Tag: smirk

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.

Oedipus Quax

Hello loyal SOSFers, noted Betamax enthusiast billytheskink here for another couple weeks at the helm. My goal today is simple, to see if I can get more writing done than Les did over the last couple months. Let’s dive in:

Here’s the link to today’s strip.

Let’s see; 1, 2, 3… 6. I wrote six words! “Once upon a time” is; 1, 2… 4. Four words. Mission accomplished!

Also, major newspapers across the country are now printing and delivering today’s strip, in which an adult son ogles a photograph of his late mother from when she was in high school while telling her widower about how attractive she became after high school. And we all called Pete the creepy one…

For reference, Lisa looked like this for much of Act II:
lisamoore

Durwood, meanwhile, looked like this before his nose went all Pinocchio/Jughead/Doonesbury in the early 2000s:
darin

Separated at birth? Why yes, actually, they were.

The Long Goodbye…

…starts today, as Westview High School’s CCTV news program announces Bull’s retirement to the student body. I don’t know what to call it anymore, though, because apparently either Tom or his Sunday Artist Intern is spelling  the title “The Bleet” nowadays. So, what do you think? Is T-Bats slipping in mistakes like this intentionally to screw around with the snark community, or is he just going a little soft in the noggin?

Since we’re talking about The Bleat/Bleet, say hello to Bernie Silver who seems to have inherited the anchor’s chair from Owen. And since he reports that the official retirement sendoff will be on Friday, we can probably expect the entirety of next week to depict =- or at least talk about – said ceremony.

So, we’ve got Bull’s retirement, a new anchor, and a stupid typo. Other than that, this is pretty much your typical mediocre Sunday throw-away, just like last week with Funky’s leafy hairline. I can’t help thinking, though, that Tom is setting Bull up for a fall. Look at Les in panel three. That filthy, squint-eyed, lifted-eyebrow smirk. He knows something, that smug fuccboi. I’m starting to hate Dick Facey as much as Epicus Doomus does.

Profiles In Nerdage

I am obligated to link to today’s strip, but I cannot in good conscience recommend reading it.

Did we really spend three days watching Lefty screw with DSH just so she could ultimately call Comic-Con “nerd prom” and smirk? Three days, nine panels, four sleeve pins, and dozens of bricks… all for “nerd prom” and a smirk.

DSH and Crazy were not nearly this excited about going to Comic-Con back when they went in 2014. In fact they invited Holly to come along on a whim and acted as if they went quite often, if not every year. So what’s with this panel 3 scene?

I dare say that TB has ruined the Electric Company for me…
Cr... Ap... Crap!

Brick Fac-sad

DSH sweats!
Lefty grows a unibrow!
Crazy continues the week in silence!
This, bricks, and more(tar)…
Only in today’s installment of Funky Winkerbean.

I have to hand it to Becky here (go ahead and boo), she’s really got John wrapped around her finger… extorting him with a sentence and a look as if she was an infamous Mafioso, all while looking like Pavel Chekov in a red windbreaker.

Cold-blooded stuff. I think we now know who was responsible for Kevin, DSH’s short and good-natured friend and employee, “leaving” Komix Korner.