Making History

Spaceman Spiff jinxed me yesterday! But joke’s on him, I’m not even going to talk about today’s dumb Dinkle strip.

Why?

Well, I and others on this blog have long admired the blog Mary Worth and Me. It has been going strong for 15 years, all helmed by the esteemed blogmeister, Wanders. The undoubted highlight of each year on the blog is the Worthy Awards, which just wrapped up voting. Many have expressed a desire to see a similar event for Funky Winkerbean.

This year, Son of Stuck Funky is proud to announce the first ever Funky Awards!

Votes will be accepted through midnight January 16th. Winners will be announced throughout the following week.

Vote Early! Vote Often! Vote HERE!

Before we present our nominees, I would like to take a moment to thank Wanders. I reached out to him for pointers on how to set these up, and he responded with the kind of humor and advice that would have made Mary herself proud.

I know that I speak for all of us here at Son of Stuck Funky when I extend my heartfelt condolences to the Mary Worth community as they mourn today’s tragic cruise ship death of strip regular Wilbur Weston.

And now onto the nominees!

The Thatsnot Hewmore Award for Standout Unnamed Character

1.) Referential Heckler

2.) Suffering Saint Nursing Assistant

3.) Average Comics Fan

4.) Mature Comic Con Attendee

5.) Zombie Orderly

6.) Oblivious Parade Spectator

***

The Livinia Memorial Award for Achievements in Feminism

1.) Women Be Shopping

2.) Women Be Changing Their Minds

3.) Women Be Jealous

4.) Women Be Catty

5.) Women Be Another Species Entirely

6.) Women Be Tiny and Disappearing in the Background

***

The Backpfeifengesicht Award for Most Punchable Les Moore

1.) Remembering Old Friends (For the First Time in Years)

2.) A Single “Manly” Tear

3.) No True Sports-Fan Fallacy

4.) Self-Centered Stage

5.) Deadly Pundemic

6.) The Smile on My Face

7.) Interacting With Fans

***

Most Puzzling Continuity Questions of 2021

1.) Who Directs the Community Band?

2.) What is Rachel’s Major?

3.) Who Did the Dinkles Have for Thanksgiving?

4.) Are the Reindeer Broken or is Tony Dead?

5.) Was Phil Holt Really a Ghost?

6.) Where Are the Kids? Who Are the Kids?

7.) What Even Is Continuity?

***

Story Arc of the Year

1.) Dinkle Joins the Choir

2.) ‘Lisa’s Story: The Movie’ Wraps and Flops

3.) Phil Holt: Resurrections

4.) The Winkerbeans Rehab, Reno, and Recover

5.) Tom Worships Idols of Silver

***

The Panel of the Year

1.) The Final Note

2.) Rare Flying Discman

3.) Take THAT History!

4.) Smoking Vader

5.) Les Waterboards Himself

6.) Eros Panoptes

7.) Stag Film

8.) Pizza Box Signal

***

The Best Funky Winkerbean Strip 0f 2021

1.) Expensive Equipment

2.) Accessorizing

3.) The Joys of Reading Over 50

4.) Interdisciplinary Thinking

5.) Funkyverse in a Cookieshell

6.) I’ve Seen Things You People Wouldn’t Believe

***

The Worst Funky Winkerbean Strip of 2021

1.) War of the Word Zeppelins

2.) Post Pandemic Doom Posting

3.) ‘Disappointed a Lot of Fans’

4.) Feeling Blue

5.) Randy Old Man

6.) Gross Randy Old Man

7.) Just Gross

Once again, vote HERE! Voting ends January 16th.

This Strip Should Be Under Review

Well, at least there’s no more Dinkle in today’s strip. We do have seven panels of a guy watching TV, which isn’t the most engaging thing for a comic to depict. And we have a gag that could’ve been told in just one or two panels, or even in Crankshaft, for that matter. And it’s a complaint that probably gets made repeatedly on every sports radio station in the country on Mondays. But hey, no Dinkle, so things are looking up.
Speaking of looking up, we all have ComicBookHarriet’s return tomorrow to look forward to! For her sake, I hope this “no Dinkle” trend continues.

Don’t Worry, One of You Will Surely Die Soon

Dinkle’s garage door is like bricks, falling leaves, and Becky’s pinned-up sleeve-they all have to be featured as prominently and as often as possible. “This guy has a treble clef painted on his door, isn’t that wacky?”.
I find it really, really hard to believe anyone from Westview could ever receive that many awards.
This strip is just another example of how Batiuk can’t seem to decide if Dinkle is supposed to be an egotistical maniac or actually great. And I wonder if Dinkle’s name legally includes “World’s Greatest Band Director”, or if that’s the award he won (which you think someone would have mentioned it at some point). I guess all those other band directors were wrong when they referred to themselves that way. If Dinkle calling himself WGBD is supposed to be humorous, you shouldn’t have him literally receiving awards referring to himself that way.

It Was a Thrill, Just Like the Last Two Times

Three things about today’s strip:
1. Batiuk still depicts signs as being on the inside of the door, which is silly.  I’m guessing he’d think people would miss the vitally important detail that this conversation is taking place in the band room, and he can’t think of a way to arrange the layout so you can see the outside of the door.  (Also, there’s no hilariously crappy tape holding the sign up.  Maybe we’ve made a difference!)
2. Based on my ten seconds of Googling, “finale list” isn’t a thing. I’m assuming it’s a play off of “bucket list”, (“he’s a musician, he wouldn’t talk about buckets, he’d talk about finales!”), but just swapping one word for another doesn’t instantly make comedy, despite what the existence of Crankshaft would have you think.
3. But hey, Dinkle is talking about his finale, which can only mean he’s about to die soon. Here’s hoping for a Sunday sideways “Death of Superman” “homage”, which will be extra awkward when it’s Becky cradling Dinkle’s corpse in her arm.

I Sold Snacks So I Can Buy Snacks

You know you’re reading quality comedy/ground-breaking genre convention busting high Art and Literature when you’re getting an “airplane food is expensive” joke. I do think it’s a little weird that Dinkle went around raising funds from people so he could fly out to California and be honored. I also don’t really get how it’s band candy if someone not in the band is selling it, but whatever.
I do find the entire premise of today’s strip, “I told people I needed X amount of money to fly out here but kept begging people for money long after I reached X” to be pretty revealing. That seems bad, and not something that one of the heroes of your strip should be doing? And I don’t really know what he means by “let on”. Is he just saying that he lied to his wife about how much he sold, and how much money he has? Which seems pretty awful, actually. Or did he lie to the fundraising company and not report some of his sales, by like claiming a box went missing or arrived damaged or something? Setting up the extremely, extremely tired “airline food is expensive” gag that got old decades ago shouldn’t be this confusing.