Funky Winkerbean: Good for you...

AAARGH. If only Les had died horribly like he was SUPPOSED to, we wouldn't have to put up with this inane awkward love triangle.

Funky Winkerbean: Just think, if it wasn't for some woman phoning in an anonymous phony bomb threat...

If it weren't for Lola, Funky Winkerbean's cloying sentimentality and empty spiritualism would be the most revolting thing in the comics section today.

Funky Winkerbean: And since my phone was dead, I just took a cab home.

Tom Batiuk's winking so hard today that he may never get his left eyelid to work right again. But I'm not sure what it says about your comic strip when the funniest thing that happens in weeks is a character not dying horribly.

Also, that wasn't a terribly long story.

Funky Winkerbean: It's a long story.

Hopefully, it's a long story that ends with Les being a ghost.

Funky Winkerbean: You're back!

Fuck you, Batiuk. I was promised misery.

I'm still holding out hope that this is some sort of fantasy sequence leading up to a gruesome reveal.

Funky Winkerbean: That sounds like a car door!

Some possibilities here:

1. It's Les. Turns out he's fine and Batiuk was just engaging in a little manipulation/meta-humor.
2. It's someone coming to tell Summer that Les has died horribly.
3. It's a serial killer, and Summer and her friend whose name I can't remember are about to die horribly too.

Funky Winkerbean: I hope there hasn't been some kind of problem.

But there has, Summer! Les is dead! He's horribly, horribly dead!

Actually, I doubt Les is dead. There's been too much foreshadowing, and Batiuk probably isn't going to play it straight. I now expect a shocking twist in which we discover that Les has merely been crippled for life. The years of misery Batiuk could wring from such an injury far outweigh the few weeks of misery (more intense though it may be) that a single death brings about.

Funky Winkerbean: In fact, I'm surprised he hasn't called before this.

At this point, I think I'm actually going to be sort of annoyed if Les doesn't die horribly.

Funky Winkerbean: Promise me you won't get on the plane!

And so Les is going to die horribly.

Finally.

Funky Winkerbean: Look, I don't know who this is ... but this is a pretty sick joke!

This comic is hilarious because Les is evidently unaware that the entire world that he inhabits is a sick joke.

Funky Winkerbean: Les ... it's me ... Lisa!

If it turns out that Les's entire, annoying success tour was a dream and he's actually been laying on his deathbed the whole time, well, that would be pretty awesomely horrible.

What's impressive, though, is that Tom Batiuk is sure to think up something even more personally painful than that.

Funky Winkerbean: Remember to pull your jacket down when you're sitting down on the set to avoid getting a hump in the back.

Ha ha, Mike's acting like a woman because he's nagging and that's what women do!

Funky Winkerbean: It's nice to see someone stressed out who isn't me.

Unsurprisingly, the closest people can come to happiness in the Winkerverse is schadenfreude.

Funky Winkerbean: So I've become a blurb whore.

Another very partial list of things you can say in the comics section:

1. "Whore."
2. "Anal."

That future Funky Winkerbean plot just gets more and more disturbing.

Funky Winkerbean: Why Lisa?

Here we see Les attempting to endear himself to the press the only way he knows how: by being condescending douchebag.

Because this is Funky Winkerbean, it will probably work. But in a cruel twist of fate, Les will die horribly before the article is published.

Funky Winkerbean: Can you break that down a little?

This comic is hilarious because Funky was looking for a more precise timetable, but the doctor cleverly avoided answering the question by being a douche instead.

Funky Winkerbean: I think I prefer the more somber cover.

This is Funky Winkerbean. Of course she prefers the more somber cover.

Funky Winkerbean: The worse the grades ... the better the book.

Ho ho, take that Higher Education! Zing! This fictional college professor, made up by a cartoonist who appears to resent his old college professors, totally got the best of you!

Funky Winkerbean: Cedars

One of the challenges I have in writing this blog is that I know virtually nothing about the fundamentals of drawing. This is why I mostly stick to things like story and dialog and only mention the art when I see an especially egregious display of hackery.

All that said, I really like the art in the second panel of today's Funky Winkerbean. While I can't necessarily speak to the quality of the drawing itself, I can say that it creates exactly the right effect, literalizing the reflection the two panels depict, with the thrill of victory in the former panel warping into the misery of defeat in the latter.

Funky Winkerbean: Even so...

"...you might well get brutally gang-raped and murdered. This is the Winkerverse,* after all."

*Or is it the Funkyverse?