Well, I guess Funky’s okay after being caught au naturel by his soon to be daughter-in-law. Apparently something interesting happened this weekend worth taking pictures of, and we missed that, and got to see a lot more of Funky than we wanted instead.
I do love strips like this, where the writer is referencing modern technology but really doesn’t seem to know how it works. Apparently this filter only took effect once the photo was actually posted on Instagram, and Funky never noticed it when he took the picture or when was selecting it to upload. It is more amusing than most gags in this strip, which is a nice change. And I’m very glad we didn’t get a sideways single panel repeat of the shower scene.
I do think it says a lot about this strip that in a storyline about two young people getting married, the focus here is on two old people trying to use technology. Which makes it the second day this week where the focus is on old people and technology.
by spacemanspiff85 | June 18, 2022 · 10:30 pm
Unfiltered Funky
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Tagged as comics, Funky, funnies, Hi and Lois, Holly, Instagram, other somewhat related comic strips, Pineapple computers, silhouette, technology, the raptor claw in Holly's hair, weekend
Son of Stuck Funky 
Hi and Lois as the joke reference is puzzling. If I didn’t read Comics Curmudgeon, I don’t think I would know what Hi and Lois is. If my newspaper even carried it, I always skipped it. And the result isn’t even funny. Why not something recognizable and visually amusing, like Hagar the Horrible?
They look more like characters from Beetle Bailey to me…
That’s understandable. Both Hi & Lois and Beetle Bailey were both created by Mort Walker.
Lois is Beetle’s sister, after all. The Bailey bloodlines run deep.
Personally, I wish Funky had clicked on the Ferd’nand filter, so everyone in the strip would stop talking (and yes, I know I’m dating myself with this reference).
Oh yes… and somehow the H+L and BB creative teams resist the call to incessantly cross over their strips. I’m guessing TB hasn’t been taking notes.
Or The Far Side filter:
The humor (as it were) in this strip depends entirely on the last panel. It’s all on Ayers, and he doesn’t deliver. Those look like Hi and Lois characters, but they look nothing like the FW characters. Fail.
On the plus side, he captured Holly’s hair horn in all its splendor in the opening panel.
I would pay real money to see a picture of myself in a Hi and Lois style.
I would’ve gone with the “9 Chickweed Lane” filter. The characters would all look the way they normally do but with massive, gaping hellmaws lined with rows of huge, gleaming teeth.
And it would no more disturbing than Funky’s butt crack.
This is my idea of what comic strip filter they should use.
Somehow, I don’t think King Features would have been too thrilled with FW plugging a competitor’s strip. I wonder how many other KFS strips he could have used that most of the FW readers would have recognized.
And usually, this sort of thing is coordinated with the other strip, but not a word about Funky in today’s Hi & Lois.
Yeah I went directly over to read Hi and Lois to see if this was cross promoted.
Well, King Features doesn’t seem to mind Batiuk endlessly plugging Kent State University, The Flash, other DC/Marvel comic book characters, Luigi’s pizza, the Ohio Music Educator’s Association, and his own books which aren’t published by King Features.
I gotta give him partial credit for at least going for an actual gag here, although here in 2022 “Hi & Lois” might as well be the Katzenjammer Kids. Oh well.
So, in today’s FW Batiuk gives us some ripe “older people have no concept of modern technology” comedy fertilizer, but did y’all notice that over in the Sunday C’Shaft it’s a “young people have no concept of older technology” knee-slapper that, just like here, fails spectacularly at its basic premise? Wait to hit a joke-free twofer, TB!
Another joke that completely fails because of poor execution. He’s got a turntable (which young people would know about, because rap music exists), CD players (which aren’t that old), a CD burner (which is an anachronism in this retro stereo setup, and were never very reliable), Betamax (which had lost the format war by 1982), and audio cassettes (which were a joke in Borat). I was going to mockingly ask where the VideoDiscs and 8-Track Player were, but that actually would have made more sense.
Nope, this one’s okay. A cheerfully goofy premise that’s properly set up and paid off: Hi & Lois is right in the wheelhouse of the demographic that would actually read this strip. We’re not looking at a deathless classic piece of material here — and okay, maybe it’s more by luck than by design — but still, this one’s fine.
Yes, yes, okay, I agree, let’s not get carried away here …. B-to-B+ fine, not Calvin and Hobbes fine. Sure. Not amazing. Not breathtaking. Not “look out, all other comic strips — a new standard is being set!” But y’know, fine.
I mean, if he hit this level consistently? Instead of maybe twice a year? There’d be no need for this website.
Shouldn’t Funky look like Thirsty Thurston?
That wife beating drunk? Ah well at least Hi and Lois isn’t pursuing any prestige topics. Imagine if Batty wrote that strip?
Shouldn’t any of the characters look like any Funky Winkerbean characters? It’s like they just drew the cast of Hi and Lois. You can see in the same panel that no one in the “filtered” shot has Funky’s or Holly’s hair color. Or hair shape. One of them even has a backwards baseball cap on, which makes no sense.
This had potential to get a laugh. The fun of this gag should have been seeing the regular FW characters in a different style. 3 of the 5 people in the shot are from FW’s endless cast of smirking clones, and the other 2 don’t resemble their “real-life” counterparts in the slightest. Ironically, the obscurities are done better, because they look more like themselves. The drawing of the characters in the H&L style is too small. It should be larger and more detailed. And Funky posted a photo of their wedding planning weekend? Couldn’t this gag have waited for something you’d actually post pictures of on Instagram, like… the wedding? Wouldn’t everyone in their wedding clothes in the H&L style also be a lot funnier?
This is why even Tom Batiuk’s funny ideas aren’t funny. He puts zero effort into making the joke work, which he doesn’t know how to do anyway. And I know exactly what he’d say about it: “blah blah blah quarter inch from reality blah blah blah blah.” He’s like a petulant child who’s given a rule to follow and follows it to the exclusion of everything else. I can’t believe I have to explain this to Mr. Two-Time Pulitzer Nominee, but for cryin’ out loud, IT’S A VISUAL GAG. IT HAS TO LOOK RIGHT AND PEOPLE HAVE TO BE ABLE TO SEE IT.
I was thinking Rocky could have made a Tik Toc video showing her opening that bathroom door and dancing to My Ding A Ling.
I imagined the whole strip as the VCR scene in Spaceballs. That picture makes Funky say the line “pass this part, pass this part. In fact, never show this part again.”
I wonder if the Hi and Lois creative team, Brian Walker, Greg Walker, and Chance Browne, had any advance notice Batty was going to appropriate their characters into Funky Winkerbean?
Batty seems to believe everything is public domain.
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As many of you are probably aware, there was a famous comic strip event named the ‘Comic strip switcheroo.’ It was a massive practical joke in which several comic strip writers and cartoonists, without the foreknowledge of their editors, traded strips for a day on April Fools’ Day 1997.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_strip_switcheroo
Batty, with two strips to his name, apparently did not participate. I’d love to discover TB’s reasons for not joining in on the fun.
Was the joke beneath him and his precious babies? Is he a notorious blabbermouth? Was he simply the odd man out? Was he hamstrung because of his alleged claim to write a year in advance?
Mr. Batiuk, you never fail to disappoint.
There was a Funky Winkerbean/Dick Tracy crossover story in 2015 or so:
You’ll never guess what they were auctioning! Go on, guess!
Hmm, I’ll go out on a limb and say comic books?