Ew. I’m feeling pretty nauseous now. I didn’t like the multiple times Dinkle made jokes about expecting his wife to put out when he did extremely basic things for her, and I am very much not liking Funky expecting Holly to repay him in sex for picking up her medication. I’m especially disturbed by how shocked and grateful Holly is acting in the third panel. Was she expecting Funky to make her walk from home to pick up the medicine? But what has me disturbed most of all is Funky’s expression. He is loving thinking of himself as his wife’s sugar daddy. Again, ew.
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Son of Stuck Funky · The web's premiere source for Funky Winkerbean snark
Son of Stuck Funky 
Uh yeah, I’m with you Spaceman…yuck. This one is just gross. He often tries to work various bits of lingo he’s picked up over the years into these cockamamie stories of his and it rarely if ever works.
It’s Les and Lisa all over again.
It’s a dumb conversation. He should have asked Holly what she wanted to do first. Maybe she needed to get her pain meds right away, and wouldn’t mind sitting in the car while Funky went into the pharmacy. Or, maybe, they could just hit the pharmacy’s drive-through window and then drive home.
Personally, I wouldn’t want Funky to pick up my meds for me. He’d likely come back a week late after spewing inanities at the pharmacist.
Gee, I wonder what prescriptions were ordered for Holly? I guess it depends on WHAT HER FREAKIN’ INJURY IS, which Battyuk hasn’t seen fit to share with us all week!
Also, “medical sugar daddy” is such a clunky and meaningless phrase, I assume Funky uses variations of it in everything he says to his wife. “Hey, who’s your purse-holding sugar daddy?” “Hey, who’s you’re kitchen reno sugar daddy?” “Hey, who’s your jukebox sanitizing sugar daddy?” “Hey, who’s your Last-Two-Discmen-In-The-World-Owning sugar daddy?” “Hey, who’s your…”
Funky should have called himself Holly’s “dealer”. Heck, maybe that’s the punchline Batiuk wanted to use, but he convinced himself the syndicate would nix it.
Eh, I just thought it was Funky being nice. “I’ll take you home so you can rest, then go out to get your medications so you don’t have to sit in the car.”
It’s weird how this strip can make one assign the worst motivation to the character’s actions. Almost like the author doesn’t understand basic human behavior, and, after a few decades of non-editorial supervision, said author doesn’t feel the need to extend his understanding.
Oh, that’s definitely true. So many strips aren’t that bad in themselves, it’s just taken in the context of how crappy and often offensive Batiuk’s work is, it’s impossible to give him the benefit of the doubt.
For me though, it’s Funky’s leer that really creeps me out about this. If he had just had some silly or sweet expression it would be one thing, but I totally expect tomorrow’s strip to feature Funky winking lasciviously at the pharmacist as he says something like “My wife is going to pay me back for this later, if you know what I mean!”.
Not to mention the fact that the label usually refers to a relationship where a substantial age difference exists between the parties.
I think it’s fascinating how you need to be a daily FW reader to understand BatHam’s weird outlook on everything, yet the strip does everything possible to discourage anyone from reading it by being so monotonous and stupid. While I agree that this one is relatively harmless by FW standards, you need to be a regular FW reader to know that. To anyone else, it’d just be plain baffling. I understand BatYam all too well, yet I don’t really understand him at all.
I have come to hate that I understand Batiuk, better than Batiuk understands anything. It’s not an enviable position.
I agree that the idea behind this joke isn’t too offensive, but adding ‘medication’ to sugar daddy is just clunky and confusing. First of all he lists two different nice things he’s doing for her, and one of them ISN’T medication.
Second isn’t the ‘sugar’ part of ‘sugar’ daddy what the girl provides in the relationship? She provides the ‘sugar’ to her ‘daddy’? So putting medication before sugar makes it seems like Holly is providing Funky with medication.
Did they leave Holly’s mom at the hospital?
She’s on that platform with Becky’s mom. Best view of the playing field.
Ooooh, my first downvote! Senpai noticed me!
Omedetō! From one downvotee to another. It’s interesting that the rash of downvoting started as this arc was winding down.
I’m resisting the nausea engendered by today’s strip because I have a couple of questions:
1. It’s dark outside. Does that mean it’s still the same night that Holly broke her ankle(or leg)?
2. If so, the examination, surgery and recovery must set some kind of record, right?
3. Where’s Melinda? Did she magically teleport home? Did Funky drive to the hospital, pick her up, drop her off at home, and come back to the hospital in time to hold Holly’s purse be annoying?
4. Will we have another visit from the Phantom Downvoter?
I’m sorry. I find it someone humorous at 11:30 MDT that your post is the only one in the entire discussion with a downvote.
Having said this, when I wake up tomorrow, I’m sure all of my comments will have a half-dozen downvotes. 😁
Out of curiosity, I performed a web search to discover if there is such a thing as a cast fetish. Yuck, there is.
Anyone who has worn a cast knows how disturbing this can be. After several weeks, a cast smells awful. Underneath the plaster and bandages is a limb that hasn’t been washed in weeks. 😝
.. and it itches like crazy! I remember shoving pens, pencils, and knitting needles down my cast.
Ever see David Cronenberg’s “Crash” (not to be confused with the 2005 Best Picture Academy Award winner)? There’s a fetish over everything.
No, I’m familiar with Cronenberg’s work but I missed that one. Quite a cast.
As I wrote the other day, I had a bad automobile accident last December. The last thing on my mind was feeling horny. 😆
There’s a fetish over everything… and I think that’s very healthy. I would frankly be more bothered if some things *weren’t* fetishes, because I would be very put-off by what things are and what things aren’t.
Think of food. We all have some food we think is disgusting, but some things aren’t food to anyone. Grass isn’t food. Some crops aren’t food. We don’t eat certain animals, or certain parts of them. Just because they don’t taste good, aren’t right for our digestive systems, or offend our religious beliefs. In a world where some plants and animals can be declared “definitely not food,” why the hell does anyone eat raw oysters?
Procreation is a core survival instinct. I think our minds are just wired to find reasons to do it. So I don’t kink-shame. As long as it’s legal, involves consenting adults, and I don’t have to know the details of it, do what ya like.
Just curious, does anybody have a warmup suit with a logo of their high school on it like Holly? Only Funky Winkerbean characters do?
I was a halfway decent athlete during my high school days, but the only item in my possession from those days is my softball mitt. It didn’t belong to the school. My parents paid for it. I still use it to play corporate softball games and play catch with Mr. “beware of eve hill.” I’m glad I held onto it. A new one can cost over $100.
Batty’s fascination with high school is intriguing. I don’t have a yearbook, and I’ve attended one class reunion in 40 years (the 10-year reunion). I stay in contact with one friend from high school, and we’ve regrettably devolved to the Christmas card phase.
I agree with you, SpacemanSpiff85. Some things should remain private. Too often, Batty hints at the sex lives of his characters like Dinkle, Les, and now Funky. No, no, no, no! Stop it! The mental images are too horrible. Nobody needs to know.
It’s like a neighbor walking their dog stops to talk with me. They end the conversation by mentioning they have to go home for their weekly sexual encounter with their spouse. No! No! Stop it! Ack! Too much information! I don’t want to know. La la la la la la.
What baffles me is that Ayers collaborates on this dreck. “You want me to illustrate WHAT?”
Tell me about it. I often have a mental image of Chucky storming out of his studio with his arms raised in frustration, pieces of paper fluttering, and his wheeled chair spinning.
Chuck Ayers: I can’t take it anymore! I’m not paid enough to draw this shit!
Somebody give that man a Pulitzer. Oh, wait! He already has one. How much does that hurt, TB?
Thanks, didn’t realize Chuck won a Pulitzer. But it looks like he was part of a team that won the award for their reporting for the Akron Beacon Journal.
According to this article from 1971, Ayers was also nominated for one for a cartoon he did while he was still a student at Kent State.
https://dks.library.kent.edu/?a=d&d=dks19710127-01.2.12&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN——-
That’s impressive. And yet I see no pompous blog posts from him about the “secret sauce” and writing process.
The problem with this story the tone Batiuk gives the whole thing. “Older person tries to be a cheerleader again and gets hurt” is an inoffensive plot in itself, but look all the twisted details that have been introduced:
– Holly and her mother Melinda spend a week reminiscing about Holly being severely burned.
– Melinda treats 50-year-old Holly like a child, and is abusive towards her.
– Holly passive-aggressively yells at Melinda but never addresses the actual abuse.
– Funky is not involved in any of this.
– Holly and Melinda co-opt a high school event to indulge their own egos.
– Dinkle agrees to this, when the high school band has been Becky’s job for a decade or two now.
– Holly injures herself again, and finds it a bonding experience with her twisted, abusive mother.
– Melinda insists on riding in the ambulance, and then immediately disappears from the story once Holly’s injury is being treated.
– Funky shows up at the hospital all of a sudden.
– The hospital asks Holly the “domestic abuse” question right in front of her husband.
– Holly doesn’t tell the nurse she got injured trying to please her unpleasable mother, who lives with them.
– Holly is rude to the nurse who is asking standard admission questions.
– Funky hangs around the examining room and makes lame jokes while Holly is in tremendous pain.
– Funky tells Holly a joke that upsets her just as she is being wheeled into surgery.
– The story never tells us why Holly needs surgery, or what her injury actually is. Funky thinks this is hilarious.
– The depiction of her injury is not consistent with the severity the treatment implies. Holly slips on a wet field, hears a crack at her ankle (the one that slipped), and falls backwards. It’s hard to imagine how this ends in catastrophic ankle injury that requires immediate surgery.
– The story pays no attention to Holly’s age, or how severe broken bones can be when you get older.
– The nurse giving Funky permission to kiss his wife, without it being explained why he can’t do it whenever he wants to.
– The sudden reappearance of COVID precautions, which continually flit in and out of existence in Westview.
– At the same time, the demands that COVID would place an on emergency room and its workers are never acknowledged.
– Funky, like Les, puts on his “nice guy” act. He clearly expects adulation and praise for performing basic tasks on his wife’s behalf.
– In this context, Funky calls himself a “sugar daddy”, a term that implies a cash-for-sexual-favors arrangement.
– Holly smiles lustily at this suggestion, even though she just got out of surgery.
– Holly is given no recovery time. It’s not even morning yet, and she’s already being driven home. I would think a night in a hospital bed is called for, especially since it must be about 3 AM by now.
– The banner implies another week of this story line.
An excellent summary! The only explanation I can see is that we’re seeing Act 4: a gag-a-day, cartoon violence-filled strip that insists on playing out in a realistic setting.
Wow. Nice job. Somebody is taking notes!
That’s a lot of plot twists. I believe it’s clear evidence that Batty writes his stories day-by-day rather than fully fleshing out the stories before laying out the strips.
There is a bright side. Despite my worst fears, this story arc has featured Dinkle in only three strips. YaY!
It always bothered me that Les, and by extension Batiuk, thought there was something remarkable about the way Les looked after Lisa. He accompanied her to her chemo appointments and oncologist meetings, and took care of stuff around the house when she was too sick to do it (with apparent abundant help from friends). He brought a hospital bed into the house when she was dying.
Yes, that was all good stuff to do, but it is the absolute minimum that would be expected in my family, or (IMO) in any sane, loving family. OF COURSE you are going to hold down the fort at home for your ailing spouse. OF COURSE you’re not going to send them off alone to the oncologist with a jolly “break a leg!” OF COURSE you are going to lovingly tend to them at home in their last days. Most of us here are at least within spitting distance of middle age, I’d guess — how many of us have had to tend to relatives dying of cancer? I have. I did all that stuff for my aunt and I don’t think highly of myself for doing it. I loved her and that’s just the kind of thing you do when you care about someone, without question, and without expecting a medal for it. Countless millions have done the same for people they love. It’s just the normal, decent thing to do.
Les thinks these actions are so unusual that they are literally worth a Hollywood star seeking him out and making a movie about his nobility. I’m just gobsmacked every time I think of that.
And now here’s Flunky, clearly thinking he’s rising to the occasion in a most remarkable way. I get it, it’s a joke, but even as a joke — come on. It’s so bog-standard normal that it doesn’t even rise to being joke-worthy. It’s as if your spouse said, “If you’re at the grocery store already, could you pick up a dozen eggs?” and instead of saying, “sure,” you made a smirky wisecrack about how “I’m your egg sugar daddy now.” The kids have a word for this attention-seeking behavior: exhausting.
Sometimes I really wonder what life is like chez Batiuk. And then I quickly banish the thought. I don’t think I want to know.
You’ve described one of the worst aspects of the Funkyverse: how Toxic Nice Guy behavior is universally upheld as positive and healthy.
Les, Funky, Dinkle, Mopey Pete, Darrin, and Dead Skunk Head John are all toxic nice guys. They expect praise and rewards for their minor good deeds and accomplishments. And this expected reward is in the form of sex or romance. Even though all of these men treat their women atrociously the rest of the time. They don’t support their ambitions, make jokes at their expense, and treat them like unpaid domestic help. And the women absolutely indulge this. They think they’re lucky to have these gems in their life.
The Funkyverse is an incel paradise.
Analysis: Extremely gross, even stomach-churning, but accurate. This goes hand in hand with the comic consistently failing the Bechdel test, even with the worshipped dying Lisa. Unless Lisa was a total sociopath, her first and primary concern would have been for her toddler daughter. What was going to happen to Summer? Would she be okay without her mother? Would there be a hole in Summer’s life that she would spend her life trying to fill? Would she remember seeing her mother waste away and die? Would she remember her mother at all?
NOPE! None of those questions were foremost on Lisa’s mind. It was jokes about Les getting remarried, and vaudeville-era jokes when asked where she wanted to be buried: “Surprise me!”
Speaking of Summer, whatever happened to her? Wonder what she thought about the Lisa’s Story movie? Oh well, who cares what some girl thinks about anything?
Unless Lisa was a total sociopath
Oh, she absolutely was. Everything was about her at all times. And her need to be protected dovetailed perfectly with Les’ “toxic nice guy” need to protect things. Nothing makes Les Moore happier then getting offended on Lisa’s behalf. And it continues 14 years after her death. Their relationship was horribly codependent.
Say, maybe Atomik Komix will start a new title called “The Amazing Adventures of Chemosabe and Medical Sugar Daddy…”
Not to be confused with Michael Chabon’s *Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,* which won the Pulitzer Prize.
(I’m starting to feel like the Susan Lucci episode of “Saturday Night Live” in which everywhere she went during rehearsals somebody had an Emmy, which she didn’t.)
Yeah, one of the appalling Act 2 strips that should be mentioned here is where Les and Lisa were in the hospital waiting room for her oncologist or her chemo treatments or something, and there was a woman a row away from them who was breaking up with her boyfriend. She had the headwrap like Lisa, and if Lisa hadn’t been in the panels with her, a reader might have thought that she was Lisa. She was crying and her line suggested that she was exhausted dealing with her boyfriend. She was telling him to take his things out of her house and be gone by the time she got back. Then she ended the phone call and cried.
Did Lisa or Les go over to comfort her, or ask her what was the matter? Of course not. Lisa just looked at Les with admiration that he hadn’t abandoned her, and presumably they just continued sitting there reading their stupid magazines as a woman going through the same trauma Lisa was was falling to pieces just 10 feet away from them. It really does line up with the idea that these incidental people aren’t actually people to Batiuk, and hence they’re not people to his characters. It was supposed to be a heartwarming strip celebrating Les, because of course it was, but instead it came across as cold and unfeeling.
Meanwhile, over in Crankshaft…the three-week (or has it been four? I’ve honestly lost track) arc on the death of the Centerville Sentinel has mercifully come to a climax with a strained link to FW.
Ed shows up at the Sentinel office and offers Skip (who is taking stuff from the job he quit, and had no trouble getting into the building) his “penny sock” (ewww!) to help save the paper. Skippy says it’s too late–even though Modor could easily hire another staffer and keep publishing–and suggests they spend Cranky’s coinage at “that pizza place in Westview” (Geez, Skipper, there are no local pizzerias in Centerville that you could support? That’s the attitude that doomed the Sentinel in the first place.).
And so another Battyuk epic limps along to its conclusion. I swear, if TB had scripted “Casablanca” he would have had the Nazis shoot Laszlo and Ilsa and finished with Rick shrugging his shoulders and saying “Well, guess I might as well go open the bar.”
And “It’s a Wonderful Life” would have ended with Clarence telling George, “It’s okay… okay for you to go.” ~THE END~ An RKO Picture.
LETSALLGOTOMONTONIS? It’s a crummy commercial!
“That pizza place in Westview” in *Crankshaft* is like “that old bus driver I had” in *Funky Winkerbean.*
Lord Voldemort must be smiling somewhere. Names really do have power!
They not only rounded up the usual suspects, they disposed of them, eh?