22-Jan 19) You're either all the way out there or entirely withdrawn. There's no in-between. You're a case study in extremes. You try your best — Pictured…not the Pizza Monster.

Point being. The Pizza Monster probably isn’t very fat. As can be seen in the bits of wrist or ankle we can see in various shots.

Also, did you know that the Pizza Monster this year has a different construction technique for the arms? I’m guessing it allows for better helicopter clinging and ladder climbing action.

So, I’ll say we can safely rule out DSH John. Even though it would fit his cheap nature to use the dozens of old Montoni’s boxes he no doubt has stashed around his comic shop in order to steal yet more pizza. And even though it would have also suited his underhanded and duplicitous side to offer the services of the cosplayer Mr. Monster last year, and then use his knowledge of that friend’s cootie allergy to steal the aforementioned pizza. Poor Dead Skunk Head is just too fat and out of shape.

By the same token, we can rule out Tony, Donna, Dinkle, Harriet, a magically rejuvenated Crankshaft, and Chester Hagglemore. They’re all just too portly, old, or both to make this costume work. Especially since, on average, the Montoni’s Pizza Monster seems to use less boxes than Luigi’s.

This pointless, boring, and unreadable chart took an hour of my life I will never ever get back. No, I don’t know why I did it, but I decided that you have to know that I did.

From the hands we can also tell that Pizza Monster has a lighter skin tone, ruling out Cayla, Principal Nate, and Bernie’s two friends who maybe have names I guess.

So our culprit is white, not fat, still limber, knows Montoni’s, knows Funky, and has such a strong desire to mess with him every Halloween that they’re willing to do all of this.

What do you guys think? Any more names we can add to, or take off, of the list?

Who was that Boxed Monster?

Link to Today’s Strip.

A most sincere congratulations to everyone who correctly guessed yesterday that the ‘WHUP’ onomatopoeia was a helicopter. William Thompson, and Cabbage Jack; your predicative Winkerplot skills, honed from years and years of skillful beady-eyed nitpicking, have served you well.

I must also second a sentiment I saw from a few of you in the comments, I don’t hate the Pizza Box Monster. I hated last year’s arc with him, but that was because it became as awkward, offensive, and misogynistic, as an elderly Bill Clinton slowly eating a bacon burka off of Adeela’s face. The first year was fine. The concept is fine.

But, who is the Pizza Box Monster? Of course, the real answer is that the Pizza Box Monster is the Pizza Box Monster. It’s a faceless reference to a annual prank at Luigi’s, as Batiuk was happy to point out in a blog post during the very first Pizza Monster arc in 2019.

Batiuk put him in the strip because he pursues patronage from minor Ohio based corporate entities in a manner that’s practically antediluvian. He’s like a modern day Virgil, putting prophecy of the greatness of Caesar Augustus (Luigi’s, OMEA, Ohiana Book Festival.) and the glory of Rome (Ohio) in the mouths of revered characters in his epic, all so the king of the world might toss him a bone instead of an exile. (Tough luck Virgie boy.)

Does Batiuk have any idea who is in that weird boxy suit? Maybe not. It’s probably no one, just an idea. A literary device. But in the universe of the strip, he (or she) has to be someone. Someone who knows Montoni’s. Someone who knows Funky enough to want to prank him three years in a row. Someone who would take all this time and effort to annoy a middle-aged man on Halloween. Everyone has a motive, and no one does.

Who can we rule out? Well, certainly characters who have been seen at the same time as Pizza Monster.

Funky and Holly. As well as the Mr. Monster cosplayer.

And now Rachel and Crazy Harry.

I didn’t want to rule Harry out a first. But while Crazy Harry is crazy enough to have gone from standing in an alley, to putting on an elaborate pizza box costume he’d stashed in a dumpster, to climbing on a roof, to clinging to a rope ladder dangling from a helicopter. To letting go of the helicopter, climbing back down the fire escape ladder, and sneaking in the back of Montoni’s, I doubt he is strong or agile enough to do that without breaking a hip.

We also can rule out these customers, who were unfortunate enough to witness the Pizza Monster the last couple years.

Whoever these customers were, we know two things about them. They have stomachs of pure iron, and they aren’t the Pizza Monster.

Also we can rule out Mopey Pete’s shirt for appearing twice.

But who ELSE can we rule out? Who is our most likely cardboard costumed culprit? Tune in tomorrow.

À la Recherche du Temps Pizza

Link To Today’s Strip

Comic Book Harriet here again! Can’t believe I’m up again already. It seems like yesterday I was struggling to find a band turkey joke that wasn’t as overdone as the ones in the strip. But Tom rolls on like an ever flowing stream of consciousness, bringing me back again, panning through his muck for fool’s gold.

I want to give special commendation to SpaceManSpiff 85. He was given a relentlessly dim and myopic arc, and managed to fill the week with a overwhelming flow of cataract puns. Sir, you have my admiration. And my sympathy. Because it seems I’m going to be just as burdened this week with shortsighted visual humor.

I asked earlier this arc if Funky has always been a hapless character that only exists to be neurotic and spout lame puns. My interactions with Act I Funky come through flashback photo-cornered panels, car accident coma dreams, and the offerings of our resident Batiukian researchers. Longtime Stuckfunkians Rusty Shackleford and Banana Jr 6000 were kind enough to reply, and both used the term ‘burnout’ to describe Act I Funky, which kind of surprised me. I can’t see the preachy Batiuk, with more cheap soapboxes than a Palmolive warehouse, insinuating his main character was dating Mary Jane Wackytabaccy on the weekends, and playing it for harmless laughs. Crazy Harry? Sure. But the eponymous protagonist?

I can see it now. Panel two has Act I Funky, in all his mellow glory, blissed out on his tiny bed, with every comfort a baked adolescent needs within arm’s reach: lamp, pizza, soda, music, The Amazing Mister Sponge. Curled up in a tiny cluttered nest of his own hedonism. He even has his SHOES on the bed, that’s how much he DNGAF.

Stark contrast to Act III Funky in panels 1 and 3, sitting on a huge, empty bed, in a mostly empty room. Only a featureless smartphone and a rapidly expanding mattress his plebian pleasures. His specific interests have been pulled out, leaving us with a boring box containing a boring man with a face slowly drooping like a blobfish.

I wish Funky could have gotten glaucoma instead. We could have had burnout Funky back.

Cataract Ranch

So now we’re back to “Funky’s Body is Failing, Chapter 43”. Is that supposed to be Corey in the first panel? I hope so, because it’s legitimately hilarious that he’d have no clue that his dad is about to have surgery. Years ago, somebody must have told Batiuk that the way to get readers up to speed on what’s happening in your story is to have one character ask another what’s happening, because he sure does it a lot, and it’s super awkward every time.
Oh, and Funky is still nervous, in case you didn’t know. I really don’t know why Batiuk thinks “someone is nervous about surgery” is comedy gold, but he does.