Well, they’ll bore you when you’re trying to be so good
They’ll bore you just like they said they would
They’ll bore you when you’re trying to eat a slice
And when you’re at The Korner haggling over price
Why do I read this anymore?
Everybody must get bored
If I was Bob Dylan I’d be genuinely terrified right now. I do know how Funky feels, though, as I do the same thing, but with Handsome Dick Manitoba. It’s pretty funny how Funky is already a jaded obituary-reading expert, because of course he is. Just two dear old pals, shooting the shit at a burial service in the rain, caring a little, but not too much…that’s the FW experience in a nutshell.
Son of Stuck Funky 
The sky is blue and it’s raining. Weird.
But I guess this is what REO Speedwagon referred to as a “sweet summ-ar uh-show-arr!” Well, I’m “ti-arred of the same old stor-ayyyy”, but I can’t just “tarn some-uh page-ayezz.”
Now that horrible, horrible song is stuck in my head. Thanks, Batdick.
Now that you mention it, yes, that’s some REALLY f*cking lazy rain right there. I mean come on, put a little effort into it, man.
The sky is blue and it’s raining. Weird.
A rare Westview phenomenon known as liquid sunshine. Even when the sun is out it rains. Westview, the most miserable place on earth.
Thanks a lot, Sourbelly. Now I’ll be scouring the obits to see if Kevin Cronin passed away.
Coincidentally, I just did a piece on the 50th anniversary of an REO concert, probably one of the very last before Cronin joined the first time.
I’m kind of hoping it will somehow get passed along to Neal Doughty, the last founding member with the band, and he will send me a free t-shirt.
(If you’re reading this Neal, make it 2XL. I like my shirts a little loose. Thanks.)
I was a little bummed when we lost Gary Richrath. But Doughty (75) and Cronin (70) are still touring with REO-this summer with Styx and Loverboy. Still fun to see!
You’re a Plugger if you check the newspaper obituaries every day for your favorite celebrities.
— Thanks to Tom Batiuk of Ohio
Two weeks later, this entry is recycled and attributed to Reed Hoover. Oh wait, he’s dead too, hah, how about that. Well, maybe they’d do that anyway.
You might say that they’ll do it every time. Oh! Another dead thing! Hah! Mercy me, so much death in comic strips. What a riot.
Bob Dylan has been alive for the entire run of this comic strip. I don’t think everything’s OK, Funky…
Let me know when Funky reads Les Moore’s obituary. Or his own.
They’re probably the kind of fatalistic weirdos that already have their own obits prepped and ready to go, and update them every year.
“A Tragedy Has Befallen All Mankind”
Good title and post, ED.
Handsome Dick Manitoba? He’s still a kid!
I listen to him at least once a month.
Thanks Ian. I always wanted to visit his bar in NYC, but it’s closed now. I did get to meet Ross The Boss back when he was in Manowar, though.
Westview. Where not only worms crawl out when it rains. Inconsiderate assholes do too.
Of course Funky would be concerned for Dylan. After all, the Montoni’s jukebox is filled with special versions of some of Bob’s biggest hits:
“Mr. Pizza Box Man”
“Barfin’ in the Wind”
“It Ain’t Me Baking”
“Subterranean Ptomaine Sick Blues”
“Gotta Serve Some Mediocre Pizza”
“One Less Cup of Coffee”
On another note, is there some reason that Mrs. Winkerbean and Mrs. Moore Who’s Not Dead Yet didn’t accompany their husbands to the funeral? I can see where Cayla might have to work at Westview High (a fact which never seems to stop Les), but Holly went to school with Mary Sue as well, and you would think she might be interested in going. But then, they’re just dumb ol’ gurls and couldn’t make snide comments like the fellas can.
Cushlamochree, you’re good, J.J. O’Malley! You make me want to go to Desolation Westview, although I suspect I’d sing a Loudon Wainwright III song when I got there, most likely “Dead Skunkhead (in the Middle of the Access Ramp).”
Though “It Takes a Lisa to Laugh, It Takes a Winkerbean to Cry” would suffice for Bob Dylan.
Well Holly is still pissed at Mary Sue for putting that stupid Lisa’s Story book out at their last reunion.
How closed off does one have to be that he would first learn of Bob Dylan’s death from the obits in the town newspaper?
In panel 1 today the parts of Funky and Les will be played by Winston Churchill and Kaiser Wilhelm II.
TomBat is 75 I wonder if Batiuk has in his safe a last month or six weeks of Funky panels that are only to be run after his death and after all the current unpublished panels have been printed. Call it Funky: The Epilogue. He could do it like the Six Feet Under series finale, going into the future showing how all the characters die Finally Les, at the age of 110 is the last one left alive. Les is in the cemetary and it is raining He has just buried Summer next to Cayla and Lisa, and Funky and Holly In the last panel the Ghost of St Lisa appears and holds his hand, ‘come on Les, the story’s over, its time to leave Westview for good’ Les breaks into a big smile and is shown dancing on Funky Winkerbean’s grave and yelling ‘Yippee!!!’ On Funky’s grave are the words ‘The End’
One of the things, one of the many things, that drives me crazy about this strip is how everyone seems to be interested in things slightly older than their actual ages. Jeff and “Phantom Empire.” The constant gushing over “Flash of Two Worlds,” a comic from 1961. The love of Dylan. How old are Funky and Moore and their class supposed to be? I’m hard pressed to imagine Funky from Act I liking Dylan, especially if he graduated high school in 1980. I’m at even more of a loss to imagine the late and not missed Bull enjoying Dylan yet they quoted him at the funeral. TB has a nasty habit of turning all of his characters into early Boomers who sound like they were born in the late 40s at latest (and that still doesn’t explain Jeff’s love of a Gene Autry film from the mid 30s). I suspect that TB has turned this comic strip into a house of mirrors and every turn he makes only shows his reflection instead of other people. Any wonder why Act III drags, annoys and goes nowhere?
They canonically graduated high school in 1988, making them all born in about 1970. Even if you interpret the 10-year time skip as moving this to 1978 and 1960, that’s still too young to be listening to Bob Dylan, who was born in 1941 and did most of his best work by about 1972. 1978 was the age of disco, FFS.
Yeah, it is just Batty inserting his favorite things into the strip. In this case he is doing it to please his hippie dippy friends from KSU. This is evidenced by Les’ smirk in the last panel.
I graduated in the mid 80s, and so I can confirm Dylan wasn’t that popular. I remember The Doors being popular, but still nobody from my generation is quoting Jim Morrison at a funeral.
It’s these little things that make this strip so hard to read. A good storyteller strives for some sort of consistency, but not Pulitzer nominated Batty.
And it looks like Batiuk is doing product placement again. You’ll never guess what opened to the public on May 10, 2022!
https://bobdylancenter.com/
Has the Bob Dylan Center announced that they’ll be sponsoring an annual award?
Morrison was hot, sexy and dead in those days…and in 1991 there’d be Oliver Stone’s movie.
On the *Absolutely Live* album, he says something like “dead cat in a top hat/thinks he’s an aristocrat/that’s crap.” Could the Lizard King have been warning us about the Eliminator helmet which would send hapless felines into hyperspace?
Good Lord, where to begin with this mess? I’m doing this Hitorque-style:
1. That’s where “what” starts, Funky?
2. Whatever “it” is that starts with reading obituaries, it gets a lot worse by going to funerals of people you don’t even know or care about.
3. You’re talking to Les Moore. Whatever “it” is, I think having a pathological obsession with your wife’s death 20 years after she died and you remarried is a far worse condition.
4. Why would your “go to guy” for longevity be a musician? That profession is notorious for its members dying at young ages. My bellweather for “first famous musician who was definitively of my own generation” is Kurt Kobain, and,… well, you know.
5. Why would your “go to guy” for longevity be a musician when you’ve never displayed a shred of interest in music?
6. Why would your “go to guy” for longevity be a musician who isn’t remotely appropriate for your age? Bob Dylan was born in 1941. He was not relevant in 1978 or 1988, however we’re interpreting the time skips nowadays.
7. You live in Westview! Haven’t you seen enough death and misery that you don’t need artificial mechanisms to trigger your own existential dread? This is at least high school class member #4 you’re buried: Mary Sue Sweetwater, Bull Bushka, Livinia Jessup, and of course The Most Exalted Dead Precious Holy St. Lisa (Her Name Be Praised). To say nothing of Becky’s arm, Barry Balderman’s sanity, or your father’s mental acuity.
8. You also live in a world with a 105-year-old bus driver, a retired schoolteacher with five jobs who just marched in a parade, your own father who’s still alive, your own wife who was in good enough shape to do a high school majorette show at your age, a guy who rose from the dead, and the aforementioned Lisa who makes phone calls from the afterlife. So spare me the “how fragile life” is speech.
9. You’re explaining death and grieving to Les Moore. Just think about that for a second.
Teenage Les creeped on Mary Sue’s “bod” and Old Les is creeping on her funeral.
I guess that’s a character arc.
Hey, that new quote in the masthead’s second panel. Is a Les retcon inbound? You gotta give us warning to take cover.
Why are Les and Funky even at this funeral?
I’m being serious here. They claim they didn’t know the person, even though Les verifiably did. They’re not paying any respects. They’ve said nothing about the deceased. They’re not talking to anyone who’s there. They’re certainly not consoling anyone. They’re not even paying any attention. So why did they attend?
The whole thing has an obligatory feel, as if attending your high school classmates’ funerals were some sort of obligation that good Ohio people fulfill to each other. Like when Cindy Summers said “with great popularity comes great responsibility” to explain why she flew in to attend Bull Bushka’s funeral. Okay… then where’s the rest of the class? There’s no Harry, no Donna, no Cindy, no Holly, no Linda.
To repeat Rusty above: “this is why this strip is so hard to read.” Funky Winkerbean exercises these strange ideas of how the world works, and then it just ignores them. Then it lectures you about how realistic it is.
I would question whether Funky and Les are “attending” this funeral. They aren’t close enough to properly hear the service, and they haven’t interacted with any of the mourners. They’re just hanging out in the middle distance, chatting. In a movie, they’d be the sinister guy who approaches the protagonist (or victim) as they leave the cemetery, to drop some clue about how the deceased came to be deceased, or hint at a terrible secret.
The whole thing has an obligatory feel, as if attending your high school classmates’ funerals were some sort of obligation that good Ohio people fulfill to each other.
That’s the thing, though. If it were obligatory, these two assholes might feel obliged to participate in the ceremony rather than stand off out of earshot and have a conversation that they literally could be having anywhere else. They haven’t interacted with anyone. They have expressed condolences to the family. They haven’t told the family how much the deceased mattered to them. (that would be a laugh)
They’re not participating at all. They’re just here because apparently a funeral lends greater credence to their stupid observations than it would if they were to have this conversation at Montoni’s. Guess they’re glad Mary Sue died to give them this opportunity.
There’s all this chit chat about death and Dylan but not one comment about Mary Sue or the fact that she died in her 50s-that’s not old. We’ve lost 17 in our class of roughly 160, and we’re just approaching our mid 50s. Some were friends, some I barely knew. Regardless, it’s sad that they’re gone and 17 is too damn many for as young as we are.
I liked Dylan’s songs better when they were performed by other people, but I still put him in my parents’ generation (Traveling Wilbury’s aside).
Sometimes I wonder why he did that time jump if he’s just going to have Les and Funky talk like 70 old men anyway.
Oh, and great title today by the way. I always appreciate the efforts made to come up with creative titles. This one is perfect.
And how does Mr. Blivens feel about these guys at his wife’s funeral? Remember, that’s the name Mary Sue gave when she was at Les’s book signing. Wanna bet that the name won’t be used before we move on to whatever’s next?
“His Christian name was Speedo, but she called him Mr. Earl…” (But only on sunny days when rain is falling, as often happens in Ohio)
I wonder what Bob Dylan would think if someone showed him today’s FW strip?
1) Cool
2) Whatever
3) Why me?