Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Sally Forth -- Into the Funky Past

For some reason, 2015 seemed to be the year of time loops. In Funky Winkerbean a time/space wormhole let the strip's original cast meet their future (our current) selves. The story line was a little problematic (even accepting the basic premise). The high school versions of Funky Winkerbean, Crazy Harry, Bull Bushka, Cindy Summers, Les Moore, Holly Budd, and Lisa Crawford encountered their older selves at a class reunion in an August, 2015 sequence.

Missing, of course, was the older version of Lisa, who had died of cancer years before. Various older characters made excuses for her absence, but the young Les Moore saw the tribute photo album and read his older self's book "Lisa's Story." (click on images to enlarge)



And that's where it gets problematic. When they returned, did the memories fade for the high schoolers? I hope so. 

Because when Lisa's cancer returned, a mix-up of charts indicated it wasn't serious. By the time the mistake was sorted out, it was too advanced to treat. One would assume that Les,armed with that knowledge, would have changed history and ensured his wife got the treatment she needed promptly -- instead of it being as much of a surprise to him as it was to her. 

Much less problematic is the Forth family encountering themselves in the corn maze. The family's inability to navigate the maze is a recurring trope in Sally Forth. In this sequence they encounter younger versions of themselves -- in a way.



Unlike Funky Winkderbean which has its characters age, Sally Forth is more or less frozen in time. In this case, its a meta time warp. On the left are the characters as drawn by original creator Greg Howard. On the right, the characters as depicted by the current team of Jim Keefe, Francesco Marciuliano and Steve Alaniz.

And Ted's right. His eccentricities didn't really blossom until Howard turned over the writing duties to others.

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