August 2016 – Page 4 – Son of Stuck Funky

Bullpun

Lack of Les Moore crotch shots is a definite improvement, and the pun is kind of clever. I like the implication in panel one that Les is sticking his lips out as far as he can, trying to do a good duck imitation. It’s rather poor but at least it’s an attempt.

However, the strip is still just two guys talking. It’s a boring conversation about things happening to other people who are elsewhere.

It’s a strip designed to take up space. There is no other purpose. No plot is being advanced, no wisdom dispensed, and the pun isn’t that good. And when the action consists of someone pouring a pot of coffee into a mug, maybe it’s time to rename this strip to something more accurate, like “How sedimentary rocks form” or perhaps “I don’t care.”

Why not try to show, instead of constantly telling? I suppose the answer is, because showing is difficult. It requires work. Planning. And the reward isn’t worth it.

I think we’re past any changes in the way the strip unfolds.. Like Funky, it’s ossified and congealed into a barely moveable mass. Maybe we should look at Funky’s disgusted expression in panel three and figure, yeah, that’s about right. That’s how this strip rolls. Or stays put, actually.

In all honesty, I would love to find things to praise in this strip. Reading each painfully bad episode is a chore; there’s rarely any relief from the omnipresent gloom that hangs over this thing. It gets old, really fast. My recollection of Act I was that it was also not action-packed; like Act III it was just people taking, but were talking to each other, about each other, and at the end of the talking there was a joke, and sometimes the joke was pretty funny. I know that’s an awful lot to ask these days.

An awful, awful lot.

Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God

Link to today’s strip.

There are a lot of folks nowadays who despair over the state of the world. Folks who are religious tell us that, although things may seem bad, God is a kind and loving father who watches over us all, and offers hope to mankind with the promise of ultimate goodness. I guess my question is then, if God loves us all, why did He allow panel two to come into being? It seems to me that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for a lot less than a Les Moore crotch shot. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, unless that man reads Funky Winkerbean. Suddenly, having an eye is the worst thing ever. If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out! Or, you know, burn the newspaper.

Perhaps this is God’s way of telling us that we’d better shape up, because the horrors of Hell are far more horrible than we are capable of imagining. In other words…things can get worse than panel two.

Okay, I’m scaring myself now. So, on a strip level, I hate to say it, but this seems more evidence that Tom Batiuk is well aware that his audience is composed entirely of critics, and this drawing of Les is his “Up yours!” to them. I guess my initial response would be “Grow up.” Tom Batiuk is not without talent. Why doesn’t he use it? If this is the case, I just find it very, very sad.

So let’s have some fun with it. Let’s make it a happy thing. Let’s turn that money shot into a funny spot. (Sorry.)

Recommended soundtrack: open a new browser tab, load this, and put it in the background. Suddenly Les Moore is magic!

The original works pretty well too, but I just love the parody of the parody. It takes something existing and makes something new out of it. A good lesson for people who are, supposedly, creative.

Gagging Run

(“Running Gag” has already been used twice…had to come up with something for a title…[hangs head in shame])

Link to today’s strip.

Say, do you ever catch yourself thinking, “You know, those Sunday strips with Funky and Les jogging are great and all, but why are they so darn short? I’d like to see a week of those!” Well, brother, you’re about to get your wish! Have you ever considered therapy?

The joke in this is always the same: Funky’s a fat old doofus who hates exercising and is unequipped to survive it. Les is an up-and-at-’em type who always outperforms. There’s only so many variants on “Funky is a fat lazy loser” and, let me tell you, none of them are funny. This one is just stupid, and poorly presented. It should show Les and Funky speaking on the phone, the night before; then Funky’s dumb non-something would at least make a certain amount of character sense (any excuse to avoid getting up early). Saying his line now, after they’ve been out for a while, makes Funky look genuinely stupid. Talk about low-hanging fruit….

Here’s an idea, Funky. If you hate exercise so much, if it’s nothing but a burden, why not stop? You’ve been doing it for years and it is clearly not benefiting you in any way, other than making you even more miserable (if such a thing is possible) and thus able to commiserate with everyone around you. Your *cough* best friend Les seems to use this time to remind you of how superior to you he is in every way. Let’s face it–you’re never going to lose weight, you’re never going to feel good about yourself, and what you see right now in life is all you will ever have. Your creator clearly despises you. Everything else in the universe is punishing you; you don’t need to join in too. You might die sooner, but you might die happier, too.

Admittedly that’s a stretch, but in this strip, any death seems like a happy occasion. Finally, someone is free of the dark clutches of this strip. Free to rot and molder, and–I think I’ll stop typing now.

Wrappin’ Around

Link to today’s strip.

Well, now that we’ve enjoyed a week of nothing at all, it looks like we’re seeing some actual hazing! But no, just turns out to be a glimpse of something that happened to that Ol’ Punching Bag Himself, Wally Winkerbean, many years ago.

Odd, isn’t it, that Becky’s example has to be something that happened twenty or thirty-odd years ago, and she’s only just this year put a stop to it. I mean, we couldn’t have used someone slightly more contemporary, like Owen, to make Becky look a little less uncaring and incompetent. But one suspects that when Owen graduated, his model sheets were thrown into the fire so that Tom Batiuk wouldn’t be tempted to take the focus away from Dinkle and Les.

The last panel does, on the face of it, constitute a “punchline” and it would ordinarily be a pretty good one. But given the slant of this strip, my first thought was “This store is going to go out of business.” Odd again that the store seems to sell nothing but plastic wrap (and lottery tickets) again indicating that this prank has been going on so long local merchants are dependent on it for economic survival–but only now is Becky addressing it. The town will probably dry up and become abandoned, and the band camp will be relocated to Camp Crystal Lake (at least Jason would be easy to draw). An interesting view of Chesterton’s Fence. I guess I’m defending hazing! Funky Winkerbean has made me a terrible person now.

I guess also that this tosses a glitch into the Batiukian Theory that men are the only ones who can act; that the sole function of a woman is to supply cookies and milk to a comic-book reading session. Turns out women can utterly destroy things. Here’s to equality!

Stay On Target

Link to today’s strip.

Look, Mr. Batiuk, you were talking about hazing, not bullying. They are two entirely different things. Hazing is something that a person submits to because they want to belong to a group. Bullying is something imposed on a person, because the bully feels hostile toward that person.

You can’t switch gears in the middle of, oh Hell, why did I type that? Of course he can, and he does, all the time. Nothing ever gets resolved; it just gets dropped. This strip is the epitome of uncaring laziness.

Apparently, Tom Batiuk thinks that mentioning something is the same thing as discussing it, and that’s all that needs to be done for a problem to be solved. The problem, as I’ve repeatedly said, is that mentioning means nothing. You can mention anything. All you’re doing is throwing out a name.

Watch this: world hunger.

There. I have just solved the problem of world hunger. You’re welcome.

If nothing else, this week has been a good long peek into the creative process for this strip. Fitting that it ends with “bullying,” which as we learned yesterday, we’ve replaced with “bullsh!tting.” See? They’ve got some of the same letters, which makes this hilarious!