I apologize that the post title significantly oversells the drab discharge that is today’s strip. Funky has cataracts, just like many people over age 65. Cataracts make it hard to see clearly, as Dr. Droopy so helpfully informs us. Will Funky and Dr. Droopy decide what to do about these cataracts by Saturday? If you care about the answer to that question, please seek help.
by billytheskink | January 18, 2021 · 10:30 pm
¡Eye Caramba!
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Tagged as "jokes" that aren't really jokes at all, arcs that go on too long, arcs where nothing happens, boredom personified, comma eyes, complete lack of humor, Complete Worthless Ass, crappy ploddinng stories that never get anywhere, doctor guy, doctors, Droopy, dull stories, four eyes, glib doctors, Old dying people, one of those arcs that just never seems to end, sad-sackery, sheer idiocy, stupid, the inevitable ravages of age, the ravages of age, uninteresting stupid anecdotes, unneccessarily long arcs, very long arcs
Son of Stuck Funky 
There’s only one course of action, naturally. Funky has to die by his own hand so that Les can ascend. It’s the only direction left for this terrible, terrible strip.
“Come then lest this wild torture wakes again! O, my hard soul, make my lips two huge stones and fasten them with iron, let no cry escape them. Let this awful work be done as if it were a pleasure for all.”
–The Last Words of Heracles.
I was hoping it was cancer of the eyeball.
Har, har…Funky can’t see well anymore either! Perhaps he’ll get real nervous before the inevitable procedure, start drinking again then have a heart attack during the surgery. Then the gags will really start coming.
Oh, no, my own cataracts just got worse! I can’t see the strip’s background! The office is just a dull blur–oh, wait, that’s the artist’s inability to do his job. Don’t scare me like that, Batiuk!
That is the bright side of cataracts, though, that it is harder to read Funky Winkerbean.
How old is Funky supposed to be? He graduated from HIgh School with Les in the Class of 1988. Assuming that this strip is supposed to occur in 2030 (time jump), he should just be turning 60. A tad early for cataracts. (Then again TomBa had him winning the medal in the Lisa’s Legacy Run in the over 65 category, so we can add basic arithmetic to the thinks TomBa doesn’t understand).
I’ve been wondering if that sequence was supposed to be a joke, that Funky lied about his age to win an award. He’d just said he never won an award and wanted to, and the story drew unnecessary attention to an age everyone knows is incorrect. But Tom Batiuk can’t tell a joke or write a story, so it’s an open question whether this was a lie from Funky or yet another continuity error.
My 58 year old partner had cataract surgery a few years ago. It’s not only an old people thing.
The strip commenced in the spring of 1972. Say Flunky was a HS fresh. He’d be class of 1975. Thus 63 or 64 in present day. 73 or 74 in this stupid time jump to 2030.
Anyone else out there surprised that Funky didn’t interrupt the optometrist in panel two by shouting out “My cataract? Oh, no, Doc, I drive a Toyota!”
The tables have turned. From here on in, the doctor will be quipping at Funky.
It’s only Tuesday. I fully expect the rest of the week will be devoted to cataract wordplay.
And he could go full racist by using “I drive a Ricorn Continentor” instead.
“I get it, he drives a Lincoln.”
That’s it. I’m calling Mary Worth.
Banana bread and cheap platitudes is all you will get from her. Still, it’s more than you will get from this strip.
At least the art will be nice.
Funky loved colors. When he could see them.
Funky has cataracts… so what? They’ll just go away- like Dinkle’s deafness.
Maybe not. TB demonstrably hates Funky and loves Dinkle. With Bull Bushka out of the way, Funky may be the next target of a Prestige Arc.
I can see it and I say bring on the misery Tom. 2022 is coming up quick, but there is still time to win that Pulitzer.
Of course you have your golden participation trophy to look forward to.
This arc is a great example of how Batiuk’s writing undermines itself. The humor and the seriousness don’t work together at all; they seem to be fighting each other for space. Funky’s vision loss should be a serious moment, but the eye doctor trivializes it with a stupid joke. Which also undermines his character, because he was previously depicted as not wanting to hear jokes. Nothing here has any focus or direction.
When Calvin and Hobbes did the “dead raccoon” and the “break in” stories, they had jokes in them, but the jokes didn’t detract from the seriousness of the situation. They gave it proper weight. Tom Batiuk has no clue how to do that, or even that he should. He just piles the misery porn and the unfunny jokes on top of each other as high as he can.
Maybe this arc is the beginning of a year or more long drama where Funky goes blind. Leaving him in despair and suicidal and wanting to join Bull Bushka in the hereafter. Until around Christmas when the Ghost of St. Lisa appears, answering Les’s prayers that she appear to restore his best friends eyesight and his will to live
No confirmation of a prestige arc in the new FunkyBlog entry today. But Batiuk does complain about the name again: “For someone whose bent was to add some depth and seriousness to the work, Funky Winkerbean was not the best title choice to help get me there.” As if the goofy title is what’s holding him back, rather than his complete inability to write anything but sub-Lifetime misery porn. Has this man EVER gotten any honest feedback?
What’s interesting in the picture he provided is all the post-it notes. As if he was checking things for continuity.
More than likely, they’re favorite strips. “Ha ha, that was so funny!” or “Damn, I was sure meaningful that day.”
The strip-naming story always irks me because he takes no responsibility for the naming decision.
“One of the name/titles we came up with was Three-o-Clock High, and I have to say that I found the double entendre amusing. However, the Publisher’s Hall Syndicate didn’t, and the name from among the others we sent that won the lottery was Funky Winkerbean.”
He appears to be implying that the syndicate names the strip. What other names were in the running?
To be fair, he’s not the only cartoonist who couldn’t get his first-choice name for the strip. Charles Schultz didn’t pick the name Peanuts, and never cared for it; he pitched the strip to the syndicate as Li’l Folks (a continuation of his earlier strip by that name), and proposed Good Ol’ Charlie Brown later in his career. Similarly, Gary Larson’s syndicate renamed Nature’s Way to The Far Side, though Larson didn’t particularly mind (“They could have called it ‘Revenge of the Zucchini People’ for all I cared”).
The most obvious example is Blondie. The original syndicate thought they could market it as a strip about a hot blonde woman. Even though the main character is clearly Dagwood, who is in almost every panel
Blondie was more Blondie-centric in its earliest years, before she and Dagwood were married. Granted, Dagwood was there from the beginning, but Blondie had other suitors as well. Here’s a pretty good article: http://www.tcj.com/chics-blondie/
Long time lurker here. I’m actually having cataract surgery tomorrow morning. In comparison with this arc, my experience has been equally hilarious, but less wry.
I hope it goes smoothly for you. And that your doctors have a better bedside manner than as depicted in Funky Winkerbean.
The strips title never made sense because anyone who reads the strip can see that the main character is not Funky Winkerbean. The central character has saways been Les, who is TomBats stand in. Should have called it ‘Les is Moore’ or just ‘Westview’
Heck, Funky’s in the strip so rarely a reader might not even know what the name meant. A reader might think “Funky Winkerbean” is a modern-day version of W.C. Fields’ “Godfrey Daniels” and might be puzzled as to what swear words were being obscured.