Son of Stuck Funky

The Art of the Steal

Good, bad, pointless, or punchable, Batiuk and Ayers provided us with no shortage of material this year. For an artist who preached so stridently on the environment, Batiuk turned out a lot of junk.

Many talented beady-eyed nitpickers in the SOSF comments crew took it upon themselves to upcycle that trash into treasure. Following in the grand tradition of Wally Wood, they cut, copied and pasted themselves to some beautiful masterpieces.

For example, this collaborative gem, written by Sorial Promise and pasted up by yours truly.

The Cream of the Crap

Now that we have crowned the worst, we must similarly honor the best. And like any election after 1796, it was easy to find candidates who were awful, but terribly difficult to find truly good nominees.

In order for a strip to be nominated, it had to achieve Batiuk’s desired effect. If the strip was supposed to be funny and was, or was supposed to be charming and mostly succeeded, it made the short list. It was a very short list. The thinnest silver lining to a dark cloud.

*And that cloud destroys everything it touches…*

Excellence in Awfulness.

With the awards to individual characters and the technical awards finally out of the way, we move on to the most prestigious awards of our ceremony. Two awards that balance each other, and between encompass the whole that Funky Winkerbean could be. The dark and the light, the yin and the yang, the Batman and the Joker.

*“We artists are not required to be nice, but only talented!”*

Drawing a Blank

What can I say about this award?

Tom Batiuk had one year. He said he knew, and I have chosen to believe him. He had 365 strips. And that’s it. That is all the time he had left.

What can I say about these strips?

Not much. Being pointed out as pointless is more than they deserve.

So without further ado,

The Most Pointless Funky Winkerbean Strip of 2022

A Thousand Words.

Yesterday we looked at entire arcs, complete stories, weeks of strips at a time.

Today, we do the opposite. Yesterday was all about the story. Today it is the art of comics. True, the context behind some of these snapshots aided them in getting a nomination. Panels that contained the climax of their entire arc.

But the single panel must be unique on it’s own. It must have merit apart. The staging, the artistry, the dialogue, something within the borders of four thin black lines, that is just as important. And panels from strips that didn’t even have arcs were also considered.

For example, this panel made the shortlist, though not the final cut.