When we last saw Wally Winkerbean in this retrospective, he was staring with longing grief and acceptance into the eyes of his ex wife Becky, after having a major meltdown flashback at the Girl’s Basketball Conference Championships.
Funky lets Becky know that, as the main character, he’s taking it upon himself to facilitate Wally’s recovery.
So Wally I guess needs therapy. Wally didn’t fall through the cracks of Veteran’s services, (since they were reaching out and he was avoiding them.)
Wally was falling through the cracks of his own friends and family. I mean, it seems to surprise all his friends that a guy who was blown up and captured and presumed dead TWICE, would maybe need some mental health oversight. I can’t decide if this is callously realistic, an adult accepting another adult’s assertions that they’re ‘fine’. Or what.
Wally is never shown seeing this therapist again. And months later complains about Shrinks.
It isn’t the professionals at the VA who ultimately help Wally. No. He needs a feminine touch.
He starts dating long term Montoni’s waitress, Rachel.
On their first date he has a flashback, but she’s instantly clued in and sympathetic.
And like every Funkyverse female, she has to pressure an oblivious male into sexytimes.
She compares notes with his ex.
And, believe it or not, Buddy the wonder dog was Becky’s idea!
Then Rachel emotionally blackmails Wally into a service dog.
And there you go. Bam. By February 2011 Wally is fixed. Fixed by a woman perfect for him in every way, who inexplicably put all this effort into an emotional wreck of a man. Why does Rachel like Wally? I don’t know. It’s not that there couldn’t be any reasons. For a Funkyverse male, he at least stays fit. He seems kind. She knew him before the wars, maybe she always had a crush? Or maybe she’s like Cayla, and wants them too pathetic to leave her. But Batiuk never sees fit to give us a reason.
And the most insidious thing is how Batiuk has framed this as the relationship that heals and validates Wally. Buddy isn’t the service dog, it’s Rachel. Do you know how many toxic men try to manipulate women into being the Rachel in their lives? Thinking that if they only had a romantic partner who gave them plently of time, who always knew what to say, what to do, how to heal them, that would be the key to finally unlocking their true potential, and being happy?
People can be a healing factor in other people’s lives, yes. But you are not owed their efforts. People are not just tools you use to fix yourself.
But Wally’s fixed now. Rachel fixed Wally! Yay!
He gets a week of final closure with Becky.
Wait. This was supposed to be a John Howard retrospective right? What has DSH been up to?
DSH has been shoved into the background again. Batiuk wasn’t interested in using him for love triangles, co-parenting drama, or even as a supportive friend to his former employee. (You remember THAT?) DSH has settled into his final position. Behind the counter of Komix Korner.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Ah, now you’re getting to the stuff that happened after I discovered SoSF. The stuff I really remember. Sigh. I really, really wish you hadn’t posted that New Year’s Eve strip though. You know why.
It’s been a pet theory of mine for a while, but as more time passes, I believe it becomes far more clear that you can divide Act III into two parts. You had the part before Les married Cayla, when he was still doing somewhat complex arcs that occasionally brushed up against (gasp) character development, and the part after, when he clearly lost all interest. Wally illustrates this perfectly. In early Act III, Wally is a major player, with a character arc that (gasp) actually, you know, kind of goes somewhere. In later Act III, however, Wally is a tedious, jittery schmuck, who spends every waking hour at that stupid pizza place. And on top of that, when the strip ends, he has absolutely nothing to show for it. His long-range character arc went nowhere.
I think he expected some major awards for marrying his hero to (gasp, shock horror) a Negro, and when no one cared, it’s like the life just deflated out of him. The strip became one long homage to comic books. Occasionally, he’d make a stab at awards (Bull’s CTE) or humiliate Funky, but other than that you could tell he just didn’t care any more.
That’s exactly the date something changed for me too–the week of Les & Cayla’s wedding was also the end of Summer and cohort, along with the end of the real-time conceit. His stories got flabbier and flabbier and the xeroxed nerdkids that Les was supposedly teaching got fainter and fainter. Maybe he should have retired right then and there? Seemed like the last point at which he was still trying.
Also since it’s the same as my own wedding anniversary i note the date is coming up in about a week.
Everything really slowed down after that, and it wasn’t exactly action-packed before. But you could plainly see how he lost interest. He wrote himself into a corner with Les and Cayla, and it seemed to demoralize him somehow. He lost interest in the “new generation”, and everything began to focus more and more on comic books and wacky elderly people.
My pet theory is that, high off of the Lisa’s Story success, he began Act III with several planned storylines in mind, all the way through to ending the entire Funky Winkerbean strip with a big Lisa’s Story movie.
You can tell from how all the arcs take years to build up, are more interconnected, and all seem headed toward a goal. But he burned through them completely by 2014.
That’s when he started just making stuff up a year at a time.
Understandable that the war left Wally with flashbacks and the inability to interact normally with people. What is everyone else in this strip’s excuse?
I think almost everybody else in the Funkyverse doesn’t have an excuse for how they act
It isn’t just the characters that went nowhere. Someone hasn’t learned a blasted thing about how human beings think and behave since he started pouting about his mean mommy told him that there was more in life than sitting on his duff, reading nonsense and stuffing milk and cookies into him!
I guess Batiuk is saying shrinks suck, get a dog?
No. This is Tom saying he went to a shrink, who suggested that Tom tell him what he felt and to look deep inside. Tom instantly gave up. All Tom felt, and could see, was his internal perfection. Stupid dumb therapist! Dogs? Those you can hit with newspapers! Do it to your therapist, and they call the cops! Okay, that time wasn’t a newspaper, it was a tire-iron. But still.
Or he was told that his mother wasn’t out to destroy him just because she thought that there was more to life than sitting on his ass and reading about an insane idiot running at Ridiculous Speed.
I’m almost disappointed that Funky’s car crash was barely mentioned because i made an edit on it
Right up there with the death of Goku, (don’t ask me which one…)
I have kind of a soft spot for the Wally and Rachel story, sort of a The Best Years of Our Lives meets The Hurt Locker meets Frankie and Johnny in the Clare de Lune. It at least has the shape of a story about human beings and human emotions.
it’s kind of a shame it’s one of the small handful times the people in the Funkyverse were acting like normal humans
Despite my poking fun at it, Wally’s PTSD is decently written, and it’s a struggle that he takes years to come out of. Yet it treats Wally’s mental issues hopefully, which is nice.
If Rachel was just given a little more depth, so she’s a person and not just a perfectly designed tool of redemption, and if we’d just been given more stuff with the kids involved and how all this was affecting them…It would have been up there with some of the most ‘so-average-it’s-good’ storytelling Batiuk was capable of.
If Rachel was just given a little more depth, so she’s a person and not just a perfectly designed tool of redemption
She’s Wally’s surrogate mommy, like every other wife/girlfriend in the strip is. Even though Wally has a legit need for emotional support, and Rachel’s a stronger female character who could actually fill it. But it’s played exactly the same as John’s need for Becky to support John with his comic book problems, Funky’s need for Holly to insulate him from his own obnoxiousness, Crazy Harry’s need for Donna to indulge his immaturity, and of course Les’ need for Cayla to listen to all his Lisa problems.
Really, that’s my biggest problem with the Wally story: the lack of weight it’s given. It’s not that glaringly awful on the surface, but it still has that trademark lack of seriousness, and the implication that everyone else’s suffering is trivial compared to that of Les Moore.
Characters are way more careful about hurting Les’ feelings than they are Wally’s or Bull’s. Even though Wally and Bull had much more serious conditions that entitled them to more patience. And, they had conditions that could make them snap and seriously hurt loved ones. The characters talk about Wally and Bull like he’s an alcoholic uncle: a bothersome family problem to be managed, not someone to actually care about.
It’s like Wally’s story is trying to exist. It doesn’t know how, but it thinks talking about itself might help.
“I’ll make sure Wally gets the help he needs.” “Wally’s going through a lot.” “We missed you in our session, Wally.” “Wally should get a dog.” “Did you enjoy visiting your son, Wally Jr., who hasn’t been seen in years and never will be again?” “Oh, we’re dating now.” “Your problems are my problems!” “This dog has helped me – I think I might be good enough to go to a concert?” “How was the concert?”
Good Lord, would something please HAPPEN to Wally? Something on-camera, maybe?
Every one of those things could have actually been at least a little impactful had they been written to show, not tell.
Example: Wally is getting ready to go to the concert. He crouches down to talk to Buddy, who looks at him soulfully. “Hey, Buddy, I think I’m finally ready to try going out on my own tonight. I never would have gotten here without your help, you know. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home!”
As I said a couple weeks ago, TB really doesn’t trust his readers to draw on their own emotions to give meaning to scenes. They might not feel exactly the right things, god forbid! So he spells out how you’re supposed to feel with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
And the result is that we’re watching Tom react to Tom’s own writing, and there’s no room for the reader’s feelings in this passionate embrace between Tom and Tom.
Some Wally PTSD strips were written like that. I tended toward the exposition heavy ones since I was trying to give an overview for the peeps-come-lately. Comparatively it was Batiuk’s better ‘show don’t tell’. Miles ahead of the crap going on with Lisa’s Story Book Tour at the time.
CBH:
Your thoughts on the appeal of Wally reminded me of a conversation at the end of Preston Sturges’s “Hail the Conquering Hero:
Doc Bissell:
Politics is a very peculiar
thing, Woodrow.
If they want you,
they want you.
They don’t need
reasons anymore.
They find their own reasons.
It’s just like
when a girl wants a man.
Libby:
That’s right.
You don’t need reasons,
although
they’re probably there.
Maybe Wally is a vindication campaign hero, just as Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith was in the movie. (Wally and Woodrow both begin with “W”! As far as I can remember, no one calls Woodrow “Woody.”)
Or maybe I’d better just save my breath, Evvy and note that before Eros denounced humanity’s “stupid, stupid” minds, Libby applied the word “stupid” three times to herself.
It certainly feels a tad insulting that Wally having “a lot more trouble than any of us realized” wasn’t obvious from the outset. Yes, some veterans play off being “fine” a lot but TEN YEARS A POW (where the hell are the book deals?!) should be a big clue to him needing a lot of homefront care and keeping up with him. Funky can’t even keep that promise since he doesn’t seem to do anything of note in the rest of the arc.
Buddy’s a good dog for what he is. The fact he’s almost sold as a replacement for proper therapy is at least vaguely played off as more of Wally’s personal issues with his therapy avenues (though I’m not sure how “they don’t get it” judgements are something Wally holds on to, feels something that relates to more general soldier traumas than the conditions of TEN YEARS A POW would cause) rather than authorial dismissal of institutional help. Him finding love again so quickly is a bit remarkable in retrospect, I had forgotten about that, and at the least it seems like a fair amount of cooperation Becky’s doing as the third wheel. Still, the fact she comes to him distantly as an ex even though the only failure in their marriage was time and the war machine ties back into what still feels half-baked and lukewarm for trying to help.
And John is useless of course, just tying the contrast all together.
Well said. Wally’s story is treated way, way, way too casually for how horrible it really is. He suffered a lot, even in a world that runs on pointless cruelty.
Good point about the lack of a book deal too. We’re supposed to believe the world is enthralled with Lisa’s Guide To Bad Parenting And Maladaptive Coping, but nobody wants to hear about a solider’s captivity in ISIS-land and his Indiana Jones-like escape from it.
Not to mention Wally returning to Afghanistan to help the people who had helped him – That story should be getting movie offers, not ‘I let my wife die and I am sad 4eva’.