pizza – Page 5 – Son of Stuck Funky

All the Way to Reno

Maddest of mad props to ComicBookHarriet for carrying us through the last couple weeks!

“Kitchen Reno“? I had to read today’s strip a couple times before I grasped that “reno” in this case is short for renovations. The weird alignment of type didn’t help. What’s with Funky’s stricken expression in panel 2? Home improvement is typically something guys like to talk about. Of course, all that Funky cares about is what all this is going to cost, especially with Holly out there sourcing materials. As the owner of a business that seems to have more employees than regular customers, he’s right to be concerned as to what this is going to cost.

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.

Pizza, Actually

Link To Today’s Strip

Or it might be when you give your oldest childhood friend your treasured copy of “Contrivance Man Vs. The Zanthian Blorks” # 1 so he he can complete his collection even though you could have easily gotten $125 for it on FleaBay. It depends on where you are in Westview at the time. Unless these are characters I am unaware of, this is an extremely rare example of BatYam devoting an entire Sunday strip to random anon-o characters, which doesn’t happen a lot in the Funkyverse. Ditto actual customers in Montoni’s. That certainly doesn’t happen every day either.

I assume that maybe this is an homage to something, maybe those old “Peanuts” strips or something. And it’s harmless enough, I suppose. I guess sometimes FW is just plain deeply weird as opposed to deeply weird and highly annoying like it usually is.

That Brown Mush on the Plate is Disturbing

Haha, can you imagine? An actual(?) superhero man is petrified just at the thought of being near a woman! Hilarious! Can you imagine if maybe an actual superhero was a woman, and not just this evil supervillain(?) Pizza Monster? The entire multiverse would collapse! They’d have to invent new words like “superheroine”, probably! Ha, total fear just from being near someone who merely suggests they might be a woman, truly this is the epitome of hilarity and quarter-inch from reality writing.