Nowhere, my fellow snarkers, nowhere! This week is so deadly-dull that even the title character is looking at his watch. It’s almost enough to make you miss the Hindenburg-sized word balloons TB would use to espouse his rants through Les about how much society should pay more attention to his cancer-strips. Let’s state the obvious; he’s going to visit his dad. Unless his dad is dead or doing the Macarena because he just won the lotto we should *not* have to suffer through such a long build-up.
Unlike the “Tar Ball” pun at the end of the Snowbirds week we get the pun early in this story arc. There’s so little for me to work with here… yet another mind-numbingly boring panel of “Funky Driving” surely to be followed tomorrow by the equally mundane “Funky Parking” scene.
File today’s strip under “someone uttering a stilted, awkward line of dialogue in panel 2 to set up a weak “punchline” in panel 3 (think of Keisha and Cayla’s “pearl in the shell” exchange a few weeks ago)”. Really, what kind of “options” will Pa be treated to at Bedside Manor? The option of spoon feeding or a tube? Bingo or Mah Jongg? The option of being benignly neglected by the staff vs. being utterly disregarded by his family? Yeah, I guess those are better than no options at all. Poor Funky Winkerbean.
It also “helps with the adjustment” if you avoid standing behind the person and talking about him like he’s not in the room. Oh, Jeez Louise…have we hit new depths of depression with today’s strip? Pa Winkerbean is still a blank slate: we know nothing about him except that he “belongs in a home”, but my heart is breaking for him. I suspect, though, that TB expects us to feel sorry for his son. At least Pa’s needs will be met. Funky goes home to his own resentful problem child, and a pizza business on life support.
At last we behold Pa Winkerbean in the flesh. Introducing Funky’s dad into the strip presents a dilemma for the artist: having already aged Funky well past his ostensible late-forties, he needs to distinguish son from father. So Funky gets a cartoon facelift, while Pa gets the white hair, a few wrinkles, and the Crankshaft nose.
Since we know next to nothing about the elder Winkerbean: is his silence due to a loss of faculties? Or is this “still strong and mentally sharp*” old man showing his resentment at being sent off to the home?
* in a lot of ways
Son of Stuck Funky 
