Previous >>151733658Today will cover 2005.Last time, Becky hooked up with a guy she'd been talking to online who turned out to be Komix Korner owner John Howard. The two of them went on a couple of dates and John was even prepared to propose to her until they saw on the news that Wally had been found after his helicoper was shot down. The taped interview recounted his story of being captured by a bandit named Khan but managed alert the military to his location. During an attack, he escaped and with the help of a young Afghani girl made his way back to the base. As Becky was watching, Wally entered Montoni's to reunite with her scuttling John's marriage plans. The two now reunited would eventually become engaged after Becky took a new job as WHS's assistant band director when Kara left to take the band director position at Big Walnut Tech.Lisa also took on a new job in the capital appeals division of the state public defender's office. Her job was to help on the case of Danny Madison, a Vietnam vet sentenced to death for the supposed murder of an employee during a robbery. In spite of the evidence she was able to gather, her efforts to overturn it were unsuccessful and after his execution she decided to quit and open her own practice. Not too long after, she and Les bought a house and their apartment above Montoni's was taken over by Wally and Becky.Other events included Funky and Cindy finalizing their divorce, after which Funky began dating Holly Budd. Although it got off on the wrong foot when he initially took two months to contact her after their initial date. As well, Crazy Harry's daughter Maddie was born, arriving while Crazy was in Finland winning the air guitar world championship and to replace Becky, Montoni's hired Mindy, granddaughter of Ed Crankshaft, as her replacement.
How joyous
Start of the John vs.Roberta story that will last for a good chunk of the year, though not all at once. Also the first appearance of Kevin Brown who will be a relatively minor character into the earlier part of Act III.
Very subtle. Maybe she should steeple her fingers and her face should be cast in shadow to make it less obvious.
This storyline with John will go on break for a while but will return in a few months for the trial.
Despite the name given, this is obviously Tracy and Batiuk was mixing up the names of Funky's Act I girlriends for whatevere reason.
>>151761493It’s hard to have any sort of investment in these characters getting married considering we’ve only seen them together for what, a month or two’s worth of strips total? Though looking back, I guess Batiuk never was great at writing relationship drama
>>151761366I love funky time, thank you OP
>>151761717He's incredibly impatient as a writer, especially as he got older. The Susan suicide/Les proposing to Lisa story stands out because it's kind of the opposite of all of his usual writing habits. The plots are actually tied together and the whole thing more or less progresses logically over a longer period of time.
>>151761548Wouldn’t Wally already know Nate from when he went to school?
>>151761817He obviously should. I assume it was just Batiuk's awkward attempt at trying to have Becky introduce him to Wally not as his former assistant principal but as someone dealing with the same kind of stuff.
The infamous Afghanistan strip.
One thing I should bring up is that I'm pretty sure by this point, Lee Loughridge is no longer coloring the Sundays and that those duties have been taken over by Rob Ro who will be doing so for the rest of Funky's run. He mostly was a 2000s guy who did like half the Azrael series for DC and some Marvel work, mainly the back half of New Mutants v2 and some of the later MC2 stuff like Last Hero Standing and the American Dream mini.I assume he takes over with this strip >>151761711 since this is the first time I notice that really glossy, gradient heavy 2000s digital coloring.
Another infamous strip with "terrorism in slow motion." I don't think Batiuk is intending for these to be funny but the bluntness, weariness and being less subtle than a brick to the face makes them inadvertently funny.
It's funny 'cause John is sad.
It's one of my least favorite artistic shortcuts: backgrounds being little more than filtered photos. It always looks like utter dogshit because the characters never mesh with them. I also want to say that Funky's pose in that last panel looks traced too just because it's way more over the top than what the art usually looks like.
I believe this is La Choi San's last appearance. Also if there was any doubt that she's supposed to be the Dragon Lady, here she is giving Terry's flight jacket to Wally.
The last strip is the first appearance of Rana who, due to things that will happen very shortly, will become Wally and Becky's adopted daughter. Like almost all the rest of the Act III kids, she's going to wind up severely underused despite what the general premise of Act III is intended to be at the start.
>>151762223Oh shit, I never caught that back then. I'm gonna believe her interest in baseball came from hanging around Terry and Pat a lot
Maybe I'm weird but the emotion in these strips is all off. Wally should be panicked, there should be more trauma considering what just happened. But everyone is all calm like "ho hum, a buch of people were just blown up" and oh look Wally and Becky get a kid so it's all feel good, ignore that this kid's family's bits and pieces are strewn all about the street.
>>151761366is burning your Christmas tree a real thing over there?
I really hate when people go back and try and reframe or apologize for old jokes like this by going "wow that's not funny now". But this is Dinkle becoming less wacky as any whimsy the strip still has is sucked clear out of it.
The start of Bull and Linda's relationship. Again, it's something that would have been nice to see but if you have't realzied by now, Batiuk just likes springing things on the reader and handwaving it as having happened offscreen.
>>151761910>band camp
And another change as Susan Smith returns, now an adult and practically unrecognizable. She'll have a role here for a little bit but I think a lot of this is setting things up for Act III where she'll be a teacher at WHS and have a more prominent role in the first few years.
>>151761979>going back to afeghanistan>to work in mine clearingwally can you not be a massive retard for one moment in your life?
>>151761910
Final confirmation that Matt is gone. So Matt graduated at the end of the previous year while Susan is, I assume, is in her senior year of college or something I don't know how student teaching works. Again, only makes sense if he was a freshman when he transferred over but really there's no point in trying to make sense of it.I also assume that Ally was a year ahead too and likely graduated.
>>151762603Did he graduate? Cause from the dialogue it could be that he moved out of state or just transferred to a different school
>>151762648The dialogue just indicates that he's gone. It could be that but graduation is more likely. It's not like Batiuk really cared after he did the story revealing that his dad hits him.
The dating to engagement circuit is completed in record time.Also another instace of mixing things up as Mickey's touchdown was them winning their first game in school history. The champioship came later after she'd graduated.
Isn't the general rule in situations like this that you should go to the ER and get a rabies shot just to be safe?
Kara!Like I said, this is the last time she shows up which is a shame. She could have easily been used as a friend/rival for Becky in Act III. But whatever, she goes out a winer having beaten Dinkle at his own game making her one of the lucky few Funky Winkerbean characters to escape unscathed and on top.
After spending most of the year on the backburner, it's now time to finish off John's legal problems.
John Byrne's cameo appearance. I'm also convinced that Kevin was only ever introduced for the purpose of doing this gag where Roberta didn't realize he was a midget which makes it weird that he sticks around for as long as he does.
Crazy 100% becomes anoher Batiuk stand-in by this point, mostly in regards to the comic stuff and him basically representing Batiuk's fanboyism.
This really won't be the last "comics aren't just for kids" tangent Batiuk will go on. This and "the funnies don't have to be funny" come up frequently enough that it's obvious any time he'd get criticism about it, it'd bug him enough to spend at least a week responding to it.
That's the last we'll see of Susan until the timeskip. We also won't see the new high school until then either which means for the last 15ish years, the school won't be the same building that's been in the comic since day one.
That does it for another year. Next time will cover 2006.Bull and Linda get married while a chance encounter during senior skip lead to Darin dating Jessica Darling. But if you think all is a bed of roses then you don't know Funky. Because Wally is called back into service and sent to Iraq while Lisa's cancer returns.
>>151762485I will not standby and let batiuk make dinkle lame.
>>151763101Bit late for that
>>151763327is that dinkle? did they removed his fucking hat?
>>151761615For someone whose daughter is marrying the guy who crippled her, she's taking it remarkably well.
>>151763750Only reasons I can think of are that the business his cousin owns is successful and probably support she wants since she's a local politician or her being conservative means she's supporting are troops.
One thing I've decided is that I will wind up including a few of the Crankshaft crossovers since they're a little more relevant to things going on than the previous ones where it was simply the characters in the same place.Specifically I'll include the 2007 one with Lucy Mackenzie's comic book collection since the major characters in it are John and Mooch and I believe the money from that collection is what helps fund Komix Korner in Act III. I'll also include the ones from 2022 with Mason buying the Valentine since that occurs immediately after the final reunion and kind of sets up the Funky characters showing up there afterwards, as the Channel One ransomware attack since that sets up Jessica looking for memoribilia from her dad's show.I don't really know what other crossovers there are since I don't read Crankshaft and if they're not that important I'm not worrying about it. I'm also not including the post-FW Crankshaft appearances either.
>>151763101He long reached that point and he was never my favorite character in the first place.
>>151762407what a wacky solution to a serious problem
>>151762767Dinkle taught her well.
>>151761696Wow, one strip and he's gone.
>>151761732Holly is not coming off great in these strips. She feels really prickly and hard to get along with, which probably wasn't the intention.
>>151762603She looks less like a grownup version of Susan than she does a grown Nicky from Pepper Ann.
>>151762714Didn't she score a touchdown on that play after a botched snap rather than kicking a field goal anyway?
>>151761664>>151761643thsi whole arc is in reference to that one case from Florida right?They got in trouble for selling Urotsukidoji if I remember right
>>151762087The imitation of poorly-aligned newsprint coloring on the flashback panel is pretty cute, I like it.
>>151762539Didn't Les already have the grandma student teacher?
>>151766949Yes
