I think that most of us, given a chance to travel back in time to relive the days of our youth, might opt to spend more than just an afternoon in the past. But Crazy’s ready to return to his present day life. Not sure why he assumes that the Magic Helmet will automatically transport him back to 2022. Also not sure why he’d so carelessly leave his precious Spider Man comic on the park bench.
- Home
- Batiuktionary
- Act III
- Other Crap
- 2017: The Bedside Manorisms in Memphis
- Batom Comics: The Untold History
- 2007 – Senior Class Trip to Washington D.C.
- 1996: Westview Post Office Bombing Arc
- 2001: Teen Pregnancy Arc
- 2003: John Byrne Steps In for Batiuk
- 2007: Darin Seeks His Birth Mother
- 2010: Funky’s Car Crash and Time Travel
- Act II “Flash” -back
- Kent State Mural by Batiuk and Ayers
- Meet Halle Dinkle
- Meet the (Act III) Cast
- Missing FW Cast Members
- The Starbuck Jones Covers
- Act IV
Funky Links
- The Official FW Blog
- funkywinkerbean.com
- Crankshaft at arcamax.com
- crankshaftcomic.com
- The Unofficial Funky Winkerbean Fan Page
- Stuck Funky
- Funky Winkerbean Cafe Press Store
Other Links
- The Comics Curmudgeon
- Mary Worth is Lit
- This Week in Milford
- 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline 988lifeline.org or dial 988
Search SoSF
SoSF on Twitter
My TweetsArchives
-
Tags
Adeela Ann Fairgood Atomik Komix basketball Batiukmobile® Batom Comics Becky Boy Lisa bricks Buddy Bull Cayla cellphone Christmas chullo Cindy Cliff Anger Cody Cody and Owen coffee Comic-Con comic books comics Cory Crazy Harry Darin Dead Skunk Head Dinkle Falling leaves Flash Freeman football Funky Funky Winkerbean Harry Dinkle hatchet face holidays Holly Hollywood hoodie Jessica John Keisha Komix Korner Les Les' yellow shirt Linda Lisa Lisa's Story Marianne Marianne Winters Mason Mason Jarr Mason Jarre Mindy Montoni's Montoni's Mopey Pete Nate Old dying people Owen Pete Phil Holt photo album corners pizza Rachel random students Ruby Lith silhouette smirk snow sports squiggly lines Starbuck Jones Summer technology traveling green shirt unnatural hand gestures Wally Westview High School Westview HS Band
Son of Stuck Funky · The web's premiere source for Funky Winkerbean snark
Son of Stuck Funky 
Is this strip really necessary?
Heh heh. He forgot his little comic book. So all of this was completely pointless. And boring. And humor-free. OK. Thank you, Tom. Thank you so bloody, bloody much.
I hope he’s changed future history and finds himself in a post-apocalyptic future where the only life is mutant cockroaches. I want to see how long it takes him to notice Westview is a better place.
Is it? Is Westview a better place?
Even mutant cockroaches have purpose.
I enjoy your comments!
Glad you enjoy my comments. And if cockroaches replace Les Moore, Westview can’t help but be a better place.
It would be nice to see Funky Winkerbean to full Umbrella Academy and see the strip turn into nothing but Crazy travelling back and forth in time to try to remedy the damage he caused on his first time trip.
You know exactly where that would go. “Good work, Harry! You’ve returned Amazing Stories #15 to its rightful owner, so the silver age comic book company can be created! You’ve destroyed every copy of Crisis On Infinite Earths, and you’ve convinced Tim Berners-Lee to go into medicine instead!. Now go up to that girl and act all indecisive and show her your very own comic book spinner rack! Girls love that!”
Yeah, better hurry back to the present there, Crazy, what with all you have going on and all. Those Komix Korner spinner racks aren’t just going to fill themselves.
It’s too bad Crazy had to leave behind his past of hanging out at Montoni’s, playing video games, and reading comic books to get back to his present of… uh… hanging out at Montoni’s, playing video games, and reading comic books.
Everyone in Westview is so amazingly incurious, aren’t they? “Welp, I used my magical time journey to buy comic books, talk to myself about comic books, and not tell Lisa something important. Guess it’s time to go back.”
Harry interacted with himself (is that what the kids are calling it these days?) and with Lisa, whom he barely knew, and just breezed past the presumed Young Don/nald, without even a look?
I don’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.
Harry ignoring his future wife seems more real than him actually marrying someone. How did he ever pry his face out of comic books long enough to talk to a girl, much less date one? Same with John Howard. What on earth did Becky, a strong and determined woman, ever see in that fat lazy smug bastard? Especially when she’s basically supporting them both. On her public school salary.
Becky found out in a chat room that John loved Sunset Boulevard as much as she did… and then found out that John was actually John when she met him for a blind date at Montoni’s followed by a trip to the Valentine Theater to watch Sunset Boulevard. John Byrne drew the whole story arc because TB had broken his foot.
I take your comment to mean that TB draws with his feet, which explains SO MUCH.
Heteronormativity is a helluva drug.
Though I think it ties in more to the “discredited trope” of Woman As Reward. John is a hero in TB’s ethos (where Wally is a Chew-toy) so he gets the girl, with bonus points for being a Caring Sensitive Guy about her not wanting to wear the prosthesis. Crazy has been blanched of all quirks into another comics-cultist, so he gets a formerly-hot girl. Dinkle even gets a work-wife (sharesies with John) as well as the one at home that he kissed and turned into a frog.
Also, TB has no idea what to do with a pre-hag female character except append her to a male character.
Heteonormativity and Nice Guy Syndrome. John does absolutely nothing to get the girl, doesn’t even really ask her out, does nothing to better himself beyond putting a cheap sportscoat over his Superman t-shirt, and gives up at the first obstacle. This is Tom Batiuk’s idea of a leading man: a comic book-addicted loser manchild just like himself.
I used to believe that Nice Guy shit, but I had an excuse: I was 15 and didn’t know any better. And it was 1987, when the world hadn’t identified this behavior for what it is: just a different kind of predator.
So Batiuk’s bragging about his Inkpot Award, which is given by San Diego Comic-Con to absolutely everyone. Batiuk’s photograph of the award winners has 24 other people in it,
Interestingly, Steve Ditko refused his award, saying “Awards bleed the artist and make us compete against each other. They are the most horrible things in the world.” Now there’s a comic book story you’ll never see in Funky Winkerbean.
Well, this was pointless.
This was like a bad episode of Far Out Space Nuts.
Did it bother anyone else that 12 yr old Don/nald had a more womanly figure than Becky, Summer, or Marianne Winter?
I just wonder how the helmet managed to conceal her gender.
It’s probably that aged trope that stuffing one’s long hair into a newsboy cap or motorcycle helmet renders one genderless until the cap is pulled or knocked off and the luxuriant tresses tumble free.
I think that was supposed to be understood as the kiddie-safe translation of having the shirt torn open and breasts exposed.
Don/nald’s haircut is similar to the awful Dutchboy cut I somehow ended up with even when it was meant to be a pixie cut or shag or something. Anyway, I could ‘pass’ for a boy at times until something like age 14 (also for under 12) but Don/nald is definitely more developed in the frontal area than I was at 13, so I don’t know how she passed as a boy.
Also the original Donald looked to be about 8-9 yrs old to judge by height and scrawniness.
Great title, TFH. (I get the reference!)
Thanks Jeff!
Of course, Harry left the comic behind. Good fortune only favors Les Moore in the Funky Winkerbean universe.
Tomorrow Les walks by the bench, picks up the comic, and walks away while whistling a happy tune. Oh, how I hate him.
The latest brilliant comic book insight from the Funkyblog: “The purpose of a splash page is to grab you, and sometimes something as simple as this can do a better job than all of the bombastic art you can throw down.” By ripping off Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?
GAH!!! (Pulling my hair in frustration)
Crazy Harry was in the proximity of a young Donna and exits the store without saying a word to her? WTH? Outstanding plot development, Mr. ‘I’m a Storyteller.’ SMH
How hard would it have been to have Harry say to Young Donna as he exits the store:
Ooo. That was a good one. You’ll enjoy it. *wink ‘n’ smirk*
or
That magazine is too mature for someone your age. *wink ‘n’ smirk*
I read in another discussion that Donna in yesterday’s comic was wearing a t-shirt that had the same stripes as when she was The Eliminator. I’ve been reading Funky Winkerbean almost since the beginning, and it was a detail I completely missed. Perhaps it was the coloring that threw me. How is a casual reader going to pick up on the fact the girl at the spinner rack was his wife, last seen in the April 5th strip? How can a casual reader even follow this strip at all?
Batty can give all the interviews he wants as to how FW tackles adult problems in a sensitive manner, blah blah blah, but he is full of coke. The reality is he inflicts upon his readers this nostalgic fantasy world about which literally only he understands and cares about. Funky Winkerbean has become the work of a self-indulgent schizophrenic.
Either that or he reads the Funky Winkerbean forums and purposely writes these stories to piss us off. How else can this material be so pretentious, contemptible, and stupid?
Eat a bag of dicks, Batty.
I can imagine Batty saying “Why would Crazy Harry need to speak with Donna? He already knows she’s going to marry him, because he’s her only option. And why have a serious conversation with her now, when he’s never done that before. (Or after. Isn’t time-travel confusing?)”
I’m sure Batty would have some lame excuse handy. He might even claim Harry didn’t even notice her, despite her being the only other customer in the shop and standing right by the exit.
It just seems like a wasted opportunity to me. I was thinking about my brother being widowed in the mid-1980s. I think he’d give his left arm to speak to his wife again. Sorry, Becky.
It’s amazing that the strip can’t even set this scene up correctly. The girl at the comic book rack doesn’t look like The Eliminator, doesn’t look like older Donna, and isn’t shaped like someone who could conceal her gender. It makes no sense, even if the reader DOES have the encyclopedic knowledge of Funky Winkerbean lore that Tom Batiuk requires. And the current arc doesn’t give you any clues. It talks and talks and talks and talks about The Eliminator, but denies you any information that would make the connection the story wants you to make.
You say you didn’t notice the shirt stripes. I think you did, but didn’t make the connection because the story showed you four other things that contradicted it. This is Tom Batiuk’s idea of “subtlety.” Subtlety is saying an important thing in a small way. This is just being unclear.
Even the colorist is confused. The Eliminator was shown in a color flashback a few weeks ago wearing a white shirt with black stripes on the sleeves.
It’s apparent Batty communicates with the colorist about as well as he does with his readers.
It’s a miracle Chuck can draw this strip at all.
There IS no ‘casual reader’ of Funky Winkerbean. The strip, as written, cannot support such a creature. Anyone who stumbles across FW in a context where it’s not attached to snarky comments? They will simply skip over it. It isn’t interesting, it isn’t funny, it contains no individual strips that make sense as stand-alones, and it does not reward the effort of following a so-called ‘story-arc’ for any period of time. It is literally impossible to assume that ANYONE reads this strip on an occasional or casual basis.
Occasionally there is a person in the Comics Kingdom discussion who defends Tom Batiuk and Funky Winkerbean.
I wonder what their motivation is? Is it possible they just don’t like to see anyone get picked on?
I like today’s Crankshaft. Not that Ed did anything funny, but I think Pmm has reached her breaking point. I’ve never seen her so enraged at Crankshaft.
Here’s hoping we see Pmm toss Cranky head first through the attic window tomorrow.
I love how Crazy just has to put the helmet back on and it transports him back to his present, and he somehow knows this. It’s one of the laziest details of the lazy trope of time travel.
“Obviously, we just needed to turn the time machine around!”
And him hiding the time-travel helmet under the Precious Lisa Bench suggested that he already knew this when the story started. Incredibly lazy.
Occasionally there is a person in the Comics Kingdom discussion who defends Tom Batiuk and Funky Winkerbean.
I wonder what their motivation is? Is it possible they just don’t like to see anyone get picked on?
Sorry for the duplicate post. My phone is too full and has performance issues.
Perhaps it’s time for a new one. Victoria Regina Victoria is 5 years old.
Yes, I give my phones names. 😁