Editing Funky Winkerbean (section)

==Controversy==
The more dramatic turns of the storyline have led to mixed responses from readers. Negative reaction to a 2007 strip featuring Wally getting blown up by an [[improvised explosive device|I.E.D.]] (which turned out in the next strip to be him playing a computer game), included two papers that ran the strip receiving irate phone calls and letters to the editor, and led to Batiuk issuing an apology soon after the strip ran.<ref name="dc070226"/>

Reactions to later chapters of Lisa's Story led to further complaints over the comic's gloomy content, and Batiuk has mentioned in interviews that he has received complaints about the direction of the storyline.<ref name=autogenerated2 /> Web comic ''[[Shortpacked]]'' produced a satirical strip in which most of the words of ''Funky Winkerbean'' characters' dialogue are replaced by the word "cancer."<ref name="sp070416"/> The [[Comics Curmudgeon]] also makes frequent reference to the seemingly unremitting gloom of the strip, calling it "a black hole of bleakness and depression and cancer from which no joy or laughter can escape."<ref name="cc090526"/><ref name="pr48"/>  The strip has also inspired a blog, ''Son of Stuck Funky'', which provides a daily commentary.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://sonofstuckfunky.com |title = Son of Stuck Funky {{!}} The web's premiere source for Funky Winkerbean snark}}</ref>

A ''[[Crankshaft (comic strip)|Crankshaft]]'' strip from May 23, 2007, sarcastically addresses the controversy from Batiuk's perspective, with a character remarking of newspaper comic strips that "everyone knows they're supposed to be funny".<ref name="chron052307"/> In the ''Funky Winkerbean'' strip published on September 30, 2007, Les essentially echoes the ''Crankshaft'' comment.<ref name="chron093027"/>

In a September 2009 storyline that many readers<ref name="cc090914"/><ref name="cd090914a"/><ref name="fw090916"/> also interpreted as Batiuk's addressing of the strip's latter-day bleakness, a group of parents protested a school production of ''[[Wit (play)|Wit]]'' because the themes of cancer and death offended them.<ref name="chron090914"/> In her defense of the play, the character of Susan Smith, a Westview High teacher and drama director, was viewed by critics as a mouthpiece for Batiuk's views on the importance of dramatic entertainment.<ref name="cc090719"/><ref name="cd090917"/><ref name="chron090915"/>

Over the week of July 7, 2008, ''[[Pearls Before Swine (comic strip)|Pearls Before Swine]]'' parodied the tendency of ''Funky Winkerbean'' towards killing off main characters when it killed off Rat and the strip's own author, [[Stephan Pastis]] (the two would later be returned to the strip via the intervention of the head of [[United Feature Syndicate]]), with Tom Batiuk even allowing Pastis to use his representation of the Angel of Death in the second to last strip in the series.<ref name="comics090614"/> A year earlier, as part of a long series featuring multiple storylines, Pastis remarked to Pig that serial strips handle long stories better and featured Funky, Holly, Lisa, and Les in a parody referencing, among other things, Lisa's breast cancer. Pastis was given Batiuk's blessing to run the strip, but just before it was scheduled to run the controversy over the cancer storyline grew to the point where Pastis pulled it from publication as he believed, although he never mentioned the disease by name, anyone who read his strip could infer that he was making light of cancer patients and Pastis did not wish to have ''Pearls'' drawn into the controversy.<ref name="pso258"/>