The 2022 Funky Awards, coming soon. VOTE. Voting continues through January 21.
Now…we continue, Lisa’s Story 2013: Lisa’s Story Like You’ve Never Seen It Before!
Back in the comments section for 2013, there were a number of people spitballing that Frankie might be a false antagonist. They thought maybe somewhere in the decades since he was seen last, the old villain had turned over a new leaf, and we’d get a story of forgiveness. It wasn’t a crazy theory. Batiuk has done redemption arcs before. At the time the Funkyverse was fresh from Cory shaving off his delinquency as easily as the Army buzzed off his hair.
For a panel or two, we get little teases that maybe Frankie has changed.
But we also get an equal amount of hints that Frankie is still no good.
However, Jess convinces Darin to at least meet with the man. Similar to her pushing Darin to look up his birth mother back in Act II, her experience losing her dad when she was very young colors her perspective. Is it copying or consistency? I don’t know.
Browsing nine-year-old blog comments, SOSF was confused as to how Darin could know Bio-Dad was a creep. They hypothesized that maybe it was something Lisa told him in the weeks leading up to her death, or something contained in Les’ book. How did Darin know what Frankie was like?
Batiuk really missed a trick here, not reminding his audience of this encounter. It would have been easy, see?
Yeah it would have stretched the arc out by maybe half a week. But so what? Find a strip or two to cut from elsewhere.
Speaking of stretching the arc out, I’m leaving you guys on a cliffhanger for a few days. I’m heading out of state for my niece’s baptism. So please send prayers for the poor innocent baby girl that is going to have to put up with CBH as a godmother. Not sure if anyone is taking the helm, of if this place will just drift along on autopilot for a few days, but I’ll be back next week with more Frankie adventures.
Also
VOTE.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Here’s the biggest problem with Frankie the Villain.
He’s not a villain. He’s just another pathetic Lisa worshipper, only one who doesn’t have Les’ blessing.
What was his scheme to show up in Westview? To film a reality show reuniting with Dullard. Why? Would there be a huge financial paycheck to do this series? Would Frankie gain power and prestige producing this show about…some Ohio nobodies?
(Apologies to folks from Ohio, you’re not all nobodies.)
No, it was so he could orbit around Lisa like everyone else.
While Frankie’s sleaziness clearly makes him a fan favorite, that’s honestly all he has going for him. His schemes are always pathetic, and they are exemplified by one panel I remember, when Dullard was in Hollywood (Frankie was running the food truck) and Frankie is running across the street to talk to Dullard and he looks like a terribly brain-damaged person. (Sorry, don’t know the PC term.) (I only remember because it was one of my stints.)
Frankie’s villainy was just retconned into rape because Batiuk couldn’t stand the thought that his greatest heroine wanted physical affection. “No, no! Of course she didn’t want…IT. Not with someone other than Les! So…of course! Frankie raped her! Because of course he would, and I bet there’s another award there somewhere!”
I’d love to join the crowd that cheers Frankie, but in the end, he was just as pathetic as everyone else, he just wasn’t favored by Les. I mean Batiuk. I mean Les.
TL;DR: drinking too much on Friday the 13th.
My sentiments exactly. And Frankie wasn’t just another Lisa, he was just another Westviewian who somehow had a national media career. We were supposed to believe this nobody with no television skills had his own reality TV show and complete control over its content. In a way that wasn’t any kind of joke or commentary on the ubiquitousness of such shows.
Frankie is running across the street to talk to Dullard and he looks like a terribly brain-damaged person
There is, of course, the possibility that Frankie really was trying to connect with Boy Lisa as a genuine father, but then Rachel made that “Funky Winkerboard” “joke” and, well, that would break anyone’s resolve. (Seriously, is there any reality in which that comment would elicit any response other than “WTF are you talking about? Is that even English?”) (Really, though, just look at Frankie’s expression in that last panel. That’s the face of a guy who’s thinking “Oh, that is IT! I’m gonna burn it all down for that!”)
Wait… Jessica Darling Whose Father John Darling Was Murdered lost her father? When did that happen? How did it happen? Was that the first we heard of that? I can’t believe Batiuk would leave that unexplored, it feels like there’s a real story there. (Also, did they ever do anything that might completely traumatize any children they might have as a result?)
“Crustaceous ketchup”? The friggin’ Lord of Language, everyone.
Durwood not being able to read the words “cocktail sauce” on the bottle tracks, though.
You know that was a direct quote from the Batty household.
This is a post that has bugged me for months. It is not Frankie related. Sorry. It deals with TB’s time skips and some supplementary examples.
Tom Batiuk has performed a time skip 3 times. Once after Act 1, another after Act 2, and a third time after Christmas 2022. We’re aware of it. Many have commented on it. Did it serve TB well?
Time skips are hard to pull off. If done poorly, They are a huge drain on any medium. For example, are we worse off that we did not see Les and the high school crowd go through college? No. It was well handled by Mr. Batiuk. Probably many thought it was bold on his part to age his characters. It was only 4 years. Could TB
make the college years seem any different from the HS years? Probably not. I am not aware of any major events taking place during time skip 1. So, this is a victory for Tom Batiuk.
But not so with time skip 2. There were major events, all dealing with the aftermath of the death of Lisa. The major suffering that Les and Summer endured, would be fair game for a good writer. He was already labeled as a doom, depression, and suffering writer. Why not embrace it and run with it? He became ill served by not treating it as it happened. He needed a year or two of writing to explore Les and Summer’s pain and grief. A good writer would have interspersed those arcs with humorous growing pains among the other characters. TB failed his readers.
Time skips are difficult. Consider “Follow Me Boys” the Disney film with Fred MacMurray. Its time skip took you right out of the movie. With better editing, that movie could have taken place in one time period with the same scouts.
Consider AI: Artificial Intelligence. This was tricky for Spielberg. He either volunteered or forced to take over a movie planned by Stanley Kubrick. The first 80% of the movie was homerun material made for Spielberg. The last 20% is terrible. If Spielberg had followed his instincts, after the robotic boy runs away, the human mom could have had a change of heart, and searched for him. Then been reunited at the end of the film.
A perfect Spielberg wheelhouse that would have ignored all that future junk.
The main problem with time skips is it ruins your suspension of disbelief. When “the Dark Knight Arises” has its time skip, you are forced to recognize no one would leave those bastards alone for all those months.That just opened up more continuity errors.
Same for “Fables 2” video game. That kid ages 10 years? It became 2 separate games. How much better it would have been to give him 10 quests that got him out of prison and aged him as he quested.
There is not much to say about FW’s time skip 3. TB knew maybe 6 months earlier that the strip was ending, and did nothing. No building to a climax. No final words from the main characters. We were just left with a pilot for a new comic strip with no interesting characters to follow, and bad art to boot. Sad.
Do you all have any examples of poor time skips, or any good examples?
A video game that I think handled two time skips well was Dragon Quest V. It plays in three phases; protagonist as an adolescent, then a young adult, then the hero and bride are stuck in time and reawaken when their children are adolescents. Three phases. There’s reasons for all of it, and it all plays out well. The world evolves as time passes. I’m being very curt about it because there’s a substantial amount of story behind it all, and it’s not necessary to say more than that here.
When I assess other creative work, I strive to make an evaluation on the basis of what I would think the maker’s intent was, rather than what I could imagine it to be. I don’t think that all matter of creation should be made to suit my tastes, and I accept that there are creations which at least have solid merit despite my having a possibly disinterested or even negative opinion about them. Just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s not “good”. So I think the most important point that you make about the failure of the latter time skips isn’t about what could have been done, but that he failed his readers – and really, he failed himself. If he truly wanted to keep chasing the dragon of Pulitzer awards, he could have had Les wallow in misery without a time skip; it would have made more sense, and it would be more easily digested by the public at large. It’s something that people in general could relate with, as people say that they did with Lisa’s decay and death. It was always there the whole time.
Puffy wasn’t interested in the journey, though. He was interested in the destination – the part where the rewards and praise come in. He was also more interested in his own tastes and interests as he got older. It’s too bad that he couldn’t let himself step away from the strip as the world that he built up for it drifted away from his tastes and attention. It’s also too bad nobody else seemed to have the desire or power to make him step away until now. That’s a lot of time that he could have spent doing something else that he would have preferred to do instead.
none,
Perfect reply about TB doing what he preferred. It is difficult to imagine TB enjoying his last 10 years on FW. He seems happier on Crankshaft. Perhaps Crankshaft is closer to his own age, and that makes it easier to write. He certainly seems more relaxed on CS, less pressure. He should have tried that approach on FW.
The time skips were nothing more than a crutch to avoid writing scenes Batiuk simply can’t write. He loves his death and misery, but he’s so shallow he can’t depict anything other than “shock reveal” and “wallow in sadness.”
I still have my pet theory that his last editor Jay Kennedy wouldn’t let him do the second time skip, so he had to keep Lisa alive for years after she was terminal. An untreated Stage 4 anything should have finished her off in a few weeks.
By using a time skip, perhaps TB did us all a favor by recognizing his limitations. Can you imagine the suffering he avoided among his readers? A time skip may have saved the life of Epicus Doomus!
It’s too bad that TB is incapable of engaging in a true interview and answering sincere probing questions. I fear most questions would start with “Why?” and most answers would be a shrug of the shoulders.
Hmmm …. at least in terms of his writing, “recognizing his limitations” is something of which TB seems absolutely incapable. Which means I’m fairly sure the impetus for the time skips was not so much “recognizing his limitations” as it was “not wanting to deal with stuff he personally finds difficult and/or uninteresting”.
The same principle applies to creating comic book heroes. The names and the covers interest TB. The tedious mucking about creating an actual story for them does not.
Y Knot
And that’s the shame. Names and covers only are good if the stories are good.
For poor time skips, I’d have to say Avengers: Endgame. It would have been fine had they followed the original Infinity Gauntlet story from the comics, where Thanos’ Snapture was undone entirely (i.e., it was made to have never happened at all), and I think that was what was expected to happen. But instead they opted to just bring everyone back, but half the universe was now five years behind the other half, and I don’t get the impression anyone at Marvel was prepared to properly explore that new reality. For the most part, it seems like they’re treating it as if everything went back to normal after a little while, which just would not happen. To compare it to Funky, when Wally came back in Act III, he found out Becky had thought him dead and moved on with her life: she had a new husband, who was also the only father Wally’s son had ever known. Now imagine that happening ALL OVER THE WORLD. All over the universe, even. Literally billions of people discovering that everyone they knew either moved on completely, or had spent that time dead as well. People returning to their homes to find out someone else was now living there and they had nothing to their name.
In WandaVision, we see Monica Rambeau come back after what, to her, seems like no time, only to discover her mother died years ago. Ant-Man sees his daughter, only he wasn’t there for some of the most formative years of her life. These are the kinds of things that NEEDED to be addressed, but really weren’t.
Basically, with Endgame, the Russos said “Hey, this should have major consequences. Eh, but we haven’t been signed on to any more movies, so… that’s someone else’s problem.” (The beginning of the movie is about a month after the Snappening; had they undone things then, maybe things could have returned to somewhat normalcy. But by giving people enough time to adjust to the new status quo, only to drop the old one on them… it just doesn’t work.) (And, yes, I know they call it the “Blip”. That’s a stupid name.)
(Of course, other than an easy-to-miss throwaway bit in She-Hulk, the MCU has ignored the fact that there’s a giant dude’s head and hand sticking out of the Earth now, so… y’know.)
(I really didn’t like Endgame.)
I am with you, Luthor. I did not like Endgame either. It made me sware off most Marvel projects that came after.
I did watch WandaVision. It was not completely horrible. I did watch Loki. Pretty good except there was no final episode. Just 2 episodes of #5. I did download 3 versions of Dark Moon to my phone. Great song. Especially the version by Bonnie Guitar. My wife was not pleased. My car played all 3 songs in a row. I watched Dr. Strange Madness Multiverse. It sucked.
I thought “Infinity War” was a perfect movie. It should have stopped there, and then they could reboot the entire franchise. Had it done so, Scorsese and Tarantino would have praised the Russos.
To me, Marvel did 4 great films:
1. The first Iron Man
2. Avengers 1
3. Captain America and the Winter Soldier
4. Guardians of the Galaxy 1
Great visiting with you!
Wasn’t the jerk from Animal House fragged by his own troops in Nam a few years later?
That’s a time shift I can get behind. One joke, here ya go, joke done & gone now.
TOM: “I can do this for DECADES!”
What a great line to live by:
“I can do this for DECADES!”
“I can do this for DECADES!”
–Steve Rogers, standing by a pile of trash can lids
OK, I have to admit I laughed at the “Astounding Productions – If it’s good, it’s Astounding” business card. I wonder what obscure silent comedy picture he lifted that gag from.
Mel Brooks used it in one of his movies: “Miracle Productions! If it’s a good picture, it’s a Miracle!” (My earlier post about this is stuck in Moderation Hell.) Apparently it’s much older than Mel Brooks; some quick googling says it was used in a 1941 flick called “Hellzapoppin.” It may be older than that.
Hell, Jim Wynorski used it in “Transylvania Twist” which I would recommend. Heck, you’re reading Funky Winkerbean, so…?
Which was Silent Movie. So it really was an “obscure silent comedy picture.” (Obscure relative to Brooks’ much better-known hits.)
The opening shot of Daffy Duck in Hollywood, 1938:
To be fair, Tommy only stole this joke when he found out someone had copyrighted “TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE!”
Then there’s Fluke Tools – “If it’s quality, it’s a Fluke.”
You want a villain scenario? One that Batiuk would never touch in a million years? Here you go.
Apple Annie sells the movie rights to a company called “FTL” productions. Les thinks, “In those SF stories I loved, FTL stood for Faster Than Light drive! Yes!”
Les goes to meet the FTL producer. We see him only from behind. “Hello, Mr. Moore. Or can I call you Les? Let me tell you about the economy of scale.
“Your movie sells a million tickets? That’s actually pretty bad, honestly. Not good at all. Your album sells a million copies? That’s…okay, that’s about average for a popular act.
“Your book sells a million copies? That’s not just good, that’s a phenomenon. ”
He wheels around in his chair and we see it’s Frankie. Les makes the connection, “Frankie the Louse.” [Or whatever, I’m tired.]
Frankie smiles. “We’re going to make a phenomenon, Les, you and I. Only it’s going to be my phenomenon.” He points. “This is your signature, is it not?”
He then laughs maniacally.
See, this is where the “I have to protect Lisa!” stuff would make sense, and why everyone would rally around Les. Frankie would have all the power and Les could do nothing.
I hate the fact that I’m a better writer than Tom Batiuk could ever be, but what can you do? I have this thing!
Tomorrow: BC sobers up and realizes what he’s done.
Write drunk, edit sober; that’s the way it’s said to be done. Supposedly.
Then there’s the Batiuk method: Write whatever, edit never.
Very few will get this 1980s reference (unless they were managing a mall toy store at the time), but every time Frankie turned up I wanted to hear the Holograms yell:
“ERIC ROBERTS?!”
And then Jem/Jerrica says “I thought you were in JAIL!”
ERIC: “You’d be surprised what money can do! Now, about my client Pizzazz and her attacking your band with laser-armed hang-gliders…”
Cracked me up every time.
You spray for these things, but they always come back!
EXACTLY. How could Darin automatically know what his biological father was like, much less that he was Frankie? It would have been more realistic for him to be excited about the whole thing, only to be let down when he realizes “bio-Dad” is the guy who assaulted him as a kid. Maybe throw in a “YOU!” panel and a revamped flashback – the Batiuk specialty – for good measure. But the whole point was about bringing attention to Lisa’s Story, so…
Virtually every FW arc I’ve ever read fills my mind with roads not taken. I think it’s because they’re so unsatisfying on their own that your mind just grasps for something to make them better — as if you were eating bone-dry turkey and you couldn’t help but think of gravy, or a plain hamburger that caused you to visualize, almost taste the French fries you wish you had to liven it up.
Imagine if Derwood had met Frankie the second time, at Jessica’s urging. But imagine that Frankie had put on a little bit of the charm and swagger that he clearly used on Lisa. What if he kind of seduced Darwin a little? Told his side of the story, made Dawson feel a bit sorry about the whole thing? Then what if Desmond sort of started letting Frankie into his life? What if he felt that brought him a little closer to Lisa?
Wouldn’t that have been delicious? Les in high dudgeon, insisting Frankie is Worse Than Hitler, and Dum-Dum telling him to buzz off, he’s got no dog in this race, and he has no right to tell Dobbin not to talk to his own father? That Lisa wasn’t some saint who was defiled, she was a high school girl who went too far with a football bro?
The Frankie branch of Lisa’s offspring squaring off against the Dead St. Lisa branch?
These kinds of conflicts, where a character is ambiguously good/bad, are the stuff that fuel soap operas that run for decades. Puffy can’t even get a week-long arc out of ’em.
Because he shuns the naughty, dirty C word. We spell it out so the kids won’t hear. C-O-N-F-L-I-C-T.
I loved the homage to Endora of “Bewitched” in your comment. Dr. Smith would have had fun with foolish friend Fairgood, too: “ink-stained imbecile,” “graphic novel geek,” “MBA moron,” “pusillanimous pizza pitcher…”
(That’s a green pitcher, son, I say, a green pitcher!)
Boy, once you get started, it’s hard to stop. Danger, Will Robinson! It does not compute!
Thanks to Dave Sim, I tend to see “conflict” as “fonflif,” as it was all one of the Fleagles could say when Spider-Roach was choking him during the Secret Sacred Wars arc in *Cerebus.*
Frafe fonflif!
And praise CBH, because she is going to be the greatest of godmothers.
Yes, how could I forget! All hail CBH, the Cool Godmother we all wish we’d had, and now some lucky infant’s hit the jackpot!
That is one blessed kid to have CBH as the godmother. Can you imagine all of the wonderful cosplay that kid will enjoy!
LEROY! There’s a clog in the torso chute!
(Unless you guys finally got sick of my long-ass ruminations and manually culled them.)
Slightly off-topic: Last week I broke down and ordered a used copy of The Complete FW vol. 1 (1972-1974). When it arrived yesterday I saw that it was signed by TB and had a nice Funky drawn in it on the opening page. So I got that going for me, which is nice.
That could be worth tens of dollars someday. Better get it graded and slabbed!
I’m not a collector but I do have a couple pieces of Carl Barks and Wally Wood original artwork which I assume I should hold onto longer than this!
I wonder how many copies of earlier volumes sold relative to later ones. I bet there are a lot more copies of Act I books in readers’ hands there than II or III.
Personally, I’d bet that it’s the old, yellowed trade paperbacks from the 70s-80s that sold best of all, and are most liked by the people that own them.
FW Act I was a fun, enjoyable, trade-paperback kinda strip, before Puffy decided that, just as football fields are for band practice, fun is for lightweights.
Vol. 1 runs about $40 used but later ones get pretty expensive, at least asking prices, which suggests that lots of vol. 1 were sold and fewer of the later volumes.
There’s at least one at that sign-askew place that escaped The Burnings. Just ask the robbie and he’ll pull it off the shelf for you.
No rush, though. The books will still be there tomorrow.
That raises a question… why would Future Lisa so assuredly say “the book will still be there tomorrow” in a society that’s seen recent book-burnings, and they had to go to a seedy “outskirts” location just to acquire the book?
sorialpromise was looking for examples of time skips, good and bad. I quite liked the one from the 1990’s animated show Re-Boot, where the ten-year-old Enzo loses an important battle, and is pulled away from his home city of Mainframe. We next see him when he’s ten years older, an embittered, battle-hardened warrior.
Also, in regards to that “Astounding Productions” joke referred to by billytheskink: in addition to the examples already provided, I’m sure there was a similar joke involving the movie studio in the W.C. Fields movie “Never Give a Sucker an Even Break”.
Eldon of Galt,
That’s an example of good storytelling using the time skip. You made me remember another example. The “10 Commandments” with Charlton Heston follows Moses through 100? years of growth. The movie fan accepts the time skip without any questions to hinder the suspension of disbelief.
Godspeed, CBH. Your niece is blessed to have you as her godmother. Safe travels and much joy to you and your family!
Thank you for the wonderful deep dives, in the meantime.
I read Comics Curmudgeon every day through SOSF. In fact, it was CC that got me hooked on SOSF. Josh is the best at what he does. He is almost at the TF Hackett level. Darn near.
What does surprise me about CC, is his fascination with “Barney Google and Snuffy Smith.” To each their own, and it’s good to see Josh give Barney national attention. I bet more people read Barney Google on CC than on CK.
I guess I have the same fascination with “Macanudo” on CK. Liniers just hits me in that sweet spot that brings me back every day.
SoSF Super Friends! (Apologies to anyone who did not like the 70s cartoon.)
Sorry to pop in and out with shallow stuff but wanted to at least say hi to you all. Busier-than-expected start to the year with hosting guests for ten days ‘(was supposed to be five!) and a business trip.
Anyway, two things here. First, maybe this is why Batiuk thought acquiring the gun used to kill My Dad Who Was Murdered was a great trope. (If anyone has already posted, please forgive me. I looked through the comments but might have missed it.)
Second, the latest book by Jason Pargin (whom I’ve never read) seems to speak for itself as a tool of snark for the final FW arc. (Final arc snark? Sn’arc?)
Super… Friends? Hm, not sure I’ve ever heard of that one. Definitely didn’t see the episode where the Legion of Doom goes back in time to erase the origins of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern, that’s for sure. Nosiree, no familiarity with that one at all.
Loved that “CotSF” episode…especially how it never occurred to Luthor that, if he prevented little Kal-El from coming Earth, it would change his own origin and leave him a good-hearted genius with a full head of hair.
Oh, and Bizarro would cease to exist, too.
In all honesty, I’m not sure it ever occurred to the writers what the consequences would be, either. The show was not exactly known for any sense of logic in the plots. (I mean, Lex gets a Green Lantern ring – one of the most powerful weapons in the universe – and then… doesn’t use it. Not even an explanation, it’s just not there anymore.) (And that’s to say nothing of the complete lack of quality control in the animation.)
Honestly, the show really wasn’t good. But I LOVED it.
I don’t think anyone even commented on the Star Wars parody in Funky Winkerbean. I like your angle, though. The later Star Wars movies do give the original trilogy the same kind of icky subtext that FW often has. (To say nothing of the icky subtext the original trilogy gave itself sometimes.)
If you have no interest in Crankshaft, read no further.
Today in Crankshaft, Batiuk tries to make another one of his name puns. The bowling alley Cranky is at is called “Margo Lanes” (I got the reference.) At least I think that’s what it is—the weird font he uses makes it look like “Marco.”
Also, Batty (or Davis) needs to be told that when you knock down all the pins, it’s not called a split.
It is a split. The 7 and 10 pins are standing, though it’s hard to tell with all the other pins still flying around. It’s more of a timing error. No true bowler would ever call anything a split before the pinsetter runs. And certainly not when knocked-down pins are still flying around.
As for the font, it’s the Pac-Man font:
A lot of retro arcades and other 80s-themed establishments use it. I saw it earlier today, in fact: https://goo.gl/maps/u9isFcMv6YQdYpVL6
So yeah, it’s a 1980s font for a joke about a 1940s character, in a scene where someone calls a result while the ball is still in play. Timing!
The 7 and 10 look like they’re leaning (to me) and also appear to have a shadow on their bottoms that led me to think they were tipping over.
They looked standing to me, but your interpretation is valid too. Why wasn’t it a shot of only the two remaining pins? If it needed action, it could have had the pinsetter moving. Totally kills the realism of the moment.
CRANKSHAFT IS ALWAYS FUNNY
CRANKSHAFT IS ALWAYS FUNNY
(repeated on page until Jack Nicholson freezes to death)
Today (Monday), and Batty has already started with the comic book nonsense. I told you he was going to ruin that strip too.
It gets worse than bad puns and Franky being a reminder that there’s a life beyond Les and his non-stop “Behold my martyrdom as people expect me to follow and understand social norms that require me to take a back seat to others” nonsense. The slow infiltration of Crankshaft by characters from Winkerbean has begun. Dead Skunk Head leads the invasion.
What’s worse is the infiltration of tedious, narrow comic book wankery. It’s only been two weeks since Funky Winkerbean was put to sleep, and already this shit has started in Crankshaft. I bet Lisa turns up before the end of March.
Oh, jeez, Banana, we were writing at the same time. Sorry for echoing you.
It’s late in my time zone. Best wishes to you for a pleasant day.
No worries, Cheesy, I think we’re both echoing Rusty Shackleford up there.
Well, that didn’t take long. Batiuk has introduced an arc about old comic books in Crankshaft. Via Lillian.
I wonder how the non-ironic Crankshaft fans who didn’t read FW will react to the imminent reduction of major characters to vehicles for reminiscing about Batiuk’s childhood obsessions.
Yeah totally believable that Lillian collected comic books. They should have shown that old crone using that comic book as a coaster for her coffee mug.
That would have at least made for some drama as one of the Westview geeks would have freaked out and told she was ruining art and depreciating the value of the comic.
Okay. Fair enough. No drama there. And no story either.
Lisa in March? Why not Valentine’s Day. Maybe Lillian will find in that box an old Valentine that Lisa sent Les. Cayla will serve her coffee cake and coffee as Les reminisces about that particular Valentine’s Day.
Then it’ll be back to comics.
The story behind that is worse, actually. Lillian didn’t collect the comic books, she didn’t even know they were in her house at all! No, it was her sister Lucy who collected them all before being stricken with Alzheimer’s, leaving the comic books up in the attic of the home the McKenzie sisters shared. They were discovered who knows how many years later by Mindy and her high school boyfriend Eric “Mooch” Myers (an Act II FW regular and third wheel in the Pete-Durwood friendship).
Mooch was pals with DSH John, of course, and conspired with Mindy to have Lillian sell the collection to Komix Korner without taking multiple bids. Lillian and Crankshaft’s yuppie neighbors found out about the collection, though, and made an offer that was substantially above DSH’s. The plot then devolved into a ridiculous scenario in which DSH was doing odd jobs for and bringing gifts to Lillian in hopes of getting her to choose his bid, with the yuppies responding in kind. DSH eventually won the bid.
Also, Lucy McKenzie was on her deathbed at the Alzheimer’s care facility while all of this was going on…
My god, that is horrible. And it’s made worse by that “Jizz In My Pants” expression Re-Pete has on his face after hearing the words “comic books.”
How many times has Batiuk done this story? How many times somebody has found an ancient, mint-condition comic book just lying around? Which is always a comic book Batiuk likes; Lucy McKenzie wouldn’t have been interested in romance comics, which was a viable genre when she was a child. (Especially when that would have given her obstructed romance with Eugene extra poignancy.)
Other communities get gentrified. Centerville is about to get, what, geekified? Is there a word in the Batiuktionary for “when a neighborhood becomes infested with comic-book addicts?”
“Get out! Get out before you’re all Winkerbeaned!”
“The Invasion of the Winkersnatchers?”
“Night of the Living Winkerbeans?”
Again with the cutesy-dootsy oblique references. “That nice comic shop owner in Westview.” I guess he can’t put “that wacky old bus driver” references in FW any more and the oblique references have to go somewhere.
But we all knew it would go down this way. The part of FW that was gonna make the crossover wouldn’t be the unresolved character arcs — it was always gonna be comix, comix, comix.
Black Raven looks like a cartoonist’s caricature of Batman.
It’s also the name of an actual (?) comic book publisher. Link to their website says they’ll email you when the “chaos and mayhem has (sic) started.” Chaos and mayhem? Is this the portal to the future in which the burnings take place?
http://blackravencomics.com/
Remember years ago when someone on some other site did a couple knockoff strips of “Cancer Cancerbean,” in which the only dialogue was “Cancer. Cancer cancer. Cancer? Cancer, cancer!”
We may be witnessing the dawning of Comixshaft.
“Comix. Comix comix. Comix? Comix, comix!”
Will Batiuk get a letter from the syndicate about this? “Dear Tom, you signed a contract to provide Crankshaft material, not transplanted Funky Winkerbean material. Please henceforth refrain from using FW characters and situations in Crankshaft. Yours sincerely, your moody and impatient friends in the Legal Department.”
Hopefully it would be from an editor, not Legal. Unless it’s about Batiuk’s endless non-fair use of other people’s characters and art.
Will Batiuk listen to an editor this time around?
Really, if he’s been going without editorial oversight for so long like we suspect, I’d have to imagine the first thing he insisted on when signing with the new syndicate would be that they give him the same degree of freedom as well.
Say, did anyone notice that in today’s (1/16) C’Shaft the Grady Twins are still being depicted as though they’re in their tweens, not Westview High age? What happened to the Great Time Discrepancy Resolution that Harley the TransChronal Custiodian promised us in FW’s waning days? Did Summer’s knowledge of the future change it? Will we see a circa 2013 DSH John and Crazy Harry in this arc? And when will Batton Thomas (Creator of the Syndicated Comic Strip “Three O’Clock High”) pop up? Enquiring minds want to know!
“Say, did anyone notice that in today’s (1/16) C’Shaft the Grady Twins…”
YES. I did!
So they’re de-aged…again? (May just be that the CS cartoonist cares about continuity less than Tom does) I’m sure there was some long thread before I got here about the Time Wars. I never grasped which strip was in the past, and which the future. Why are they both the same? “OH NO, I dropped my iPod Nano down the self-driving iChamberPot, which had all my Napster downloads on it! And the flying car-like object has lost all of my MySpace posts!! Ask the Robbie, or at least Jeeves! Siri, order me a McDLT.”
So, is this another jump? Any guesses as to what age the FW creeps will be this time? I’m going with “Younger,” so Bats in the Attic can draw Les more handsome.
Cayla will look the same, because we’ll never see her.