Tag: time travel

In which Bull is slow on the uptake

“D’oh!” mournfully Bull does not add after having failed to come up with a brilliant lie about why Old Lisa is absent from Not Her Reunion ([modified] panel 3)

“You’re going to get cancer, but you’ll have a chance to survive it if you make sure your clean bill of health is legitimate. You’re going to get a clean bill of health too soon because of a paperwork error. Here’s a copy of my book with all the important dates highlighted,” Old Les does not helpfully add, because he’s nowhere to be found and useful as a football bat.

O Funkere! O Mortificatione!

“How long,” old, mortified Cindy asks the Funkies Winkerbean, “have you two been standing there?”

“Since 1972,” neither Funky responds, because that would have been funny.

“What does self-loathing mean?” instead queries Funky the Younger, which makes me wish that he had left home in 1975 and headed west, to San Francisco, and never looked back.

Spoiler Alert: She Fails

In today’s strip, old Cindy ’fesses up to self-loathing, and, astoundingly, tries to offer her previous self some good advice. Because she clearly doesn’t remember this encounter and hasn’t overcome her self-esteem issues, it’s clear that the advice will fail to take root in the past.

This takes place within earshot of the Funkies Winkerbean, so mortification, if not humor, will surely ensue.

Also, the gym has been replaced by a nondescript grey gradient for the last week. Has anyone else noticed that they’re enveloped in a dull miasma? Anyone?

In Which Cindy Has Lied to Her Teenage Self

“But you’re a star TV news anchor and everything!” teen Cindy exclaims to old, worn-out Cindy in today’s strip. “How can you not be happy?”

Last time I checked, Cindy was a former local news anchor, who had previously been a has-been national anchor, and who was now the news anchor for a semi-professional blog in Los Angeles. So the conversation these two selves had moments ago wasn’t exactly accurate, if you receive my meaning.

Paging Le Chat Bleu

Today’s strip poses the existential, time-travel-convoluted question “Am we happy?”—or is that “Are I happy?”

Clearly Cindy will never have read The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking, which you’d think would be required reading at Westview High, were it not for the ban on happiness of any kind, and probably the school levy failing.

Although… Cindy ought to be happy, given that her female existence has been validated by Mason Jarr, a man, coming into her life.

“And Im Livinia, the only girl in this strip but what women’s lib doesn’t know won’t hurt ’em!”
Just ask Livinia what the worth of a woman is! (Detail from inaugural FW strip, 27 March 1972.)

Mason arrived in Cindy’s life inexplicably, I might add, but needn’t, because everything in Funky Winkerbean is inexplicable. You know what else is inexplicable?

  • It’s still the evening of July 5. Talk about time paradoxes!
  • The older versions of the characters don’t remember this event (except possible Crazy Harry).
  • The older versions of the characters offer no useful advice. Here’s a thought for title character Funky Winkerbean: “Hey, kid, you don’t know it yet, but you’re an alcoholic; please don’t ever touch the stuff!” (Alternatively: “Kid, my advice is to start drinking heavily!”)
  • Young Funky doesn’t recognize old Funky from the Starbuck Jones–cellphone girl incident.

So… Cindy is going to be the latest character to be revealed—mirabile dictu—to suffer from depression, or self-doubt, or impostor syndrome. Why isn’t Le Chat Bleu there to taunt her?