Putting the "F-U" in "Funky Winkerbean."

Once upon a time, the comic strip "Funky Winkerbean" was a pleasant little daily funnie about a high school and their band director. Now it has become a veritable "soap opera" strip, akin to such two-panel wonders as "Mary Worth" and "Rex Morgan, MD." In fact, the nature of the comics are so similar that when the dialog is swapped between any given comic strip of the soap opera genre and any given recent "Funky Winkerbean" strip, the change in quality and context is virtually unnoticeable.

In short, I take a strip from something like "Mary Worth" or "Rex Morgan MD" and swap its dialog with the dialog from a "Funky Winkerbean" strip, demonstrating how little difference there is between the two. Observe.

Friday, September 18, 2009

FW <==> Mary Worth, + Commentary

Today Tommy B. continues his Author Tract. I've swapped out the continuing Susan Smith sermon with a Mary Worth speech. [click for larger images.]



So we have Ms. Attempted-Suicide-When-The-Teacher-Now-Sitting-Beside-Me-Rejected-My-Advances-When-I-Was-His-Student-And-10-Years-Later-I-Still-Want-Him continuing her lecture. Will Susan's *Plato* be able to enlighten Us Readers' the Angry Parents' *Cave Dwellers?* O, Thomas, bestow upon us the Light that will at first uncomfortably blind but then illuminate our souls, guiding us to transcendence through the True understanding of the Logos! Having the Batiuk-Hammer sledge us with a speech about art is like having Garfield try to educate us about veterinary medicine. Sure, Garfield's a cat and Liz is his vet. And yes, FW is made up of drawings, and drawings are by the loosest use of the definition "art." But Liz doesn't give lectures to reader proxies about respecting the importance of the existence of Felis Domesticus, and neither is Jim Davis' Staff qualified to have her speak about it. Intelligent people know the difference between a real Vet and one who plays one in a comic strip. And I hope the same people can easily tell the difference between something that is art (specifically, the kind of art that honorary Author Avatar Susan Smith is referring to) and something that pretends to be art in a comic strip.

Someone on Comics Curmudgeon suggested that this speech is filler so that the "big one" can come on Saturday, the end of the week for the b/w dailies. Even the soap strips don't use the Sundays to reveal large plotpoints; but if they do they are reiterated and reworded for the proceeding Monday b/w. If that's the case, are we to expect a standing O from the disgruntled reader proxies, demonstrating how they were so clearly and unconditionally wrong? Maybe, but that's probably too much action for Batiuk to handle in his current style. Expect it to be something self-congratulatory, though.

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