I’m a little worried about Les’ being “a little worried about Funky.” It’s a business trip, or so we’ve been told (although many of you pointed out yesterday the absurdity of scheduling business travel a week before Christmas). He didn’t just up and “take off”.
Instead of standing around the airport muttering to himself, Funky should learn a thing or two about air travel from his old pal Les: don’t be miserable, be a douchebag to everyone you meet and make them miserable!
Son of Stuck Funky 
I’ve always more or less agreed with the theory that TB hates Funky because he saddled his comic strip with a weird and unmarketable title. Obviously this is batshit insane, but what else explains the apparent glee he takes in putting this character through his misery wringer? He just loves making Funky suffer, he thinks it’s actually funny in some way. And as usual, he’s wrong again.
Taking forever to get to the point…there’s another tried & true FW trope. In fact it’s pretty much the theme of the strip, the endless time-wasting and repetitiveness that takes up five out of every six days. We know Funky is a sad-sack loser, just get to the f*cking point already, Pulitzer (nominee) Boy.
I kind of wonder if the entire week will just be “flying is rough right before Christmas”, over and over and over.
Whenever I see that “Les is a douchebag to people just doing their jobs” strip, I mourn the fact that he wasn’t shot dead by someone who was just pushed too far. Of course, that will never happen; Les’ long-delayed and well-deserved savage murder will only appear in the realm of “fan fiction.”
I must say I stand in line to Tom Batiuk for refusing to recognize the utter loathsomeness of Les Moore despite all the evidence that has accumulated over the years. That kind of denial of reality really deserves an award. Just not a Pulitzer.
At least Les was an asshole in specific ways related immediately to air travel. Funky is just standing in an airport miserably saying “Boy, I sure wish I didn’t have to travel over the holidays!” over and over again. That’s not insightful, it’s not relevant, and it’s certainly not funny.
@The Diva — “Funky Winkerbean is a comic strip that deals with the concerns of young adults in a reality-based manner. It’s not insightful, it’s not relevant, and it’s certainly not funny.”
Or whatever the Comics Kingdom blurb says, you’ve improved it 100 percent.
Funky should have known that he didn’t have to travel during the busy holiday season to conduct his business. He could have accomplished it all on his computer in the comfort of his home by using Skype.
Mr. Batiuk certainly knows the benefits of telecommuting. He’s been phoning it in for years.
Judging by Funky’s look of depression in panel #3, I’m calling it that Corey was killed in action, and Funky’s “out-of-town business” was to go claim the body. Yes, I know that’s not how it works in real life, but when has Batty ever come close to reality?
This thing where Crazy starts a thought and Funky finishes it just is not working at all. It’s an interesting concept, but it seems Tom couldn’t get it quite right and he just said “close enough”
Must have been up against a deadline.
Every time I see that strip of Les being an asshole, I’m struck by the snowglobe panel. Now I know this is all about satisfying Batiuk’s id, in that he has Les behave the way he’d like to behave, but, well, let’s just say that if you talk like that to a TSA agent, missing your flight’s going to be the least of your worries.
Seriously, simply giving an agent some lip will result in them emptying your bags and strip searching you, but actually jokingly threatening to bomb people? Les would find that everyone who claims that TSA agents don’t have a sense of humor were understating the case.
Anyway, as to this strip. Funky’s a whiny pussy (not that we didn’t already know this). That’s a short line for an airport. I’ve been in some that were easily ten times that size.
The problem is that we don’t quite know why he’s miserable. Is he picking up Corey’s remains? Is he having to deal with a lawsuit from the former employees of a Montoni’s come to claim backpay? Is he just leaving town to avoid a holiday that’s become as miserable as the rest of his life?
@Epicus Doomus, it’s not just a theory. He blatantly said as such in (what else?) a slow-pitch softball interview with Funky’s flagship paper, the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram.
“Looking back, Batiuk does have one big regret.
‘If I’d known this (‘Funky’) was going to last 40 years, I would have worked on the name more,’ Batiuk said. ‘It’s either the best name in comics or the worst one.'”
@Nathan Orbal: Charles Schulz knew what the worst name in comics was: “Peanuts” with “Zits” in second place. That being said, we’re left wondering that if Funky Winkerbean were named something like “Jimmy Clarke,” would he still be as fat, depressed and greedy?
I just thought of this: Funky’s AA supporter (what’s his name?) has passed away, and he quietly flew out to attend the service.
Nah… that requires critical thinking on Batom®’s part.
That last one sounds good, but it runs into the same problem as most of the ideas. If that was the reason then Funky would have no reason to keep it secret and neither would his wife. Just saying to people that he’s going out of state to attend a funeral would be more than enough answer.
@Gyre: True dat. And the amazing thing is, Wade is one of the precious few characters that Batom® never really ruined with Act III.
@Paul Jones: The difference between “Peanuts” and “Funky Winkerbean” is, Schulz had the name forced upon him by United Features Syndicate president Larry Rutman. It easily could have been titled “Charlie Brown and Snoopy” and the TV specials and merchandise (and for a long time, the Sunday panels) clearly reflect that.
Batom® could have easily kept the title “Rappin’ Around” for his strip instead of creating a nonsensical joke name for both the strip and its lead character.
Every time TB draws Funky in profile, I initially read his dialogue as “good eeevening”. Every dang time I tell ya…
Seriously, what is Funky’s complaint? That he has to wait in line to board an airplane? Did he miss the boarding call for children, those requiring assistance, and self-important assholes? Is traveling during the holidays supposed to be inherently inconvenient and aggravating?
It’s been established that Funky was traveling “on business”, and I don’t expect any deeper explanation of the purpose of his trip. It was just an excuse to show an aggravated Funky and a smirking Les for a couple of days.
I was picturing a panel of Funky telling his wife “I’ve got to go out of town … on… business” while his computer screen reads “Ashley Madison dot com” but maybe that’s too much detail for one panel.
Despite the lovely possibility that something horrible has happened – I as other suspect this will be nothing but part LXVI of ‘how to anticlimax’ by the Author.
Nathan Obral: “If I had known my dog would live more than a few years, I probably wouldn’t have named him Turdburglar”. That is such an insane line of reasoning IMO. is he saying he just chose the first thing that popped into his head or is he saying he had no confidence in his own work?
Whatever the reason, he just takes such obvious glee in torturing the Funky character. It’d be so novel and surprising if he’d just let Funky “win” once in a while, he has a whole giant cast of characters to “sad-sack-ify” (and he does, just not as often as FW). In early Act I FW was more or less a “straight man”, the “normal” average Everyman character. Then he started with the drama and all of a sudden Funky was subjected to all sorts of indignities, as he still is today.
I get wierded out all over again every time I read about BatHole creeping around the halls and sitting in on high school classes. “I’m here to get story ideas.”
Yeah. Right.
Many of you are assuming this whole “Waaaaah, I don’t like Christmas any more!” arc is going somewhere. Well, you’d be wrong about that. Maybe you think this is a setup for Flunky to perform some kind of Christmas Miracle. Maybe you think he has some sad personal business to attend to, resulting in a semi-interesting storyline. Maybe you think he’ll be involved in some sort of drama on the plane, where he uses his pizza and drinking abilities to land the aircraft safely.
No chance.
This is no more and no less than a few days of random “Anymore, airports sure are crowded!” gags, followed immediately and abruptly by the latest comic book quest.
I’m also betting on this being a big nothingburger. Funky will be back in the pizzeria Monday morning, serving only Crazy Harry, St. Les the Righteous Smirker and Skunk Head Howard, and nothing more will be said about this.
Batom® can’t conclude a storyline to save his life, but now he’s slipped into Stephen Pastis’ technique of dead-ending a story abruptly when there is nothing left to say. But Pastis is a professional… Batom®’s continuous execution of this leaves you with the urge to break your iPad or burn your newspaper in anger.
This is no more and no less than a few days of random “Anymore, airports sure are crowded!” gags,
Nonsense, in three years, we will look back in awe at that one week of “Funky stands in a line and complains about it.” I assure you.
@Nathan Obral: The story he tells is that he asked a bunch of kids what were the stupidest first and last names they could think of.
“”@Paul Jones: The difference between “Peanuts” and “Funky Winkerbean” is, Schulz had the name forced upon him by United Features Syndicate president Larry Rutman. It easily could have been titled “Charlie Brown and Snoopy” and the TV specials and merchandise (and for a long time, the Sunday panels) clearly reflect that.””
Interested conversation here. Almost nobody refers to the strip as Peanuts. It’s usually known by Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Heck Charles Schulz own name is more well known that Peanuts.
As it goes, United Features Syndicate bought Schulz’s strip, which he simply titled “Lil’ Folks”, but UFS was insistent on a name change because of a then-existent strip titled “Little Folks.” Schulz couldn’t think of a name beyond simply titling it after Charlie Brown and Snoopy. UFS president Larry Rutman went over Schulz and consulted someone who had no exposure to the strip, and that person chose “Peanuts.” Schulz was horrified, but had sold over creative control over the strip, as was common practice at the time. So he had no choice but to give in.
In the early 1960s, Schulz attended a Victor Borge concert with said Larry Rutman. Borge introduced Schulz as “the creator of ‘Peanuts’… now, isn’t that a hell of a thing to be a creator of?” Schulz then said to Rutman, “See?”
I believe that a few years ago Funky was riding pretty high in the Pizza industry. He had multiple locations in Ohio, and had for inexplicable reasons opened a location in Manhattan. He actually made the cover of “Pizza” magazine, pictured sitting at the counter ot the Westview Restaurant throwing a pile of money in the air. Then for more inexplicable reasons the whole Pizza market collapsed and he had to liquidate all his locations except the original location, and he was back to scraping by.
As to HOW Funky managed to start a franchise, let alone a location in NYC, is just as impractical as this storyline. He really wasn’t that great of a manager at the Westview location. It really amounts to nothing more than a gimmick on Batom®’s part, as it was obvious that he wanted Funky to SUFFER for no reason that requires any sense of comprehension.
The collapse of the franchise is generally attributed to Funky’s cheapening of the ingredients and lowering of pizza-making standards (think, Little Caesers
Pizza House of Cardboard). But Funky didn’t learn a damn thing from his stupendous failure, and blamed those eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil bankers with St. Les the Righteous Smirker.All in all, a ludicrous story with a ludicrous setup, following up with a ludicrous ending. Yup, it’s gotta be Funky Winkerbean!