While we wait for Wednesday’s comic to appear at midnight eastern, here’s an update from the official Funky Winkerbean blog:
Awhile back I was asked by Kurt Kolka to write a preface for a book featuring his character the Cardinal and a story dealing with bullying. Almost from the first week in Funky, I’ve been taking on this topic in the strip (empahsis added) so I was more than happy to add to Kurt’s take on the subject.
Here’s Tom Batiuk “taking on this topic” in 1983:
It’s just one of many Act I strips in which “Bull” Bushka physically and mentally abuses meek, hapless Les Moore. This was a regular occurrence during their high school days, and Batiuk always played it for laughs.
As they time-jumped into middle-aged adulthood, Les still seemed excessively intimidated by Les. He even panicked at the thought of Bull being Summer’s driver’s ed teacher (2009):
In April 2011, TB “revealed” that Bull had only pretended to abuse Les, so that the “real” school bullies would leave him alone.
More recent bullying arcs have centered around Cody and Owen (Act III’s Les and Crazy Harry) and goth gurl Alex enduring non-funny taunts from Wedgeman, and the realization of Bull’s transformation into an anti-bully:
Batiuk’s “got a lot of make up work to do” too…he’s more than happy to crow about “touching on the issue of bullying since the comic strip’s beginning in 1972,” but he should cop to using bullying for comic fodder for most of that time.
But that’s not the really interesting part…from the Medina Gazette:
In addition to contributing his work to the book, Batiuk also wrote a preface to a full-length issue of Kurt Kolka’s “The Cardinal,” a superhero who deals with bullying and other social issues affecting teens.
The Cardinal comic reads almost like a religious tract. It’s surprising that Batiuk, whom I’ve always taken as a solid secularist, would lend his imprimatur to a explicitly Christian enterprise. In fact, Batiuk’s lone entry on IMDb is acting the role of “Art professor” in a straight-to-cellphone video adaptation of The Cardinal vs. the Wrath of the Warthog!
TB’s doesn’t appear in this clip, but enjoy the spectacularly cheezy trailer. Stay tuned for more updates as they become available!
Son of Stuck Funky 
Tom Batiuk doesn’t strike me as particularly secularist or spiritual. Or rather, I’d imagine he’s like most people, in which it doesn’t really occur to him to look through topics that don’t directly deal with religion or non-theism through those lenses.
Which is kind of surprising, really, since this guy is exactly the kind of person who you would expect to do that. But hey, let’s give him credit for keeping that crap out of Funky Winkerbean. Not a lot, but some.
I’m basing my opinion on a couple things. Batiuk has used Jim the science teacher to mock the theory of intelligent design. Also, the only time the existence of a supreme being is even hinted at, it’s about how He loves to make everyone suffer.
It’s kind of amusing to me that a guy who does two comic strips centering around old, miserable people is involved with something aimed at kids. It’s all well and good but how many kids will see a TB preface and say “Wow! the creator of FW!”? I also enjoy how he has a very loose interpretation of what a “book” is. That’s certainly true to form.
Yeah, if he doesn’t cop to using bullying for comic relief in the past, it’ll be disingenuous to say the least. He can pretend that Bull didn’t regularly pummel Les for laughs just like he pretends the hall monitor’s machine gun was just a “prop”, but his older readers know better. The 2011 retcon job (aka Les Wets Himself) was just so heinous and wrong in so many ways. Unless I’m mistaken, Bull’s bully tendencies were explained in Act II when it was revealed that he had a difficult and abusive home life thus there was no reason to deviate from continuity like that. Yet he threw an extra layer of stupid on it anyway just because he could. It was infuriating.
His blog posts are incomprehensible, he just jabbers like one of his characters on an especially wordy day. Comic books, Superman, bullies, books full of comic strips, I can’t make hide nor hair of it all. And how come he never updates that woebegone website of his? It’s embarrassing.
TFH: Spit take re: suffering. His God is NOT a benevolent god.
I have no idea of Batiuk’s religious views and I don’t honestly have any interest in them. There have been a couple of priests in to perform Les and Wally’s weddings, and there was a bit where Funky went to church because Cory, but I think the cast mostly rails against “the universe” rather than any deity. The exception might be when Funky had that one bad week, he might have referred to himself as God’s toy, but I’m too lazy to look that up to be sure. I’m turning into a real resident of Westview I guess.
I’m not sure about Batiuk, but his characters seem to be maltheists: they seem to view God/the Universe/whatever as a sadistic force out to make their lives miserable. Given what we know about their creator, this seems like a reasonable stance.
Not much to talk about in the actual comics front–just more “lol, Funky doesn’t want to exercise.” I think it’s safe to say we’ll be seeing this for the rest of the week.
Given how incoherent Batiuk’s thought-processes are, he seems to be literally incapable of seeing the absurdity of not admitting that he used to play bullying for laughs. After all, he seems to not admit that it’s not funny to play Funky’s imminent collision with a massive, crippling stroke that’ll lead him to bunk with his father for laughs in the here-and-now.
I might be wrong, but my impression was that when Bull only pretended to beat up Les, it was a one-time thing. He was moved to compassion (?) because Les was so scared that he wet his pants in anticipation of being beat up. He wouldn’t have done that if it had always been pretending.
Since the framing of the story of Bull pretending to bully Les was Bull describing the incident to his daughter, I assumed that Bull was lying to her outright.
“TFH: Spit take re: suffering. His God is NOT a benevolent god. ”
His G_d is the G_d of the Pentateuch.
And BTW, the metamorphosis of Cayla REALLY becomes apparent when you look at the driver ed strip above.
What’s strange to me in that “closet” flashback, is the two guys laughing outside listening to Bull have his way with Les. That looks like teen Funky with a buzz cut, which is how he wore his hair much later. And the other guy is that black guy was Batiuk dropped in the first time jump. Since his only defining characteristic was a big afro, I can’t recall his name.
Batiuk probably was told decades ago by his editors not to mention religion in FW so it would appeal to (or bore, as it turned out) as wide an audience as possible.
Today’s strip is classic act III Funky Winkerbean. That’s not a good thing…
The fact that a Christian comic book character named “The Cardinal” is not dressed like a Catholic cardinal, but rather, like the Iowa State University mascot rather is considerably more amusing than today’s strip.
Rusty, I believe the be-afroed character you are thinking of was Derek. Any desire he had to see Les beaten up was understandable.
Actually I do think The Author’s heart is in the right place, in a mushy love me I’m a liberal (hat tip Phil Ochs), kind of way but his head is full of old rags. I’d honestly rather think well of his concern about bullying than regard this as some sort of cynical trolling for awards.
“In April 2011, TB “revealed” that Bull had only pretended to abuse Les, so that the “real” school bullies would leave him alone.”
You have GOT to be kidding me. And this is the guy who is going to write a sincere story about bullying? Really? And does’t that also undercut Bull’s previous revelatiuon that he became a bully due to being abused by his father? Talk about retcons within retcons.
I’ve gathered and posted the strips from April 2011 in which Bull pretends to beat up Les in the janitor’s closet.
Notice how Bull towers over Les in Act I, but Les is considerably taller than Bull in Act III? That would be an interesting study on the power dynamic between the two if I, you know, cared.
Today’s episode was one of the best in a long time, and by “best” I mean “least objectionable.”
That’s because The Cardinal is described thus:
Moreover, he’s neither a super being nor a millionaire:
captaincab: Retconning Bull into Les’ dear old pal and protector, thereby ignoring a huge chunk of FW’s history? Yup, it happened! I think it was right around the time Les allowed the dumbest guy in town to handle his daughter’s rehab after her knee exploded, instead of entrusting, you know, a real doctor.
^^^^
“It’s called retconning” is apparently the new standard then.
Actually, “the Cardinal” is a pretty good secret identity for a guy if he is known primarily for his devotion to Lutheran theology.
Take a close look at that Cardinal cover. Punchy McPunchperson, toward the back in the right, is itching to do more punching, restrained only by his father, Rich Whiteman. Some mustachio’d guy behind the main quintet is trying to rouse the crowd, while hovering over the entire scene in the clouds is…Dracurangatang? Devil-Ape? Hank McCoy in a bad mood?
billytheskink: That old strip was actually pretty good.