Day three of this crap. Batiuk is one of the worst writers I’ve ever encountered…though at least today he didn’t start with “So.” He was probably tempted though.
Imagine him writing “Who’s On First.”
Monday – Costello: Hello, Abbott. I thought I’d find you here, in the middle of the stage. Abbott: Hello, Costello. I’ve been in the middle of this stage for a while now.
Tuesday – Abbott: Say, Lou, did you know that I used to manage a baseball team. Costello: What?
Wednesday – Costello: You used to manage a baseball team? I did not know that at all–that you managed a baseball team, I mean. Abbott: Yes, me.
Thursday – Abbott: I sure did–manage a baseball team, that is. Costello: Managing a baseball team–that sounds like a lot of hard work!
Friday – Abbot: Oh, it sure was hard work. Managing all the players on a baseball team, the way a manager would, was really hard work and it had to be done, if the baseball team was going to be a real baseball team and play baseball games. But I was the best at it, and I was nominated for awards. Costello: Of course, you were the best at it! And all those innovations!
Saturday – Abbott: Say, I had three players on the baseball team that I managed who had weird names! They were named Who, What, and Idunno! Aren’t those weird names? Costello: They sure are! I couldn’t have managed a baseball team the way you did with players named like that!
Sunday – comic book tribute.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Batom, watching a New Orleans jazz funeral scene on TV: “You know, it might be very funny if I had my very own Harry Dinkle direct a New Orleans jazz-style funeral service!”.
And now, ten or eleven years later, he was actually desperate enough to do it. This is one of the weirder FW tangents in recent memory. I guess we should consider ourselves fortunate that he didn’t stumble upon a G.G. Allin documentary and file THAT idea away for future use.
Speaking of things, make sure to check out the official Funky Blog, which has recently been updated with one of the most portentous “Lisa’s Story” genesis posts of all time. The Great Victory Lap never ends.
Reading the Battyblog’s “Match to Flame” posts make me want to put a match to every volume of The Complete Funky Winkerbean. They’re excerpts from said volumes, in which TB recounts his storied career with numerous, folksy parenthetical asides.
They’re so disconnected from reality they’re almost a parody. The Great Artist, locked in a titanic battle between his artistic muse and the expectations of The World, aching to express himself, consequences be damned. Then you read the strips and they’re just FW, but with extra cancer.
He sounds like Hedley Lamarr. “With the story of Lisa, my mind was a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives. I was about to embark on a great crusade to stamp out runaway decency in the west. My editors were only risking their lives, whilst I was risking an almost certain Pulitzer Prize nomination for Best Editorial Cartoonist.”
He literally compared himself to Solomon writing Ecclesiastes.
And then confessed that he doesn’t read the Bible.
And I was like, “Yeah, I can tell. Maybe if you did you’d learn some HUMILITY.”
And he actually called a book of the bible “Ol’ Ecc.” As if it was Dennis Eckersley when he was with the Oakland A’s.
If he had read as far as the second line of the book of Ecclesiastes, he might have encountered one of its best-known pieces of wisdom:
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
I love that he calls (most likely) King Solomon “Ol’ Ecc.” He hasn’t read Ecclesiastes, but he’s on a first-name basis.
If he actually did Ecclesiastes, he might be brought up short by well-known phrases such as “there is nothing new under the sun” and a general sense of the transitoriness and insignificance of human life and labor. Doesn’t seem like his thing to be reminded that he’s not that special after all.
Is there anything of which one might say,
“See this, it is new”?
It has already existed for ages
Which were before us.
There is no remembrance of the earlier things,
And of the later things as well, which will occur,
There will be no remembrance of them
Among those who will come later still.
I at least hope he was watching “Live and Let Die”… That’s the first time I’d ever seen it and I thought it was so strange I needed dad to explain it to me…
If minister Phil Silvers in a hairpiece is trying to pull a fast one on Dinkle, he’s put a lot more effort into the gag than anything TB has written in the last 15 years…
“No, but as your minster and confessor I think a fast would be a good thing for you. You can atone for your sins by fasting until Doomsday!”
“But I’ll die!”
“And ‘die’ is the most important part of your ‘diet!'”
I feel like I’m getting stupider with every FW strip I read this week. No jokes, no plot, just…this. I must be missing something.
But on a positive note, at least we get to enjoy those well-developed, wacky/lovable characters in the Gospel Choir. Such as the old white-haired lady, the teal-haired ladies, and that younger/sassier other teal haired lady that smirks occasionally. Oh, and out of nowhere, the blonde lady who I’ve never seen before. I can’t WAIT to hear about her cuckoo-nutsy adventures!
It’s the first time we’ve seen the blonde lady this week, but she’s been seen in the choir before. Back in early May, there was a story arc about “Bingo,” the St. Spires choir loft cat. The blonde lady was the one who introduced Bingo to Dinkle. I’d recognize those baggy eyes anywhere. A relative of Mopey Pete? Mopey Mom?
St. Spires had a windfall fundraiser by posting videos of Bingo online. Dinkles idea of door-to-door choir candy sales was a total bust.
Batiuk, give us more Bingo! Bingo may be just a cat, but it would better than this Dinkle stuff. Dinko is el stinko.
How Today’s Strip Should Read:
Panel One: “You want us to prepare a New Orleans-style jazz send-off for a funeral?”
Panel Two: Harry looks at his choral ensemble.
Panel Three: “You DO realize you’re talking to a minyan of small-town Midwest Caucasian biddies who collectively are about as hip as Guy Lombardo and whiter than that painting of a polar bear in a blizzard, don’t you?”
I only WISH somebody was pulling a “fast one” on the old choir director, because it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if this joke-free jambalaya gets stretched into a second week.
Ha! Two weeks? You think Batiuk’s gonna stop at two weeks? You poor, poor naive soul. I hope you’ve laid in a supply of blood pressure medication to get you through the month.
I can’t prove that “look how white we are” isn’t the intended joke. Dinkle’s reaction is so nonspecific that you could read almost anything into it.
And why is Dinkle so incredulous about this? Shouldn’t a “world’s greatest” music guy have at least heard of it? “Look how white we are” might as well be the joke.
When I first read this strip, I thought Dinkle was looking up at the ceiling, thinking about the idea. But if he’s supposed to be looking at the choir, then Ayers’ poor artwork ruined the joke, at least for me.
Ayers drew today’s strip drunk.
Change my mind.
I posted a similar comment on Monday, suggesting Ayers appears to have a certain “lack of enthusiasm” for drawing the strip and frequently does a slapdash job on the daily strips. Perhaps Chuck has other activities he enjoys more. One of Ayers’s biographies mentions he teaches cartooning at the local universities. He’s into photography as well.
It kind of made me laugh to think that getting into the proper mindset to draw Funky Winkerbean necessitates Chuck getting all liquored up.
Look at Lillian’s pupils in panel #1. They’re pointing in different directions! Some Crankshaft snarkers refer to her as Lizard Lillian. We’ve never witnessed her chameleon-like eyes before now. 😂
I wouldn’t be surprised to discover Chuck considers his recent work on Funky Winkerbean to be the “poorly knitted ugly sweater” of his career. I wonder if Chuck is contractually obligated to sign his name on the strip?
Even on Ayers’ worst days, the art in Funky Winkerbean is a lot better than it deserves. FW should look like Crock or Momma, where the art is as slapdash and mailed-in as the writing. Ayers makes the strip look a lot better than it really is.
Or like some of the “artists” who draw Six Chix. A true amateur hour. Some strips look like they’re drawn by a kindergartener.
There’s only one artist with talent suited to draw Funky Winkerbean. Tom Batiuk. Batty drew his characters with their eyes too close together, and sometimes even on the same side of their faces. 😂
“You want us to prepare a New Orleans-style send-off for a funeral?”
“No, I want you to prepare a New Orleans-style send-off for a wedding. WTF do you think a New Orleans-style send-off is?”
It says a lot about Dinkle that he’s apparently never heard of a New Orleans musical funeral.
Yet Batiuk keeps telling us The Big Dink is the unquestioned expert grand master of everything uttered with a musical note going all the way back to the founding of our country…
SUBMITTED FOR YOUR APPROVAL:
I present my playlist request for The Big Dink and his famous St. Spires Choir during my homegoing service… I strongly suggest you turn your PC/laptop/smartphone volumes UP to the max level — **ESPECIALLY** if you’re in the office right now…
Wasn’t Dinkle supposed to be the organist for this stupid church? Now he’s just the choir director, because where Dinkle goes directing must somehow follow.
Yes! Batiuk spent three full weeks (if you include the lead-in from Crankshaft), establishing that St. Spires needed a new organist, and that Dinkle was going to be that organist. And then, after he got the job and showed up for the first practice, the ladies told him, “You’re also the choir director! Surprise!” And everything since then, aside from a single Sunday strip, has been about choir-directing. This is the sixth week of choir material.
I know Batiuk has made plenty of gaffes and weird creative decisions, but that sudden gear-shift has stuck with me. It was so bizarrely unnecessary and easy to avoid.
There was a strip that explained that “the church organist is traditionally the choir director.” As if choir director were some minor side job, that didn’t require a completely different of skills. But, yeah, you’re right, Dinkle must be in charge of all music at all times. And apparently now he’s a band director in addition to choir director, since a New Orleans musical funeral would require musicians at least as much as it would singers.
Dinkle was playing the organ in a Sunday strip early last month. The Rev talked to Dinkle after the service about detecting a bit of Star Wars in his playing.
Batiuk’s earthbound God of Music performs both jobs. He sings too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he gives the sermon.
Panel 1: Repeating things we already know.
Panel 2: Empty space.
Panel 3: Dinkle’s a jerk.
Funky Winkerbean, everybody!
Way to go on the Abbot and Costello as written by Batiuk, BC. You really captured the essence of obnoxious repetition.
Obnoxious repetition, wordiness, and completely missing the point. Have you ever heard the complete “who’s on first” bit? It’s pretty funny. And it relies on a brisk pace and brevity, two things Tom Batiuk absolutely cannot do.
Have you ever seen their film, “Who Done It?” It contains a variant on the Who’s on First routine. Later they hear the original routine on the radio and dismiss it. Pretty meta for 1942.
I think I did, but that was a long time ago. I know I’ve seen a contemporary biography of theirs, which of course included the famous bit.
1942 was a good year for meta, as you’ll also find in Bob Hope’s “My Favorite Blonde, with Hope playing Larry Haines:
[Larry switches on the radio]
Bob Hope: [on radio] How d’ya do, ladies and gentlemen, this is Bob Hope, the Pepsodent Kid, still hanging on by your teeth. And I’m here to tell you that I –
[Larry switches off radio}
Larry Haines: I can’t stand that guy.
I also enjoyed the conceit and the execution, but thought it missed out on one crucial element. Here’s my edit, with the greatest of respect given to the original creation:
Monday – Costello: Hello, Abbott. I thought I’d find you here, in the middle of the stage. Abbott: Hello, Costello. I’ve been in the middle of this stage for a while now.Costello: {smirks} That’s why I thought I’d find you here!
Tuesday – Abbott: Say, Lou, did you know that I used to manage a baseball team. Costello: What? Abbott: {smirks} Maybe you can manage to listen to me better?
Wednesday – Costello: You used to manage a baseball team? I did not know that at all–that you managed a baseball team, I mean. Abbott: Yes, me. {smirks} They called me “Barely Managing”.
Thursday – Abbott: I sure did–manage a baseball team, that is. Costello: Managing a baseball team–that sounds like a lot of hard work! Abbott: {smirks} Oh, I managed!
Friday – Abbot: Managing all the players on a baseball team, the way a manager would, was really hard work. But it had to be done, if the baseball team was going to be a real baseball team and play baseball games. And I was the best at it, and I was nominated for awards. Costello: Of course, you were the best at it! And all those innovations! Abbot: {smirks} Glad you managed to notice!
Saturday – Abbott: Say, I had three players on the baseball team that I managed who had weird names! They were named Who, What, and Idunno! Aren’t those weird names? Costello: They sure are! I couldn’t have managed a baseball team the way you did with players named like that! Abbott: {smirks} Also, the shortstop was named “I don’t care”.
Sunday – comic book tribute (with random characters in the corner, smirking “This comic book we wrote won’t sell.” “That’s because it’s too good for most people!”)
What can I say, other than “bravo.”
Hey, I was working with excellent source material!
What are the odds that the first panel of tomorrow’s strip is the Pastor saying “Yes, I want you to prepare a New Orleans style Jazz send-off for a Funeral”
Imagine him writing “Who’s On First.”
Hey man, you stole my bit!
And why would ol’ Big Head be approaching Dinkle and the choir to do this? Are the ladies supposed to scat and beatbox the jazz instruments that they’d usually be playing for this bit?