YMMV / Funky Winkerbean

• Americans Hate Tingle: Like with most other U.S. plot-based comic strips, Funky Winkerbean has pretty much zero European readers. Perhaps more surprisingly, it never took hold in Canada either, where it's also almost completely unknown. Part of the reason, no doubt, is the difficulty that new readers would have in understanding new strips without access to the decades of old strips that have piled up. (Of course, it's also pretty obscure even in America, despite having run there for 50 years.)
• Arc Fatigue: Les Moore has been mourning the death of his beloved wife Lisa since 2007. And it took her eight years before that to die of cancer. Recurring plot lines include books about Lisa, movies about Lisa (two separate attempts), tape-recorded messages from Lisa, Lisa appearing as a ghost (including one time where she called in a bomb threat), and annual "legacy run." To put it mildly, it's getting tiresome.
• Ass Pull: The directions of some storylines have been received as this for many snarkers:
  • Adeela's arrest and attempted deportation by ICE being solved by Funky calling Bill Clinton himself to intervene, even though it was based on past storylines where he was on good terms with Montoni's, came off as contrived in this manner for many reasons. It was a Call-Back that had not been referenced in many years (namely an Act 2 storyline where Bill had ensured Montoni's sign became a historic landmark), was seen as implausible by many given the then-current political administration that supported ICE and was in conflict with the Clintons in particular, and ruined any nuance the Ripped from the Headlines story could say about an ongoing issue by relying on a fantastical solution out of reach of actual victims of aggressive ICE deportation. The story ending on the ICE agents having become friendly due to loving Montoni's pizza also came off as insult to injury for those who felt the organization didn't deserve sympathy.
  • Montoni's closing with the end of the strip, with the blame being put on the COVID-19 Pandemic for "wiping out [their] thin-crust profit margins" didn't make sense for many who observed that when the strip had addressing the pandemic (after ignoring it for some time due to the month-long advanced writing of the strip), Funky had mentioned being overwhelmed with business via their delivery service (something that many pizza-serving restaurants saw a large boom in profits at the time in Real Life). The fact that such an important cornerstone of the strip coming to an end^note Which was even confusingly contradicted by the Montoni's crew using delivery cars with "new" snow tires on Christmas Eve, long after the strips announcing the shop's closure wasn't even a prime focus of the final months (with the storyline quickly shifting to Summer's Westview book and Harley's past and future revelations connected to it) felt disingenuous to Funky's overall legacy for many
  • Though Harley's role as the school janitor had been established in Act 1, he had largely faded into the background in the following Acts, making his final appearance have the vibe of Remember the New Guy? for later readers. That he's revealed to be a time-traveling observer whose mission has been to guide the timeline in the proper direction just to Hand Wave away the strips many, many, many Continuity Snarls and the gap with the Crankshaft timeline certainly didn't help either.
• Audience-Alienating Era: In its early years, the comic was simple enough – a wacky gag-per-day strip that took place in a high-school. Years later, after a few in-universe timeskips, it became one of the most dark and depressing comics ever syndicated. Constant mention of cancer, death, suicide, characters trapped in a miserable world, and even a story arc of one of the major characters getting cancer and slowly dying from it for the reading public to follow. And yet, for some reason, it still retained its silly name. Even its sister comic Crankshaft (which is in the same continuity) can't escape the constant gloom that all the characters suffer from.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: 2019 saw a months-long arc around Cindy and Jessica filming a documentary about Butter Brinkel, a 40s Hollywood star whose career was ended after he was charged for the murder of an actress he dated, and who was a close friend of Starbuck Jones actor Cliff Anger. After the long period of pre-production and exploring the case's drama and peculiarities (including that Brinkel refused to testify for himself), Cliff ends his interviews for the documentary with an odd recollection: Brinkel's actor-chimpanzee pet Zanzibar, who he recalls once pointed a prop gun at him and spoke (in English, which is impossible for real chimps!) to demand where his "father" was when Cliff looked after the monkey, suggesting that he killed the actress in a fit of misplaced jealousy, and that Brinkel let himself be charged to cover for him! The arc comes to an end mere days after this bizarre revelation, with no further comment on the absurdity of it all.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Becky has it bad, really bad, suffering not from just a major physical ailment, but emotional issues too, but she fights on and keeps from wallowing in despair, despite living in a Crapsack World. And that's why a lot of people like her.
• Fan Nickname: "Masky McDeath", "Funky Cancerbean," "Funky Cancercancer". Occasionally, the comic is called the Chunkyverse as the readers noticed how most the cast put on considerable weight during the Time Skip, some to the point of being unrecognizable.
• Fridge Horror: The first strip of 2011 sees Les passionately kissing the ghost of his now thirteen-years deceased spouse in full view of his girlfriend and former suicidal student turned romantically obsessed adult. ^note Fortunately for Les, they only saw him from behind, and from that angle he appeared to just be staring out of a window. As if to confirm to both characters that yes, Les would much rather hallucinate about his One True Love than spend any time caring about them. Several readers pointed out that this moment is not just another sign of Les' unwillingness to let go: it's an indication of full blown mental illness.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A Running Gag in the original version had the hall monitor armed with a machine gun. Nowadays, given the very real debate over arming teachers in response to school shootings, this really isn't funny in the least. Though Hall Monitor Les said at one point the "machine gun" actually, when the trigger was pulled, played the school fight song.
• Humor Dissonance: The strip slowly declining in humor value has been a common accusation by readers ever since its dramatic shift, and in spite of the heavy subject matter involved (depression, addiction, illness, death, etc.), most of those complaining don't even find it offensive or upsetting in practice: they just think it's not funny. Given that the punchlines are usually either gentle wordplay (which is sometimes directly acknowledged as being annoying), old characters smugly griping, or wistful irony, it comes off as a failed attempt at poignancy at best — and at worst, passive-aggressive towards its own readership.
• Lighter and Softer: Believe it or not, the strip did lighten up in 2015 or so and begin focusing on characters finding friendship, becoming successful writers, etc. Unfortunately it (especially the suspicious emphasis on writers and comic artists) tends to come off as thinly-veiled Wish-Fulfillment and most of the wordplay is pretty tortured. Not to mention it loses the unintentional comedy of the Cancer Years.
• Memetic Mutation: "Cancer cancer?"^ExplanationFrom this Shortpacked! strip lampooning the... particular focus the comic had taken.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Certain elements regarding Lisa's death, but especially when she makes a video for Summer. Typically though, Batiuk overplayed his hand on this, and then spent literally years unveiling more and more videos Lisa made, seemingly micromanaging Les's life from beyond the grave. What was a one-time genuine and bittersweet moment eventually became cringe-inducing (inadvertent) self-parody.
  • Bull Bushka's illness, from his initial diagnosis of having a degenerative brain disorder (the result of repeated concussions while playing football), to the aftermath (retirement from coaching and later teaching at Westview High) to seeking treatment but being denied insurance coverage to his decision to take his own life (fearing bankruptcy, suffering from ravaging headaches, unable to explain increasingly bizarre behavior and knowing his family and friends will likely watch him devolve into a dementia-type vegetative state) … the storyline of the onetime superjock and super-tormenter of Les Moore who overcame his past to be one one of Westview's most beloved coaches and teachers (and one of Les' closest friends) into a man truly suffering and tortured by his predicament and knowing there was nothing he could do was one of the strip's most heartbreaking storylines.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Actually inverted initially, despite the idea you might from commentators these days. Not to say the tone shift didn't have its detractors, but Act II was generally well received and the cancer plot was praised even by typically snarky commentators like The Comics Curmudgeon. It wasn't until Act III, a full fifteen years after the initial timeskip, that it gained the overwhelmingly negative reputation it has today.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: It's a little hard to care about these people, either because of the sheer number of bad things that happen to them (and their resigned fatalism and utter unwillingness to do anything about their situations) or because of how much it gets hammered in your face.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Les is supposed to be talented and morally pure, and his grief over Lisa is supposed to be touching. Readers find him smug, out-of-touch, and hypocritical, and his sadness over Lisa to be an obsession that he really should have gotten over after more than a decade. And his endless writing about Lisa is always shown to actually be about Les, himself — in every version of "Lisa's Story", Lisa is almost an afterthought to the tortured, martyred, too-pure-for-this-world Les.
  • Harry Dinkle has also firmly entered this territory. His overbearing, egotistical behavior worked well in Act I, which had a much more comedic tone. (And his appearances usually ended with Dinkle getting his comic comeuppance as his band festival was rained out yet again.) But now that Dinkle's using the same tactics on a choir made up of elderly women, in a world we're supposed to take much more seriously, he comes off as downright abusive. And he now DOESN'T get a comic comeuppance ... inexplicably, Dinkle is the one character in Funky Winkerbean for whom things always work out, even though he whines about what a trial his life is.
• The Woobie: Poor Wally. He gets in a car accident which results in his girlfriend getting her arm lopped off (see Ensemble Dark Horse above), and is traumatized enough that he joins the military as atonement. He gets in a helicopter crash and is captured by mercenaries and presumed dead for the first time. He escapes and marries Becky, but the trauma of Afghanistan weighs on him, and he returns to the country in an attempt to atone for that and gets nearly blown up. As soon as he gets back he is unexpectedly re-deployed. When he gets back to Afghanistan he learns that his wife is pregnant and he misses the birth of his son. He is then exploded by a roadside IED, and held captive for years while presumed dead again. The only face he can remember during his long imprisonment is the face of his beloved Becky. And when he's finally reunited with her, she shows him her second husband, takes him to his own grave, hands him a trombone, tells him Dinkle said hi, and LETS HIM WALK TO FUNKY’S HOUSE. He's probably the most tortured man in Westview, and that's saying something.

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