“Our friend Roland” refers to a character who appeared in the very first Funky Winkerbean strip in March of ’72:
I don’t when he disappeared from the strip (or what happened to Livinia). I suppose his function in the early days of FW was to provide a little Doonesbury-esque topical humor. His radical views, of course, did not extend to Playboy magazine (va-va-va-VOOM!), which is why he did not bequeath to Crazy Harry any Betty Friedan or Susan Sontag.
Remember all those strips where Crazy Harry held forth about his conservative beliefs? Me neither. In order to wring another weak punchline out of the Harry Sells His Library premise, Batiuk, out of the blue, assigns a right-wing political view to the presumed former stoner. I’m just thankful that Batiuk didn’t have Crazy identify himself as a “teabagger“.
Son of Stuck Funky 
This might have been a passably amusing punchline if only the storyline wasn’t so relentlessly awful
Livinia died, baby. Isn’t that just expected?
There was a easel at one of the reunions mentioning the students from the class who died and she was one of them.
Haven’t even looked at today’s atrocity but I wanted to be the first to indicate that because… well, I don’t know. It’s not as if that helps me score Cool Points or anything.
TFH sez: Actually, it does! Good call.
You know, at the official Funky website, one of the pages has Roland as a background image. In fact, you might not want to mention this to Tom Batiuk but all of the background images (except, of course, for Lisa) are from the early days of the strip. Seeing as how he now pretty much disowns those 1970’s strips (or at least that kind of humor), I wonder how that happened?
Even back then, Batiuk didn’t draw women so much as he drew slightly more androgynous men.
Thanks for reminding us who Roland was, I don’t go THAT far back with this strip. Obviously he must have died at some point…whoa, shocker.
Now let’s dissect that punchline, shall we? Is it being implied that “Crazy” is a “Tea Partier” because he’s weird and eccentric? Is it an even deeper satirical dig at the Harry character (a shiftless, lazy, taxpayer-funded federal employee)? Is Harry’s “weirdness” the reason his sad little plight is being played strictly for laughs instead of Les-esque pathos? Is the author actually attempting to write satire again?
Nah, probably just an accident after one too many sips of cranberry schnapps (or low-alcohol craft beer, more likely). Still, all in all, a real “howler” by FW standards. Remember, by FW standards, “staring at it indifferently” is akin to ROTFLMAO in real life.
To be fair, TheDiva, isn’t Les just an androgynous woman… with a goatee?
(a woman from the Mirror Universe??)
Could someone please explain the dialog in the last panel to me? I’m totally serious. I just don’t get it. Like, I don’t even get it enough to make a joke about it.
Sourbelly – all the authors mentioned are on the political Left, whereas the Tea Party is an organization of the political Right. So Harry has rejected those authors’ views and wouldn’t be going to the library to re-read them.
I guess that’s supposed to be the joke.
Sourbelly:
I’m going to assume that is has something to do with all of those writers being countercultural leftists/hippies/yippies from the ’60s. Now that Harry’s a member of the Tea Party he’s diametrically opposed to them politically.
It doesn’t make sense because there’s no indication that Harry calling himself a tea partier means that he’s, you know, an actual tea partier. That revelation came out of nowhere, so it doesn’t really work because it’s not playing off something long established with the character.
I just think TB should avoid politics altogether. Guy’s just too simple-mindedly doctrinaire to avoid pissing off, well, pretty much everyone.
I don’t know what everyone here thinks of Act I, as I’ve never read any of it before today.
Just let me say I was expecting funnier.
I would have placed Crazy Crusty in the Mad Tea Party of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland with the March Hare and Mad Hatter, rather than that political outfit. It even fits within the Westview Fate and Misery Index, because time had punished them by standing still at 6 PM, giving rise to an eternal tea party. Of course, time stands still in Westview. As at the Mad Tea Party, riddles abound here – for example, why has Crusty never mentioned the tea party even once before now? Love ’em or hate ’em, the real Tea Party is an enthusiastic bunch and tend to wear their political angst on their sleeves. Crusty just mopes about drinking free coffee. Further, is Crusty not the Mad Hatter himself ? His nickname is Crazy and his standard issue appearance involved a hat. Of course, ex-wino Funky is the March Hare. “Have some wine”, said the March Hare. But, this whole arc is ever so slowly going down a rabbit hole and I suppose, we, like Alice, should just split the scene and proclaim Crusty’s as the stupidest tea party ever.
Crazy Harry is a lazy employee of a quasi governmental agency, so I doubt he’s a Tea Party member. This is Westview, where taxes need to be ever increasing. TomBat’s 1/4 mile from reality.
A knuckle dragging Union Lunkhead also a Tea Party member? No effin way in Hell. Kinda hard to walk a mail route with two broken legs. The Union limb snappers would have “corrected” him long ago. That’s what unions do, along with making union bosses rich at the expense of its members.
Message is once you go totally insane and become CEO of a room full of book-employees, your next step on the road to the Rubber Room is to join that awful, whacky-doodle Tea Party, for God’s sake!
“Tea partier”, eh? Doesn’t make much sense, unless… Ah! There’s this definition from the Urban Dictionary: “A much older term for marijuana, made popular in the 1930’s. Today it is considered obsolete.” The 1930’s- right around when Harry was buying his Tarzan “comics”!
Had this been set up it might have been interesting as the Tea Party is noted for being, shall we say, confused about things – A classic sign seen more than once at tea party demonstrations was “Keep Government out of my medicare” so crazy harry fits right in at least in the confusion department.
But Batiuk has no idea how to set up anything – at all so this is just an unfunny ass joke.
As has been said, Livinia’s dead, and I think Roland got really into the 60’s and no one ever saw him again…
except at the “coming reunion”, maybe? I think he’s the pony-tailed dude next to Crazy. Looks like he grew out of having three noses.
Roland was a campus radical in high school in the 70’s. I myself attended high school in the 70’s, where radicalism started and ended with peace signs on t-shirts and embroidered patches sewed on jean jackets. He was basically a college student character plopped into Westview High so Batiuk could try to relevant. Liviana (WTF with that name?) undoubtedly died in a horrific manner off-screen. Les used to try to date her, so maybe suicide?
What’s especially bizarre is just less than a week ago, Crazy was visibly insulted by Funky’s suggestion of him getting a job in the private sector.
On the plus side, all the pieces are falling into place for a “mental illness” storyline.
Roland must be dead, having left Harry his prized books as part of his will. Or maybe he’s alive, having taken advantage of a guy nicknamed “Crazy” and sold him those books at an insane price. I’m sure you all care about these details as much as I do. (which is to say: Nobody cares.)
So yeah, had same experience davidorth had trying to unload used books–about 100 paperbacks–$5 or store credit of $25.
But the store is within walking distance so I wouldn’t burn up the profit in gas money
I can add to the Crazy’s not going to get much here chorus – Used book stores will pay for review copies of current books (review copies – free copies sent to reviewers or potential reviewers of said work or just to publicity firms or agents) otherwise not so much. I worked for a NY publisher some years ago and I remember that more than one assistant editor would supplement their meager income by just grabbing any review copy they could find and heading for the Stand Bookstore in NY where you’d get if, you were lucky, 4-5 bucks for a $25 dollar book which they would then sell at oh $12.50 or so. For actual used books the rate was something like 25 cents per hard cover and 5 cents per paper back. Don’t know what it is now. I’m sure with Kindle/nook/whatever the price has gone down.
Crazy would do better selling plasma.
How can Crazy Harry be a Tea Party person when its the GOP/Tea Party that wants to do away with, massively downsize or privatize the Post Office?! Crazy is supporting the people who are costing him his job? I don’t think Batiuk thought this through.
I’m pretty sure Crazy is being sarcastic, Dreamer. Not that it makes the strip any funnier.
The politics TB has historically appeared to support in strip lean the opposite way of all of the words affected by the italics epidemic Sgt. S triggered earlier this morning.
OK, I have nothing against Batuik giving one of his characters a controversial political stance, so long as he doesn’t play it for drama or start openly endorsing it.
But does it make sense with anything we know about Crazy’s characterization for him to suddenly be a tea partier?
I have to put this down as “actually amused me” although after this long slog of a filler arc almost anything would. Since TB’s politics are easily detected I was surprised but it is also a reminder that he’s working a year or so “ahead”–so he’s talking about a group that has all but disappeared off the public radar.
Serious or not, i expect this to be referred to again about as often as Crayola’s “I’m pregnant” gag.
I don’t know if you can quite parse out TB’s specific politics from his strip as easily as you think. I tend to look at his politics within the strip as being “whatever he thinks will ingratiate him to his readers the most”. Take a look at that original strip, and realize this hasn’t actually changed. Look at how Roland is supposed to be politically active, but he doesn’t let that get in the way of appreciating porn, man. Bros, dude! And then there’s the swipe at “them Women’s libbers”, written in such a way as to suggest that, you know, they’re a movement that needs to be tolerated just to get along, but he’s still gonna roll his eyes at them.
You might look at the gay prom and think that makes him real progressive, and that’s what he probably wants you to think. But really look at that storyline. It’s as vague and craven an endorsement of gay rights as you could possibly get. The only stance he takes is one that says the principal isn’t going to change the vague and inadequate wording of the school manual, and that he’s going to interpret it in a way to support his students. Hell, if you took out the hand-holding panel, how certain would you be that he was talking about homosexuality in the first place? Maybe it’s just two bros without dates who still want to go to the prom.
And while I won’t say it’s certain, it’s very easy to read his strips about the 1% and global warming as pandering to his readers’ perspective as he perceives it. That doesn’t mean he actually believes any of it. It’s entirely possible that he doesn’t have any strong beliefs at all, and all of these lines are just more basic manipulation as he does with Lisa and Wally and Becky and any other of his countless “human experience” stories.
Spot frickin’ on, Charles.
Tom obviously broke down and wrote some new slips of paper for Crazy’s hat, should his name get pulled out of the fishbowl again.
“POLITICKS”, it reads. Or perhaps “Pot Licks”…which would also apply.
Charles: I think it’s safe to say that Tom really, really believes women should keep their mouths shut unless they’re blessed cancer saints or vaguely boyish sports stars.
The “Girls, know your place!” attitude in the strip has taken a gargantuan leap this year.
I thought Batiuk was pretty progressive from the fact he put his main character (Les) into an inter-racial relationship, basically a first in the lily white comics pages. Even Doonesbury doesn’t have an interracial relationship.
But then what did he do right before he had Less get serious with Cayla? He had Cayla lose the ‘fro and straighten her hair, to look more white or hispanic. Cayla is now race neutral. Maybe thats a sign he wasn’t trying to be politically progressive and do a breakthrough interracial couple at all. The fact that he ‘straightened’ Cayla’s hair could be a sign of conservatism.
re Doonesbury: well, Mike is married to Kim, who’s Vietnamese.
It’s important to remember the circumstances that led to Les getting involved with Cayla.
If you remember, one of the first consistent jokes of Act III was Les and Summer baffling one another with their differences, moreso Les annoying Summer. Another part was the TREMENDOUS IRONY of douchey wimp Les having a superstar athlete daughter and former superstar athlete Bull having an intellectual daughter with no capacity for athletics whatsoever.
So Summer’s involved with basketball, and she gets a rival. Since it’s basketball, the rival’s black. And since one of the regular recurring motifs is Les chafing Summer’s ass, Les starts seeing the rival’s mom. I don’t think all of these steps were planned at once. I think the notion of Les dating Cayla only came to TB after he had introduced Keisha as a black girl, so obviously, Cayla needs to be black.
But then he may have trapped himself, because Les couldn’t break up easily with Cayla without making TB potentially look racist, especially if he does it to hook Les up with emotionally unstable and terribly problematic anyway Susan. And it would have been just as bad to hook him up with a white woman created specifically for that situation. But he wanted Les to remarry. So he inadvertently blundered into a situation where he had to have Les marry a black woman. So what happens then? She becomes whiter.
I do think there was a time when he found it kind of fun and racy, mostly when he could gain some cred with having a mixed race couple, which is why Cayla switched to the mini-dreads. But once he realized he had to stick with her, it all went away.
Am I cynical about this guy or what?
Today, I opened a new box of staples and informed them that they now worked for me, and I was their absolute monarch. Later, one of them went crooked when I tried to fasten two pieces of paper together. I took this staple aside, let’s call him “Fred” (not his real name), and told him that this was behavior I would not tolerate as long as I’m in charge. I’ve since sent “Fred” off for some one on one councelling to help him resolve the personal problems that were affecting his job performance.
So, no, I don’t see anything at all weird about Crazy’s recent behavior.
Hey Beanie, from memory:
“Oh broom you must now sweep for me, the dust it fills my room;”
“No John I will not sweep for you, for I am not your broom.”
“What nonsense are you speaking broom, my words you must obey!”
“Another life awaits me now and I am on my way.
I am not your broom, I am not your broom, another life awaits me now for I am not your broom.”
Also, anyone else think Laviana looks like Funky in need of a haircut?
I’d say it’s possible that Liviana is/was Funky’s sister. She looks very similar to Funky in Act I, but somewhere around Act II or III she faked her death, and took the place of Roberta.
The real history is that while Lisa and John did win the case of John and the furry-porn he was selling to kids, he couldn’t sell it anymore and had to pay a fine. Disgruntled by this fact, John and Liviana (who did not die) killed Roberta between Act II and Act III. Finding that Becky was supposedly widowed, he annulled the marriage between Becky and Wally, and forced Becky into marriage, under threat of her “other arm”. This explains the following:
– Becky doesn’t want to have sex with DSH John…she’s essentially under duress.
– Becky is a neurotic mess, this caused by her mother’s murder and her miserable marriage.
– Roberta looks like Funky in drag (she’s actually his long-lost sister)
– Becky didn’t kill her mother, but the person pretending to be. That’s why she said “no jury would convict her”.
who died when Comic Book John murdered her after
The Dreamer, what part of “Crazy” don’t you understand?
Binkley in Bloom County had an African American girlfriend, way, way back in the early 80s.