Today we learn that Harry’s not just in town to “compare notes” (HA!) with his fellow music educators…in addition to being a retired band director, Harry’s also a member of that most esteemed class of humankind: Author and Signer of Books! Get ready for the sight of adoring music teachers queuing up for their personally autographed copies of Vol. II (!) of Dinkle’s autobiography. And what does Harry have in common with Les Moore, Westview’s other A&SOB? Why, both have published books with the same titles as those by Tom Batiuk!
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Son of Stuck Funky 
So how many people out there are going to actually get this joke and know that this “Rose Parade” book is actually a FW collection (in stores now)? Maybe ten? So that means the other thirty or forty readers will simply shrug confusedly and go read Mark Trail or whatever. I guess that maybe he thought this would stand up as a joke all on its own, but he was wrong about that.
This takes me back to the days of the big “Lisa’s Story” serialized advertisement centering around Les’ book-movie-signing-option tour thing. This one (hopefully) won’t be nine weeks long, at least. Isn’t it also weird how both fictional FW books are autobiographies in the Funkyverse but mere collections of comic strips in the real world? That would be a great question to ask him at a signing, too, I’d pay to see that reaction.
A crummy commercial? Son of a bitch!
Ah. It all makes sense now. I should mention I’m a part time pro musician. A number of my colleagues are school band teachers. Some are retired from that profession. And the ones that are retired are DONE! They don’t loiter at their old school and get up in the business of the current band director. They don’t go to teacher conventions. They are DONE. So I was ready to throw the yellow flag and call “bullshit” on Dinkle shlepping to this convention.
Oh, but now I see he, like everyone else in Wankerview, is a writer. And not JUST a writer. A FAMOUS one. One who would hold book signings. So he’s in Columbus to meet his adoring public. His fans.
Of. Course.
That’s the good news. The bad news is apparently Summer (um, or is it Mopey Pete?) has also lost an arm, and is wearing a pinned up sleeve, just like Mrs Kid Toucher. Too bad about Summer, if that’s who that boy is. Maybe the K*nt State bench fell on his arm and lopped it off. Well, no matter. Even a one armed basketball player can’t make the Lady Women’s Golden Flashes Girls Basketball Team any better or worse.
By the way, funny thing, speaking of “writers.” I had a dream a while back that Les had his book picked up by Hollywood. Ha! Crazy, huh? They were gonna make a MOVIE out of it. That dream… It seemed so real at the time. Ah, but it was just a dream…
What awful clunky dialog. Again.
BatHack is a Grade A narcissist, to put it mildly.
Shameless advertising? Check.
Hatchet faces and drawing, with women looking like men? Check.
Pinned up sleeve prominently displayed? Check check check.
Self serving hogwash
I think it’s time to get Harry a nice flat at a retirment home. If TB insists, it can be one for “octave-adults”…
When I started visiting this site, I seem to recall people defending Batiuk in the “seems like a nice guy” vein. Does anyone anywhere still believe this?
Looking up the book title on Amazon, I see it was published in 1990 and there’s one USED copy available for $49.95 – no reviews and no discussion, so I can’t imagine that the purpose of this strip is to promote the book, unless he’s planning to re-release it to cash in on the 40th anniversary Funky-mania phenomenon. At any rate, with all the multitude of dangling loose ends we have in the Funkyscape these days, it’s pretty cheesy to waste a week (and he WILL waste a week on this) on something completely irrelevant.
TB is the Ohio bizarro-world Harvey Pekar. The strip is a thinley-veiled autobiography, except it sucks.
They say you should write what you know. Clearly Batiuk knows shameless, self-absorbed shilling.
“The no holds bared true to life story of a high school bandleader, the tours, the drinking, the late night coke jags, the groupie scene, the unnatural sex, his encouters with the famous and infamous and his long term affair with one of Mick jaggers wives – he forgets which one.”
Now in paperback
It’s as if every damn character in this strip has to represent Batiuk.
What the hell is going on with the color in this strip?
In the future. did the sun go through some weird supernova, that left the world aglow in sepia-tone color or something?
…or did the colorist finally say…”screw this, I’m going to go look for work on Garfield..”
I
We get it, Tom.
All forms of creative expression fail to compare to the Holy Righteous Glory of AUTHORS.
And the very best example of AUTHOR-ship is a rambling, incoherent, dreary book report style recounting of things that bum you out.
No one ever has a different goal. And everyone will be unfulfilled unless they achieve it.
We GET IT, already.
…Tom, I know you -do- check in here from time to time. All I can say is: Get help. Stop projecting your values onto others. And stop lying to yourself. You are NOT an author.
All you’ve done is took what used to be a mildly amusing strip and turned it into a pompous, pretentious, bitter, and deeply dishonest unending rant about how much you loathe your own life.
Get help. Please.
well said @John. I’d go so far as to say the BatHack resembles a…
Pedantic schoolmarm from a bitter hollow
He’s also a beady-eyed, nitpicking, hidebound literalist.
I guess there -were- some children left behind.
The most compelling chapter in Harry’s autobiography: “How I went deaf for 5 minutes one afternoon and then got better and never used my hearing aids ever again!”
(By the way: typing that sentence makes me an author!)
John: Yes it has already been well noted that TB does look in on our snarks.
Throw in “meglamaniac “.
FW characters are all to some degree manifestations of Batyucks ego…..or as with the Westview women, it is some sort of mommy issues. Or intimacy issues.
Today the part of Harry Dinkle will be played by former Vice-President Dick Cheney.
Batiuk’s blog has been updated.
“Paid homage to” now means “tracing over with a SharpieTM or just plain pasting in via Photoshop!” now, eh?
“Questions continue to come in-”
and
“it SEEMS there are a lot of folks”
Why do I get the feeling that IRL, these two items actually aren’t connected. And nice usage of weasel words there, Tom!
I have an easier time parsing my freshman students’ writing than whatever that is on Batiuk’s blog. You can’t call that “writing”.
Here’s a translation for you folks who don’t understand Batiuk’s writing.
“Questions continue to come in about the comic book covers that I use from time to time in the Funky Sunday strips.
It seems that there are a lot of folks in Funkydom who enjoy seeing the comics of their youth and the artists who created them paid homage in this way. ”
Translation: “Complaints continue to come in about the comic book covers that I use from time to time in the Funky Sunday strips.
It seems that there are a lot of folks at Son of Stuck Funky who think I’m ‘paying homage’ in this way when I’m too lazy to draw.”
“So I thought I’d let you in on some of the thinking behind their selection.
When I arrived as a freshman at Kent State University, I experienced the usual traumas of being away from home and living on your own (more or less) for the first time.”
Translation: “When I went to K*nt State University, I was a sniveling little milksop who had never left his Mommy before, and cried myself to sleep every night.”
“Once I was settled-in, I went looking for a place that sold comic books in Kent. Even though I had the vast resources of a university at my disposal, I needed to continue my comics education because I was still basically being home-schooled by Stan the Man Lee.”
Translation: “Instead of learning practical, I wasted my parent’s education fund and read comic books instead.”
“There were only a couple of places in Kent that sold comics and both were quite a hoof. Making the journey often required the cutting of a class or two. The first place I tried was called the Kent Kozy Korner. It was the kind of small little drugstore/lunch counter establishment that was already fading from the scene, and was probably a year or so from closing at that point. It had one of those old fashioned comic rack/magazine stands, and when I walked in and saw the comics there, it was like encountering some long lost friends. While the place stayed open, it remained my source for all of the magic that was pouring out of Marvel Comics at that time. None, however, was more magical than this Jack Kirby/Don Heck cover showing the Red Skull becoming the master of the cosmic cube.”
Translation: “I cut class all the time to go to the comics book store like an immature teenager. School is for idiots, anyway!”
“That it’s a Kirby pencilling job there is no doubt, although the inking looks more like Dick Ayers or Syd Shores to me, but who am I to argue with the Grand Comics Database.”
Translation: “I never doubt the Internet, except those vicious critics of mine!”
“What it certainly is is a masterful piece of work that exploded in my brain like a small thermonuclear device. The image never left me and was one of the first I thought of when it came time to give my due to the comic creating gods of my youth.”
Translation: “Being only educated by old superhero comics, I think of myself as a great writer. I am only lying to myself.”
“Sadly, instead of being designated a historic landmark, the Kent Kozy Korner was razed not too log ago to make way for a Speedway gas station… which doesn’t sell comics. However the memory of the Kent Kozy Korner does live on as the Komix Korner, the comic shop in the Funkyverse.”
Translation: “The Kent Kozy Korner closed because the owner was a pedophile. I never did get to see those backrooms. With Funky Winkerbean I can continue to have John be a greasy perv without pity.”
“I’d like to close by thanking the Ohio Music Educators Association for the royal treatment this past weekend.”
Translation: “I’d like to close by thanking the Ohio Music Educators Association for not kicking me in the nuts like last time.”
“It was the kick-off book signing for Volume 2 of The Complete Funky Winkerbean and I had a great time meeting with a lot of old friends and making some new ones as well. We’ve already made plans to do the kick-off for Volume 3 there next year. You should be able to order Volume 2 from this website in short order or you can go to Amazon right now where it’s already listed (and at a very nice price I might add). Also, some new book signings have just been added in the events section on this site. Check ‘em out.”
Translation: “Did I mention my ego?”
I could be wrong but I think the only other person that had a two volume biography was Adolph Hitler
Others have posited that Batiuk has a bet going with Lynn Johnston to see who could be the bigger hack.
My contention is that he has a bet going with Brooke McEldowney to see who can be more self-indulgent. Amazingly, after this strip, Batiuk is winning.
And I was actually going to note how he’s no longer prominently featuring Becky’s sleeve. In panels 2 and 3 he totally could have barfed it up front and center but decided not to. So that’s two panels of Becky without featuring her sleeve. That surely must raise its incidence from 0.001 to 0.00101 of all the Becky strips!
“Harry Dinkle was born. He loved marching bands and JP Sousa. He became the band director at a small mid-central Ohio high school where he became locally renowned for his intense practices, wild formations and all-around megalomania. Then he suffered from some hearing problems. Then he retired, was replaced by a one-armed woman and now spends his time lurking around his old job because he has no other interests and nothing better to do. The End”.
There, I just wrote Dinkle’s entire biography and only needed one paragraph, not two (lol) volumes. For such a gutless “writer” BatShill sure is ballsy sometimes.
Look at panel 3, and you will understand why Dead Skunk Head married Lefty — SHE LOOKS LIKE A TEENAGE BOY!
The next time my massage therapist asks my why my neck is so sore, I’ll say “I was reading Funky Winkerbean, and just shaking my head at it all.”
“Sadly, instead of being designated a historic landmark, the Kent Kozy Korner was razed not too log ago to make way for a Speedway gas station.” Historic landmark? Why, because it inspired Tom Batiuk to create his comic strip masterpiece?
“However the memory of the Kent Kozy Korner does live on as the Komix Korner, the comic shop in the Funkyverse.” How can we ever repay you, Mr. Batiuk? You are indeed a national treasure.
I still cannot believe that Crankshaft and this POS are done by the same “writer”. Or am I missing something? Sometimes Crankshaft makes me chuckle. This crap just makes me sob.
I think I have to give it to Batiuk about placing the Komix Korner in Funky Winkerbean. While the idea of a store selling just comics in a small Ohio town isn’t really feasible, it could be plausible to have that and still have the “quarter inch from reality” bit. I can accept that: while having pure, old-fashioned comic book stores in towns that can’t support them is impractical, but gives it whimsical fiction. It would be like me making a city in SimCity 4 with a modern Super Kmart–something that unfortunately doesn’t really exist in reality. What I can’t accept is how Batiuk’s characters act, talk, and interact with reality, with him still parading that “quarter inch from reality” crap.
Oh Beanie, you dreamt about Les?! OMG. But let’s not get you therapy yet. It must have been the day on the King website when there was a discussion about a FW movie and what actors would play what parts. I remember Les would be played by Bob Saget.
It was a horrible dream, Lynn! And when I woke up, my pillow was gone. I know, I hate waking up to the wrong punchline.
Whip a cheesy goatee and bald wig onto Saget and he’d be perfect for Les. Cayla would be played by Taylor Swift.
Summer, Becky, and VHS Lisa would be Justin Timberlake.