Tag: retcon

Momenade

Today’s strip is the kind of maudlin slop that TB believes makes his comic strip stand out from the strips that people actually enjoy. Why is Holly telling Funky this now? Was this supposed to run before Funky and Holly left on their ridiculous road trip? Why wasn’t this a week long set of flashback strips instead of one of TB’s unloved trademark walls o’ text? Did Holly’s mom really go to prom with her daughter? Do I really care about any of this?

No.

Edit post script:
I had to write this on a telephone in a car and neglected to thank you all for putting with me for two weeks. Our fearless leader TFH takes the helm tomorrow. Have a safe and happy Labor Day weekend SOSFers.

Lisaday, March 10

Today’s strip was not available for preview. If this week’s trend holds true, we’ll be seeing another Les-Lisa milestone. The most likely possibilities:

– Les’ European adventure from 1995 – Where he chased Lisa across Europe to propose to her after Susan sabotaged his original audiocassette proposal.
– The post office bombing that injured Lisa in August 1996 – You can read the whole thing right here on SOSF.
– The Halloween 1996 wedding – With Funky Winkerbean as Spider-Man in the DC-Marvel crossover no one asked for!
– The strip that launched TB’s opus – You know the one…

In case my guesses are totally off, and so no one visiting SOSF today leaves empty-handed, here is Lisa’s very first appearance in Funky Winkerbean:

FW11-8-84

And as an added bonus, I regret to inform you that you will be able to own your very own hard copy of the strip above (and many others) come October with the release of Prelude: Lisa’s Story Begins, available for pre-order NOW on Amazon!

Gless Joe Vs. Bald Bull

Our old friend the park bench returns from a long absence in today’s strip. A pity that these two are disturbing its peace. Or were disturbing its peace, rather, as Les and Durwood are STILL flipping through old photographs.

You could probably argue that they are flipping through new photographs staged to look like old photographs, as TB redraws all of these flashback panels, but then you’d be debating the semantics of Funky Winkerbean, which (speaking from experience) won’t get you invited to many parties.

Anyways, today’s flashback panels pretty accurately replicate the original strip from August 1993 (The Westview High School class of 1992 1988 had a 5 year reunion? Weird.)

TB has, of course, recapped Les punching out Bull at the five year reunion before, though not with these same panels. It was part of Les’ reminiscence of his time with then-fiancé Lisa after she was injured in the 1996 Westview post office bombing. This was less than three years after the famous punch, by the way. Again, it was a fairly faithful reproduction of the original strip except that Lisa gets a snarkier 3rd panel line in the flashback.

Oh, and if you are wondering what awful thing Bull said about Lisa to deserve being punched… Uh, I’m not sure, honestly. At the most, he was being patronizing to Les while making a mildly unwelcome but factual statement about Lisa. Anyways, Bull was remarkably cool about the whole thing, in an early example of the common Act II trope where Les’ haplessness was played to make others look bad instead of for humor.

Swing and amiss

I will give Tom Batiuk this, he rarely reuses artwork. Story arcs, dialogue, themes, comic book references, potentially fatal diseases, and whatnot, sure… but not artwork. No, he loves redrawing Act I scenes in his current “realistic” style.

Which we see in today’s strip, where he has redrawn a pair of panels to almost exactly match the strip from May 10, 1985.

FWcompare8517

Lisa appears less desperate in the 2017 panel than she did in 1985, though one could say she appeared Les desperate in 1985… On the Funky Winkerbean retcon scale this is RETCON NINETY-FIVE. Today’s strip hits RETCON ONE in panel 3, though.

Les, who alleges that he was so in love with Lisa back when this happened, actually asked three other girls to prom before he asked her: Cindy, who Les files a sex discrimination suit against after she turns him down; Allison, who Les asks via world’s worst wingman Crazy Harry; and Tracy, who Les openly insults before asking.

Oh, and he doesn’t appear to know or remember Lisa’s name until after they dance, (in some pre-prom dance in the gym that they are both attending? I can’t quite figure out what is going on.) referring to her as “that girl” in his thoughts before asking her to dance.

Past Dense

Link To Today’s Thing

Even time travel is a snore in the Funkyverse. Crazy discovers a time portal and the only thing that comes to mind is to invite his dimwitted pals to gawk at it. Then they make inane stupid “observations” in a way that suggests they’re not all that impressed. Totally Batiukian. Maybe they could travel back to 1972 or whatever and convince Batom to get himself a nice accounting degree or something.

God, is Lisa irritating or what? Why is she even there? I don’t think she even attended WHS in the first place. And I’m sorry, but retcon photo album corners go with sepia-tone, otherwise it’s totally inappropriate. And why is Crazy the only one that remembers any of this? Sigh. I hope they eventually jump into this thing, as right now it appears they’ll be talking about it for a week and a half.