Les whines, imagine such a thing

So today we go back to Les and naturally this means it’s the setup for a week of him complaining about something.

I’ll just ignore Les blowing through his month’s allotment of photocopies, both because I trust all of you to hash it out more than adequately, but also because Batiuk’s going to give us plenty of opportunity to do so over the course of the week, to comment on something else. It’s the way Les is drawn in panel 2, looking down at the top of his recently severely-balding head. (Seriously, look at how significant Les’s hair loss has been in the last two years) I’m going to assume that Burchett leaves the diagramming of the strip’s art to Batiuk, because this is by far not the only time Batiuk’s used this angle. The odd thing is it’s with one exception always a balding man, with the primary focus on his male-pattern baldness. He’s never once drawn a woman from this angle. But now he’s shown Les, Funky and Bull in this fashion multiple times each – an odd, inexplicable angle with their head bowed showing the full ravages of a receding hairline.

It’s remarkably unflattering and jarring. Makes me wonder why Batiuk keeps coming back to it.

 

Bang for the Buck

From the FW blog:
Rick [Burchett]…lays-out and pencils the Sunday sequence. When that’s finished, it’s my turn to jump back in and ink it into a Funky Sunday. The lettering is then done on the computer after which it goes off to colorist Rob Ro who proceeds, as he always does, to turn it into a totally beautiful Funky Sunday.

Colorist Rob can even turn a clump of gridiron turf into a flaming mini-volcano! Well done, Rob! So today we get the big payoff in the Buck Bedlow saga. We wondered why Buck showed up out of nowhere and went to such lengths to overturn Bull’s non-touchdown in the Big Game. What Buck was really doing was getting a preview of his own impending decline. But if he got his “CTE diagnosis” (grrrrrrrrrr!) “last month,” why did he show up back in September?

Well it’s been a pleasure stoking the snark fires these first two weeks of the new year. Tomorrow, guest author Charles takes over the reins. Wear a helmet, folks! –TFH

Smirk ‘n’ Turf

spacemanspiff85
January 12, 2018 at 2:14 am
I have a strong feeling they’re either:
A. Digging away the snow so Bull can recreate his “winning” play.
or B. Digging up the dirt where Bull “made” his “winning” play so Bull can take it home and preserve it.

And the correct answer is “B”, if by “preserve it” you mean plop it on a shelf where it will wither faster than Bull’s mind. I guess we can remove the quotation marks around “winning” now, as Buck ‘n’ Bull have, by sheer force of will, turned that long-ago loss into a win. And again with the “crazy” talk, though at least Linda means it figuratively. While thematically this week’s arc was nothing to write home about, what interests me (barely) about  today’s strip is Bull’s profile in panel 2. Not because his hair, which three months ago was brown, is now pure white. It’s that as he gazes at the relic of what is now seen as his life’s greatest achievement, he morphs into a bald version of his Act I self.

Goal Diggers

Y’know, these days, many high school sports fields, even Batiuk’s alma mater, feature modern, expensive, artificial turf fields. So in today’s strip we’re witnessing two clowns causing costly damage to school property. Even a natural turf field would likely have an irrigation system below the surface. And besides that, the ground is frozen. But Batiuk’s not about to let any of these details get in the way of us “earning” whatever “ending” this is all leading up to. Why all this phony closure-seeking on behalf of a man who sadly will soon be unable to remember anything? And if the mission here is to somehow scrape up Coach Stropp’s ashes, they need to move over a little more to the left.

Shovel Off to Bull-fellow

If you are reading this and your name is not Thomas Martin Batiuk, you read Funky Winkerbean not for its  depiction of “contemporary issues affecting young adults in a thought-provoking and sensitive manner” (because all that ended with Act II). You don’t seek real-life situations, believable dialogue, likable characters, or coherent plotting. You likely were a true fan of this comic back in the days when it did have these characteristics, in abundance. Perhaps you’ve continued reading faithfully ever since, or, perhaps you picked up the funny pages after a lengthy absence, decided to check in on ol’ Funky and his pals, and wondered what the hell happened.

But if you’re reading this blog, you share a very special perspective on the Funkiverse. You keep coming back either to see how incoherent, tone deaf, and awful it can get…or…you cast aside whatever passes for narrative around here, and inject your own. In which case, today’s installment could be right out of a Coen brothers film: repressed midwestern matron Linda gleefully looking on as strapping Buck marches docile Bull out to dig his own cold, lonely grave.