So Holly somehow topped Chester The Chiseler’s $50,000 bid in order to repay John for helping her to acquire a bunch of Starbuck Jones comic books for nothing? And now John owes Holly at least $50,001 for the favor? Welcome to BanTom’s whacked-out comic book-centric fantasy world, where happiness is bagged, slabbed, tagged and longboxed. There’s no need to point out the gigantic logic holes here, as the entire thing is a huge logic hole. I don’t mean this story specifically, I mean the entire strip.
Get a load of Skunky’s unbridled joy upon learning that he now owes Holly a cool fifty grand. Why, he’s just like a kid whose parents put themselves into crippling debt to buy him a candy store! I certainly hope Holly hides the vodka and firearms BEFORE she informs Funky about this rather implausible development, or we’ll be re-visiting Act II before you know it.
And, uh, what happened to Dick Tracy? It’s like the big crossover never even happened, which in a way it kind of didn’t, now that I think about it. Oh well, at least it didn’t involve Les in any way, thank God.
Son of Stuck Funky 
So what on earth happened here? Last year Holly couldn’t afford a single issue. Her credit card was frozen when she tried to buy one. Now she has $50,000+ just sitting around, ready to spend at a moment’s notice? And it’s not like she knew beforehand how much she was going to be spending or anything. Also, for all she knew she outbid John and Harry. I doubt they gave her the name of the high bidder, since all John and Harry knew was that some anonymous phone bidder bought them.
I guess we’re supposed to shut down our brains and completely ignore the least amount of logic because imaginary people just got some imaginary comics.
A crappy ending to a terribly executed crossover. Wow, Batom® outdid himself with his “writing” skills.
Okay, this was only about a factor of ten away from plausible. TB set the bar at $50K, not $5K, for reasons unfathomable, and now he has to live with it. And i certainly did not see this one coming, as Holly having the largess to do this was certainly never foreshadowed.
Missed opportunity for a Dick Tracy crossover notwithstanding, the thing that’s bugging me is that it seems that in TB’s mind, this is the payoff to the whole Starbuck Jones collecting arc. Not Cory’s homecoming, not him talking to Holly, not him enjoying the books… this is the “ending that has to be earned.” This is the point where the story that had a human dimension does indeed seem to revolve only around childish obsessions.
Okay, let me throw out a discussion topic: which would you rather, TB quit writing Funky Winkerbean, or quit drawing it?
bad wolf: Good question. I’d go with writing it. As bad as the artwork can be at times, it’s more consistent and passable than the writing is, by far IMO. He’s either not interested or not capable anymore, everything is either comic books, cheap tropes or cheap tropes about comic books.
Les would just get in the way of all the comic swapping.
So in DT, the comic book auction HASN’T EVEN STARTED YET.
“It’s hard to believe a bank robbery in Westview. Nothing ever happens here.” The same can be said about the inner machinations of Batom®’s mind.
I do commend Staton and Curtis for doing their best to avoid any interaction with the “Funky Winkerbean” cast.
Aside from the Funk Man (and likely a St. Les the Righteous Smirker cameo tomorrow, as St. Lisa the Cancer Chew Toy’s Legacy Run of Doomy Doom will have a plug in DT) Dick and Sam got off easy. It will just be a big lipped alligator moments where nothing ever happened.
@bad wolf: Both. Batom® is totally uninterested in writing about anything beyond comic books and fake comic books, and it seems as if that is ALL he is interested in. So many characters have seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth because he has no material for them. There is nothing about Funky Winkerbean that suggests anything remotely close to reality.
And his artwork isn’t really any better. Am I expecting Joe Staton artwork? No, but his skill set is starting to show obvious signs of deterioration and is now the opposite of ligne claire. Thankfully it hasn’t reached Frank Bolle levels of melting human beings, but still.
Wait…what?? What about Mason Jarr The Movie Actor and the SJ movie? And Cory? WTF!!!!
@bad wolf: Both, please. (*Sigh*)
It’s weird, but sometimes the artwork demonstrates a continuity the writing never does, like with the omnipresent green pitcher. He’ll take the time to get all the details of Montoni’s wall just so, then he’ll completely ignore a ten year time leap. Mind you, I’m not applauding the artwork which at times is just as lazy as the writing is, just pointing out that he appears to put way more effort into his drawings than he does his stories.
In hindsight, this is pretty much how I expected the crossover to go. I should have known better than to expect any sort of meaningful connection between the casts. Having Dick be a cameo in Winkerbean and having Funk-Man be a sort of extra to tell us where Dick was arresting some idiot he’d busted before was pretty much all we could expect given the lack of real coordination between Batomic Comic Obsessive and Team Tracy.
“I bought these comic books in return for all the help you gave me! But you don’t get to keep them, oh no. You must sell them, and I expect every penny of my money back so don’t even think of trying to stiff me! No need to thank me; what are friends for?”
stupid lame and pointless. Well at least there wasn’t a talking hand saying how they will start buying comic books soon.
I’m thinking Staton and Curtis were told, “Hey, let’s have a crossover story. My only conditions are that your guys interact a lot with my cast, and that Les Moore is featured.”
Staton and Curtis agreed, and then they actually read a few weeks of Funky Winkerbean and their jaws dropped.
Then, based on Tom Batiuk’s own exacting standards, Les Moore was featured as a face on a Two-Way Pole TV, and the interaction with the cast was one perFunkytory cameo by the title character. They then did what they wanted to without any Funky Winkerbean to speak of.
Tom Batiuk read the roughs and was well satisfied with how his conditions were met, but then said, “Wow, this is action packed!!! My readers will likely be scared by all this, so I’d better calm them down with comic books.”
Why a phone bid? Why did anyone show up for the actual auction if they could have just phoned it in? And does a phone bidder automatically silence the live bidders? Could Chester not have gone higher?
I’m calling it here and now: In one of his next blog posts, L’Auteur Glorieux will be gushingly saccharin about how this almost non-existent crossover was “wonderful,” “fantasitic,” and “just went well beyond [his] wildest expectations.” A quarter of an inch from reality? Batty is more like a quarter of a light-year from reality.
In regards to the “writing, or drawing” question, I would just say this. The artwork is generally sloppy-looking, like he just dashed off some roughs and never bothered to clean them up. There’s a bare modicum of consistency, so that when Funky and Mort are in the same room, you can usually tell who’s who.
However, there is one aspect without which this site would never exist. To coin a phrase, ladies and gentlemen, It’s called writing.
Bad drawing just makes this strip another Zits or Beetle Bailey. It would be interesting to see Tom Batiuk’s genius for plot, dialogue and character handled by someone like Joe Staton.
(Or Jack Kirby. And you just know that when Tom Batiuk reads those three words, his head will explode.)
Still time to watch the Kent State Womens Basketball team take on Western Michigan. Summer & Super K are 3-13,
HEY…. John couldn’t even pay his rent…and now he has an employee,
Probably the only reason why Brendan Buford will never ask Batom® to give up “Funky Winkerbean” is because he’ll pull this petty stunt again with either Funky or Les:
But if he did that again, the strip would become much more popular and marketable.
@badwolf, a very good question indeed. If I couldn’t persuade Batiuk to flat give up cartooning period, I’d have him give up the writing for sure. Crankshaft is better drawn, but is every bit as incomprehensible and weakly written as FW. I happen to be a fan of the single panel comic Close to Home, which is horribly, horribly drawn but for some reason makes me laugh most of the time.
And click the John Darling strip above for another case in point. Tom Armstrong has a pleasing, cartoony style but the character at left is spouting some really tortured verse. That panel is interesting for other reasons: Plantman, who it turns out was JD’s killer, is among the mourners (hindsight, I know). Joan Darling, wearing sunglasses, is holding baby Jessica Darling (also wearing sunglasses? not sure). And who’s the gal next to Plantman wearing a Raggedy Ann dress?
IMO good writing covers bad artwork better than good artwork covers shitty writing. Jokes are jokes, if it’s funny enough the artwork only really needs to help deliver the gag, it doesn’t have to be stellar. As I mentioned above, you’ll see BanTom put a lot of detail into, for example, his Montoni’s drawings but it never makes a difference as the characters are mostly jabbering and babbling about nothing.
Looking back through the GN archives, it’s actually pretty hard to tell when Tom stopped caring and started using the characters as shark chum. Was it Lisa’s death and all that followed after? Her first diagnosis of breast cancer in 1999? Becky’s arm? Wally’s unhappy Chew Toy childhood? (Heck, his whole LIFE.) JD’s murder? After the kids finally graduated from high school? Harry Dinkle’s hearing loss diagnosis? Lisa’s pregnancy?
@Nathan Orbal: What really annoys me about the John Darling My Father Who Was Murdered “torch the franchise and run” stunt is that Batyuck is so proud of stiff-arming the syndicate.
When Skunkhead and Beardo McWeirdo toddled off the the comic book auction, they did so with the idea of “steaing” one. That is, they thought they’d get a bargain. And considering their monthly revenue is somewhere between zero and pocket change, a bargain is just about all they could have afforded. Instead, they essentially forked over more than $50K for them. Holy Christ! And they weren’t even bagged, tagged, slabbed, or whatever you’re supposed to do with “valuable” collectible comic books.
And what sort of auction allows only one bid per participant? Chester O’Manchild didn’t have an opportunity to outbid the mysterious telephone bidder (Holly)?? I’m pretty sure he could have outlasted her, even if she sold her house, Montoni’s and Snowball the Wondercar.
Wait… Telephone bidder?? So you didn’t have to attend in person? And you could have, I’d assume, phoned in from outside Ahia, even. Given all that, and considering the apparent value of these amazingly awesome comic books, why on this globally warming green earth wouldn’t they have just put the whole thing up on eBay? Get the whole world bidding for a week or more! And as Batyecch has taught us, EVERYONE in the WORLD loves comic books! I’m sorry, but this just might be the most forced, most contrived premise in the entire history of Flunky Wankerbean.
“eBay? What in tarnation is that?” asks Tommy BatElderly.
This is incoherent nonsense, and not in a good way.
@ComicTrek – I think Tom Batiuk stopped caring when he failed to win a Pulitzer. I think the only thing that he has as a goal now is getting the strip to its 50th anniversary.
@beckoningchasm : I think you’re right!
@beckoningchasm : I agree. And if the strip is this awful now, can you image what it’s going to be like when he’s 75 years old?
GREAT comments today gang. Just my two cents but IMO BanTom stopped “caring” so much after he killed Lisa off. Lisa was responsible for a solid 80% of the melodrama and pathos in FW. Her slow death was like the culmination of years and years worth of cheap contrived drama, the ultimate “real life issue”, so to speak. IMO it seems as if his interest in doing that sappy depressing crap seriously began to wane a few years into Act III when it became more and more difficult to find ways to keep Lisa active (so to speak). Over the last three or four years it’s become noticeable, he relies more on stupid gag-a-day type stuff and, of course, the comic book crap, as well as the standard annual arcs (football, Thanksgiving, jogging and etc.) he does as a sort of traditional thing. Early Act III was much more like Act II with the car wrecks and illnesses and the drippy Lisa stuff, you can visibly see him “slowing down” as far as those far-fetched dramatic arcs are concerned. Every so often he’ll “go there” again but not nearly as often as he used to do.
“… and pay it back, oh, whenever.’Cause we got money to BURN, baby. Don’t worry about Funky. I’m sure he’s fiiiine with this.”
Holly must have gotten Funky to mortgage Montoni’s to raise the money. Where else could she have gotten it?
From the Kill Fee!
Thanks for the feedback folks! It’s something i’ve never made up my own mind about. On the one hand, the art is at least serviceable and reasonably consistent, and the contrived writing is the biggest problem with the strip today. On the other, TB has written his own and two other syndicated strips, and i think Crankshaft still has its moments. But i think he could use another artist/writer to at least bounce ideas off of (note that i am entirely abandoning the idea that Brendon Burford exercises any oversight or editorial function).
I know i haven’t followed the strip long enough to say but it seems that after the high-school graduation its been slowing down, and after a year or two he realized that doing things in real time meant having to come up with new ideas and/or characters…. which is when things stopped completely.
Great.. good luck moving 50 comics worth $800 to $1500 each from your small comic shop in Ohio. And better luck not getting a gun pointed at your head some afternoon when word spreads that you’ve got a small fortune in golden age comics in your tiny hovel of an unprotected shop.