2022, Lisa.
Lisa, many Lisa 2022.
Lisas?
Lisa January.
…
Lisa February, Lisa’s Story, Lisa.
…
Lisa March. Lisa award. Lisa proxy. Lisa win. Lisa-y Lisa.
…
Lisa April. Lisa past. Lisa hair. Lisa crazy. Lisa.
…
Lisa August. Flashback Lisa. Crazy Lisa. Cancer. Cancer Lisa. Tapes.
Lisa.
…
Lisa October. Lisa Memory. Neon Lisa. Barf Lisa. Les Lisa.
…
Lisa November. Diary Lisa. Mom Lisa. Frankie Lisa?
Lisa December.
LISA LISA LISA LISA LISA LISA LISALISALLISLISAALLISLISALISA
Many Lisa. Lisa year.
Lisa Lisa-est Lisa 2022?
Lisa Lisas:
Lisa Lisa Lisa
1.) Lisa Birds
…
2.) Lisa Book
…
3.) Lisa Crawford
…
4.) Lisa Tapes
…
5.) Lisa Robin
…
6.) Lisa Loves
…
7.) Lisa Lies
…
8.) Lisa’s Lisa’s Lisa
Lisa? Lisa, Lisalisa lisa?
Lisa:
Lisa’s Lisa’s Lisa
Tomorrow?
Not Lisa.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Her name would not have been Lisa, would it?
I chuckled at the remixed strip, and LOL’ed when I zoomed in to check out the details. I stand in Lisa line!
Lisa would be proud that you liked it. ;D
Lisa would have liked that.
Batty just can’t help himself with Lisa, he keeps going to that well but it dried up years ago. No Pulitzer for you Batty boy!
Eh. It was okay, but needs a LOT more Lisa.
Probably most of us here are familiar with the caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, and his habit of hiding his daughter’s name, Nina, in all his cartoons.
Batiuk needs to reissue all the “Complete FW” volumes, with every single panel redrawn to include the word “Lisa” hidden in the line art. Only then will Lisa be properly venerated.
Hirschfeld example for reference below. Hop to it, Tom.
For this one, I had to go with “Lisa Loves”, because the implications were just SO vile. Timemop was willing to “nudge” Lisa to get her and Les together? Wow, that’s not creepy AT ALL. And look how it turned out without him influencing them. They start dating, Lisa turns into a complete nutbar (who Funky apparently described as clinging to Lisa like “skin on a fish”, which… the Lord of Language, everyone!), Les breaks up with her, she transfers to Walnut Tech and hooks up with Frankie.
I mean, that whole “Frankie” thing was either part of the past that Timemop had to ensure happened (pretty icky if he influences anyone involved there), or it wasn’t and he didn’t do anything to stop it (our hero?).
Either way, the entire thing resulted in Lisa getting raped. And Timemop was willing to “nudge” her into getting close to Les. Which, if she needed nudging… would be pretty much rape.
Basically, Timemop didn’t actually CAUSE Lisa to get raped, but he would have, and he certainly ALLOWED her to get raped later.
And then Summer looks so friggin’ CHARMED by this “meet cute” story. Despite already reading her mother’s rape journal.
Batiuk, did you put ANY thought into the implications of this “elegant” solution of yours? (I mean, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn’t, because if you did and you still went with it… that’s just disgusting.)
But, y’know, even voting for a different nominee, I can’t argue with the “winner”. Lots of worthy terribleness to go around.
First, she ruined Act I with her teenage melodrama. Then she ran roughshod over Act II with the pious platitudes and eventual slow death. Then, in Act III, she was always front and center, despite already being dead for ten years when Act III began. It was a bit much, let’s say.
You gotta love how he used the final FW strip to pimp the cancer book one last time, though. Man, that arc just meant EVERYTHING to him. He spent fifteen years…nearly a third of FW’s run…shamelessly shilling that book at every opportunity. Just think about all the arcs he wrote specifically to take another “LS” victory lap. It had to have been dozens.
Yes, that final panel was the campaign plank that got my vote.
When we found out that this strip was being shitcanned, I’m sure we all wondered, “Will Lisa be reincarnated before this thing ends? Please, Tom?”
She wasn’t. Not literally. But the last-ever strip was a clear promo for Lisa’s Story, the Story of Lisa and Her Non-Battle with Cancer. I mean, that hideous Queen of the Future is pointing straight at it in the between panels area. So Lisa may be gone, for now, but we should all read Lisa’s Story to learn of the good news to come. I guess.
Funky: You know, Lisa would have liked that!
Too bad I never saved that strip.
I did! I did!
Didn’t quite get the quote right.
I voted Lisa Lies here, the Batiukiest of the year’s many many many Lisa story arcs.
Lisa Lisa-ing? Check
Sepia-toned flashback? Check
Smirks? Check
Characters being insufferable? Check
Devotion to massaging Les’ ego? Check
Videocassettes? Check
Some of TB’s pet pop culture ephemera? Check
Sidelining female characters? Check
Glacial pace? Check
Pointless retcon of pointless minutia? Check
It was far less infuriating than some of the other choices, sure, but it was just so Tom Batiuk. Perhaps the most Tom Batiuk-y thing in the whole strip last year.
USA! USA! USA!
If there’s ever an award for “Greatest Single Funky Winkerbean Panel [or Strip] of All Time”, that should definitely be a nominee.
I think the real thing here is, yeah I’m gonna say it again…ELEVEN MONTHS.
TomTom would look at a dozen words for a year, nodding at himself “Yeah, them words be best!” and then just scream “MURDER MONKEY TALKS! Also, Ghost Lisa birds!!” and go with it.
And then spend 2 weeks writing a strip about him getting the Oscar for this shit.
Hey, last I checked, Crankshaft was literally about to crash and burn. May that strip follow that course.
Also, tomsbooks/buyThemBeforeHisRightHandGetsSore.com.
It’s like who the whole “Roland is transgender thing ended up going nowhere and doing nothing because most people forgot who the person was” mess: he’d painted himself into a corner trying to make a lousy high school romance between a skeevy loser and a wan hysteric into a grand tragedy and he never figured his way out.
Well-put, painted into a corner. Kind of like how the name “Funky Winkerbean” was a goofy early-70s teen-inspired joke that worked in Act 1 but that then haunted the strip as it tried to get “serious,” resulting in TB relentlessly punishing Funky throughout the strip’s long run.
This points to another ending that Batiuk failed to consider: figuring out a real first name for the character and having them finally start using it.
The “name reveal” in itself could have been an interesting topic for an arc. Colin Dexter wrote Inspector Morse books for years, which then became a TV show, and other characters were always rebuffed when they asked Morse’s first name. When it was finally revealed, it made the news in the UK (and explained why he’d hidden it for so long).
Imagine if Funky’s real name had been something like “Cuthbert.” Any competent writer could have made a funny and touching arc out of that. Too bad FW didn’t have any competent writer.
Worse still was that he did do a name reveal… for Bull. And then he used Jerome T. Bushka’s real first name one more time and killed him a year later.
Ignoring, glossing over, or completely missing anything potentially interesting in situations that he actually went through the trouble of setting up is, of course, a TB trademark. There are too many examples to count.
Why bother doing a name reveal if it’s gonna be “Jerry”? It should have either been something like “Bulworth” or something like “Aloysious.”
Again, whoosh go the dramatic and comedic possiblities, right over Puffy’s head.
I would argue that the “Roland is transgender” thing went exactly where it was supposed to go. It just only took two panels to get there. “Hi, I’m transgender now!” “I’m ok with that!” The end. Virtue signaling achieved.
I had an unlikable coworker who went by the name Larry. I mentioned him as “Lawrence” to his wife, and she said “That’s not what it’s short for. And it’s his middle name. His first name begins with K.” She refused to tell me what his birth name was.
He was born in England in the mid-1950s before his parents came over. I imagine his real names were those weird names the Brits gave males then. Think Philby the Spy and Johnson the Composer. You know–Kim Laurie.
Hey, it’s only been 10 years since someone said to me “OH NO MR BILL!” and thought that was the height of comedy.
I choose to believe it was KL = Kimberley Leslie. Both men’s names to the Brits.
“Larry” was indeed scum. He likely got me fired from there (a net gain for me in the end!) and then instantly regretted it. His wife and he would never again get 3 day weekends every weekend, and get to skip major holidays. (Seriously, they made Game of Thrones backstabbing look like nice coworkers)
But “Leslie”? Even I wouldn’t want him to be named after Mr Moore!
I had a male coworker whose first name was “Claire”. He went by his middle name, “Daniel.”
I voted for Lisa Birds, because it set a new low for how sick Les, his enablers, and Tom Batiuk could be.
The worst thing was: the story was actually kind of sweet, if you don’t know Lisa’s been dead for 24 years. I’ve been in that situation where nobody wanted to do a task that a recently-passed family member typically did. Eventually, someone has to just do it. It’s part of the healing process; it’s a small but important way we face the reality that the loved one is truly gone. Having a neighbor “feed the birds” for a few days, until we were emotionally ready to do it ourselves, is an incredibly kind gesture I would have greatly appreciated.
But of course, the words “healing”, “reality” and “appreciate” are not in Les Moore’s vocabulary. It was just another favor the world owed him in perpetuity, Because Lisa Died. And then Summer, who’s been absolutely browbeaten into dealing with Les’ sickness her whole life, was so proud to indulge this. “No… I don’t think I’ll tell him Lisa has not been feeding the birds since 1997. It’s good that he thinks that!”
Absolutely sick.
Kind is also a word not in the pompous dimwit’s vocabulary. A kind man wouldn’t make the whole damned book about how he and he alone suffered.
Speaking of Lisa, Tom Batiuk said his on his blog he’s going to do an “annotated walk through Funky’s final week.” I wonder if it will reveal anything that hasn’t already been pointed out here. Or explain how the book “Strike Four” can exist in this world when Ed Crankshaft himself is a character in it.
Hilariously, this entry is almost a complete duplication of a 2021 blog entry. It has the same title, image, closing text, and lame excuse that Tom is just so busy. WordPress had to append a “2” to the URL. But hey, let’s give him a break – not writing Funky Winkerbean is hard work.
Batty’s idea of hard work is sighing “Well…I guess this pudding pop isn’t going to open itself…
“WIFE!!! DADDY NEED PUDDING!”
Once again, I voted with the majority, though all were worthy choices.
The entire strip was so repulsive and demented that I missed a couple details the first time I read it.
We already discussed the baffling idea of Summer’s book ushering in a grand utopia, which somehow includes book burnings, which somehow missed this one store which is still open and staffed. But:
1. What are these other books on the shelf? Isn’t it interesting that this bookstore seems to carry a large stock of books (perhaps the only copies in existence of all of them) but only the Batiuk-related books matter? After the burnings, the works of Shakespeare may be gone, but thankfully “Strike Four” survives.
2. Summer’s book
In other words, her book has remade the world into a happy-clappy hovercraft-filled utopia. Presumably it’s a sort of Bible/Koran/Communist Manifesto/Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book amalgam. Yet the Lisa books were almost all burned and finding a copy is a rare treat? Wouldn’t they also be considered holy books, perhaps a sort of Old Testament to Summer’s New Testament?
If Westview ever had book burnings, there’s no way Lisa’s Story and/or Summer’s book wasn’t at the center of it.
The irony is that they were printed with ink that, when burned, released carcinogens into the atmosphere.
Not ironic at all. They scoured the Earth for the most toxic, carcinogenic, flammable ink they could find, hoping to spread the Blessed Cancer across the land.
Not to mention, shouldn’t Summer’s daughter already own copies of Les’s and Summer’s books?
But not precious TREE COPIES!
I am still of the opinion that Batiuk intended ‘the burnings’ to be large scale climate damage wildfires. Since this year he was harping so much on how it was probably ‘too late’.
He just made the mistake of not clarifying, and everyone here and elsewhere in the snarkosphere assumed book burnings.
CBH, that thought hadn’t occurred to me, but of course you could be right. Practically anyone could be right when we’re given such spotty/contradictory information (and this goes for the entirety of Act III).
In English, “the burnings” would be understood to refer to an act of man, while “the fires” could be either human-caused or a natural phenomenon. Example: A “church fire” could be caused by a tipped-over candle. A “church burning” is something altogether more sinister.
But that’s English, not… uh, Batglish?, or whatever Puffy’s native tongue is. I’m not fluent in Batglish, so all bets are off as to what he meant.
I believe Batiuk’s language is referred to as “Tommyrot.”
It certainly wasn’t helped by Future Lisa’s Mother specifically referring to Lillian’s shop as “one of the few bookstores to survive the burnings”, as if they ONLY (or primarily) affected bookstores. Or at least, that’s probably how most English speakers would parse that statement, as opposed to those who only speak Batiukese.
Honestly, the idea that “the Burnings” referred to vast “climate damage” wildfires rather than targeted arson of bookstores is so far off from how the statements would normally be read is probably the best evidence that Batiuk did, indeed, intend the “wildfire” meaning, because Batiuk has never met a sentence whose meaning he wouldn’t obfuscate.
I know you’re all on the edge of your
roofsseats wondering what happened to Crankshaft, last seen dangling from an icy roof gutter while his flamethrower had landed on the roof and was still spitting out flames.Today we have, of course, skipped right past all the action and Ed is standing around with the family and Lillian as the fire department finishes putting out the flames (which don’t appear to have damaged anything). The firefighter makes a weary, sarcastic remark. Skyler is not seen and presumably was left behind as everyone fled the house.
Adding: The sarcastic remark from the firefighter is “I’ll say this for your dad… he certainly knows how to keep things fresh.”
An interesting choice of words to describe a stale scenario even casual Crankshaft readers have seen before.
Both your comments were almost exactly my reactions to today’s Crankshaft strip. Even when the story’s not emotional or controversial, Batiuk still cuts away from the money shot. It’s like trying to watch an R-rated bikini movie on the USA Network.
Today’s CS is a great example of how Batiuk’s writing fails the artwork, something we’ve all talked about this week. In this case, he doesn’t even give his artists a chance. You know what would have been funny to see today? Literally anything.
Any plausible method of rescuing Ed from the second story ledge would been a chuckle, without even trying to be funny. Send a firefighter up an extended ladder like they’re rescuing a kitten. Tell him he has to let go and fall into the catch blanket, being held by a team of firefighters. Show the long drop from Ed’s perspective. To say nothing of what you could have done with the fire.
To see all of this and more, and how much comedy the art could have mined from the same situation, see Ren and Stimpy:
Banana Jr. 6000,
Re: both of your posts –
I do find the infrequency and brevity of his blog posts curious and wonder if it signals something.
I also noticed something about Crankshaft yesterday. Instead of the copyright belonging to Batom, Inc., the copyright is listed as Mediagraphics, Inc. I haven’t paid attention to know if this is new or if it’s just something I hadn’t noticed. I also don’t know what this means given his long-standing obsession with ownership and control of his works.
I don’t read anything into the less frequent blogging. It’s all been so haphazard since he moved to his “new” website.
I think “Mediagraphics” is a Crankshaft-specific ownership company. Old CS strips include it as well: https://www.gocomics.com/crankshaft/2009/11/09
At least when Cranky was hanging from a single leaf they used it for a few gags.
BTW, I don’t know if Lil is trying to put the leaves under him in the vain hope they’ll cushion his fall or pulling them away in the hope he’ll break his legs. I prefer the latter.
Heaven help me, that one got a little laugh out of me. It’s an actual gag!
It actually occurred to me that somehow the cut & paste art itself was driving the plot — that a “rescuing Ed from icy/burning roof” strip would have to be drawn from scratch, and ain’t no one got time for that.
But the strips drawn by Ayers, who did hand-draw each one, had the same Victorian tendency to avert their eyes daintily from conflict, danger, or drama… so no, I think the boring conclusion is all Batiuk.
There was a similar Crankshaft story arc back in 2019. Ed utilized a drone because Pam wouldn’t let him climb up to the roof. Ed initially attached a magnifying glass to the drone to melt the ice, but it was too slow. Refusing to admit defeat, Ed replaced the magnifying glass with a laser.
Batiuk, as usual, didn’t show the drone in action. We had to settle for the aftermath.
I don’t think this one’s too bad, it’s an actual gag and I don’t really think showing the laser cutting through the gutter would improve anything within the confines of a weekday strip. Maybe in an action comic like Dick Tracy it would.
I don’t think Show Don’t Tell isn’t really as ironclad a law as people believe – I always use The Red Green Show as an example here, every episode revolves around the characters relating their off-screen adventures to the audience. The events are so over-the-top that by letting you imagine the specifics, it’s always going to be funnier than anything they could show.
Batiuk just sucks at telling. Like this week’s Crankshaft doesn’t have any sort of amusing resolution, it’s just “he almost falls off the roof, his neighbor calls the fire department, they get him down safely.”
After reading today’s post I’ve got this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G9HtR0D2Bc
earworm stuck in my head.
In non-Lisa news, as I’m making my way through Act I my used “Complete Funky Winkerbean vol. 2 1975-1977” arrived yesterday and just like the vol 1. that I got, is autographed on the title page. This time with a Dinkle drawing. I’m getting the feeling that all of the FB “complete” anthologies were sold at in-store book signings!
I’m getting the feeling that all of the FB “complete” anthologies were sold at in-store book signings!
I think a lot of the signed anthology books *weren’t* sold at in-person book signings. Meaning: TB pre-autographed more copies than anyone would want, they didn’t sell, and were shipped to fill mail orders.
I have a pet theory that unautographed copies of FW books are actually more valuable than autographed ones. They’re certainly more rare.
They used to joke about that with Terry Pratchett who did many book signings in stores and conventions
If you buy them ‘used’ it’s a pretty good chance.
I got my volume 2 copy used from within the Northeastern Ohio area, yet somehow it didn’t have a Batiuk signature. I feel robbed.
On the far chance I ever met him at a signing, I’d ask him to try and draw Holtron instead of whoever he usually draws and tell him it was my favorite character. See if I can tell from his facial expression if he was hoping I’d mention Lisa or Mason Jarr.
1. Even by Lisa standards, that “THE GHOST OF MY DEAD WIFE MUST BE REFILLING OUR BIRD FEEDER!” storyline bullshit was one of Batiuk’s lowest points… Both Lester and Batiuk should have been referred to a mental health evaluation…
2. “I’ll say this for your dad — He certainly knows how to endanger his life and the lives of everyone around him along with his wanton destruction of property and being a massive one-man resource drain on Fire Rescue and EMT Services!! Hahahahahahaha!!! BUT SERIOUSLY — If you can’t be bothered to give a shit about your own selves, PLEASE take away his power tools, gardening chemicals, incendiary materials and especially his commercial driver’s license before he kills a bunch of innocent kids and spends the rest of his miserable life in the penitentiary!!”
2a. What I hate the most is the firefighter could have said something genuinely funny here but instead we get a recycled punchline I know I’ve seen before…
2b. Look, I get that locals in NE Ohio are used to it, but it vexes the hell out of me to see so many people dressed for a 60-degree day when in reality it has to be no warmer than 20 degrees out…
In yesterday strip, Ed Crankshaft was hanging for his life from a burning roof. Today’s strip seems to be screaming at the top of its lungs “Everything’s fine! Everybody’s fine! Ed’s fine! He’s not injured! The fire’s put out! There’s no major damage! Pmm and Jff aren’t angry! Nothing to worry about!” Then it screws that up by omitting the child, the person you’d be most concerned about in this situation.
And we all know what tomorrow’s going to bring: “oh, that wacky bus driver!” As if he hadn’t just put a bunch of lives and property in danger, and wasted civic resources for the 500th time.
Batiuk can’t let his characters be in danger for even a nano-second. Or face the tiniest repercussions for their own asshole behavior. How squeamish about itself can a story be?
OMG. The third to last Funky Winkerbean
comicstrip ever. I’ll never forget that day. A shiver went up my spine at the sight of Future Lisa spotting ‘Lisa’s Story’ on that shelf. It totally creeped me out. There’s that accursed book again! The book is haunted! There is no escaping it!It’s a book of pure eeeevil! ‘Lisa’s Story’ survived the burnings because it is no ordinary book. It is a book born of hellfire! It cannot burn!
‘Lisa’s Story’ makes the ‘Necronomicon’ look like a children’s book.
No! Future Lisa, don’t buy that book. Run! Flee as fast as you can!
Here’s the appropriate music to accompany the arrival of ‘Lisa’s Story’ in that strip.