Metapost: [to the tune of "Candle In The Wind"] and it seems to me / you lived your life / like a Funky Winkerbean (plus COTW)

FOLKS … nothing gold can stay, because everything gold will eventually develop cancer, or CTE, or a hearing disability, and that’s why Funky Winkerbean at the end of the year will, in the words of the Daily Cartoonist, “reach completion” (ew?). I guess this explains why Funky is retiring and Summer is writing a book about her dad’s boring old friends. Don’t worry, though: Tom Batuik will still be posting occasional Funky stories on Tom Batuik dot com, and Crankshaft will keep on aggressively malaproping indefinitely, so there’s still hope that we’ll eventually find out whether Cayla divorces Les or not.

Funky Winkerbean has of course been one of my favorite strips to make fun of since the Masky McDeath days, and it goes without saying that I am sad to see it go! Say what you will about all the cancer, but it was its own unique multilayered world and, somewhat bizarrely, had multiple lives as a cultural touchstone. I hope Batuik enjoys (semi) retirement. I just want to point out that I’ve been doing this blog since 2004, and I never taught my spellcheck the word “Winkerbean” and now, sadly, it appears I’m never going to have to. RIP to a real one.

But we must plod on and do what we can in a Funkyless world! Credit goes to Bowsnonk on Twitter for the title of this post, and credit must also go to the comment of the week:

"One thing all the building-up of the Truck Tyler legend didn't prepare me for was how exquisitely bitchy his between-song patter is." --Artist formerly known as Ben