17 thoughts on “Ho Ho Hum”

  1. “Crankshaft”. Crank. You see? He’s always cranky and mean which, because he’s also old, automatically makes him hilarious. He made the little girl cry, which is the opposite of what Santa is supposed to do! When it all came together for me I was in stitches too, believe you me.

    Batiuk is just taunting us now, waving this sub-FW level character in our faces just for sheer vindictive pleasure. Is that Wally or a young Funky looking on in horror? Given the wildly inconsistent time line in this strip, who the hell really knows? And is there much of a difference anyway?

    I really hate that little “back in the real world” window thing too. I know Deadheads who have fewer flashbacks than this Batom guy does. He must buy those photo album corner thingies by the f*cking gross.

  2. Batom® has forgotten how to draw Funky.

    He recently retconned his Act I yearbook photo to having a bulbous nose. But today, his Act II nose is shown in its non-bulbous form.

    This is just sad.

  3. Ah, yes. I can see why Funky is trying to forget Crankshaft. He doesn’t want to face that fact that he too is a bitter failure using his self-inflicted misery as a means of justifying being an antisocial jackass.

  4. Lemme guess. Tomorrow, Batom® will retcon this incident as the reason why Funky took up the bottle, as his marriage with Cindy was apparently starting to dissolve.

    Because Pulitizer nomination.

  5. Ah the ghost Christmas past and future at the same time. After the next time jump when Crankshaft is in the nursing home and no longer driving a bus, Funky is forced to take Crankshaft’s place as a second job to pay for Holly’s quest to collect original FW artwork.

  6. Query why on earth Crankshaft would even apply for the less-than-coveted position of Pizzeria Santa Claus. Further, query how he could pass even the rudimentary interview, what with his fractured English, ice-cold stare and Cheney Sneer. The answer is that Crankshaft is a true sociopath who carefully planned this sadistic enterprise and is now (was then?) wrecking eagerly planned hell on this little girl who apparently wandered in unattended and figured “Pizza? Santa? What the hell, it’s worth a try”. The big payoff should occur tomorrow when Funky – or is that Wally – administers the beat down of Crankshaft’s miserable life. I, for one, can’t wait to see it.

  7. Remarkably, this is better written than today’s Crankshaft, which shamelessly plagiarizes a joke from a Jeffersons guest appearance during the final season of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

  8. Today’s strip is ho-ho-horrible. It took TB three days to set up this joke? There is no punchline here, only “Ed Crankshaft is a giant DICK”.

  9. Again, how Crankshaft could possibly be hired for this position is a mystery. It could be forgiven if it was funny, but this is Funky Winkerbean, so that’s out of the question…

    Speaking of mysteries, I was looking at the official FW page, and if you scroll down to the bottom, you’ll see that everything is (c) Bantom, Inc. Not “Batom” but “Bantom.” Just to be sure, I went to his blog and scrolled to the history of his fake comic book company, and yes, it is supposed to be “Batom.”

    Of course, in that entry he also mentions the giants of science fiction as being “Heinlein, Asimov and Clark.” I assume he meant Clark Ashton Smith with the last name, as that’s not how you spell Arthur C. Clarke’s last name.

    Quality control? What’s that?

  10. I seem to remember Crankshaft having a Christmas Santa job in his regular strip, but that was at a mall or department store.

    The blog pic (yesterday’s thread) showed a modern Funky hiring Cranky, and this is a slightly more proper Act II FunkyWally (?) with contemporaneous Cranky.

  12. “… he also mentions the giants of science fiction as being ‘Heinlein, Asimov and Clark.’ ”

    What’s the point of being a science fiction giant if fans of the genre can’t even spell your name right?

  13. Just look at young, still recognizable Funky there. Must have been a rough 11 years worthy of a documentary. I still can’t get over how awful and decrepit Batiuk chose to make Funky, Holly, Crazy and Donna look after the jump. As I have said before, this is not normal aging, it borders on mutation. But hey, just look at those golden boys, John and Les. They look fit as fiddles and unlike their now-mishapen friends, the worst thing these two schmucks managed to inherit from those cruel years was John’s skunk streak and Les got a goatee and a widow’s peak. Batiuk’s two avatars certainly sit as kings don’t they?

  14. “They look fit as fiddles…”

    OK, I guess I should amend that a bit. Obviously John himself doesn’t look “fit as a fiddle” but he still looks relatively young and although he’s fat, at least his proportions now versus act I/II match up. And of course there are some people who age horribly in a short amount of time but the way Batiuk approached it both morbidly and en masse with the aforementioned victims just aint right.

  16. Today’s strip is probably the finest example of anti-humor. I don’t care if Batom® was trying to set up a joke, it comes off as “haha, Ed Crankshaft is so mean, he drove Funky to nearly drink his goshdarn life away.”

    There is nothing to laugh at here. Nothing.

    In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this lead into Funky going off of the wagon, angrily confronting Cory upon his return, destroying the Starbuck Jones collection that Holly lucked into completing, and going missing… thus leading into the Dick Tracy crossover to find him.

    Thanks, Skunk Head and Crazy Harry. **smirks**

  17. @captaincab: Don’t forget about the strip’s third author avatar in Harry L. Dinkle. Reasonably speaking, Dinkle doesn’t look half bad for a creepy old man in his late 60s/early 70s that wanders around the campus of a high school for absolutely no reason.

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