With apologies to the memory of Marcel Marceau.
…now why don’t you make like a tree and leaf! Hah! Snort!
Whew. Les is just as creepy and loseresque 10 years later.
It is revealed (oooh, aahh) that Susan is reading the draft of Lisa’s Story.
Wow, I’ve been wasting my short time on Earth adding to this blog for a whole year! I’d been doing mashups for some time before, but this has been a cheap fabulous way of setting them down in pixels and hoping that they’re making some folks laugh…or chuckle…or groan…or scratch their heads.
I don’t even have a mashup to commemorate Anniversary #1, but hey, June Morgan is in a bikini today, so maybe that’ll inspire me (I say “inspire,” because considering how June looks in a bikini, I think I’d just be depressed otherwise…).
Okay, I lied. Well, no, I just got inspired. And the more I looked at the first panel in the 3 April strip, the more I wondered why we can’t see ANY of June in the mirror. Of course the bathroom in her cabin is larger than any of the ones in MY HOUSE, so that could have something to do with it, but I prefer a more logical reason (a bathroom that large for the run-of-the-mill cruise guest is hardly logical, after all).
Thanks to Josh F., The Comics Curmudgeon hisself, for his great blog, and to Dean Booth, whose mashups first inspired me and continue to do so several years after discovering just how PhotoShop can be abused! (also to mr. bats :[ who puts up with these doodles and at least pretends to follow all the convoluted plot machinations in Mary Worth and Rex Morgan et al. when I start sputtering about them; True Fable ‘cuz he’s sweet; Mooncattie, who’s also sweet and doesn’t mind appearing in the occasional mashup (right?); and a whole buncha CC folks who I know drop in here!)
Mrs. Funky? While we’re laying all of our cards out on the table, let’s just call a spade a spade.
Time for a little “Creepy Dad Comix”! I know I’ve been really focusing on Rex Morgan, but well, the snark only spreads so thin, and the reason I’m messin’ with sad-sack Les is because he’s dredging up ghosts.
Again.
Blue cats are cooler.
And how bad is it that **I** can figure out that Chat Bleu is going to make an appearance three days before he does? Not that it doesn’t piss him off anyway (he is a cat, after all).
And so, a week of cut-rate seance chicanery bites the dust:
I don’t know why I follow Funky Winkerbean at all, or at least after Lisa’ death/the ten-year “jump.” I never cared much for the strip, and the ‘old’ characters seem to be at least 20 years older now and singularly unattractive. In some cases, like Funky himself, he may as well have been hit by a bus, as there is no resemblance between his younger self and his bloated protocorpse.
What really chaps my hide is that Lisa is still apparently alive to both Les and Batuik. There’s no attempt to show in the strip that while Les can remember his dead wife and even imagine conversations with her via his memories of her, that she’s not alive anymore! She appears as solidly drawn as any of the other characters in the strip!
Oh, yeah, and Les’ interest in his teen-age daughter is extreme to the edge of incestuous creepiness. Evidently, a decade of therapy hasn’t done him any good. Hint, Les: Funkytown can’t be that small — find another freakin’ therapist! Get laid! Even if you have to pay for it! You’re such a sad sack, that you’d probably qualify for a sympathy screw.
In Sunday’s strip, he and Summer (and Lisa) go shopping for a dress for Summer to wear at some school party. I thought it might be improved by allowing Lisa to opt out of the mad crush at the mall and have Chat Bleu be Les’ Handi-cat.
Lisa makes a visit from beyond the grave (thrilling? hardly.). Cheapskate Les probably hopes that the “bonding” between Summer and her dead mother will be enough so that he doesn’t have to spring for a decent birthday present for her.
Kinda makes you want to poke Les, doesn’t it?
GET OVER IT!
The Funkiverse has moved on ten years. Les goes to NYC on business, but goes to all the old haunts that he and dead-wife Lisa visited, even when he and Funky’s ex-wife Cindy go out to dinner (and from what I’ve read, “Ellen’s Diner” is a real tourist trap, just tailored for the usual from-the-sticks first-time New York visitors (“Garsh, the waiters even sing!”). When he’s on his own, he has conversations with a frighteningly solid Lisa.
Losing a spouse is dreadful, and the way this has been presented suggests that, aside from managing to drag his sorry ass to work on a regular basis, all Les does in his free time is mourn. I suppose in the Funkiverse, that could qualify as a hobby, though. Yeesh.
Still, I had to indulge in this pity party for one good reason (hint, he’s feline and snarky). The second good reason kind of appeared during the mash-up (as he is wont to do).
So Mopey Pete gets pulled over by a motorcycle cop in the Sunday strip (6 July). The dialog doesn’t matter (well, I guess it does, if you’re going for a comic strip). What matters is that Batuituitituik has apparently been getting his model inspirations from old Village People record covers.
Me? I just surf the ‘Net for Tom of Finland art. That’s a lot more fun…
(And yes, that is crappy, ungrammatical Finnish. If you’re burning to know what’s being said:
“Boxcar!” (well, actually “Train!”)
“Hmm…”
“Good morning!”
“Sorry. Very sorry. Very very sorry. Very very very –”
“Great! A telephone number!”
“Hah! A false telephone number! Loser!“.)
First, the Comics Curmudgeon site goes down mid-morning (and is currently staying there). Then, I put together a new Rex Morgan, only to hit the wrong button and have it vaporize; okay, it was pretty lame and fairly obvious as to what’s likely to happen in the plot (several of us are gunning for Max’s kid to be none other than “‘Dipstick’ Mallory, Track Star”), but poop, none the less.
So, who’s to blame? I say Elly Patterson! With Linda Bushka (or whatever the hell her name is) acting as insufferably pleased with herself as St. Elly, I think a martyrdom is in store…
