Today’s strip is best read in print… on a popsicle stick, or maybe a Laffy Taffy wrapper. I would even guess TB took lifted this gag wholesale from a Bazooka Joe strip but for, um… obvious reasons.
My only question is, where is this snarky Funky when Les gets to thinking he’s Shecky Greene?
First, a big hand for Epicus Doomus for taking a three week stint writing these posts. Yeoman’s work, truly. I can’t tell you how many times this strip has had me wanting to tap out after one week day.
Looks like today’s strip continues what we saw last Friday and Saturday, and what has dominated 10 of the 18 strips printed since Christmas Day… yes, it is yet another installment of At Home With The Winkerbeans. Part Pluggers… part Lockhorns… It somehow manages to fall short of even the absolute worst that those two mockable comics page mainstays have to offer. Heck, I’m not even sure what is going on here.
Is the joke that Holly’s vision is even worse than Funky’s? (Believe it or not, there is 4 year old precedent for this.) Is it that Funky’s vision is so bad that he thinks their DVR has a clock when it doesn’t? Is it that neither of these characters wear glasses regularly even though they both demonstrably need to? Does TB think DVR clocks are ubiquitous in the way VCR clocks once were? (They aren’t.)
One down, thirteen more to go…
Bull’s busted racket in today’s strip would fit real nicely around Les’ cranium, wouldn’t it? Alas, the grinning visage Les sports in panel 1 as he patronizes Bull shows no obvious signs of blunt force trauma.
And so here we are at the presumable conclusion of a 5 strip story arc centered on a “friendly” tennis match between Les and Bull played in Westview, Ohio. It ends with one character welcoming the certainty and nearness of death. Of course it does…
Les finally pries open that smirk in today’s strip. Does he continue to live up to his well-earned reputation as the biggest schmuck on the comics page? Boy, does he ever!
This is, perhaps, the perfect test to see if the jerk store called and is running out of you:
Your friend has a panicked expression on his face and is admittedly struggling to breathe, beyond being typically “winded”, what do you do?
– A – Make a joke about his possibly health-threatening condition being an improvement for the environment.
– B – Do pretty much anything else.
Bonus Haiku:
“I don’t know what it
Is… but I just can’t seem to
Exhale completely”
Even when potentially in need of medical attention, Bull puts forth his second haiku in as many panels. This is notable because it is more than the last three years’ worth of writing from Les and Mopey Pete combined.
Aging gracefully
No one in Westview does it
As today’s strip shows
Smugly smirking Les
Has not spoken yet this week
Still so hate-able
The second panel
It is um… well, it… oh boy
Photoshop away
So many chain links
Has TB found his new muse
Alongside red brick
“These days I grunt when
I sit down for a break… and
When I get back up”
Well, what do you know
Bull is a better poet
Than Les the writer
Son of Stuck Funky 
