That seems like some fast acting “sedative” if the nurse thinks it would be affecting Funky’s sense of humor as she’s injecting him with it. Where has she been all week? This whole cataract storyline seems to be nothing but Funky making one joke after another only to have someone say he’s not funny. It’s also kind of funny when you read the week in context, how it goes from Funky being nervous and anxious to “Hey! Here’s a cow joke for literally no reason at all!”.
I’m pretty sure she should be giving him anesthesia and not a sedative, too.
Cataraction
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Son of Stuck Funky 
Nurse, start the cyanide drip…stat. And save some for us, as it’s only Wednesday. Here’s a FW gag I just thought up.
Q: Where would you find the latest FW comic strip?
A: What the f*ck is Funky Winkerbean?
Oh, I was gonna say “In a moospaper”.
“What do you use on your hotdog? Moosturd!”
“Funky, don’t talk shop!”
We could discuss ways to improve this strip, but it’s a moot point.
Funky would have a ball with the ideal Funky Winkerbean gag.
Badum Ching!
Hmmm: plot that’s supposed to be serious but poorly done, glacial pacing, unfunny pun tossed out, then shot down by another character…Yessiree, for the Funkyverse this is indeed “normal.”
Besides, everyone knows that you only paintings done by moose in a mooseum! Ha,ha, where’s my Pulitzer?
Also:
You sure as hell won’t find Funky Winkerbean in a museum. Unless it’s the “Museum of Cautionary Tales for New Cartoonists”. Or if a museum is short on toilet paper, I guess.
Eye surgeons usually avoid general anesthesia. They need you awake so you can keep you eyes still.
I’ve seen eye surgery where the patient was under general anesthesia and they just dug little hooks into the eye to hold it still. I think it was a tumor and not cataracts.
They also have you change into a hospital gown before they administer the sedative.
So here’s a question for people who read through more of Act I and II for me. Has this always been ‘normal’ for Funky? Has he always been an insufferable punmeister? Or is it part of the Westview aging process?
Funky was to me, sort of a burnout kid. He smokes some pot and cuts classes here and there, but he drives a nice Chevelle that he fixed up himself. His fellow burnouts probably said: “ Hey Funk, you seem kind of righteous, but then we see you hanging around with that dork Les. What gives?
It’s that little bit of bad boy that Cindy was attracted to. But then Batty decided he hated him and so he became a fat, drunk loser married to another fat loser.
Young Funky reminded me of John Cusack’s friend in Better Off Dead. Yeah, he’s a burnout, but wise and philosophical at times. His most interesting trait was that he didn’t take high school that seriously. This made him a good contrast to the other characters, and their overblown teen problems. He lent perspective. I agree with Tom Batiuk that he probably never should have been the title character. Not because of his silly name, but because of his role. He was a sidekick who needed a leading man. And Lord knows Les Moore wasn’t it.
And he’s still a good guy at heart. He employs half the town, specifically the down-on-its-luck half. He sticks up for his friends. He runs his own business. He has a large house. He married high school beauty queens, Cindy and later Holly. It’s sad that he’s been reduced to a pudgy, alcoholic, annoying loser while the strip endlessly praises and rewards awful people like Les, Dinkle, Dead Lisa, and comic book Pete.
Right. I was kind of in a similar position in high school. I had burnout friends and I had geek friends. I leaned geek but still enjoyed some burnout things like their music, working on cars, some smoke, some drink.
Funky really is the best character though. Runs a successful pizza shop, lives in a nice house. Recovered from alcoholism. Was married to the class beauty and then the popular majorette. He is there for his family and friends. Doesn’t buy his wife salad dressing as a gift. For all that, he is punished.
I may just be me, but I find the weird vibe of this whole arc to be creepy and unsettling, starting with the unfunny jokes. What emotion is TomBa hoping for? How do we get from Funky terrified by the prospect of surgery to annoying Funky?
Baaaahahahahaaaaaa ahhhhahhaha haaaaa hhhaaaaa ahahahaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaa
This has to lead to some complication happening during the surgery.. ..does Funky go blind or get COVID or have a heart attack? Some temporary crisis to fill up a few weeks. Not unlike that unmemorable arc from years ago where Les sends Lisa to the post office to mail a letter for him and the post office blows up….
Well, I said yesterday’s strip would make more sense if Funky was already high, and then Banana proposed this exact joke… Is it fair to criticize Batiuk for doing exactly what we said he should do?
You’re right, it would be hypocritical of us to criticize it, when it’s the gag we wanted to see. By itself, the strip is okay; the problem is that it’s now redundant. It adds nothing to the overall story. It should have replaced yesterday’s strip, not exist in addition to it.
You read utter drivel like this, which has no redeeming features, and you wonder how this particular episode survived even Batiuk’s quality control. Then you remember the only award left is that 50-year one and you foresee years of drivel coming down the road.
The worst thing about this arc is: It should be good. It really should. Cataract surgery is a great premise. Eye trauma or loss has been a staple of horror stories for ages. But it’s now a routine surgery, and common for people of Funky’s age. This should be a great opportunity to explore Funky’s squeamishness, while at the same time giving him something legitimately scary to face. And he could deploy the “humor is how I deal with tragedy” line that’s currently in the header.
I’m reminded of the Calvin and Hobbes.”break-in” arc. They come home from one of their infamous camping trips, they’ve had a break-in, and Hobbes can’t be found. It mixed humor with drama, but gave both the proper weight. Calvin’s parents make some worthwhile observations, like “a man’s home is his castle, but it shouldn’t be a fortress.” Even the missing stuffed animal is treated with importance. Which resonates with the audience because we had once a toy like Hobbes, we raised a child who did, or at least are familiar with the concept.
That’s the first thing this arc gets wrong. It lends no seriousness to what Funky has to face. All his valid concerns are disregarded or joked about. Granted, a doctor might ignore the words of a patient who’s loopy on drugs, but Funky wasn’t most of the time.
Which is thing #2: the story isn’t clear about what’s happening and when. Yesterday we wondered if Funky had gotten the sedative or not. He got it today, so he must not have had it before. But that makes yesterday’s strip even more nonsensical, because it eliminates the possibility the birthday question was to test his reaction to the drugs. Which in turn makes the series of events even more out of order: it should be birthday-blood pressure-drugs, not blood pressure-birthday-drugs. They don’t treat you until they’re damn sure they know who you are.
Problem #3 is that the story is poorly researched. Others have pointed out errors in what happens and when, in a cataract surgery. Count of Tower Grove pointed out the hospital gown, but I have another question: why were Funky’s shoes off on Monday? Look at it again; those are definitely socks. Maybe he stayed overnight, but that means he’s been gone longer, which makes it even more implausible that Cory doesn’t know where he is.
#4: Random emotions and characterizations. The eye doctor went back and forth between hating dumb jokes and making dumb jokes. The hospital nurse went from hostile to neutral. Holly went from unconcerned to smirking to visibly worried. Funky immediately went from scared to angry in the “I want to be in a coma” strip. Nothing happened in the story that prompted any of these mood changes.
#5 The jokes are awful. Most of them appear borrowed from a pun book for six-year olds. And the author has no clue how to deliver them, or work them into believable dialog.
#6 Despite all the things missing from this story, it’s still way too long. About two thirds of the strips so far should have been cut. They don’t advance the story, reveal anything about the characters, or make a joke that could stand on its own.
#7 Where’s the squick? No author has ever gotten less mileage out of a cut eyeball than Tom Batiuk. For a world that runs on cancer, disease, death and Becky’s missing arm sleeve, it completely refuses to mine the central premise of eye surgery for anything. I’m sure Tom Batiuk can’t depict eye surgery in the comics, but he could at least wheel Funky in, or show us the scary surgical tools, or something.
#8 More tone problems. That “we need volunteers to hold down someone getting eye drops” strip really threw off the story. No professional medical office would ever do that. But the whole story doesn’t exaggerate like that, just that one strip. If they said that and then wheeled Funky from the Beetlejuice waiting room into a examining room full of medieval torture devices, it could work.
The movie Better Off Dead works because ridiculous things happen all the time. It’s not a by-the-books teen movie for an hour that suddenly blows up Ricky’s mom. That would disturb viewers. They balanced the grounded story with the silliness throughout. Funky Winkerbean, for all its pretense to doing just that, completely fails at it. It just throws drama and comedy into the bowl. It doesn’t measure, mix, or even check the expiration dates first.
#9, and perhaps most importantly, the story takes a dump on its ending. “Humor is how I deal with tragedy” should be a great capper. But the story makes it a lie. Funky “uses humor” early on, when he’s not facing any tragedy. Other people “use humor” for no apparent reason. And because of all the above problems, it’s not made clear that Funky uses his dumb jokes as a coping mechanism. It looks he just does it to annoy people. Which makes us unsympathetic for the character.
Sir. I stand in line.
I love that you dropped Better Off Dead in there, such an awesome 80’s flick, “Two dollars!”