SoSF's Third Anniversary Giveaway!

What’s the perfect reward for someone who invests precious time and energy every day into actively hating and griping about a 41-year old newspaper comic strip? How about a handsome, bound volume collecting three years’ worth of that comic strip? You know you want this book.

I just wish I could come up with a clever and challenging contest around such a coveted prize. Instead, the path to winning is stupid easy: just leave a comment on this post between now and 11:59 PM EDT, Saturday, April 13. As in past giveaways, the winner will be selected totally at random using the WordPress plugin “And the Winner Is“. Enter as often as you like, but if you’ve won a previous giveaway, another winner will be randomly chosen.

Thanks to everyone who reads and comments on SoSF!

Your pal,
TFH aka Tom Hackett

 

Small print:
Prize is a new, hardcover copy of The Complete Funky Winkerbean Vol. II, shipped directly from Amazon.com. Winner must provide shipping address. Enter before 11:59PM EDT, Saturday, April 13, 2013. Son of Stuck Funky and this contest are in no way sponsored by or affiliated with Batom Inc., King Features Syndicate, or amazon.com.

95 thoughts on “SoSF's Third Anniversary Giveaway!”

  3. Happy anniversary, TFH & SoSF!!! May the snark always be at your back…or something.

  4. The banner is awesome. Vol. II is pre-time jump, right?

    TFH sez: Vol. II covers 1975-1977, truly the golden age of FW!

  11. way to go happy 3rd yr annv ,i’ve been reading about yr,great site anyho think i should chip in couple bucks since your site is only funny thing about bathacks crap

    TFH sez: Thank you very much, flappy!

  18. Oh I do want it (especially since the local public library hasn’t bought a copy).

  19. SOSF is like a rose bush of funny that thrives on the decaying hummus that is Funky Winkerbean ever since Lisa died. Thanks for all the hard work and the genuine laughter you’ve given us, unlike a certain somebody in north central Ahia.

  21. Congratulations on a very successful site and for surviving the threats and challenges of working with such lame material. Again, well done, sir! 🙂

  22. Thank you for the hard work – and what nobody’s made the second prize joke yet?

  23. Happy Anniversary and congratulations on another humorous year! Funky wouldn’t be worth reading at all if it weren’t for this site.

  24. (The most dangerous part of getting a Volume II is the temptation to get Volume I.)

  29. I was the random winner of Volume I. Trust me when I say that my childhood memories of this strip are far different then what the actual product was. To be fair to TB, it really was a gag-a-day and suffers tremendously when reading numerous strips at a time. In particular, he enjoyed having a character look out at the reader and cringe at each punchline, which has evolved into the smirk the characters all walk around with now.

  32. Congratulations, TFH! As for the book, eh. I’d rather remember FW as “good, once upon a time” rather than confront the reality that it was kind of ordinary at best.

    And okay, Professor Fate, I’ll do it–second prize is TWO copies of the book!

  34. If the book is coming directly from Amazon, I guess that means it won’t be autographed by TFH. That greatly reduces the value of the prize, but I’ve got to throw my hat in the ring anyway.

  36. On funny strips, I think it would be great (if extremely unlikely) if Tom B. and TFHackett teamed up to create a recent Funky Winkerbean collection with witty commentary for every strip.

  37. @Rusty:

    This is why I’ve refrained from buying the Complete FW. Unlike the Far Side or Calvin & Hobbes or Peanuts or even Doonesbury probably hasn’t stood test of time

  38. Sorry, that should have been “humus.” No way FW is comparable to tasty tasty hummus these days.

    I got Volume I from the library and felt the need to cut Batiuk some slack since he was learning his craft in public, unlike Breathed or Trudeau who developed their skills on college newspaper strips almost nobody read.

  39. @Rusty I like that every punchline comes with someone cringing at whoever has the unfortunate honour of having to utter the terrible, terrible punchlines.

    Early Funky Winkerbean at least has the decency to actually be pretty funny.

  46. Would you believe I’ve never read Act I? I’ve heard good things about it, but mostly from people who look on it nostalgically. I have no idea what the contents of this book are like.

    (I’ll read anything you throw at me as long as it’s a cartoon, so it pretty much doesn’t matter.)

  47. Inkwell: Act I differed from II & III in one major way…it occasionally featured amusing jokes. Seriously though, pre-Lisa Act I was satire, a look at a “typical” suburban high school and the zany characters within. He didn’t start with the idiotic, cornball serialized “stories” until Lisa showed up preggers and ruined everything. I genuinely enjoyed FW back then, not that it was rip-roaringly hilarious or anything, but it was generally pretty decent with jokes my high school-aged self could actually relate to some of the time.

  48. Batiuk once said after he drew Lisa as pregnant, he couldn’t write the same way again, or something along those lines. What I’m wondering is why Act II FW had to replace Act I FW. “Winkerbean & Company” (like what Batiuk wanted) could’ve run from 1991 to 1996 before being canned, while FW carries on and evolves, possibly in better hands. It would’ve been a comic you want to read and occasionally make you laugh, not one that makes you spew your coffee across the room. There could’ve been storylines, but nothing permanent and often silly.

  49. Personally I don’t care to read ACT I despite what everyone says about the how good the golden days were…..and having said that, watch me be the person to actually win this effing book!

  50. BTW, I think repeat posters should be punished by getting Vol. 3 sent to them.

  51. Señor: Before Lisa, they were caricatures. After Lisa, they became characters. Before Lisa, you were supposed to laugh at their zany antics and wacky predicaments. After Lisa, you were supposed to “care” about them and the “life experiences” they were living through. Before Lisa, the humor was heavy on the satire and irony. After Lisa, the humor was surgically removed (except for some small and very weak wordplay fragments) and replaced with maudlin sap masquerading as “drama” with increasingly silly attention-grabbing “plot developments” sprinkled here and there to (unsuccessfully) alleviate the boredom. It’s why he “time-jumped” into Act II in the first place: attention and more fertile ground for his “prestige arcs” which really came into their own during Act II.

  52. “…the humor was surgically removed (except for some small and very weak wordplay fragments) and replaced with maudlin sap masquerading as ‘drama’ with increasingly silly attention-grabbing “plot developments” sprinkled here and there…”

    This furthers my belief that Funky Winkerbean is the male For Better Or For Worse. One is narrated by a sweet if scatterbrained old lady who thinks it’s heartwarming and full of helpful wisdom. The other is told by a cynical old fart who sees it as a tale of “life sucks, you get over it”. But they’re the same story.

  53. @Ae Daily
    April 9, 2013 at 3:29 pm
    @Rusty I like that every punchline comes with someone cringing at whoever has the unfortunate honour of having to utter the terrible, terrible punchlines.

    It’s the repetition of having 4 strips on a page, every single one of them having a last panel where a character stares at you making a face as if he just caught a whiff of a fart.

  54. Three years? It only seems like 30! (Because of the strip, not the blog.)

    Congrats, TFH, for getting so many of us clever, good-looking haters to comment on your blog for so long. This place is a blast.

    And as for that age-old question, “Why do you people keep reading and commenting about a comic strip you hate?”, well, this is the answer: The chance to win free shit!

  55. I really hope I win, it will give me something valuable to sell to the used book store after I get laid off.

  56. Whoever wins, though, be forewarned.

    I had a copy of Volume One on my bookshelf last year and had some company over on a couple of occasions. Well, I guess word got around because I returned to my apartment on New Years morning to discover it had been broken into. There were now 4 copies of Volume One on the bookshelf…

  58. I really need this. My coffee table has one leg that’s a couple inches shorter. You have no idea how much this would help my situation!

  59. All together now, to the tune of the William Tell Overture –
    Happy Anniversary, happy anniversary, happy anniversary,
    happy AAAAAAANNiversary!

  60. –I really need this. My coffee table has one leg that’s a couple inches shorter. You have no idea how much this would help my situation!—-

    I hear you.

    I on the other hand fear I could run out of toilet paper any second. I like to have a backup.

  73. Hey, what can I tell ya…I wanna win the book from back when Funky wasn’t “stunky.”

  74. I was watching David Letterman back when he was funny on NBC and in his monologue he mentioned a New York newspaper strike that was going on and how it was interfering with being able to follow his favorite comic strips like “Funky Winkerbean.” That’s the only external reference to the strip in the media I’ve ever seen that wasn’t generated by Batiuk’s press agent.

  75. I want to see Volume Two. A bad gift would be when Batiuk gets to Volume 39 or so and we have to deal with the crap from 2011.

  78. I was watching David Letterman back when he was funny on NBC and in his monologue he mentioned a New York newspaper strike that was going on and how it was interfering with being able to follow his favorite comic strips like “Funky Winkerbean.” That’s the only external reference to the strip in the media I’ve ever seen that wasn’t generated by Batiuk’s press agent.

    You mean you missed the Funky Winkerbean parade balloon on the appropriately-titled Simpsons episode “TB Homer Vs. Dignity”?

  81. Got this little back thing going, but not a big deal. I should be up and around in no time.

  85. There’s this book I have my eye on. I can’t really afford it, what with having to pay for all the pain medication; and I heard it causes cancer, but it might just pass the time.

  86. @Billytheskink: The image isn’t showing up for me. Is it the same one from this page? (TFH sez: Image has been fixed.)

    I remember when those simple, unpolished, cute little fansites ruled the internet. I saw ’em for Pokémon, Kirby, and SpongeBob, but I never imagined there was one for Act II FW.

  89. These are the dailies and not the Sunday strips, right? That means the one FW I genuinely found funny (“That’s your cookie!”) is likely not among them. Unless someone Funky Winkerbean’d during the printing process.

    TFH sez: I’m not sure, but the word Complete in the title would suggest that this is three years’ worth o’ strips, Sundays included, though those probably are not reproduced in color. The couple old paperback collections I’ve acquired on eBay include the Sunday strips.

  90. Syndicated cartoonist is a lot like tenured professor. They have to work their butts off the first few years, then they’re coasting for life.

  91. @ Inkwell: I miss the wild and wooly days of the early Internet. Pages were garish for sure, but it was fun! What’s aggravating is how websites got more complicated (read: slower) as Internet speeds were going up. Hate to see SoSF on a 56k…

  92. Let’s see…Inkwell has a 1/10 chance…with O.B.’s chances slightly better.

    Epicus: who relates to FW nowadays?

  93. I know someone who wants to write a FW parody, so I’m putting another ticket in.

  94. I think we should definitely get the comment number to 100. Doing my part!

    Also, Kendall-Jackson rules.

  95. Señor: No one I’ve ever met. Or even heard about, for that matter. Which is why FW’s longevity has always astounded me. I have simply never seen any evidence proving that anyone reads it.

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