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.
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.
Recently, the comic strip Luann has been irritating me almost as much as the Batton Death March, which begins its 11th week today. Luann‘s tedious story arc is about a “Career Paths” class, which seems to be the only class the title character is taking in her 27th semester of junior college.
I decided to improve both stories, by crashing them into each other.
Text that appears in the standard Crankshaft or Luann font is unedited from the original strip, except for minor rewording, and sometimes being paired with different artwork.
Warning: The parody story text contains lots of foul language.
This is Part 2 of our deep dive into Max and Hannah. Part 1 is here.
Max and Hannah bought the Valentine Theater from Ralph Meckler in 2016. October 10, 2016 was their first week of ownership. It was a disjointed mix of them fixing up the place up, receiving their first customers (Jeff, Pam, and Ed) and Max being tired from the stress of working two jobs.
Citing burnout, Max quits his job at Channel 1 on January 12, 2017 to run the theater full-time. Both Pam and Ed Crankshaft point out that Channel 1 is paying the better part of his salary (even though Max gripes about being underpaid), so this may be an unwise move. Nobody ever points out that Hannah has been working the same two jobs, and is not depicted as being fatigued, despite her having the more physically demanding Channel 1 job of camera operator.
I never noticed it until now, but women are much expected to be much tougher than men in the Funkyverse.
Again, I was a broadcast journalism major in the 1990s, so trust me on this: those live TV-grade cameras are heavy. But Max is the one who’s falling asleep on the job, Peppermint Patty style.
On January 25, 2018 during a blizzard, Ed Crankshaft brings a busload of school children to the Valentine, who have to spend the night there. The incident gets positive coverage in the Centerville Sentinel, back when it still published news stories. July 26 is another round of Pam and Jeff helping to spruce up the theater.
On March 31, 2019, Jeff visits an apartment and says “I appreciate you two having me over for dinner,” implying that Max and Hannah are now living together. This apartment building isn’t the same one Max moved into in 2008. It’s probably another real-life building Tom Batiuk and his wife lived in at some point.
June 3, 2019 is almost identical to last week’s arc. Hannah and Max go to Pam and Jeff’s house with a major announcement: they’ve decided to incorporate! Which, combined with the last week’s strips, and the “we’re buying the Valentine” announcement from 2016, means they bait-and-switched a marriage announcement three different times. And I guess they never incorporated either, because incorporation was a declined option on March 6, 2026.
But it doesn’t end there. In October 2019, they invite Pam and Jeff to the theater with yet another surprise: Hannah is pregnant!
There’s teasing a big reveal, and then there’s just being jerks. When it’s the fourth time you’ve done this, and you order custom printed balloons before you’ll tell your own mother what’s going on, you’re just being jerks. Smirk your heads off, you smug bastards.
That story ends on October 20, 2019:
And we have the answer to the question many of you have been asking! Yes, Max and Hannah having a child out of wedlock is established Funkyverse lore. As Pam explained it at the time, they wanted to “focus on more important stuff.” Given the bizarre priorities of Funkyverse characters, you’re welcome to guess what those might be. Lord knows Tom Batiuk doesn’t tell us.
On February 10, 2020, Ed Crankshaft and Mary Marzipan show up for a Butter Brinkel marathon during a blizzard, necessitating a second overnight stay. This was also the very beginning of the real-life global pandemic. Why do people in this town insist on going to shows during life-threatening conditions, like COVID and blizzards? Remember Dinkle’s “Christmas Messiah” near the end of Funky Winkerbean?
It is during this second overnight stay that Hannah gives birth to Mitch. Infamously, Ed Crankshaft helps with the delivery. Which may be the most unrealistic thing in the history of the Funkyverse. I’m not a woman, but I think that if Ed Crankshaft offered to help me give birth, my immediate reaction would be DO NOT LET THAT MAN ANYWHERE NEAR MY HOO-HAH FOR ANY REASON.
Especially if he’s going to make that face about it.
Mitch is first seen and heard on February 27, 2020. Jeff “covers for” Max at the theater for a week while they adjust to parenthood. On July 27, the Valentine is showing The Phantom Empire. Max takes Mitch to the theater “because it’s never too soon to introduce a child to culture.” Even though that child is five months old, and his irregular aging hadn’t started yet.
May 9, 2021 is the first sign of trouble at the Valentine. Max tells Hannah not to bother disinfecting the seats, because “their draw was an older audience that doesn’t want to go out to a movie theater now.” By May 21, a strip club is interested in buying the place. Here’s my version of that story:
“Why was there placenta on my seat?” may be my favorite sentence I’ve ever written for this blog.
On May 27, Pam and Jeff visit. Max calls them “the biggest crowd we’ve had since we re-opened.” They’re the biggest crowd we’ve ever seen, even before COVID, other than the night Ed brought a busload of school children.
They start vacating the theater. On June 4, Pam offers to let Max, Hannah, and Mitch move into the apartment over the garage. Oh well, at least it’s not the apartment over Montoni’s for a change. This move happens in September 2021. January 17, 2022 is the first time we see Max, Hannah, and Mitch around Pam and Jeff’s house. They would start appearing as background characters at that location, much like when Max was staying there between his 2006 graduation and 2008.
On August 1, 2022, Max and Hannah go back to Channel 1. This is what 17-month-old Mitch looks like now:
Apparently they were playing Jumanji, and Mitch aged ten years while he was trapped in the game board. That’s quite a screw-up, even by Crankshaft’s standards.
Amazingly, Channel 1 hands them their old jobs back. One wonders what happened to the cameraman and director of yesterday’s show, roles that must have been filled by someone. Which is another highly unrealistic depiction of media jobs. Max and Hannah are about as replaceable than fast food workers. Year after year, universities are still cranking out dozens more journalism graduates than there will ever be jobs for again. Not to mention the scores of self-made content creators thanks to YouTube, and affordable consumer-grade video production tools. So Channel 1 would have plenty of qualified applicants on file.
August 2022 saw the ransomware attack on Channel 1. It was Hannah who had the brilliant idea to air old John Darling episodes, since they were stored on physical tapes that weren’t held hostage by the ransomware. This kept Channel 1 on the air without having to pay the ransom of…
August 31, 2022.
Next month, a Deus Ex Comic Books arrives to save Max and Hannah from their own passive idiocy.
Mason got all his money from making the Starbuck Jones movie, so this qualifies as a Deus Ex Comic Books.
It’s Mason Jarre and Cindy Summers! Note that the Valentine livery and movie theater entrance is still up, even though it closed down a year ago, and a strip club existed there in the interim. Timemop must have been a regular.
Mason immediately offers to buy the building from unlicensed guest character Lois Flagston from Hi & Lois, looking like a deranged psycho the entire time.
What, me worry?
Ed Crankshaft happens to wander by during this conversation. Like most American small towns, Westview/Centerville has no concept of privacy, so they discuss this celebrity couple’s financial business right in front of this complete stranger. Ed conveniently mentions that his grandson and his wife once ran the theater, so Mason wants to take them to dinner. Of course, they go to Montoni’s. Mason tells Max and Hannah he wants them to run and manage the theater “based on their experience there.”
Which is even more ludicrous than them being re-hired at Channel 1. At least they were competent Channel 1 employees, which is more than can be said for their management skills. They’re the ones who ran the Valentine into the ground with their endless Phantom Empire screenings, and insistence on remaining open during blizzards. Once again, the story acts like they’re the only two people on earth who could possibly do this job.
On October 1, they get their first paycheck from Mason. Of course, it’s gigantic.
And the Funkyverse business cycle is complete!
Be from the remote outskirts of Cleveland.
Have Tom Batiuk-approved opinions on How To Do Media Things Correctly.
Find a rich person who shares those opinions.
Wait for the rich person to throw money at you to manage it for them. Because rich people have zero interest in ever making a profit, or in hiring people with any useful skills.
Mason became to the Valentine Theater what Chester Hagglemore was to Atomix Komix, what Pink Productions was to Lisa’s Story, and what Mordor Financial was to the Centerview Sentinel. They’re the faceless entities that exist solely to swallow huge losses, so Batiuk’s beknighted small-town yokels can have mainstream media careers with complete creative control. And, of course, be paid big money themselves.
In spite of their new-found tax bracket, December 2022 shows Max and Hannah are… still working at the TV station?
Despite getting huge paychecks from Mason Jarre to do their dream job, and a Channel 1 paycheck on top of that, they were never seen moving back to an apartment. And they continued to make walk-on appearances in household stories. Which implies that they’re still mooching off Pam and Jeff to this day.
In 2023, Skip Rawlings shows up to ask about the theater’s reopening, which happens in May 2023. His interviewing skills weren’t any better then. The next month, Mason flies in for the grand re-opening. And we all know what the main attraction is!
This may be the most Funkyverse panel ever created. Especially if you don’t know who’s asking the question.
The pandering continues. Mason also wants to premier Starbuck Jones III: The Rise Of The Disney Lawsuits Bandelorians at the Valentine. And he wants to meet with Harry Dinkle, because he wants to use Claude Barlow music in the movie.
Which is mind-bendingly stupid, but isn’t worth any further deconstruction. Because Max and Hannah were never constructed in the first place.
Max and Hannah are the same as Atomik Komix. And Les Moore. And Lillian McKenzie. And Skip Rawlings. And Mason Jarre. And Harry Dinkle. And Batton Thomas. They exist to fuel stories about small town people who run a media empire the way Tom Batiuk thinks it should be run, and be handed ego tongue baths and piles of money for it.
Despite this couple’s obvious purpose as story enablers, Tom Batiuk has decided that their marital status was a loose end that needed to be tied up. He made a similar decision that near the end of Funky Winkerbean, that Cory Winkerbean and Rocky Rhodes needed to put a ring on it.
But that was justifiable in the context of Funky Winkerbean ending. Weddings are a great excuse to get all the characters in one place, so we can see them one last time. As stupid as that arc was, it was also the final appearance of characters like Keisha Williams, Maddie Klinghorn, and Rocky and Cory themselves. That’s not the case this time, though.
Son of Stuck Funky 