I thought for a minute that “the little boy in booth two” was Rachel’s son Robbie, whom we’ve not seen since January 2011. Nope, he’s just another luckless Montoni’s customer. Meanwhile, our old friend the green pitcher features prominently in today’s story!
Naturally, anything called “Merchant’s Day” would have to feature the only two functioning businesses in Westview. What I don’t get is how cavalierly John runs his comic book shop. Here are a couple of potential customers who, yeah, might not read comics themselves, but might know people who do and thus might buy gifts, and John can’t even be bothered to look up. Isn’t he perpetually behind in his rent payments? Isn’t the entire town continually strapped for cash? Does he not want to even try to make money? Look at the expression on his face: it just screams “Get out of my shop. Get out of my shop. If I don’t look up maybe they’ll just go away.”
Besides, given the fact that John frequently proselytises everyone about the art and value of comic books, you would think in his world there wouldn’t be anyone who wasn’t a potential fan, just waiting to have him open up a whole new world for them. Yet here he doesn’t even try.
Yes, I do know that the words “try” and “attempt” and “strive” and so forth are considered curse words in Westview, but the continual avoidance of those activities is just so. Damned. Wearying.
…come to think of it, this particular episode seems to sum up Funky Winkerbean in a nutshell. “Look…here’s something.” Lady, if you only knew how wrong you are. “Never mind…this isn’t a store.” You know what else it isn’t? A joke. The joke is right here, and it’s on us.
Sound logic there, Funky, you could land a gig with several NFL franchises or TV networks with that kind of keen pigskin analysis. No, seriously, he’d probably be an upgrade in a few cities (all eyes peer eastward to East Rutherford or westward to Oakland). At least the question of how Bull keeps his job has been answered: turns out the school board is always composed entirely of morons. “Let’s stay the course and hope that the law of averages balances things out”, otherwise known as “the roulette strategy”.
Seriously though, way to sell the program there, Tubby. Sitting there on the bench, gorging on pizza while his young charges get the crap knocked out of them by other high school programs whose coaches actually pretend to give a damn, doing little other than complaining, being grossly overweight and nonchalantly mocking his team’s incompetence. I mean I realize that BatTom has been doling out the karmic revenge upon Bull for a long, long time but seriously, does he have to be so thoroughly unlikeable? (I meant Bull but it works the other way too I suppose).
Suggestion re: a possible winning, successful, revenue-generating future WHS sports program…competitive eating. That is all.
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?
Les’ hilarious struggles against writer’s block continue! If his self talk in panel 2 sounds a little odd, it’s because he’s merely repeating what he misheard as encouragement from Cayla.
Son of Stuck Funky 
