Just wondering… the gag in last Sunday’s strip involved the words “folk you” (and Bucky obviously mistaking that for a more well-known phrase), and the one before that centered around the word “coon” and Satchel speaking in what could be taken for ebonics. While this might be considered pretty mild in the world of “comix”, it’s not exactly typical Sunday-comic fare.
He might lose some papers, but he won’t lose his contract. Nothing goes out without his syndicate’s editors (sometimes reluctantly) approving it.
I thought you were asking because it is so painfully unfunny that he must be trying…
I used to really enjoy the strip. Over the past year or two, I agree, it’s gotten progressively weirder.
It also looks like Conley misses deadlines fairly regularly. At least once every few months, a week’s worth of the “Get Fuzzy” strips in the Chicago Tribune run with a message: “At press time, a new “Get Fuzzy” strip was not available. Please enjoy this strip from (some earlier date).”
It’s always been my impression that Conley ran out of ideas for the strip fairly early in its life.
By the time my newspaper picked the strip up, the strip already appeared to be gasping for air. I saw one of his anthologies in a bookstore once, and his early strips were much funnier.
It’s a shame, because his characters are funny-looking and well-drawn. He just doesn’t know what to do with them anymore.
Well, yeah, that’s the other thing. It does seem like he’s burned out. The “folk you” gag was particularly badly set up… it was like he got this idea for a gag, couldn’t think of any reasonable way to pull it off, and went with it anyway.
In other words, he pulled a Stephan Pastis?
You might have a case to make on the first one (though any unseemliness is totally made up for with the punchline), but the second one is a non-starter. Ebonics? Seriously?
You don’t see how changing “Satchel” to “Satcha” when disguised as a “coon” could be taken as a play on ebonics? What’s the other joke?
You guys actually read newspapers? I suppose you do that while be-bopping to your phonographs and tinkering with the vacuum tubes from your televisions? 
The real problem with that strip is that Conley botched the big pun. He obviously meant to include the word “fragile” between “Cali” and “plastic.”
Now, this is interesting, because usually it’s Bucky and Satchel who misread things. This time it’s you. Satch said “Folk! You folk, buddy!”, not the other way around. Satchel, trying on the idea of “rocks” meaning “excels,” assumes that some other kind of music would substitute for rock.
Satchel has a dog brain. With his limited smarts, he cheerfully tries to make sense of the world. He almost makes it.
Bucky is insane and irrational, but he believes he’s brilliant.
The strip works for me most of the time, but I realize other people don’t see it that way.
Ahah… that’s what I get for posting about something I read quickly just after waking up :smack:
Still… although I understand the joke better now, I still think it’s relatively easy to misunderstand. If it were not for the unfortunate similarity of “folk” to that other word, I guess I would have sat there for a minute or two and puzzled it out. (“Let’s see… Satchel is saying “You folk” instead of “you rock”… but why did Bucky get mad?.. well, he’s a rabid right winger… and I guess folk music is sort of associated with left-wingers and wimpiness… so… I guess that’s funny.”) The thing is, it was just easier to see Satchel saying “Folk! You folk, buddy!” and think “Oh, Bucky thinks Satchel is swearing at him.”
You didn’t misunderstand at all. The “folk you” pun is the whole point. Indeed, Satchel’s dialog has to be slightly strained in order to have the word “folk” precede “you” in both balloons.
I liked Bucky’s"Nerd Burger" graffiti, anyway.
Not to mention the “folk buddy” part.
I think Get Fuzzy would work better as a TV show than as a comic strip. The dialogue is frequently very funny, but it doesn’t always seem to fit the three-panel gag-at-the-end daily strip format.
Which is also why he says at the end “well, that techno-ed”. See, he’s replaced “suck” with “techno” - because techno sucks.
I still have no idea what “How duz your munky checkbook” is supposed to mean, but it cracked me the hell up.
Lord, I do hate young people :D.