“Easy there, Becky…you’re beginning to sound like your mother.”
“I see my influence is finally rubbing off on you, Becky.”
(No third panel at all)
There, three “jokes” right off the top of my head that would have worked better than having the constantly cackling Dinkle make a stupid irrelevant reference to a character from a different strip no one cares about. This is one of those times when I just can’t grasp the logic at work here, unless it’s just pure unmitigated laziness, in which case I understand completely.
How many FW readers are even going to get that “joke”? I’d bet that they’ll both be confused and be forced to resort to going to the official Batom Inc. website, clicking on “complete cast of characters” and scrolling through the detailed information within in order to…oh, wait. Never mind.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Seriously, Batiuk, give Dinkle his own spin-off strip already; I love having multiple outlets with which to abhor you.
Tomorrow: Horrified that she has something in common with Crankshaft, Becky throws herself off the scissor lift in despair. The band celebrates their liberation.
A person expecting “jokes” in Funky Winkerbean is like a person expecting “humility” from Les Moore. They’re really starting at the furthest point away.
The Crankshaft thing is likely a bone tossed to the faithful. A smirk-inducer among the fanatics who follow Batboy’s every move, i.e. both strips, tossed out so that they can feel smug by getting the inside joke. But, I swear, FW give me a strong desire for cartoon violence – now I want to see Crankshaft beat hell out of Owen with his own horn for being such a douchebag on the band bus.
Meanwhile, Der Dinkle in P3: “C’mon, Betty, I got a rocket you can operate on!”
Why is he even up there with her? And why is she being so rude to the kids? And why has Dingle been up there this whole time?
And why is her ex-husband’s future wife wearing a post-it note around her finger? I think that the only real thing about that post-it note is that it really stinks!
And that kid with the stupid Peruvian hat should have grown out of it by now.
As a guest page turner author of books, I have to give this two thumbs down!
It’s almost like Backache realized: “Whoops, I just made one of my favorite characters deaf and retired him from one of the three places he can hang out at.” and decided to retcon him back to work as… whatever the hell he’s doing now.
Seriously, Becky has been doing this for an indeterminate amount of time from a decade to 18 years; how about cutting her some slack, Dinkle? Is it because she’s a woman or ’cause she’s missing an arm that you’re trying to be so “helpful.”
It’s like following a blind person around constantly and warning them about curbs and opening doors for them. It gets annoying FAST and it’s the opposite of helping.
“Hmmm, one more panel. Hey, you know who also screams and drops a lot of malaprops? Crankshaft!”. So lazy, so stupid, so irrelevant. Just another sad excuse to find a way to include even more inane Dinkle babbling. Just because you can, it doesn’t always mean you should, you know?
I love how he refers to Crankshaft as “that old guy”, which is like Funky calling someone fat or Les calling someone smugly obnoxious or Becky making fun of a one-legged man. I’m seriously on Dinkle overload, he’s definitely a character that works best in small doses, if at all. But then again, they all are, I suppose.
Left foot, right foot….It’s easy for you to say, Becky!!! These kids don’t have the convenience of having only three limbs to keep track of!!!! You selfish bitch!!!!! Have some consideration for the the quadrappendally-challenged!!!!
So… the joke here is that one character created by Batiuk is saying something another character created by Batiuk would say?? That’s not even a punchline. What’s the opposite of a punchline?
S.P. Charles: Flatline?
Why do kids at Westview still go out for the marching band? Clearly they’d have heard from their older siblings and others that band camp is really like an old school army boot camp. Band camp is weeks of torture and suffering designed to re-program the brains of these kids so any sense of individualality is destroyed and the collective rules. Band camp isn’t about the music, its about pain and suffering and learning to obey Becky the dictator, who learned all from the ultimate evil tyrant, Harrty Dinkle.
Good grief. He’s reduced to stealing punchlines from 1997 era “Zits” strips…and he’s not even stealing them competently!
Tom, if you won’t quit, at least take a sabbatical.
After some thought, I’ve come up with the best generic fourth panel for any Funky Winkerbean. This will end each strip perfectly, no matter what characters are in it.
Why have Dinky awkwardly describe Ed Crankshaft rather than just drop his name? It’s an inside joke, so it doesn’t get any better for outsiders if you describe the malapropist as a bus driver.
It’s like this author doesn’t understand anything about comedy, narrative, or basic English composition. But surely that can’t describe a guy who didn’t win a Pulitzer, ever, in his 40-year career.
I was going to complain about how irrelevant the Crankshaft reference is, but I’m pretty sure he’s appeared in FW more recently than Wally Jr. or Rachel’s kid.
4th Panel – Becky beats Dinkle senseless with the bullhorn.
I love the fact that our view of the band has to feature all two of the teenaged characters we still have, along with what looks like a slightly slimmer Funky himself filling in.