“I thought you were dead.”
Says Bernie in today’s strip
“Nice to meet you too.”
Bernie, Bernie *sigh*
It’s Phil Holt that’s the dead guy
Turn in your nerd card
It’s a fair guess, though
Batom Comics was founded
65 years back
That’s without time jumps
So Flash must be 90 plus
Did time stretch his face?
Thatsnought’s creepy smile
Over Durwood’s chicken scratch?
It’s a rictus grin
Pete, what’s with that face?
Keep your hands where we can see
Please please please please please
The overestimation of Pete and Durwood’s market value we saw yesterday continues in today’s strip, though now it is Durwood and Pete who are doing the overestimating.
$10 to draw Thatsnought Hewmore into a Sophomoric Sightings panel?! That’s piracy! Durwood draws a couple of unknown titles for a startup comics publisher and is exhibiting at a Free Comic Book Day event, nobody is there to spend money at all, much less on his limited artistic skills. Durwood should be glad-handing customers as much as possible in hopes that they’ll even consider thumbing through next month’s issue of The Inedible Pulp.
Pete’s offer is a bit better, partially because he’s charging less but mostly because he’s sitting next to Les. In contrast to Pete’s attempted $5 grift, Les is trying to unload copies of Lisa’s Story at (presumably) the suggested retail price of: HA! No.
You know, if I saw a couple of teenagers hauling a mattress toward my house, I’m not sure I would deduce that they are 1) high school students and that 2) they are selling mattresses to raise funds. (I’m not sure what I would make of it, to be honest.) That this guy has correctly deduced all this makes him much more of a detective than either Bernie or Thatsnought; thus, he has every right to ignore the “wit” offered, pivot on his heel, and slam the door in the faces of these inept salesmen. Something I’d honestly like to see happen more often to the regular cast, followed of course by dumping vats of boiling oil over them. I’ll stop there, because I could probably go on for page after page of Funky Winkerbean cast humiliation, and I’d never get any work done.
Is it my eyes, or is that mattress getting smaller and smaller? They should just sell them as pet beds, because no human being over the age of six is going to spend a comfortable night on one of those. That is, if “comfortable night” is a possibility in this strip.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! May you look fondly upon the year to date, and may fortune smile on you in the coming months. And yes, that includes you, Tom Batiuk.
Have you ever watched a comedian start a bit, and it just sits there and dies? And instead of moving on to something else, the comedian just keeps going on with this bit, determined to persevere, and it just never gets funny, but more and more desperate? And the audience goes from unamused to slightly hostile, and then gradually starts feeling embarrassed for the guy, and finally goes straight into concern for his well-being?
Yeah, that’s what I’m seeing this week. None of this has been funny by even the most generous measurement, and throwing in terrible semi-puns just makes it more and more cringe-worthy.
I can kind of see the process here–“What would be funny for band members to sell?” And Tom Batiuk thought “Mattresses, of course.” And I’m sure someone–possibly–could make that into a funny week or so. But there’s that problematic word again–“funny.” Coming up with a funny premise is just step one–step two is to turn that premise into a funny joke. Otherwise you’re stuck with a bit that never gets funny and makes your audience feel embarrassed for you.
That might, might get that comedian some sympathy the first time around. But if he persists with that bit, thinking that sympathy is enough, he’s going to find his second audience consists of a few sleeping drunks, an irate bartender, and a scowling janitor anxious to start cleaning up.
There won’t be a third audience.
PS: If the “springs” bit is supposed to be a pun, I don’t think it works. I may be mistaken, but mattresses don’t have springs, it’s the box springs beneath the mattress that are loaded with springs. But I’ll admit I’ve taken a leaf from the Batiuk Book and not researched the Hell out of this.
I guess the joke, if that is the correct term, is that Thatsnought never thought being a musician would entail heavy lifting.
It’s quite possible that, in the myriad of universes parallel to our own, this joke is considered quite a knee-slapper.
In this universe…not so much.
It strikes me that there’s someone who might start to rethink a career in cartooning.
Son of Stuck Funky 
