Current Funky Winkerbean story line <possible spoilers>

phansford

Anyone else reading the current story line in Funky Winkerbean?

Quick overview.... Crazy has retired from the Post Office due to cut backs. Its an early retirement. He sells some "assets". Gets a job at the comic shop.

I absolutely love Funky. Great stories. Love the artwork. I love the continuity of the strip. Its not a joke a day strip (even though it started as that type of daily).

nweathington

I haven't read it regularly since I stopped getting the newspaper over a year ago. I should start reading it online, but I just haven't gotten into the habit of doing it.

I'm sure you know Tom Batiuk is a big comic book fan. John Byrne has even done a few guest-artist strips. Tom gets a lot of criticism for doing so many depressing storylines, but I do think it's one of the better strips being produced today.

phansford

Tom Batiuk was a regular guest in Artist Alley at Mid-Ohio Con. Very approachable. Super nice. My oldest son took a school notebook once for autographs. Sam was probably 10 years old at the time. Tom did a great sketch of Funky along with is autograph. Mark Schultz did a dino along with his autograph. (Also a super nice guy). We still have the notebook.

Chuck_Melville

I enjoy the strips, but get extremely annoyed at the comments posted there. There's a regular crew who drop by to snark, piss and moan about the strip. I ignore the comments as much as possible, but can't help notice them. What a bunch of ingrates...

phansford

Yeah.... comics are supposed to be funny. ;)

Flagwaver

I got the first volume of The Complete Funky Winkerbean for Christmas. It has been out a while and I've not seen anything about volume 2, so I am hoping they haven't dropped it already.

RickM

Growing up near Cleveland, Tom Batiuk was a very big deal -- a local guy producing a pretty successful national strip. It's nice that he didn't get locked in to the typical cycle of people who tell dreadful jokes every day for 20 years.

LibraryBoy

We don't get Funky in the papers here, nor do I read it online, but so many comics internet people read it ironically and bash it for the downbeat storylines (Comics Alliance has a regular column that exists for just that purpose, fer cryin' out loud) that I find myself rooting for the strip anyway, if only out of spite for the haters.

Chuck_Melville

LibraryBoy said:

We don't get Funky in the papers here, nor do I read it online, but so many comics internet people read it ironically and bash it for the downbeat storylines (Comics Alliance has a regular column that exists for just that purpose, fer cryin' out loud) that I find myself rooting for the strip anyway, if only out of spite for the haters.

Yeah, exactly. I see a lot of that, unfortunately, and I just don't get it. It's a fine strip, but it apparently doesn't live up to the expectations of the bashers. I don't see the point of the gripes, save perhaps they're posting out of sheer boredom.

The strip is just fine as is, a slice of life comic, sometimes humorous, sometimes funny, always interesting, and deserving of better readers than the snarks it seems to to draw.

nweathington

Well, since the ’70s comedy has been king with the newspaper strips. There are a few holdouts among the adventure and drama strips, but they seem to typically get more grief on those sites than the gag strips. I think the complaints about Funky really started when Batiuk made the time jump and aged everyone. As much as comic book fans are resistant to change, I think it may be worse with comic strip fans. I’m sure he alienated a large portion of his readership with that shift, and he only compounded it when he started doing more serious storylines.

But, really, how many band turkey jokes can you make? How many times can Les get stuck at the top of the climbing rope and it still be funny? Frankly, the strip needed a change. Maybe not such a dramatic change, but I think Batiuk wanted to get the characters to an age where he could deal with a greater number of issues, and I applaud him for having the guts to do it.

phansford

Batiuk had moved to a more serial storytelling approach well before the time warp. The early stories were of the group in young adulthood. Graduating college, getting married, having children. Now we see them at middle age. Probably like most of his longtime readers such as myself. I've enjoyed seeing Les as a single parent with a teenage daughter, then finding someone to replace Lisa in his life. Now the original cast has children in college and the service. Tony has retired and moved to Florida (very Ohio- HaHa). Funky now owns the pizza parlor. The Bull is now one of Les's best friends. I like how people have changes with age. (Just like life).

Yet Peter Parker is still the same person as he was 30 years ago.

If you've read Caniff's run on Terry & Pirates, Terry went from a young boy to a pilot during WW2. Caniff let his characters age with time.

The bashers are fools. Batiuk taking real life issues head on and letting us contemplate the world around us. He's very much of his generation. This is a guy who was of age during Kent State. I think in time people will come to recognize that Batiuk is creating some of the best literature of our times. There just aren't any lunch boxes, trading cards, action figures or blockbuster movies to accompany the strip.

chrisw

I'm afraid I'm guilty of being one of those people whose only exposure to the strip is through the "bashers" - Comics Alliance, and Comics Curmudgeon, specifically. Comics Alliance devotes an entire monthly column to it, Comics Curmudgeon touches on it from time to time.

Maybe if I read it as a whole instead of cherry-picked strips with snarky commentary I'd enjoy it more, but it just doesn't seem like my cup of tea. I do give the guy some credit for actually putting effort into his strip, though, as most strips seem to be written on auto-pilot these days. Aside from the obvious financial reasons, I'm baffled as to why so many strips that have been around for decades still exist.

Incidentally, while Comics Alliance column is pretty much bashing, Comics Curmudgeon is actually a fun blog that makes fun of pretty much every strip, and I get the impression that the writer genuinely does like comic strips, he just sees the humor in the execution of some of them.

phansford

I've seen Comic Curmudgeon's blog before...... I sure Nancy is a perfect fit for him or maybe Garfield. ;) That blog is nothing but negativity. Eventually, you have to ask What's the point of discussing things you hate? I'd rather spend more time pushing the positive.... probably why I have not really chimed into the One More Day Necessary thread in any detail. :D

I haven't seen Comic Alliance to comment. I'll check it out.

nweathington

I believe it was the Comics Curmudgeon who loved to make fun of the Dick Tracy strip. That is until Joe Staton and Mike Curtis took over the strip. He got a lot of mileage over pointing out how good it became, so there is some positivity there amidst the negativity.

On a related note, the Garfield Minus Garfield blog—where he takes Garfield and Garfield's dialogue out of the strip and leaves the rest—is pretty funny, as is 3eanuts, which is Peanuts without the last panel. They both get a little surreal at times.

Chuck_Melville

It was hard not to snark at Dick Tracy, which had fallen so low. What Curtis and Staton have done to the strip is to revitalize it with a new sharpness of writing and art and grant it the miracle of a new life.

chrisw

I've never found Comics Curmudgeon terribly negative. Most of the humor feels more MST3K level commentary on things happening in the strips, not actual bashing of the creators.

There are exceptions, a few strips that the blogger genuinely doesn't like, but in most cases, I find him justified. With all respect to Stan Lee for all the great work he's done in the past, the current Spider-Man strip is about the laziest strip out there right now.

Chuck_Melville

chrisw said:

With all respect to Stan Lee for all the great work he's done in the past, the current Spider-Man strip is about the laziest strip out there right now.

Boy, I hear that. There's such a huge disconnect between the strip and the books, too. About the one thing I like is that Spidey and MJ are still married in the strip.