Son of Stuck Funky

Hold the Pickles

WHAT ABOUT THE BIRD, TOM?

We’re all waiting on tenterhooks to see if Ed Crankshaft presses fat lips to cold beak and puffs Pam’s Christmas Cardinal back to life, and Batiuk just shifts gears to Pam and Minty redecorating a Christmas tree that should have been well and truly decked as of Thursday afternoon when Pam strung lights under the watchful eye of her blood red companion.

And all so Batiuk can, once again, flash us that hysterical landmark, 425 West Avenue, Elyria, Ohio. The starter apartment of Pam and Jeff, Ann and Fred, and Batton and his nameless Cathy Clone.

While the bird’s fate is unknown, a surprising, long memory holed, friend has emerged from the reference sheets. Appearing for the first time in the Davis era, on Wednesday we saw a feline resembling Pickles the Tomcat. Last seen on December 23, 2016, during Ayers tenure.

Wherever Pickles has been the last nine years, I’m guessing it included a short stay in the Pet Sematary. Since the mangy old feline debuted in Crankshaft’s first couple years, while Max and Mindy were still young.

Back in the glory days when Crankshaft still had the personality of a lime-encrusted sea urchin.

Save the Cat and Pet the Dog are tropes as old as time. A quick shorthand to show the true empathy innate in a character. If you want to show your character is a slimy fake, you have a seemingly ‘nice’ person kick a dog.

If you want to show that the grumbles, grousing, and belly aching of a cantankerous old coot are just the timid farts of an emotionally constipated man, you have him get a cat.

Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal Cardinal MUSHROOM MUSHROOM

I miss the early days of the Internet. It was devoid of toxic social media, and full of goofy creative stuff. If you’re not familiar with the primitive brainrot the title refers to, you can see it here. (WARNING: It will burrow into your brain like those Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan worms. If you do recognize the title, it probably already has. Sorry about that.)

This week’s cardinal arc reminds me of Badger Badger Badger. There’s a cardinal, and… that’s it. It exists as part of a larger work that defies any narrative sense. It’s practically trying to be a meme.

I know I’ve joked about the cardinal being Lisa’s ghost, and that’s still the favorite on the odds board right now (-500). But now, dragging out Lisa’s corpse for the millionth time seems too straightforward for Tom Batiuk. He seems to be veering into the avant-garde. As evidenced by this week’s Ingmar Bergman coloring. (NOTE: I initially missed that this effect was borrowed from Schindler’s List. Thanks to Y. Knott in the comments.)

I say this because I was baffled by the December 13 strip that ended “Pizza Box Monster as Santa” week. He gets paid by Lillian, shakes her hand, and then this:

What on earth was Tom Batiuk aiming at here?

Yes, that’s the building where this week’s proceedings occurred, but what is the point of sticking it at the end of the story? The second panel, PBM saying “Pizza on earth!”, is the kind of thing Batiuk would normally use for a punchline. It’s almost like he drew this panel and forgot to use it, so he stuck it here.

Sometimes you can end a story just by pulling back and putting it into its larger context. Like in A Streetcar Named Desire (the stage version, not the movie) or Cameron Crowe’s Singles. But that’s not what’s happening here. This isn’t a scene of people wandering around, enjoying Christmas, or anything else that would lend weight to the story. Not that there was much of a story to begin with.

I think Tom Batiuk is trying to mimic visual effects, and heartwarming endings, he’s seen in movies and TV shows. But he has absolutely no idea how to execute them, or why. That’s what I think we’re getting at the end of this week: an ornately staged, but confusing, ending.

UPDATE (December 19): And with this morning’s strip, Batiuk’s true intentions are revealed:

How Many Times Did Funky Winkerbean Jump The Shark?

I didn’t mean for that last post to be a poll, but it’s revealing how many individual Jump The Shark moments posters were able to identify in Funky Winkerbean. Here’s a compiled list, in roughly chronological order (because, as you know, Timemop).

Act I (1972-1992, ends with the original class’ graduation)

Lisa’s pregnancy (1986)
A high school girl has a genuine mutual, unreciprocated crush on Les (1988)
Les’ valedictorian speech (1992)

Act II (1992-2007, ends with Lisa’s death)

Lisa’s first detection of cancer (1998)
Wally dies in the minesweeping simulator
Becky loses her arm
The first class reunion
Susan Smith’s suicide attempt
Wally’s first homecoming (2003)
John Byrne’s guest stint permanently alters the artwork (2003)
Sadie Summers – not because she was a bad character as Tom Batiuk thinks, but because she was under- and mis-utilized
The post office bombing (USA!)
Lisa’s cancer returns in 2006, because of a hospital error
Lisa’s death (October 4, 2007)

Act III (2007-2022, ends when Funky Winkerbean ends and its characters move to Crankshaft)

Tom Batiuk skips ten years after Lisa’s death, throwing away a gold mine of story ideas. Which also prevents Les Moore (and Batiuk) from ever moving past Lisa’s death, when that was the stated reason for the time jump
Les screaming at Summer over a dress for the winter dance he was pushing her to attend
Les saying “yes you did” and getting pissy with Funky over a mild joke about Les attracting two women at once
Wally’s second homecoming, which destroyed the likeable Wally-Becky relationship, and needlessly added to Wally’s suffering
Lisa’s Story becomes a thing
Starbuck Jones become a thing
The emergence of Cayla as a character
Funky’s car crash and time-altering coma (2010)
casting Susan Smith as the antagonist in the Les-Cayla-Susan love triangle
the gay prom story where the gay teens never seen or talked about again
Morton Winkerbean’s remarkable but never-addressed recovery from dementia
Wally hooking up with Rachel and turning his life around
Cayla’s appearance changes
Lisa calls in a bomb threat from beyond the grave
Darin and Pete become major characters
The rise of Atomik Komix as a central location
“Where’s father?” – the resolution of the Zanzibar The Talking Murder Chimp story
The death of Bull Bushka, which was ultimately insurance fraud
Les walking back his earlier forgiveness of Bull
Darin makes a toy for his son, out of a handgun that was used to murder his grandfather
The entire finale, featuring a long -forgotten janitor who is revealed to be a time-traveling agent, tasked with ensuring Summer’s book gets written
“behavior-patterned algorithms that will let us define humanity as our nation” or whatever that drivel was

Act IV (Crankshaft, 2023-)

The Funky Winkerbean characters invade Crankshaft
The alleged Burnings
The Batton Thomas interview arc

And must be a lot more candidates than that… because that list doesn’t mention Dinkle even once.

When Did Funky Winkerbean Jump The Shark?

Such opinions are highly subjective – I’ve told my story in detail – but I think there’s a new way to identify roughly when this happened in Funky Winkerbean.

Here is the cover blurb for The Complete Funky Winkerbean, Volume 14, 2011-2013, released in January 2025:

[this book] sees the sons and daughters of the original Funky gang starting to make their mark on the world by playing in basketball championships, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, and being deployed to war zones. Along the way there are graduations, weddings, and anniversaries––including the 40th anniversary of Funky Winkerbean.

Now here’s the same blurb for the brand new Volume 15, 2014-2016, released just three weeks ago:

the Funky gang are now in their late forties and raising teenagers of their own. Batiuk continues the Starbuck Jones storyline from the previous volume, as Holly searches for the final five issues of the comic book to send to Cory in Afghanistan. Elsewhere, there is a memorable class reunion, the character of Mason Jarr is introduced, and the cast decamps to Hollywood as Lisa’s Story is about to be adapted into a movie.

Notice the difference? Volume 14 at least sounds like a comic strip someone might want to read. Volume 15 has nothing to sell. Starbuck Jones! Mason Jarr! The Lisa Movie (which wouldn’t even be completed until 2022)! That stupid time travel class reunion, which was basically another Lisa story! Oh, and someone’s in Afghanistan, but don’t worry – his mom is collecting comic books for him!

I submit that 2013-2014 is the time when Act II’s overambitious sloppiness finished transforming into Act III’s lazy self-indulgence. Because Batiuk can’t even polish this turd anymore.