reunions – Page 3 – Son of Stuck Funky

Bowling for Soup

Link to multiple weird continuity errors.

Aaaaaand just like that, the teeter tooter pivots and suddenly I’m annoyed again. All the Holly relatability of the last three days evaporates in a puff of smoke because REALLY?

This drivel should be coming out of Les’ mouth. Not only is he a self-important sad-sack always eagerly searching for a way to inject pathos into the most mundane situations, but he also was actually bullied and teased in high school. And the fact that he took a job at the same school district so that he could constantly re-traumatize himself is perfectly in character for Les Moore. He’s just the kind of insufferable pseudo-intellectual that thinks pain is somehow more real than joy, and so seeks it out.

But Holly? Holly, you were a popular and well liked HOMECOMING QUEEN who seemed to take being regularly set on fire with carefree joy. You were so self-confident (and dumb) you didn’t even realize when you were being teased.

*She is just gleeful at the prospect of self-immolation.*

Maybe I’m missing a subtle turn in her characterization somewhere between where Vintage FW has gotten to on CK and the end of Act I. But while I’ll buy that a plump middle-aged Holly might be a little daunted tonight, wondering who she hasn’t seen in 40 years might have jetted to Westview to judge her weight gain and dough slinging husband, I don’t buy for A SECOND that she was nervous every day she showed up at High School in full majorette attire.

And, news alert Holly. THAT ISN’T THE SAME BUILDING.

Crazy Harry seemed to remember and reference it earlier this year, when he made sure to take a walk down to ‘the old high school’ during his off-gassing time travel adventure.

I think it’s symbolic of this strip as a whole that Batiuk tried to move on by tearing down the old building 15 years ago, and obviously regrets it now. He wishes he still had the thematic through line. My parents attended the same High School building I did. I remember at a brother’s wrestling meet my mom walking me down to her old locker and her combination still worked. Batiuk would fume in jealousy that such an opportunity is gone. He tried to ‘kill the past’ but somehow Palpatine returned.

He started Act III with big dreams of merging all three acts thematically together. You’ve got the old Act I crew being middle-aged adults, you’ve got the grown up Act II kids in Darin, Pete, and Jessica being the new young adults just starting out, and you’ve got the Muppet Babies kids to keep the High School hijinks flowing.

But now its a gerontocracy of the impossibly old taking over everything. Even poor Pete, Darin, and Mindy have been supplanted by octogenarians.

You’ve all said it below. This shouldn’t be the 50th class reunion. Their 30th class reunion was in 2008. This pretty much confirmed that the time skip from Act II to Act III moved their graduation date from 1988 back to 1978. Summer Moore was established as turning 16 a few months prior. So is she 36 now? Seriously?

I would be perfectly fine with Batiuk having his strip officially enter Comic Book Time. It didn’t bother me at all that it took Bernie Silver six years to graduate. In a medium where a single five minute conversation can take two weeks if a comic year equals a calendar year then you’re leaving a lot of these characters’ lives out. It’s a comic strip, we understand that Christmas comes in December, school starts in September, and it takes eight years for a toddler to turn four. It’s FINE.

But the sudden, inexplicable, fast-forwarding of random characters we’ve gotten recently is just baffling. Why is Crankshaft’s great-grandson suddenly eight, when he was born less than three years ago, but Emily and Amelia haven’t aged? Why is Funky suddenly over 65 and Skyler, born in 2013, is still sitting on Santa’s lap and baby talking?

The time pool reunion arc of 2015 DIDN’T have a date or year attached. And that was a much smarter take in my humble but correct opinion. Because it wasn’t clear an entire seven years had passed since the last one. (And a 37 year reunion seems really weird)

But Batiuk couldn’t resist slapping a big fat 50 on this one. Despite only MONTHS before presenting them as all in high school in 1980!

And you know what. I’m here for it. I’m here for all of it. I’m cracking open a cold one, kicking back, and watching this train wreck. Because I have such a great bunch of people to do it with. Because it genuinely brings me joy.

Don’t let Batty get you down guys. Just enjoy the screeching, burning, twisted mess. Are you ready for a 50th reunion of “Senior Discoveries” ? Are you ready for “exploring the honesty beneath such a gathering’s initial artifice”?

Are you ready?

Skipping Out

Link to today’s strip.

This week has been a real see-saw for me. Because while Funky himself has been insufferable, and Batiuk deciding to fast track his Act I cast to their late 60’s is just infuriating, Holly has been so darn relatable.

I can’t help it, guys. She just reminds me so much of my mom. There’s not been a single thing she’s said or suggested these past three days that would be out of character for Momma Harriet. From wishing she’d lost weight for a major event, to scoffing at too much nostalgia from high school, to wanting to avoid hours and hours of vaguely remembered former acquaintances pasting on smiles while silently gauging which of them had the most loveless marriage, messiest divorce, or the most messed up grandkids.

I don’t remember the context enough for specifics, but I KNOW my mom has suggested escaping to me while driving to some dreaded social event.

“What if we just kept on going?” She smiles, desperately, trying to psych herself up for a family reunion or wedding of a third cousin’s cousin. “Drive all the way down to your sister’s, and just…hid out?”

Is the choice of the word ‘disillusioned’ weird? Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve seen the way my mom’s face falls when talking about a friend’s divorce, or the profligacy of a young adult she’d nurtured as a child. She’d rather not know that the marriage she’d been a bridesmaid for fell apart after infidelity, or the sweet little girl she taught in Sunday School had to get a restraining order on her meth-ed out baby daddy.

If I’m being nicer to Holly and this strip than it deserves, just know that it’s because all it would take is a brunette wash and a pair of glasses, and Holly morphs into my mom. And I love my mom. And if you knew her, you would love her too. And if you didn’t it would be a clear sign that you are a garbage human forever beyond hope of redemption.

I want to thank BJ6K and anneki for bringing the Washington Post article to our attention yesterday. It was the puffiest of puff pieces. It reminded me of those puff balls in the timber around here. You whack it and release a giant yellow cloud of nonsense.

Everyone had their favorite quotes, but mine had to be when he compared the first time skip to a ‘Road to Damascus’ moment. Because yeah, I’d believe that Batiuk has been struck blind on his creative journey. And now he’s sitting there at home, his eyes covered in scales, with no Ananias of an editor to come and peel his blindness away.

FYI: Cows got out again on Monday morning. They thought our neighbors’ corn looked tastier than the dry grass left in our drought stricken pasture. Fixed the fence AGAIN, gave them some big round bales of hay, and they STILL were all standing by the fence this morning, staring longingly at the green stalks on the other side of the woven wire.

Maybe if we could get some REAL RAIN, and not mother nature spitting in contempt on the dusty cracked ground…

Y’all have been amazing in the comments lately! Love all of you!

WAT?

Wat.

No really. I’m sorry.

But WAT?

I guess August 2022 is the month that Funky Winkerbean decided to try to out dick Les ‘Dickface McSmuggy’ Moore in a dickishness contest.

Because there is NO WAY that high school was more daunting, stressful, confusing, scary, exciting or heart breaking than beating cancer, overcoming alcoholism, surviving a car accident, weathering a divorce, losing a friend to cancer, raising a troubled son, and having a son in the military.

(Notice how only ONE of those things was a positive? For Pete’s Sake, Tom. Lighten up!)

Do we enshrine our high school years? Some of us, yeah. Not all of us, because like Holly said, they’re just FOUR YEARS. For some people they were pretty low key.

I had a pretty good time in high school. I wouldn’t say I ‘enshrine’ it, but I look back on it fondly. I had a group of great friends. I liked 75% of my teachers. I packed my days with extracurriculars. That’s what I miss the most about it. The thing wistfully wish I could get back is being called on to perform and having all of those creative outlets and the buffet of interests to pursue: band, choir, art, drama, sports, FFA.

The people that ‘enshrine’ high school don’t do it because it was the superlative apex of emotional experience. If someone had high school as the most exciting or heart-breaking time in their life, then they died soon after graduation, either literally or figuratively. People recognize high school as a distinct, notable time because it is a liminal period. The border between childhood and adulthood.

For many it’s the last time they’ll put on uniforms, play instruments, have their names on score boards, sing in a choir, and be asked to draw a picture. At the same time, they’re getting a little taste of growing up, dating, driving, spit-balling possible futures at a half-interested guidance counselor.

But after that, they have the rest of their lives.

I’m not married. I don’t have kids. I live in the same town I grew up in. I willingly put hours into writing a Funky Winkerbean snark blog every few months. If anyone is going to pretend High School was the MOSTEST TIME EVAR GUIZE, it’s going to be someone like me. But no. Life since then has been just as much, and often more daunting, stressful, confusing, scary, heart breaking AND exciting. I’ve gone on adventures. I’ve made forever friends. I got a tattoo on my ass. I met Mark Hamill. I kissed my baby nephew’s tiny fingernails and felt him fall asleep on my chest.

Batiuk wrote all kinds of these experiences for Funky and Holly over the last 30 years. The quality of the stories is debatable. But was is objectively true is that MAJOR STUFF HAPPENED.

In one strip, Batiuk is tossing away everything he’s written since 1993, more than half of his entire comics run.

Why did he decide to let the Act I cast graduate?

By allowing my characters to have a time-driven existence, I get to explore everything that flows from that . . . goodness and evil, happiness and sadness, weakness and strength, failure and success, love and grief, youth and age, and the quest for meaning. And the vehicle for all of this is story.
From The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume 9

But, I guess none of that matters. Since Funky is telling us today that everything explored since then is LESS meaningful, impactful, and exciting than the time these characters spent in high school.

WAT.

Jess Another Monday

A big tip of the SoSF coonskin cap to Beckoning Chasm for seeing us through the last couple weeks. Link to today’s strip

Slight scheduling change, TFH will be jumping in next Monday so you’re stuck with me this week! And if today’s strip is any indication we’ll be spending yet another week on the inner workings of the Fukyverse’s weirdest and least plausible marriage of them all, as well as seeing firsthand what will happen when a dimwitted force meets an unbelievably bland object. I mean it’s not like Jessica just got back from Iraq or Antarctica or something, she was only in California waiting for someone to ask her to film a documentary, so this magical airport reunion doesn’t really have the “emotional impact” Bat Ick probably thinks it does. Only the most devout FW reader would even realize they’d been apart, much less why.

Note how I failed to mention today’s punchline. I think that summarizes it better than any other insult or criticism could. “Airport pick-up”…just kill me now.