Tag: real places in Ohio

You Can't Go Back If You Never Leave…

I don’t know about you all but today’s strip left me feeling a little wistful– whoops, nope, that was just gas.  I have to say, with all of the retconning going on lately and TB’s freedom to claim *whatever* bulls*** he wants, I’m left a bit disappointed that from the looks of things, the most exciting thing that happened to Les during one of those mysterious time jumps is that he sulked around a college campus with his nose in a book of bad poetry he’d written.  How much more interesting would it have been if Les had said: “Failing that class was rough, but it was nothing compared to when I thought I could enlist in the Marines…”

Um, a zillion times more interesting.

Just for the record, here’s the distance he’d have to travel for his “big escape” from Kent, Ohio, back to Medina, Ohio.

36 miles.

 

I know this was in the days before Google maps but didn’t he at least have a car!? Escaping talk aside, as an ex-Ohioan I can tell you that most kids dream of getting the hell out of the state, not moving back to the small town they grew up in.

This begs a question I actually have *no* idea about.  Does Les have parents?

 

 

If This Made Any Sense At All I'd Call It Retconning

My head asploded as I attempted to summarize today’s strip.  At first I was as confused as hell because I thought the sepia-toned flashbacks were hearkening back to Les’s college years except for the fact:

1. He still looks in his 40s.

2. He still has that now retcon-yellow yellow shirt.

Then I realized that Les is getting all sentimental and reminiscing about something that happened literally *yesterday*.   The problem is, does his reference to “planning my getaway” refer to when he wanted to leave Kent State as a college student after he graduated or is he referring to want to leave yesterday?  ‘Cause if it’s the latter, hey, Einstein, get in your car and drive 90 miles to home.

One last thought: please, God, I don’t ever want to see that Panel 2 expression on Les again unless I can see where his hands are.

Funky Cold Medina

I guess TB needs to remind readers once a year that Funky is a recovering alcoholic. Although taken with the strip from two Sundays back, could he be setting Funky up for a relapse? The Winkerbeans waltzed to that tune with the line “Till [sic] I can gain control again…” Is he losing control? Are Funky’s demons “exercising” him?

1/4″ from Reality Dept: the gazebo figured so prominently in the past week’s strips, and is rendered so lovingly in today’s; I took a notion that TB must be copping a real-life structure somewhere in, oh, I don’t know…Ohio? Sure enough, a bit of Googling yields pics of the real-life gazebo in Medina Square in TB’s hometown. And true Batiuk completist collectors may pick up a CD of the Medina Community Band‘s 2009 “Salute to Sousa” concert; cover artwork by you-know-who.

Way to Go, Ohio

http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20110204&name=Funky_Winkerbean

Young Les, who retroactively grows handsomer by the day, gazes out over the mighty Cuyahoga and plans his “getaway”. This would be much more poignant if we didn’t know that his post-college trajectory would land him right back in Westview!

Bonus Location Footage! Our Kent, Ohio correspondent crisis du jour has once again provided pics of the actual locations in today’s strip! Les’ reverie unfolds not very far from the KSU campus.

Pufferbelly Restaurant
(behind Les in p1)
(click to view larger)		  

The old Bisslers building and the bridge
over the Cuyahoga (panel 2)
(click to view larger)