Son of Stuck Funky

In my tedious dissection research currently ongoing of the stupid Skip and Batton interview, I nearly let an important anniversary pass us by! So thanks to CSRoberto for reminding me that this week we are celebrating 54!

No, not that one.

No, not that one either.

Instead, the 54th Anniversary of the first Funky Winkerbean Strip!

And, since things have been so unbearable on the Crankshaft front, I thought I’d throw up some choice 1972 material.

I MEAN CHOICE 1972 FUNKY WINKERBEAN MATERIAL!!!

Covering a wide range of topics Batiuk would never touch now! Like…

Cannibalism.

Cultural Appropriation.

Body Shaming.

Trad Wives.

Or Livinia in general.

And who can forget that there was once a time Batiuk dared to pretend he didn’t deeply revere Baseball and Comic Books.

But of course…some things never change.

54 years later and he still won’t shut up about climate change.

And the levy will NEVER pass.

And Tom will always find a way to insert himself into his comic.

And Les Moore is an unbearable human tumor no one wants to see. At least we can be greatful we’ve had more than a year of his absence!

Funny to think about how the ‘Kid’s These Days’ this strip was originally about are now all pushing 70. World leaders, congresspeople, CEO’s, generals and admirals.

“I mean, this is surely the generation that will figure out that whole Middle East thing, right?”

But at least you can look back and see where old Funky Winkerbean predicted the future.

Yeah, that is pretty far fetched and ridiculous.

Funky Winkerbean, if only we knew what we had when we had it.

Thank the Lord! We have an ugly and abominable week of anemic puns and malaprops at Dale Evans! I do have to laugh at today’s strip, where there’s a weird fern hanging above Crankshaft’s head in an area that would be just kind of randomly hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the restaurant. I mean we’ve never seen that before! Right? The conglomeration of shoddy art stealing slaves using the name of ‘Davis’ is such a stupid collective moron.

Oh…no… wait… we have seen this before.

Don’t know what Ayers was thinking there!

But surely Ayers isn’t to blame for Angie’s terrifying lidless stare and the hideously askew ‘Menu’ from Monday.

HA TAKE THAT DAVIS YOU HACK.

More soon to come….

I swear on the decaying blonde Barbie jammed in the background of the Luigi’s bandbox, if we do not get Ed Crankshaft on Monday, doing one of the eight or so things that Ed Crankshaft has done for the last 38 years, then I will create an effigy of Tom Batiuk from old pairless socks and ritually burn it at the stake! This is not (just) a joke! I’m serious! On Monday morning when I go to GoComics there had better be a comic strip with an elderly asshole buying another Bean’s End boondoggle! Or else!

Am I coming across as aggressive? Maybe it’s because of this stupid week of Batton blathering about his precious Bristol Board. Because Batton, as Batiuk’s wish fulfilment Mary Sue, of course needed no ghost artist providing pencils for him to trace.

Heaven forbid Batiuk give Batton his own Avers Chuckson! He might have to write Batton having a relationship with someone who isn’t a goat looking git with a smartphone.

Still aggressive? Hmm….maybe it’s because of this comment by my own dear Co-captain.

One of Batton’s most obnoxious remarks had spilled, nearly word for word, from my lips months before that August strip. Should I be mad?

See, I dabble with a bit of fanfic writing now and then. Every few years, some movie or show or comic or video game or web series will spawn some mentally completish narrative in my brain and I’ll spend a few months to a year binge building the outline of an epic tale of cringe and feels. Sometimes I’ll even start writing the story down. Sometimes I’ll even show a couple equally cringe friends, so we can cringe and feels together.

Thus far, I usually lose steam after a bit, and it becomes more and more tedious and frustrating to put words to word document. I go full GRRM mode and eventually move on to another project, promising I’ll finish what I started I swear. Once I even did! (Do not ask to see it, it is 15% lost to digital hell, and 100% too niche and cringe for even you, my wonderful nitters)

Anyway, I was talking to one of my friends, (the one with the epic webcomic, who did the Westviewcrumb Tinies for us.) As I whinged to her about once again getting bogged down in a fic, she asked me, “Do you like writing?”

And I said, right away, not knowing that I was copying Dorothy Parker and WOULD be echoed by Batton of all people.

“I like having written.”

Because that’s the honest truth, for me. I love having written. I love going back to reread stuff I wrote even decades ago. I find my own jokes funny. The scenes I put down give me just the feels I was wanting to be feeling. The characters speak to me because I put the damn words in their figurative mouths. The set ups and pay off feel balanced and satisfying.

It’s like cooking for yourself, knowing just how much garlic and lemon and sugar you really really like. If eating your own handmade pasta was 100% more egotistical and narcissistic.

But writing, unless I’m in one of those wonderfully manic moods, can be an absolute CHORE. If I could have my rough drafts extracted from my brain and into a word processor by a helmet covered in needles, I’d do it. Definitely.

But I know that my dear Banana Jr. didn’t mean ‘loving having written’ in exactly the way I do. He’s clear about that in the rest of his comment.

And this is demonstrated SO SO CLEARLY in this godawful Skip and Batton interview drivel. Nothing (heaven help us– so far) has been about the stories Batton wanted to tell, it has been about wanting to achieve the social status of a writer. Like a forensic investigator dissecting a rotting corpse, maybe this wretched storyline deserves a deeper analysis…

FARM REPORT FOR THOSE SO INCLINED:

Monday was about 10 degrees Fahrenheit with a foot and half of snow. Today it was 85. All four seasons in one week. Someone get Mother Nature some lithium because the bitch is bi-polar af.

Had our first calf of the year on St. Paddy’s Day, on a day barely warm enough to leave it out on pasture. We’re up to four calves today, including a widdle moo with widdle Ray Bans.