As yesterday’s pitch blackness turns into cheerful dawn, our joggers pass by what appears to be a WWI “doughboy” sleeping on a park bench. The sight inspires Les (and Tom Batiuk) to launch another zinger about how “the Wall Street crowd” (aka the “greedy, immoral morons“) create so much misery for us decent folk.
Tag Archives: the economy
Bench Depress
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
You Just Kahn’t Win
Huge news today, as in panel one we see that Funky has apparently hired some really strange looking kid (Wally Jr. perhaps?) to help out around…oh, wait. LOL, that’s just supposed to be Wally. My mistake.
I’m trying to recall a time when “things” WEREN’T “tough” in Olde Westview town…and I’m drawing a complete zero. It has nothing to do with “this economy” or the “times” in which we currently live. No, the reason every business in town struggles mightily to eke out a meager unfulfilled existence is because Westview is a remorselessly sucking black void, a vortex of failure, pain, human misery and soul-murdering realizations followed by weary, listless acceptance and total surrender to whatever dismal fate “the universe” happens to have in store for you next. A “successful” business in Westview would blow the entire FW paradigm to complete shit, as it would mean there IS a flicker of light and hope in that twisted hellscape and, as we know, that isn’t going to happen.
Well, it took him a while but Batom finally has his fictitious little town exactly where he wants it to be: devoid of any businesses other than a pizzeria and a comic book store. Utopia realized, not a deli or a grown-up (as opposed to “adult”) bookstore anywhere in sight. Perhaps they can find an oncologist willing to move into Khan’s old space, but I suppose that might just be too on the nose, even for TB.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Kahn’t Make Ends Meet Anymore
Welcome to Main Street, Westview, Ohio…where the “American Dream” goes to wither and die a slow, painful and agonizing death. Where do I even begin today? Let’s go panel by panel here…
First of all…Kahn! That in and of itself is quite noteworthy. Take a look at Wally aka Master Of The Obvious…yes Wally, that “going out of business” sign really DOES give one the impression that Kahn’s deli may indeed be closing! How someone with those keen observational skills ended up working at a crappy pizza place is a real mystery. The fact that Kahn’s is right next door to Montoni’s makes their shock and surprise even funnier. Then again, when it comes to pizza these folks are nothing if not focused.
Panel two: Check out that look of total horror on Funky’s face as he realizes that a) he’s getting a glimpse of his own not-too-distant future and b) his position as president of the local chamber of commerce is even more of a sham than it was yesterday. And look at Wally, who appears to have just realized that if he’d said nothing he’d probably be back inside already.
Then in the final panel we see Funky roaring into “heart attack” mode, as if shoveling a never-used sidewalk will somehow fool the locals into believing that their pitiful “downtown” area isn’t an abandoned desolate death-hole, a monument to failure, disappointment and shattered dreams. Actually, knowing what I do about the typical Westviewian, that could work. I mean no one ever actually enters any of these places so who’d notice the difference?
Goodbye, Citizen Kahn’s…we’ll always remember you as an especially stupid bit of Batominc wordplay. Poor Kahn, he had pretty much everything working against him from the start: dopey cutesy business name, nothing to do with pizza or comic books…you know, everything.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Wall Street Weak
I read the words “I’m like Wall Street…” and braced myself for one of TB’s ripped-from-last-year’s-headlines “topical” punchlines. Which probably would have been preferable to Holly telling us that she steps on the scale four times a year. I think when it comes to fitness goals, surely there’s a happy medium between weighing oneself daily or quarterly. And I don’t pretend to understand the financial world, but doesn’t “Wall Street” check to see how it’s doing like, every hour of every day? Isn’t that why they have those stock-ticker things?
Filed under Uncategorized
Lend Me Your (Dog) Ears
Beanie Wanker
December 6, 2012 at 7:22 am
…With Crazy Harry and his “library,” [Batiuk] aims for “quirky,” but hits “mentally ill.” Only a mere quarter inch away, in the Land of Reality, a guy who starts talking like Harry here would be brought in for psychiatric evaluation. I expect him to start carrying on conversations with these books, and maybe having sex with a couple of them.
And with that in mind, just be glad that today’s comic is only one panel…
Filed under Uncategorized
Son of Stuck Funky 
