Dunno what to say about today’s strip. I’ve never had a broken leg, so I don’t know if toe-writing is a standard healing exercise or it’s just a bit of whimsy.
It’s actually kind of funny, to be honest. I mean, I didn’t laugh or anything, but I appreciated the attempt. I like, too, that she seems to be making light of the situation without being condescending–a real rarity in this strip. Though Ayers has drawn the doctor as if he had just been sneered at.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Tagged as bare trees, bricks, doctor guy, Falling leaves, Funky, Holly, hospital, leaves, talking building, Westview Hospital
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Son of Stuck Funky
Yup, it’s a joke all right, but JUST barely. I guarantee he’s used this gag in real life, which means he’s reached a point where he’s using long-ago doctor appointments as inspiration for his “jokes”. And that’s kind of sad in a weird stupid way. He really needs to get out more.
How about comic sans, or, in this case, sans comic.
god please no
It was bad enough when Dick Tracy used it for a few weeks towards the end of Locher’s reign. Gah what trash.
“It happened!”
Of course dipshit has to sit there and hold her purse.
It’s probably a by-product of when I worked in retail while I was in college but I have the irresistible urge to say to Funky…
Oh, that purse is you, sir! May I show you a pair of matching shoes?
Funky looks like his hallucinogenics just kicked in. His response would probably be “Hey, my purse sounds really purple, man.”
Of course he does. Holly, being a woman, can’t possibly answer complex medical questions like “does it hurt when I do this?” without her husband being present to supervise.
WHAT BOOT?
Am I blind? Am I hallucinating? More so? What the fuck is he talking about? There is no boot visible anywhere in this strip! None! What fucking boot are you talking about?
Maybe he means when she gets home? “I want you to do take the boot off and do this exercise twice a day.”
It’s just more forced, unclear writing. If the doctor wanted her to do this exercise at home, he could have said this in the same amount of word balloon space. “When you’re home, take the boot off, and move your toes like you’re writing in the air.” He asked it like he wants her to do it now. But Batiuk misses that too. Holly should have responded “my boot’s already off, stupid, you were just examining it.”
Yeah, the antonym of cursive hand (or toe?) writing is Roman. Not Times Roman, which is a font. Quarter inch away from clever. A full light year away from funny.
You can find the Winkerzone a quarter inch from clever and a full light year from funny. Plan your unsatisfying vacation today.
Doctor: Chinese alphabet. You don’t have to do all of the characters. About 2,000 or so will do.
Here, let’s start with a relatively easy one that you’re actually familiar with:
癌
Now to really work those tendons, here’s a tricky one! Again, you’re intimately familiar with the concept already, being a resident of Westview and all:
鬱
I found it hard to believe that this is a real thing but apparently drawing an imaginary alphabet using the big toe as the pencil is a prescribed exercise used in rehabilitation.
My father contracted West Nile Virus a few years ago (it went to his spine/Neuro system) and a big part of his rehabilitation was weird motor skill exercises similar to this. So I won’t fault Batty for that.
Everyone in the rehab center, my dad included, was heavily invested in getting out of there so wry ennui comments were pretty uncommon, and the few that did arise were funnier than this (More than one patient likened the phys-therapy intern to Count Rogen in “The Princess Bride”) . I will snark on Batty for *that*.
A lot of physical therapy exercises seem very silly. When I had my second broken arm (technically a broken shoulder), I had to play “itsy bitsy spider” with my fingers. I would crawl up the wall, put my palm flat against the wall, and let it slide back down. The point was to get use to raising my arm again, something I couldn’t do. And boy, did it hurt every single time on the way down. Another one was to lie on the bed and hold onto a small towel while the physical therapist tried to take it away, like you would play with a dog.
There’s a new entry on the BatBlog today and it’s quite a corker. Never before has something so boring been described with such grandiosity. Why, it’s almost as if HE never reads it either!
He certainly didn’t proofread it. What the hell is happening in those final few words?
I think he’s having a stroke.
I think he wrote “not caring if it tried” but then decided “not giving a flying fig” was better. Now, me, I would have deleted one or the other before going to post, but clearly that’s what an editor does, and Batiuk couldn’t bear to do it.
This was printed in a book, that was published by a university. Kent State University should be embarrassed by this.
I got a chuckle out of this line: “ I was also beginning to outgrow my influences. So, I let them go and began to trust my own instincts more, and those instincts were pushing me to create work without the intervention of the outside world, and frankly not giving a flying fig not caring if it tried. ”
Well, it is true that the outside world does not intrude on this strip. It doesn’t intrude on his blog post either. That last sentence is written in some sort of foreign language.
And again, this is what he used as an example of his improved wit and instincts:
It sounds like a tender moment between Beavis and Butt-head. “Huh-huh, you said ‘pass,’ huh-huh.”
Say what you will about Act 3’s art, but at least we will never have to see Helmet Hair Goggled Cyclops Les ever again.
A more naturally behavioral dialogue?
Ahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!!(Wheezing, gasping, labored intake of breath) Ahahahahahahahahah!!!!!!
*Sigh*
This was so close to being a viable joke.
“Cursive or shorthand?” or “Times New Roman or Comic Sans (or whatever font)?”
But he had to go all Big Brain and oversell the punchline.
“In your case, make it ‘drawing wooly mammoths on the cave wall.'”
Definitely a bad comic strip for people who like necks. I’m not sure I really see a single one…
One has to wonder at this point: Is responding to any medical professional’s simple requests or questions with snarky and supposedly humorous comments something endemic to Westview, Ohio, or is it a trait peculiar to the Winklebean household?
I’m thinking this entire week’s worth of strips was the result of a bet Battyuk made with some golfing buddies, all of whom were doctors, that he couldn’t come up with six hospital-related jokes in the time it took them to finish playing the back nine.
I really hate this kind of strip, for several reasons:
1. It’s not clever or witty at all. Funky Winkerbean characters love to act like they’ve been asked a stupid question, when they haven’t. Obviously, the doctor wants Holly to start putting her ankle through its usual range of motion. It’s an easy thing to understand. Batiuk thinks this sort of quip makes the doctor look stupid, when it really makes Holly look stupid.
2. It’s artificial and forced. In real life, people aren’t limited by the size of word balloons. The doctor would give more of an explanation, like “I want you to start exercising your ankle, by keeping your boot off, and imagining that you’re writing in the air with your foot.” Today’s strip depends on the doctor not explaining why he wants her to do this, as if it were some random off-the-wall request.
3. It’s not an authentic reaction. When you’ve had a broken bone, an instruction like this is great news, because it’s a major step towards full recovery. Broken bones have to be immobilized for the first month or so. Simple daily tasks become a pain in the… ass. So being told to exercise the limb isn’t something you’re snarky about; it puts a big smile on your face.
4. It’s rude. BC says “Ayers has drawn the doctor as if he had just been sneered at.” Well, he WAS just sneered at. He’s doing his job, giving an appropriate instruction, and Holly is being a smartass to him for no good reason. Why does Tom Batiuk find so much humor in belittling medical personnel? It’s one of the highest-regarded professions out there. Especially now, after all the sacrifices these people made trying to protect us all from COVID. Don’t they deserve better than this?
5. That obnoxious hangdog “I’ve so suffered so much” look that Funky Winkerbean characters love to give when they haven’t suffered at all. Holly broke the ankle on a Saturday night, needed emergency surgery, and was riding on an ankle cart first thing Monday morning. It normally takes weeks to reach that stage, and even longer to get past it. And within 3 weeks Holly was on crutches, back at work, and apparently able to run up stairs to chase the stupid Pizza Box Monster.
Which is also problem #6: this event doesn’t fit the story at all. Holly just moving her ankle is a step back from things we’ve already seen her do. It contradicts the narrative. But Batiuk thought it was a real knee-slapper, so into the strip it goes.
Apparently Holly possesses excellent recuperative powers. It’s a little over six weeks since she broke her ankle seriously enough to require surgery and she’s beginning rehabilitation. A Google search showed that, depending on severity, a cast or boot is needed for six to ten weeks with age and severity being complicating factors and yet here we are with Holly’s boot coming off in the minimum amount of time.
To be faaaaiiiir, it may mean “take the boot off so you can do this exercise, then put it back on, and do that every day for no more than 20 minutes” or similar.
I was working on bending my knee gently for rehab while still spending most of the time with the immobilizer on.
Incidentally, I was also told that usually older women got the canes instead of crutches, (though I was pretty happy with crutches) so Holly should probably have canes, or whatever the proper name of those cane-like sticks is.
Oh, yeah, and we have Dinkle’s word that Holly’s recuperative powers are outstanding (there’s a pun there but I can’t be bothered).
Batyuk tripped over and punted this “joke” all around the block. It’s a lesson on how not to tell a joke in a comic strip.
1.) First and foremost, it’s Times New Roman. There’s no such font as “Times Roman”.
2.) Cursive is a writing style. The opposite of cursive is print or block script.
3.) The “joke” really falls flat because the choices are of dissimilar types.
I’m sure Batyuk would pass off the blame for this gaffe on Holly stating she barely graduated from high school or something. Batyuk frequently portrays Holly as a bobble-headed nincompoop who can’t make it through the day without Funky’s help. Batyuk would claim “There’s been no error. I meant to do that. It’s part of the joke. Blame Holly, not me.”
As many have said, an editor would help prevent errors like this. I’ve seen someone, probably in the SOSF Twitter feed, who claimed she was Batyuk’s editor. She gushed what a nice guy Batyuk is and what a pleasure he is to work with. That tweet leads me to believe her function as an editor is strictly limited to making sure Kings Features has an FW comic to distribute on any given day. We’ve seen how salty Batyuk gets when people criticize his work.