Strips like today’s really just make Batiuk’s habit of writing his strips so far in advance extra hilarious. Not only is nobody wearing a mask and everyone is basically touching, you have a roughly hundred year old man on oxygen right in the middle of them. And it’s not like the global pandemic just sprung up in the last week when it was too late to tweak the strip. Batiuk’s had nine months where he could’ve had the artist at least draw masks on the characters to make it look like it reflected reality.
Les blatantly ogling Funky’s ass with both of his hands in his pockets while his Lesser Wife is standing right next to him is extra awkward.
When did Crazy Harry’s wife die from cancer/get murdered by him/starve because his part time job at a comic shop couldn’t feed them both? It’s especially sad when you’re a Funky Winkerbean character whose tragic untimely death doesn’t even merit an arc, or Les silently staring at your obituary in the paper.
Tag: Les
You Forgot the Hot Chocolate And Cookies, Cayla
Oh, yay. Another sideways strip. If your comics are so awkwardly wordy that they have to be turned sideways to fit in all the dialogue, maybe you’re doing something wrong. Or maybe visual storytelling isn’t for you.
What Lisa-related writing do you think Les is working on while he sits there silently while Cayla literally praises his greatness and showers him with kisses? That is one awkwardly clunky line Cayla is reading. I wonder if this was one of those situations where Les won because nobody else bothered to enter.
I have a feeling that Batiuk tells himself “You deserved to win” every day, when he thinks about the Pulitzer. I can see how he could be that deluded, given that he can spew out garbage like last week’s arc and still get it published and somehow get interviewed in major newspapers like he’s an Artist.
Threescore and Five
Oh, now hold up. Men’s Over Sixty-Five Division? This is the last time I’m going to harp on timeline and continuity: Batiuk clearly gives no fucks so why should we? But if you go by what Wikipedia says:
In 1992, Batiuk changed the strip’s format. It was established that Funky, Les, Cindy and all the rest of the previous cast had graduated from Westview in 1988…
In which case, today Funky would be right around 50 years old.
In November 2008, the gang assembled for a thirty year reunion (“the coming reunion”). This would make them WHS Class of 1978. Funky would be about 60 (at the “time pool” reunion in June 2015, any dates on the banners were artfully obscured). This number also would jibe with Funky being 46 at the beginning of Act III in 2007, as shown on the “Meet the Cast” page. So we have what amounts to a time jump within a time jump. The characters are catching up in age with their creator, and Funky (and his peers, including ageless Cindy) are at least 65 years of age. Older than me, even!
Heavy Medal
[I]n 2008 [Tom Batiuk] was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Only three other newspaper strip creators have achieved this distinction in the award’s 100-year history: Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury), Berkeley Breathed (Bloom County) and Lynn Johnston (For Better or For Worse). Pulitzer judges cited Batiuk’s controversial story line in which his Lisa character battles cancer – a subject not typically covered in the funny pages.
“That sort of validated my career for me because there are only four … Trudeau, Breathed, Johnston … and Funky,” Batiuk says with a smile. “I’ll take that company. That’s not bad.”
Today’s strip…Who wouldn’t admire a guy who creates three hugely successful (in their day) daily comic strips? The main difference between Tom Batiuk and two of those other three famous cartoonists is that Trudeau and Breathed won their Prizes. Now, being a Pulitzer finalist is nothing to sneeze at, but this does put Batiuk in the lower percentile, alongside Johnston, creator of the only long-running, “serious” comic that engenders even stronger love/hate among its faithful readers.
Not having that Pulitzer on his shelf alongside his Flash maquette has to sting a little, for a storyteller who likens himself to Charles Schulz and Woody Allen. Despite the considerable success and fame that Batiuk’s earned over nearly a half century, he’s still “never won a medal.”
C’mon man. Even Skyler‘s won a medal.
It Keeps You Running
Jeez, that’s quite a list of ailments. Can you imagine what kind of shape Funky would be in if he didn’t exercise regularly?
Son of Stuck Funky 
