CONTENT BASED ON FUNKY WINKERBEAN
SoSAfDavidO here! Having some technical issues but I think they’re worked out.. another day, another pun title for you!
Actually, our previous host did such a good rant I’m going to let it stand and thank them for their hosting job and picking up Sunday’s strip!
It–it’s–there’s nothing there. There’s nothing there!
Link to today’s strip.
ORIGINAL TL, DR POST
As always, Sunday’s episode was not available for preview, so…time for one of my marathon blatherings? Well, probably not.*
I’d like to apologize to all the SoSF staff and readers for the rather uninspired posts I’ve done over the past couple of weeks. Being a guest host is usually fun, and I really enjoy thinking of odd theories and weird insights into the Funky Winkerbean world. Though I tend to go on (and on and on), still, it’s fun.
But facts must be faced. 2014 has been one of the worst Funky Winkerbean seasons in recent memory. It’s not that it isn’t bad–it is. And it’s not that it’s getting good–it isn’t. And that’s the problem in a nutshell: Funky Winkerbean isn’t.
I don’t know Tom Batiuk, but he seems remarkably thin-skinned, and it feels certain he scours the web for critical views of his work. It also seems certain he feels he doesn’t have to address the source of those criticisms. Someone saying “It’s a cesspool of misery and Les Moore is horrible,” would be met by the thought, No it isn’t, and he isn’t. How can I get this to stop?
And I think he’s found an answer: make the strip so bland and forgettable that it becomes a struggle (at least for me) to have anything at all to say about it. Funky exercising. Funky and Holly sitting around watching TV. People reading comic books. People sitting around.
There’s not a lot you can say about people sitting around. It’s like criticizing Andy Warhol’s movie Empire–a single, eight-hour shot of the Empire State Building–by saying it’s static. Well, duh!
Of course, you can go after the creator, but I’ve honestly tried to focus on the work and not the man. Everyone has the right to earn a living, after all, and as noted I have no idea what Tom Batiuk is really like (reports are he’s a nice guy in person). I really don’t like the ad hominem attack when it isn’t really merited (the guy’s not a criminal, he draws a comic strip).
The way I see it, this has to be a deliberate choice–make it so bland that it becomes critic-proof. And when all the critics have gone on to other targets, you can feature Les Moore all the time, and bask in your achievement.
What this ignores is that critics do have a function in the arts–no one, not even a Picasso, is born a genius sui generis, after all; valid criticism can help focus an artist to work toward his strengths and overcome his weaknesses. (And even invalid criticisms helped create Impressionism and Cubism.)
If, on the other hand, you already feel that you know it all, and those who say otherwise are beedy-eyed nitpickers, well, I guess you’re the ideal person to take over Funky Winkerbean when Tom Batiuk retires.
(Okay, that was a bit nasty, and I apologize.)
But guess what! There’s hope after all, a light at the end of the tunnel! No, no, silly, not for Funky Winkerbean, but for SonOfStuckFunky! For tomorrow, your humble host yields the guest chair to none other than David O, the best of the O clan!
*On the other hand, look at the mess I managed to cough up anyway!
Son of Stuck Funky 
And Pa Bean got HIS sense of humor from TB, which is why he’s an Alzheimer’s patient in an assisted living community! See how it all comes around full circle? Anyhow, this constant Funky-centric stuff as of late is just plain exhausting at this point. I guess it’s better than months and months of (shudder) Les Moore, like how a compound fracture is “better” than a heart attack, but still. Maybe he figures that month after month of Funky’s depressing antics will finally drive the FW haters away due to intense boredom, I don’t know. Sure is annoying though.
Funky Winkerbean: Certified humor-free since 1985.
Butthead: Hey, Beavis, do you know why a dog licks his balls?
Beavis: un, no, heyhey.
Butthead: Because he can.
Beavis: So what, anyone can lick a dogs’ balls. Let me show you. Hey Funky, over here….
Well, that’s properly filthy, isn’t it?
Oh yeah, that remarkable Winkerbean sense of humor.
Pa Winkerbean: “Don’t look at me, I think these guys are nuts.”
(with apologies to Ghostbusters 2)
Funky Winkerbean – he is the least interesting man in the world.
And why train a dog not to lick? it’s what they do.
It’s pretty funny how in spite of featuring Holly and Funky for what seems like two straight months, he hasn’t managed to advance the big SJ comics arc AT ALL during that span. And every time he does touch upon that particular story arc, it’s always the same: “Holly is confused as she enters the weird and zany world of comic book collecting”. Same old FW, all premise, no story. And every week that he manages to avoid telling that story is another week of Holly & Funky to endure later on down the line.
Am I the only one who sees a gradual but unmistakable morph-over where Big Funkybean and Funkybean Junior are actually starting to look alike, in a family resemblance way? Kudos to Batiuk for finishing Matchbook Art School!