Son of Stuck Funky

Gitmo Drops In

I viscerally, personally know that things have been cold in the Midwest, but has anyone checked to see if the polar vortex has reached Hades?

Because, this is three days in a row now I’m not annoyed at Funky Winkerbean. This joke is tolerable. It’s kind of edgy for a guy who retconned a machine gun nest into cardboard. And its a little clunky, because obviously he’s only putting drops in the eye that was operated on, and that information is necessary for the joke, but he uses the plural in the first panel. But I can’t get mad at it.

Maybe we’re the ones who have broken under the torture. The cataract saga is nearly a month old at this point. We got a brief break from it for the most anemic OMEA arc I’ve seen in ten years. But we’ve had dozens of strips of Funky cracking wise to an annoyed health professional. Weeks of the punchline being, “This joke isn’t funny, sir.” And now, we’ve had three beautiful days of inoffensive. Yeah, we’re back to ocular humor, but this one doesn’t leave a bad taste.

You know what the difference is? Funky’s talking to Crazy Harry, his friend, and not some poor doctor, nurse or orderly. We’re not seeing two humans failing to connect, a wall slowly growing between them, as one assaults the other with misplaced quips. Friends are the kind of people you’re supposed to trade lame jokes with. The bonds of brotherhood can overcome all pun punishment, safe in the intimacy of bad humor between comrades.

I mean, it wouldn’t work as well if this was Les. His inherent Mooreness poisons his every interaction. Les is ‘best’ when he’s interacting with strangers who hate him, because it’s what he deserves. But he’s the exception. As far as I’m concerned Crazy Harry and Funky can sit here watching quality cartoons for my entire two week shift. They’re having fun, and I’ll find some tangent to run off on, and everything will be groovy.

But still, we’ll always know it can’t last. Hidden behind the panels of this strip, in the gradients at the corners and the darkness in the doorways, there’s something out there waiting for us, and it ain’t no man.

It’s Lisa’s Legacy.

Locked in Cels of Padding

Link To Today’s Strip

Guys, I’m just so conflicted here. Like, painfully so.

On the one hand, we have two 60 year old men getting excited about watching nearly 30 year old Batman cartoons. The overpowering flavor of nerds, soaking into the lumpy bland tofu of these soy cubes, nauseating me. It’s getting really old. The entire Westview landscape is nothing but men waxing eloquent about Batarangs. Everyone male is consumed by geeky interests. There is no escape.

On the other hand, I, a nominal adult closer to middle age than adolescence, love cartoons. I own more DVD’s of cartoons than I own pairs of shoes. I watch more cartoons than any other genre of television. So this entire strip feels like some kind of personal attack.

It doesn’t help that Batman: The Animated Series is not only an amazing, critically acclaimed cartoon that no adult should be ashamed to watch, but is also a cartoon that I remember watching as a small Harriet. I actually watched it as it was airing. A beautiful cartoon. A cartoon that deeply, deeply, wonderfully traumatized me.

There I was, a poor little girl, not even seven, sitting on the couch on Saturday Morning, watching the silhouette of a man held down and begging for mercy as he’s drowned with toxic chemicals.

An innocent girl, manipulated by her invisible and increasingly more unhinged father who loves her possessively and dangerously.

A mentally fragile man sobbing uncontrollably after the violent ‘death’ of the creepy puppet that was actually a manifestation of his dissociative identity disorder.

What I’m saying is, this show gave me some of the formative psychological horror experiences of my young mind, and if anyone wants to sit and rewatch it with me, well, I thought you’d never ask.

(Also, Batman TAS was produced as TWO seasons. the first was 65 episodes long to reach syndication length. They then made an additional 20. It was released on DVD in four volumes. So, you know; suck it Tom.)

À la Recherche du Temps Pizza

Link To Today’s Strip

Comic Book Harriet here again! Can’t believe I’m up again already. It seems like yesterday I was struggling to find a band turkey joke that wasn’t as overdone as the ones in the strip. But Tom rolls on like an ever flowing stream of consciousness, bringing me back again, panning through his muck for fool’s gold.

I want to give special commendation to SpaceManSpiff 85. He was given a relentlessly dim and myopic arc, and managed to fill the week with a overwhelming flow of cataract puns. Sir, you have my admiration. And my sympathy. Because it seems I’m going to be just as burdened this week with shortsighted visual humor.

I asked earlier this arc if Funky has always been a hapless character that only exists to be neurotic and spout lame puns. My interactions with Act I Funky come through flashback photo-cornered panels, car accident coma dreams, and the offerings of our resident Batiukian researchers. Longtime Stuckfunkians Rusty Shackleford and Banana Jr 6000 were kind enough to reply, and both used the term ‘burnout’ to describe Act I Funky, which kind of surprised me. I can’t see the preachy Batiuk, with more cheap soapboxes than a Palmolive warehouse, insinuating his main character was dating Mary Jane Wackytabaccy on the weekends, and playing it for harmless laughs. Crazy Harry? Sure. But the eponymous protagonist?

I can see it now. Panel two has Act I Funky, in all his mellow glory, blissed out on his tiny bed, with every comfort a baked adolescent needs within arm’s reach: lamp, pizza, soda, music, The Amazing Mister Sponge. Curled up in a tiny cluttered nest of his own hedonism. He even has his SHOES on the bed, that’s how much he DNGAF.

Stark contrast to Act III Funky in panels 1 and 3, sitting on a huge, empty bed, in a mostly empty room. Only a featureless smartphone and a rapidly expanding mattress his plebian pleasures. His specific interests have been pulled out, leaving us with a boring box containing a boring man with a face slowly drooping like a blobfish.

I wish Funky could have gotten glaucoma instead. We could have had burnout Funky back.

Wild Cataracts

Here’s another in the long line of Batiuk’s insults to the expanded space comics get on Sundays. Literally copying one panel and repeating it four times is pretty sad. (You can tell since that little line above the coffee mug is exactly the same). I don’t think the strip would have suffered at all if there had been a little variation-snow falling outside the window, a bird landing on the windowsill, a TV on in the background, or even that little line above the coffee cup changing. It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen a Sunday strip in either this or Crankfshaft that couldn’t have been told just as easy in one or two panels.
Oh, and having cataract surgery clears up your vision. Expect Funky to start cheating on Holly just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Thanks for having me! Taking over tomorrow is Comic Book Harriet. I hope Cayla gets COVID or something, just so CBH has something to write about.

Scataract

“Humor is how I deal with tragedy“. I bet Batiuk has used that line a lot at book signings and when newspapers inexplicably interview him. And I’m sure the response he gets more often than not is “Humor? What humor?”.
I really don’t get what “tragedy” Funky is referring to here. The tragedy of successfully having a routine surgery that lots of people get? The tragedy of having to age when you’d rather stay ten in your parents’ attic reading comic books forever?
Oh, and Funky’s joke isn’t funny and really doesn’t work. It doesn’t really sound at all like what it’s supposed to, I don’t think. It’s a pity it’s one of the last things that poor guy pushing the wheelchair is ever going to hear, since he’s clearly about to drop dead.