Okay, first, it's poor professional conduct for a cartoonist to critique in a public medium another comic strip (I have a rather pointed email from the good folks of Archie Comics stressing just that very fact). Second, from all accounts Tom Batuik is quite the genial individual who I have always found to be a talented and accomplished artist. Third, just this very year I had Ted Forth grapple with his own emotional downturn not unlike those portrayed in Funky Winkerbean. And fourth, I write the comic strip in which said Ted Forth appears, no doubt negating any right I may ever have to critique a fellow cartoonist's work.
That said, when even success begats dismay as in the above strip...Listen, as someone who has experienced his own pronounced and prolonged bouts with depression (much due to shyness)--and is apparently blurring the very line between imaginary people and real people for the objective of this post--I just want to see this strip's characters, hell, even one character, experience a moment of pure joy. I'm not asking for eternal bliss here. I just want to see something occur to cause one of the cast to puts his/her hands in his/her pockets, closes his/her eyes, slightly tilt back his/her head, feel a cool breeze on his/her face and have him/her quietly say, "Ahhhhh."
So, with that in mind, I humbly suggest the following simple yet happy exaltations be uttered in Funky Winkerbean come 2008:
"I can't believe we won both the Daytona 500 and the MacArthur Fellowship! What a Tuesday!"
"The Con Ed explosion destroyed all of Seventh Avenue save Montoni's Pizza, which not only survived unscathed but is now impervious to monster attacks for some reason."
"With this Sword of Isis you shall never have another's day fear! Oh, and take the hilt, too. It promotes luxurious hair."
"Why, that's no ordinary mud puddle, my son! That's the mud puddle that always picks winning stocks!"
"It's easy--I tell Ben what to do, he tells the other rats what I said and before you know it--Viola! We've got ourselves a perpetual motion machine!"
"Hey, Les, that guy from 'Pushing Daisies' just touched your wife. She wants to see you in the kitchen.
8 comments:
Or how about:
"HEY EVERYONE! CRANKSHAFT FINALLY DIED! OH, SWEET FREEDOM!"
Wait, wait. So us ordinary schmucks have no business criticizing the likes of Schulz and Patterson and Batiuk and the AJGLU 3000 because, as mere peons and readers and consumers and puppy-trainers and fish-wrappers, we are in no way qualified to comment on the stratospheric genius that has created these works...but at the same time, fellow creators are not allowed to critcize, because then they would be engaging in unprofessional conduct?
I call Shenanigans! Rule is hereby overturned. Everybody is free to criticize everybody else! Otherwise, nobody is any better than Britney Spears or George Lucas or George W. Bush, surrounded by a posse that insulates them from the views of the outside world and assures them that everything they are doing is perfectly all right.
"Les, God just called. He said to thank you for winning another bet for him. You were the most fun since Job! And now, you get everything back!"
Oh, come on, they can't have any joyous moments because then they'll lose their souls.
AdamH: So you're saying the entire cast of "Funky Winkerbean" was cursed by gypsies? Better yet, the entire cast of "Funky Winkerbean" are vampires?
Wow. I like the strip a whole lot better now.
Woah, that is a brilliant idea for a comic. Take a normal, boring newspaper strip and replace all the characters with vampires. Just have them do the same things the regular characters did, but also have to deal with the problems of not being able to go outside in the day and having to drink the blood of the living. It couldn't fail.
The proposed "Picture of Dorian Gray" interpretation of Miserable Wretchedbeings is pretty compelling - that the characters in this strip are suffering for the sins of characters in other strips. But adamh seems to be suggesting that maybe there's a Faustian bargain at work here - that Mephistopheles has made deals with the characters that contractually obligate them to lives of misery in exchange for, say, protection for each other - not realizing that everybody else in the strip has made the same bargain.
I'm intrigued...I'd like to hear more about this email from the owners of the Archie Joke-Generating Laugh Unit 3000.
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