Previous >>151538477Today will cover 1991.Last time, Cindy again got most of the longer stories as she got in trouble for cheating, was forced to babysit to earn money to pay for a speeding ticket and had to spend New Year's Eve at a fast food restaurant with Les.
I wonder, do zoomers have their own Milli Vanilli or Ashlee Simpson moment? Or do they not care about lip syncing anymore?
That strip with Funky is definitely old art. Probably why he used these so often. He really only had to draw like one strip and could just fill in the boxes over and over.
>>151551948If there's no breaks in the run of the comic at this time, it's likely he probably used these to get ahead of schedule or more easily fill-in when he goes on vacation, I'd guess
Either Carrie is just the ugly friend the pretty girl hangs out with to make herself look better or Cindy must actually value her a lot.
This is almost like a preview of how the series will get. This won't be the last strip that will have a maudlin Fred sadly ruminating on the future of the children.
>>151552180Yeah, he didn't get his year long buffer (another trait he and Willis share) until he got Chuck Ayers to start peciling Funky. It's kind of nuts to think that for about 13 years Ayers was drawing two dailies at the same time.Batiuk said his first strip was a Susan Smith on in 1994 but I can't really tell which. Either Ayers did a really good job at copying Batiuk's style or Batiuk's inking made it a non-issue.
The oil fires were supposed to be this huge disaster that Carl Sagan predicted would essentially cause the equivalet of a nuclear winter. That obviously didn't happen though.
This is the last sand kicking gag I believe. There aren't any others this summer and next year Les won't be a teenager.
I was wrong before, this is the last I-Chong mention until Act III.
Yep, it's a Carrie story of all things. I think you could reasonably argue that from about 1988 Cindy is more or less the main star of the last few years of Act I, more than even Les. It's basically her and Dinkle.
Carrie won't really survive as a regular character into Act II but she does make a couple of appearaces during a storyline where Cindy attends her wedding and then afterwards when Cindy and Funky get married. But she's not mentioned after that.
Bump
The Scapegoats are on a winning streak.
>>151552787Meant to post this.
Here she is, Tom Batiuk's worst mistake (according to Tom Batiuk).
Personally, I think Sadie's role in her few appearances before the timeskip of trolling Cindy into homicidal rages is genuiely funny. She could have had a lot more done with her after the timeskip but Batiuk basically grew to dislike her really quickly and that was it. She's definitely one of his biggest mistakes as a writer but not for the reasons he gives or thinks.
I think this is the first time that Centerville, where Crankshaft takes place, is mentioned or acknowledged in Funky. By the later years it'll come up a lot more to the point where the final "real" week of the series is in Centerville.
Hokey smokes, they did it!
Remember the old Claire Voyant gag from the '70s? Batiuk, for whatever reason, decided to make her an actual character for Act I's last few months.
Computer viruses, terrible puns, and Terminator and Seventh Seal references. Truly a lot going on in this week's series.
That finishes up the year. Next time, Act I ends and Act II starts. Les needs a date for the prom and a crisis leads to him speaking at graduation while after the timeskip he settles into his new job as a teacher at Westview High.
Cheers OP
>>151551694>75% of why Dinkle is as he is goes back to his childhood.If only his teacher knew...
>>151553470It's all her fault.
>>151552605I'm honestly pretty surprised, I went back and looked at Cindy's marriage to Mason in Act 3, and you don't really see Carrie or Sadie or whoever. It is funny that Cindy usually has her and her friends as the upper class in the hierarchy of the high school but in her later life she generally spends more time with Funky, Holly, Les, and Crazy in Act 3
>>151552625suddenly Darin grew up
>>151554639Yeah, the cast shrinks a lot after Summer graduates. Basically anyone who wasn't part of the main Act I group (which going by the one reunion is Funky, Holly, Les, Crazy and Cindy), Dinkle, Darin/Pete/Jessica or the newer Hollywood/comics characters is abandoned. And fucking Morton for some reason. Batiuk seemed to think that Morton was hilarious.Wally's story effectively ends once he marries Rachel, Becky turns into an accessory for Dinkle who refuses to go away in spite of no longer being remotely funny... it's just dire.
>>151555219I wish Darin had gotten hit by a truck before graduating high school or something.
>>151552951For those of you who were too young to be paying attention to banking scandals in 1991: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_International
>>151557277The early 1990s in general was bad economically. It's more or less why Bush lost the election.
>>151552902what the fuck was Batiuk's problem?
>>151551694I like how the panels for the flash back have little triangles so they are like photos. A Very cute arc overall
>>151552862>>151552902From just this little bit, seems like the main mistake was making her design just a shorter Cindy.
>>151558388Like I said, you can argue that in the last few years of Act I Cindy is the character with the most focus in terms of stories and gags. Batiuk obviously liked her a lot and as he said he didn't want to loser her so Sadie was created to allow him to do Cindy strips. But he quickly considered her to just be a pale imitation and so disliked her because her creation and role were flimsy. As I've said, I think that could have been used to stories about changing her up but once he decided that, that was it.I also strongly suspect that he just didn't have interest in high school stuff. A lot of the high school characters from Act II and on are way less developed or get way less focus aside from a few; Wally, Susan, Darin and Pete mostly (Becky's focus comes after she graduates). But I assume that he also felt high school was too integral to get rid of. So Sadie is mostly just a symptom of larger issues that become apparent as he gets older: mainly that he wants to focus on characters he sees as similar to himself either in interests, age, sex or all of the above.
>>151552824This is actually a little exciting when you’ve been reading about their losing streak for almost 20 years
>>151551694I wonder if this reflecting is Batiuk getting us ready for the time jump.
>>151553091>since no team in our conference has ever actually acceptedThey expect us to believe that no high school football team in their conference has ever accepted being awarded a conference championship because the other team turned out to cheating. In Ohio no less.This is probably the biggest flight of fancy in this entire strip so far.
>>151552862>>151552902Like the other anon said from what I’ve seen the worst mistake was to just make a small Cindy.
>>151552934Good for them, as the coach says no-one is going to look into those win numbers.
>>151557277Thanks, these comics are good little time capsules for the age.
>>151552962I swear he’s done this joke before word for word.
>>151552994Should have played music at the Pep Rally Harry, you’re losing your spark.
>>151553005I like the little visual gag in the third strip.
>>151553031>Harry L.What is Dinkle’a middle name?
>>151559662Ligma, maybe?
>>151553091Let’s go, team!
>>151553170Second strip took me a second, also Les is *technically* correct (the best kind of correct), it is really the fault of the question writers for giving such an open-ended question.
>>151553184I wonder if Batiuk is venting here.
>>151553198Honestly I enjoyed this week.
>>151559662L. like how Truman's middle name is S.
>>151552824scapeG.O.A.T.s!
>>151552951the computer should stick to star trek conventions.
>>151553091I like the callback to the aquarium joke
>>151559638same with the last one here >>151552092
>>151553229It’s somewhat refreshing to see a strip that doesn’t go down the route of ‘TV/phone bad’ and has a bit of fun with the idea.
