On July 12, 2009, the front door to the Howard home opened… and Wally Winkerbean came back.
The comics commentary blogosphere of the time was astounded, dumbfounded, SHOCKED.
Or not.
I went back in time to the ancient Stuck Funky archives, and it was facinating to read the comments. I wasn’t on the Funky Snark Commenting crew 14 years ago, so seeing names familiar and strange passionately debating and dissecting was a real trip.
During the Sunday strip where Becky opens the door, commenters theorized that Wally was still really dead and this was a dream sequence or symbolic of his remains finally being returned. Some, like Sgt Saunders and O.B. Dan, held to this belief for nearly a month, even through most of the flashback.
We know now, of course, that this was really him. For real. Sergeant Wally Winkerbean has returned home after years as a prisoner of war. And Funky just…went to pick him up at the airport alone. For 2009 commenters, that was one tidbit making them think Wally was just a box of cremains.
But Merry Pookster was wrong. Tuesday was not Bobby Ewing stepping out of the shower.
Instead it was the start of an extended expository flashback.
Batiuk loves doing this. Jumping from ‘now’ to ‘earlier’ and back again. I’m not going to knock the storytelling device in the abstract. I’ve seen it used many times to great effect. Especially in Anime. Done right, dropping a bombshell while holding back information for some later flashback exposition can make for an amazing suprise.
For example, my housemate and I were watching SPOILER ALERT, and SPOILER told SPOILER that he was SPOILER and his friend was MAJOR SPOILER, and she totally didn’t see it coming and lost her goshdarn mind. The show then went into a flashback where you learn that SPOILER TWO was kind of expecting SPOILER AND SPOILER to be MAJOR SPOILERS. Showing that before would have ruined the suprise. But not showing it at all would lose the context of what happens next, and also make the characters look dumber than they’re meant to be.
I’m not going to say Batiuk always uses this trope poorly. In fact, the Wally reveal was IMO the perfect place to do something like this. But Batiuk also used it to nauseating and egregious effect right after Lisa’s death, and during Rose Murdoch’s death in Crankshaft. In both of these cases it was so his tortured male character could exposit feelings at us.
The problem with the way that Batiuk uses it in this case isn’t that he shocks us with Wally and then jumps back in time to explain it. The problem is that he jumps back in time for TWO WEEKS of Cindy Summers using tortured wordplay to not so subtly imply she would do anything for a scoop. Especially if anything includes seducing a Military Press Liason who has to be at least 15 years her junior.
I’ve decided not to show you this entire arc. Why? Because this is supposed to be a John Howard dive. AND because it is stuffed with more cheap filler than Cindy’s wrinkle-free face.
At this point the Wally-is-dead theorizers were still around. Still betting that Batiuk was wouldn’t be so removed from reality to have Wally presumed dead and secretly held captive for around ten years only to be swapped back almost on accident.
But then, the cat is let out of the bag. And what a discheveled, confused, stubbly cat he is.
Now came the funniest part of the arc for the comments. Where people still couldn’t reconcile Becky and John’s mopey behavior of a few weeks ago with a living Wally returning home. So decided that Wally was still going to die.
Cindy, after learning that her ex-husband’s cousin is still alive, someone she has known for decades, someone she knows has two children and a sort-of-wife back in the states, someone she has already interviewed once before on his POW experiences…
She learns this someone is still alive, and immediately calls…who? Her X-Man.
And Funky decides that, rather than wait for the military to contact Wally’s next of kin through official channels, he’s just going to walk over and drop a bombshell on the Howard household.
I guess it’s good Funky sprung this on them though. Because I guess the military isn’t going to make the effort to supress this news story until the NOK are contacted. I guess they’re just going to let the news of the longest missing American POW recovered alive in modern history air without any oversight.
And, Ooooooh! The tension. The anxiety! Wally’s return from captivity! The ten years of trauma he must have faced. His half grown children whose lives he has missed. The media firestorm that will inevtably surround a man whose mental state is uncertain. Will political powers attempt to use him? Will pundits on TV label him weak, or spread theories that he was a deserter?
WILL IT ALL BECOME AN ANEMIC STORY ABOUT DSH JOHN WORRIED HE’LL LOSE HIS WIFE!?!
I’ll let the original Stuck Funky poster speak on this.
As the Howards and Winkerbeans and Blackburn-Winkerbeans gather around the old HD Brown and White to hear the news, we note that Funky is slowly morphing into an infant with a man-sized head. We’ll look past that for now and focus on the impending issue: what does this mean for the male characters? It’s nice that Wally surfaced alive and sexy, but shouldn’t the masses be more concerned about Becky – the woman who married Wally and bore him a child? It’s true that having cancer helped TB write the story from Lisa’s perspective, but is he that closed off from females that he can’t put Becky’s emotions on display? All we know about this marriage so far is that John showed up in some sort of a mini-twist…and all we know about Becky’s feeling for Wally is that she sobs in her car. Depth like this doesn’t write itself, my friends. Somebody’s gotta work magic with the ink. This? It’s more like a fidgety rabbit emerging from the hat while the magician fumbles with an unrelated card trick.
Son of Stuck Funky 
The reason things unfold as they do is that Batiuk meets with people who really do know what they are talking about, smiles politely and behaves as if he understands what he’s been told and proceeds to reject their reality and substitute his own. Given his lack of ability to even want to understand how someone else is going to behave, we get nonsense like a returning MIA prisoner treated like something someone dug out of his ear. Becky should behave one way but since wimmin in comet bwoots behave a certain stupid way, she might as well be Iris West bitching about Barry moving kind of slow.
The emotional focus is completely wrong. Wally returns home from a fate worse than death, and Becky gets her Lost Lenore back. But John Howard is the one whose feelings we’re supposed to care about. As if the third act of Cast Away was completely about FedEx executive Stan, while the end credits say “oh yeah, I guess Tom Hanks got off the island or something.” It is gobsmackingly inept.
Compare this to how we’re supposed to feel about Dead Lisa. She dies because of her selfish choices and Les’ uselessness, and we’re supposed to cry about it for 20 years. Becky is the recipient of a biblical miracle: getting her man back from the dead – a man she didn’t give up on after he crippled her and destroyed her music career – and she just doesn’t give a shit.
All to keep a man she SHOULD treat like something she scraped out of her ear. John Howard was born to be the Bellamy – the male character in the romcom who *doesn’t* get the girl. “How did he look to you” is exactly what this character says to Renee Zellwegger, before she shoves him in front of a bus and runs into Chris O’Donnell’s arms. It reveals John Howard to be stunningly shallow, clueless about love, and a selfish jerk. Of course she thinks he looks better, you complete moron. You’d know this if you knew the first thing about your person you married. (Hey Cayla, this applies to you too.)
And even after Batiuk got all that wrong, there still could have been conflict between Wally and John Howard, or some mixed feelings on the part of Becky. But Batiuk resolved all that in less time than it takes him to make a comic book cover. Then he sat down and waited for his Pulitzer that never came. And he still wonders why.
It’s irritating to have to remember that his ideal of a marriage is not a pairing of equals (which is probably what Wally and Becky would have eventually become) but “useless boy-man obsessed with his wasted childhood” and “long-suffering mommy-wife who takes care of him because he’s helpless”. This says a lot of crappy things about a deluded nitwit.
Iris came to respect Barry, though, much as Sue Dibny came to realize “my Lord, I really do love this clown” with Elongated Man Ralph.
Still, Barry only kept his promise to reveal his dual identity to her on their wedding night because he talked in his sleep. (Ah, the Comics Code Authority was a harsh mistress in the 1960s, not unlike Heinlein’s Moon.)
If only cpaps existed back then
Ah, but let’s not forget that Batiuk hates character development almost as much as he hates changing the stupid reason Flash runs at Imbecilic Speed. If things change, he has to grow up and perhaps understand what he looks like to the people around him. He just can’t do that because it might make him the bad guy.
My wife and I are in a casino in Oklahoma. It is 0445. Can’t sleep, although the beds are fantastic. Bad back. Changing positions only helps so long. Over 1 hour ago my phone alerts me that ComicBookHarriet has a new post on SOSF. I have no idea if only CBH gets this treatment, or if Epicus Doomus would be treated the same.
1. What are the timeframes for Wally’s 2 releases and captures? This second release is dated 2009. Was the first one during Desert Storm? Where does Kahn/Khan fit in? How was Wally freed from his #1 imprisonment? Inquiring minds want to know?
2. Today’s Crankshaft, 7/20. Is not Jfff’s pose in the last panel the worst ever? Grown man telling the world that the greatest experience in his life is reading a comic book? Not marriage or children, and not even a great FF story, but this run of the mill filler story.
Man oh Manischewitz, I sure do miss my recliner!
An equally interesting question:
If Wally is a sergeant (a three-striper, like Nick Fury in the days of the Howling Commandos or Frank Rock at Easy Company), why is he wearing a corporal’s (two stripes) chevrons?
SP:
If J.J. O’Malley (how are thing at the Elves, Leprechauns, Gnomes, and Little Men’s Chowder and Marching Society these days?) is correct and Jeff is looking at the issue which introduced Ronan the Accuser, I agree with you about “run of the mill filler issue.” I could see getting excited about the two issues which followed it (because they introduce Him, who will become Adam Warlock), but I would have picked #60 for the conclusion of the Doctor Doom steals the Power Cosmic from the Silver Surfer storyline…or gone back a year earlier for the introduction of the Black Panther (#52) or the Changeling’s change of heart regarding Mr. Fantastic (#51).
Then again, Jeff was excited about reading the second part of a *Congorilla* story, so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.
Anonymous Sparrow,
1. IThe things that inspire TB, barely register to us, mere humans. I agree with you that the conclusion to the Power Cosmic story would explain Jfff’s actions. Yes to the Black Panther. And absolutely yes to “This Man, this Monster.” Some consider this story to be the greatest single issue of all time. Even more amazing is it follows the Galactus Triology. (Not many know this, but GalactUs has a son named, EpicUs DoomUs.) Lee and Kirby were hitting on all cylinders. I believe the Galactus story ends before the end of the issue. Their publisher did not like the soap opera stories, so you begin to see more single issues. Bit takes some of the wind out of the sails of L&K.
2. I would enjoy your take on this next topic. Batiuk enjoys the more mature Flash stories. He likes Lee, Kirby, and Ditko. Why does he not emulate these strong writers. I grant you that writing 2 or 3 panels for 6 days, is different that writing a 22-32 page comic, but he should have mastered the technique by now. Has he done this for at least 30 years? Compare the lengthy arcs that Charles Schulz and Bill Watterson creates, even Berke Brethed. At this stage I will even include Doonesbury.
He’s competing at the same time with the best of all time, and judge the output. Sad.
SP:
Yes, indeed, the threat of Galactus ends early in *F.F.* #50, with about half of the story going to a variety of other matters (Reed’s readiness to explore the Negative Zone, which annoys his wife; Johnny Storm enrolling at Metro College and meeting Wyatt Wingfoot; Coach Sam Thorpe’s troubles with his prima donna star quarterback Whitey Mullins (that went nowhere…do you think Whitey crossed paths with Flash Thompson in Southeast Asia?); an anonymous scientist planning something evil (which we’ll see in the next issue); and the Thing feeling sorry for himself, yet in a way that’s rare for him: he’s not blaming Mr. Fantastic for his rocky state, and he can understand why Alicia Masters might prefer a “gleamin’ gladiator” like the Silver Surfer to a big gorilla like him. (Worry not, Ben! For Alicia, you’re the finest man who’ll ever live! Even if Norrin Radd talks like a poet!) For an example of Jack Kirby at his best, check out the panel in which the Invisible Girl (as she was then) asks the Thing if he can’t ever be serious about anything, and Ben replies that if he ever took anything seriously, he’d probably blow a gasket. We only see his back, but Kirby so poses him that we know what’s on his face, and that it must be pure pain.
“This Man — This Monster” is a story I can quote snatches of, and when Grant Morrison paid homage to it in a *Doom Patrol* story, I felt they’d (Morrison is nonbinary) missed part of its power: the Changeling becomes Ben Grimm, yes, but he becomes that because he sees how wrong he was about Reed Richards (“that’s the guy I spent years hatin’ — bein’ jealous of! I ain’t worth his little pinkie!”). Morrison’s false Robotman doesn’t experience such an epiphany about Niles Caulder.
Other DC writers, I suspect, would have the Changeling hurl Mr. Fantastic not back to safety but to the heart of the Negative Zone where he’d quickly perish, thinking: “I don’t have much time left, but at least I don’t have to hear any more of this hogwash before I go…”
Given the work Batiuk admires — and as he is an admirer of Neal Adams, who made “comix that give a damn” on *Green Lantern/Green Arrow* with Denny O’Neil in 1970-72 — it is surprising that he clings to his three-weeks-and-no-more method of storytelling, rather than letting things play out as they should (hmm, Segar had Popeye and Salty Bill Barnacle spend ten months on Plunder Island…and King saw that that his *Dark Tower* sequence would run three thousand pages…). Maybe he’s afraid that if he tried to create something he’d like people to genuflect before (go away, Darin and Pete) they would instead laugh at it, noting what he gets wrong about military attire, military policy or the way nations conduct their affairs.
Norman Mailer’s piece on the 1968 Democratic National Convention muses on the death of Robert Kennedy, and the appearance that the Kennedys gave: they seemed to be a little better than they should have been, thus giving the impression that the U.S.A. could be a lot better than it was. Maybe that’s what Batiuk would like to do, but perhaps his own knowledge of the form (Sydney Smith killed off Mary Gold in 1929…Will Eisner gave comics innovations we’re still catching up with…) he knows that he can’t do anything as significant or even as good. Thus, he talks a good game about his intentions and hopes no one finds this little gem from Mark Twain:
“To do good is noble. To tell others to do good is even nobler and much less trouble.”
L’amour s’en va comme cette eau courante
L’amour s’en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l’Espérance est violente…
“Maybe he’s afraid that if he tried to create something he’d like people to genuflect before…they would instead laugh at it”
Well, we’re gonna agree to disagree here. Anyone who doesn’t like Tom’s serious arcs are the ones he laughs at.
I think it didn’t start with Lisa’s Story, but with Lisa. The “teen pregnancy” arc, which was not a thing comic strips talked about in the mid-80s. My paper ran an article saying that “so many teachers have asked us to reprint that story, we’re offering it free to any educator or library that wants a copy.” I thought that was really cool!
Then what happens? Oh, it’s abuse and later date rape. Then cancer, then more cancer, all happening to the same character. Tom went overnight from “cartoonist” to “artiste.” What else did we get? POW for decades. TBI suicide. Alcoholism from Funky. More alcoholism, from Wally. Drunken car crash ripping an arm off. Afghan refugees who celebrate Xmas. Mr Saint Lisa’s husband marries a Black woman that he clearly has no feelings for. FREE OSCAR. Look, how many other “GIMME PULITZER!!” stories were there?I know I’m missing some.
Is he now going to settle for an Eisner Award for Most Sucking Up To Old Comics?
1. I loved the quote by Mark Twain.
2. I was in between 8th and 9th grade, when Mr. McCarthy won the Oregon primary. I went to bed too early for the results of the California primary. I woke up to my Mom and sister crying. 1968 was a horrible year. Then a friend and I slept outside on the patio during the Democratic National Convention. That night, we took a break and came inside. We watched Julian Bond nominated for vice president. Unfortunately, he was too young.
3. Lee and Kirby liked long arcs. One stretched from issue 38 to 43. The villains were for the most part, the Frightful Four. Yet Doctor Doom has a 2 issue story in the middle that has Daredevil and the Fantastic Four without their powers. The climax is Dr. Doom one on one with Ben Grim. Victory yet horrid results. The next 3 issues have spectacular covers. The best one is the Thing in combat with Mr. Fantastic. There are heavy stakes with great drama Someday, I will relate my favorite Hulk crossover from the same period. Have a great night.
Nous parlons de sujets limités, mais ils nous emmènent à l’infini.
Things were a little rough in the ELGLMCMS during the Pandemic, A.S., but the membership keeps humming along. Thanks for asking.
Myself, I would have opted for the two-part FF #25-26, where they team up with the Avengers to stop a rampaging Hulk from destroying Manhattan. It’s the second fight between Ol’ Jadejaws and the Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing, and contained some of Ben Grimm’s best one-liners (“Hey, leggo! That’s the hand I eat pizza with!”). I would talk about reading and re-reading the story in reprint form in FF Annual #4 back in 1966, but I’d be afraid an invisible homunculus of eight-year-old me will pop up.
JJ,
I see your invisible homunculus of eight-year-old you, and raise you a bumbershoot of a rug snufflin dog of me at 12.
Glad I was there for your insomnia, SP! And I hope that you and Mrs. SP have a fun time at the casino, (don’t bet the farm!) despite them not providing Lay-Z-Boy’s for their guests.
Wally’s first capture was during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, following 9-11. Batiuk, unfortunately, was lucky in setting Wally’s war experiences in conflicts where US soldiers were stationed for over 10 years. Makes his time jump futzing work a little better.
One important thing, when Batiuk did his ‘Time-Jumps’ he didn’t seem to actually move into the world’s future. Nor did he slide events into the past. Instead it was like the characters had lived ten whole years in a world that didn’t change politically/technologically/or in fashion.
I’m not even mad about it. I think it would have been worse to take things ten years into an imaginary future, and be wrong about everything from phones to trends.
Of course Batty even confuses the, ‘aged ten years in place’ thing, by having Dinkle reminisce about a very 2008 recession type crisis and George H.W. Bush, in SEPIA TONES with photo corners.
Fortunately,
My wife was invited to attend a food conference for nursing homes. So no gambling. I am not morally opposed to gambling, I just never had any money I could afford to lose. This is why I try to gamble with Be Ware of Eve Hill’s money, (when she isn’t looking!)
Now regarding your strips with Dinkle and Bush. They are funny. I liked them. When TB applies himself, he is good.
You remind me of Mr. bwoeh’s attitude towards gambling. He was born a Scot, who have a reputation for being frugal.
We’ve been skiing in Tahoe a few times because our friends had a timeshare there. On our first trip, we landed early in Reno and went sightseeing and visited a few casinos. I talked Mr. bwoeh into playing a nickel slot machine. Within minutes, he hit a $20 jackpot and immediately quit playing. When we left the casino, he never cashed out. He was still carrying the plastic bucket with $20+ worth of nickels.
Near Lake Tahoe, gambling is legal in Stateline, Nevada. At night, after a day of skiing, our friends, my husband, and I would venture to the casinos. During that first trip, Mr. bwoeh would stand behind me the entire time, watching me play. That couldn’t have been much fun but he was bound and determined to go home in the black ahead of the gambling establishments. He says he used the nickels in the vending machine at his workplace.
On a subsequent trip we found a little casino that had penny slots. That was more to Mr. bwoeh’s liking. He cashed out, down on his original $1 investment. He took the receipt the machine spit out to the cashier and took his 43¢. 😂🤣
I’m a little more adventurous and try most table games at least once. Mainly, I play the quarter slots. I figure if I spend $10 and it entertains me for a few hours, it’s worth it.
My friend played a $20 slot machine just to say she had done it. Her $20 lasted three pulls. It must be nice to be rich.
I worked as a shipping clerk. My boss was friends with a bookie. He had a deal that you pick 5 NFL winners for $5, you win $75. I tried it, and won 4 in a row. But like an idiot, I bet on the Monday night game. The agony of waiting for that 5th win. I was almost physically sick. On top of that I hadn’t told Mrs. SP. She could tell something was up. IT WAS JUST $5!!!! Finally, I spilled the beans. But that Monday night, there were a lot of hallelujahs.
Was Wally captive for 2 years, 10, or 20? I think I remember one of those pointless, utterly unexplained Time Jumps happening then. I know Crank was in the past–or was it the present? If set today, is Crank in 2013, or Funk in 2033? Why did he even do this? In a strip where the main characters have 25th or 50th high school reunions every 5 years?
Oh, right, sorry. It’s called lazy writing.
Wally was a POW for the second time skip, the one that lasted 10 years. (And the one that was done so that Batiuk wouldn’t have to occupy the comic with Les grieving for Dead Saint Lisa, even though the sorry sack of crap was STILL grieving for her after the time skip, and for the next TWENTY-TWO years.)
To further add to the confusion, even though Crankshaft didn’t have that time skip (when characters from Crankshaft would appear in Funky, they’d be 10 years older, and when Funky characters appeared in Crankshaft, they’d be 10 years younger), both strips were happening in the “present day”. (Further confused by that being about a year behind current events, thanks to Batiuk writing so far ahead of time.) (Hence the “elegant” solution of Westview being out of sync with the rest of the universe thanks to Timemop, even though every single person who lived in or near Westview, or ever traveled into or out of the town, somehow never noticed.)
We just don’t use the word “bumbershoot” enough anymore. What a great word.
Maxine,
1. It has been a total bumbershoot of a day, I best bring my umbrella.
2. Bummer, I totally bumbershooted that one.
3. “Hey, Garçon, bring me a whiskey and a bumbershoot chaser.” (Anonymous Sparrow would point out that I used an outdated French cliche.)
4. What would you have if you changed a light with 4 bumbershoots? You would have 4 extra bumbershoots.
5. A bumbershoot and a lady walked into a bar. She ordered both a dry martini. The bartender shouted, “Hey. We don’t serve your kind on dry martini days. This is a wet bar.”
That should catch us up for a month of Sunday’s for bumbershoot. Don’t dare me. Unfortunately, I have more where those came from. “Darn it! Where did I keep my bumbershoot? I hate it when I forget my leash!”
I would say he moved the past back ten years. Still looks like a mistake but i’ve been thinking about it (and Luann’s high school to college transition) and i would say: he should have done a jump but then maintained the time afterwards. The first time moved from high school to young adult; fine, no one likes college hijinks and you get a new cast. You move them around for a while until you get tired then bam, second jump, ten years ahead. He could have stuck with that new cast of Summer’s generation all the way to the end, instead of starting “I’m going to do real-time stories!” and running out of gas miles from the end.
I think this is what he decided to do with Crankshaft, if any part of that fiasco was a conscious decision.
Btw we always avoid politics but i’d completely forgotten this swipe at ol’ GWB. Was this really 2008? That’s much earlier than i would have expected TB to get to it! Nevertheless i do enjoy how the word “whole” in last panel is crushed to leave room for the senseless photo corners. Someone had an ‘oversight’ alright (it was the letterer).
Golden Bumbershoot?
Private Pinkerton’s name is Pinky, or Percy if you insist on being formal!
1. Golden bumbershoot, Batman. The Joker has riddled me a Penguin!
2. “Bumbershoots R Us, as I always say.”
3. To bumbershoot or not to bumbershoot, that is the question.
4. In a knife fight, bumbershoot him in the middle.
5. Bones says, “No, Spock. He means that he feels safer about your bumbershoots than most other people’s facts.
(TF Hackett thinking, “This is why, I kept this website open?”)
So much potential for a compelling, dramatic story-wasted. Since TB loves telling his story in flashback, he could have shown memories from Becky’s point of view about meeting Wally, their courtship and marriage, their being apart, how she ended up marrying John (because we really don’t know do we) courtship-anything to show how conflicted she surely would have been. But no, comic book nerd is the only one who matters.
I don’t know what it says about Jff’s mental state that his imaginary younger self went from a barely visible spectre to full color hallucination.
CBH-Excellent job on the Mystery Date salute. I had to look at it twice to realize it was a spoof! Incidentally, I had the 1970s version of the game. Not surprisingly, the Dud sort of resembled Les.
The Dud and Les comparison is very apt. And in Act I, all the girls at school tended to treat him like the dud.
My mom had her old copy of the game, the original from the 60’s, and she would pull it out for us to play on special occasions. The little door/card gimmick had frayed to the point that going for The Formal date was a complete bust.
In 1999, my sister got the version with THE PHONE. The one where Hollywood Superstar-to-be Chris Evans was one of the potential dates.
In 1999, my sister got the version with THE PHONE
Not the same game, but:
I don’t remember the later one with the phone, but a couple of years ago my young adult daughter brought home a game she won at a party called Catfished-which was some sort of Mystery Date spoof. I don’t think she ever played the game, as she’s old enough to have had some lousy luck with a couple of real life duds.
Looks like the commenters at the time were in Kübler-Ross’ first stage: Denial. I’m interested in seeing the posts from when they hit Stage Two.
And speaking of anger, I just read today’s “Crankshaft.” Sweet Freakin’ Christmas, Jff! Will you and your hideously grinning inner homunculus just shut the hell up?!
Have just been able to catch up on SOSF after a month and a half of family obligations (CBH, I bow to your tenacity, research skills, and clear writing). I see that I am in time to vent about the ham-fisted, tone-deaf and unbelievable story arc brought me to this site in the first place. There is absolutely nothing that any of the characters do or say that would remotely be the reaction of at least 90% of the human race. I felt the scales fall from my eyes and from that point on could no longer fail to see the total manipulation of characters to suit the author’s agenda that is the hallmark of this strip.
And as a capper, I see that the current Crankshaft arc features the obligatory San Diego ComiCon visit. Have regular Crankshaft readers been clued in to the existence of young Jff or are his sudden appearances and disappearances in this storyline a complete mystery to them?
Will a side trip to Los Angeles to revisit The Phantom Empire be forthcoming? Doesn’t Jff have to get a replacement rock? If memory serves he gave the one Old Jff got from the Queen to Mason.
And speaking of Mason, I’m guessing the imminent gala reopening of the Valentine with “Lisa’s Story” will mark the reintroduction of Les to the Crankshaft crew.
Time will tell.
If memory serves he gave the one Old Jff got from the Queen to Mason.
He gave it to Pmm:
Thanks. Somehow I had conjured up a re-gifting to Mason when the Valentine was sold.
It could have been both. Like how Montoni’s closed, sold all its stuff, and then was open again with a new fleet of cars.
Jff’s dumb inner child is a creation ported from Crankshaft over to Funky Winkerbean. I think he first showed up during the arc where Jff was staying with his mother after she had a fall.
But I don’t think he’s reappeared in Cranky since Rose died in 2016, and Jff went back to his childhood home to fetch him.
OMG, I thought “Les dances on New Years with imaginary Lisa 10 years after she’s cold in the grave, in front of the 2 hot women who are inexplicably drawn to his scenty musk” was weird. Yeah, just put your arms around this figment and talk out loud to it on your neighbor’s lawn, sure. But I do this in the grocery store with the ghost of Jeffery Dahmer and security gets called!
How…long has Tom lived in his freak bubble?
Quarter inch from my ass.
CBH,
Thanks. The tangled morass that comprises the FW/Crankshaft can be daunting. Glad that you and the SOSF community are there to guide us.
Without repeating my rant/thoughts from last time too much, one interesting thing about the double-dipping on “Wall-the-POW” as a story arc is the way Batiuk ends up writing an extraordinary circumstance, and turns it into something banal and personal, divorced from the real gravity of the situation. Setting up Wally as missing from the end of Act 2 and roughly 10+ years of time (already unique as far as how other sources have depicted the MO of the terrorist forces to publicly broadcast their POWs as opposed to keeping them secret), the length of time is treated as an afterthought, despite the logistics of the time-skip-tangled timeline and the degree of such a loss, something that would’ve certainly gotten massive attention and focus on Winkerbean and his family. Yet it’s presented as such a non issue that barely one person ends up meeting him at the airport in his home state and the narrative goes on to focus on the “lost” family and how he’s “forgotten by the system” by the heartless army and left destitute on his own.
Perhaps Batiuk would explain it as a perk of the “quarter-inch from reality” that greedy media doesn’t hound our characters like the vapid pests who fire Cindy for only having a handful of wrinkles despite her retaining the fountain of youth among the Act 1 cast (with Les’s “Anthony Ainley Master” look the 2nd runner up), but it’s a sort of streak that prevails his handling of big issues. Lisa’s Story famously added in the hospital-papers-snafu just for Hope Spot drama Mrs. Moore just had to roll over and die for, in spite of the serious malpractice it represented. That one Batton Comic guy that died revealed it was all a hoax to confront his old colleague in the middle of someone else’s award-receiving panel at SDCC, and it’s treated as a cool “plot twist” instead of the scandal that anyone faking their death usually gets. And the winner of Best Actress announces on live TV that she’s handing her trophy over to the bloke who wrote the memoir her film was based on and nobody in the press or Academy gives enough of a care to follow the handover or put their foot down on it. To say nothing of how many times, as shown here, people learn news directly from friends and others instead of agents and officials who legally have the duties of proper contact procedures.
The Funkyverse was built on a quirky quarter-inch representation of suburban Ohio high school where a computer organizes Star Trek conventions and a bus driver consecutively and mostly-unintentionally creates massive explosions with his crummy grilling skills, so yes, we never really were meant to expect realism as far as to how a world reacts to these weird things happening. But when it goes for its Pulizer-brownie-point endeavors for telling Very Special Episodes it keeps accidently going extremes that continually makes them hard pills to swallow when people are so ho-hum and ah-gee-whiz about them. And Wally is the butt of one of the biggest ones of all. wonder how often in his quite drunk nights he wondered how even was out for 10 years when it seems like he left in 2007 and returned in 2009.
And while I’m at it, while I’m a few days late to point it out following last Sunday’s Crankshaft, isn’t it rich that Mopey Pete somehow became one of the biggest writers in comics on the level of JMS or Bendis, got to write for Marvel and DC (including the latter’s most iconic character), work on a sci-fi character that ended up in feature films, then rides his riches to end up in an alleged indy-hit throwback to Silver Age pulp heroes, all while still being able to go to SDCC in cosplay without anyone noticing or caring who he is? At the least, could say something about how readers “really” felt about his work.
The Funkyverse was built on a quirky quarter-inch representation of suburban Ohio high school where a computer organizes Star Trek conventions and a bus driver consecutively and mostly-unintentionally creates massive explosions with his crummy grilling skills, so yes, we never really were meant to expect realism
To be fair to Batiuk, he said after the Les-takes-knocked-up-Lisa-to-Lamaze-classes arc, that the characters had grown up, and he couldn’t just go back to wacky hijinks anymore. Which would have been fine, if he’d actually done that. The strip was just as dependent on Act I tropes (e.g., Dinkle) while it was turning into Cancer Cancer Death Cancer and fishing for awards. FW became an off-putting tonal mismatch.
He isn’t alone in wanting to have his cake and eat it too. The comics page is littered with people who don’t see the absurdity inherent in a realistic, down-to-Earth show that’s totally off the wall and swarming with magic robots.
This all happened a little before I discovered SoSF (or just plain SF), but those names still ring out. But I remember how appalled I was upon reading such a blatant display of shameless, shameless melodrama, pathos and pandering. The way he chew-toyed the living shit out of Wally was just so cringe-worthy. And in the end, what was it for? Those God-awful PTSD arcs? Granted, the original Buddy arc was nice and all, but again, where did it go? Nowhere, that’s where. Wally came marching home, he hid in his room for a few years, went to community college for seven or eight years, and ended up slinging pies at Montoni’s. One can only imagine what he’s doing now, in his post-Montoni’s world. Shudder.
And now that I think about it, would it have killed Batiuk to do a 2022 arc where Funky and Tony pass Montoni’s on to Wally and company? If you recall, he just suddenly shut Montoni’s down with no explanation, which was odd and jarring. Didn’t Wally earn a shot to own and operate the old dump? I mean, Montoni’s was his entire life. But Batiuk couldn’t allow him a victory, I suppose, or he just wouldn’t be Wally.
I should have just done one long comment, but I’m way too easily distracted today. Anyhow, it’s one of those things that we say all the time yet somehow don’t say enough, that being the fact that this BatYam guy is one sick, twisted f*ck, who often seemed to have a weird, warped vendetta against his own creations. He spent decades just beating the hell out of Funky, Lisa, Bull, and a whole host of others.
But Wally REALLY took a beating. And you can’t help but wonder, why? It was just never enough. And to top it all off, he becomes a manager at Montoni’s right before the place closes down. I keep picturing him sitting alone in a dark room, his head in his hands, wondering why nothing ever seems to work out for him, while a menacing, malevolent Batiuk head floats above him, like Major Briggs in “Twin Peaks-The Return”.
That would have been nice, not only for Wally but also for Rachel. Probably much more so for Rachel, in my opinion.
Rachel waited tables at Montoni’s from the Clinton administration all the way to the end (well, she quit to go back to school a few years prior to the end… but then didn’t actually appear to have done that… sometimes). She watched numerous people with far less food service experience (including Wally) wind up as “managers” at Montoni’s, all while never getting to hold the title herself. Seriously, all of these folks who didn’t spend half the time at Montoni’s that Rachel did wound up as managers: Holly, Khahn, Durwood, Cory, Rocky, Adeela, Les (LES!!!). It still bothers me. Even marrying Wally didn’t get her a long overdue promotion.
Rachel spent more time at Montoni’s than anyone other than Funky or Tony (and as often as Tony was in Florida in Act III, she may have edged past him). Someone willing to do that must have an affinity for the place. She also married into the family that owns it, and met her husband while working there. Most of the closest friends we ever saw her have also worked there. Montoni’s should mean a lot to Rachel, perhaps more than to any character in the strip, and her and Wally settling down to run the place would have been a nice and well-earned capper for her. But TB never even seemed to consider this angle. Rachel, like nearly every woman in this strip, got reduced to a prop in Wally’s story… a story TB also got bored with.
BTS, I stand in line. A brillant take down of the treatment of Rachel Who Has No Last Name.
It really demonstrates how little he cared about his characters, and how little he cared about writing real stories. One little two-week arc where Funky and Tony pass the torch to Wally and Rachel would have been kind of nice, albeit pretty corny. But still, it would have given Wally a little redemption, and who earned it more than Wally did?
A quick comment about Jff’s appearance in this arc. He appears to have discovered Cindy’s fountain of youth. He is no longer sporting the white hair in his sideburns that he had when he stayed a Rose’s after her fall and encountered his child ghost-self and at her funeral. He also lacks the receding hairline that afflict Funky and Les (and that he exhibited in Act 3 Funky). Amazing for a man identified in the strip as being over 70.
This arc being the current Crankshaft.
While I won’t rule out Jff bathing in the blood of the innocent like Cindy, it’s probably just that the colorist wasn’t given a style guide that shows his proper hair coloring. (The receding hairline went the way of Decrepit Crankshaft; once Timemop allowed Westview to resync with the rest of the universe, all the appearances by Crankshaft characters in Act III Funky were retconned away, as if they never happened, or as if their writer just stopped caring.)
Well, everyone out there who predicted “Jff spends his SDCC time rebuying the Silver Age comics he just sold four months earlier or which his mom trashed years ago,” give yourself half a credit. Friday’s ‘Shaft shows him proudly marching up with an armload of hardcover “omnibus edition” reprints (which, at least, are cheaper than the originals). Oh, and now it appears that Lil’ Phantom Jff is somehow able to carry books for his adult self, too. Or are his copies supposed to be “Imaginary Omnibuses”?
Meanwhile, Mopey Pete and Min-dull are still dressed as the Maximoffs and wandering the convention floor. Funny, I could swear that they went out to San Diego as Atomik Komix staffers. I could swear that Pete is one of only three writers on the company’s payroll and scripts some of their (dare I say it?) biggest titles. I could swear that Mindy co-created the hit character Wayback Wendy. Shouldn’t the two of them be–oh, I don’t know–MANNING A FURSHLUGGINER AK BOOTH to draw attention to their Lilliputian label’s product? This is the second or third time Atomik has gone to San Diego, and Batiuk has yet to have them treat it as a business opportunity.
Your comment over on GC won’t be up for long. The crybabies have returned with their petty insults. Frankly they should be insulted by the strip itself but who knows what goes through people’s minds.
There’s a Rick and Morty episode where Rick assembles a heist crew. Why? Because he refuses to buy “guest” tickets to a heist convention, and you have to have a crew to buy the “professional” tickets. He does this and then dismisses the crew, because that was all he needed them for.
Atomik Komix is the exact opposite of this. They insist on buying the fan tickets and want nothing to do with being professionals, even though they’re supposed be important industry figures. They go to an industry convention for their own industry, and do nothing but run around in costumes squeeing like 12-year-old fanboys. Every. Single. Year.
And AK *should* have a fan base it needs to interact with. As much as the Sunday comic book covers suck, at least they’re evidence of real published material. But who does book signings and meets squeeing fans over and over? Les Moore and Lillian McKenzie. Whose works don’t lend themselves to that kind of fandom. Les is too fragile and incompetent to have ever written a word about his dead wife. And Lillian has never written anything but a book title: Murder In The Snowclone.
Earlier this year, Lillian was unable to write her own bio for the website Windy Mindy and the Doublemint twins constructed for her. Mindy complained that Lillian’s bio “read like a resume” and got Mopey Pete to write the bio for her.
The famous author had to get a comic book writer to write her bio for her. Some writer. Lame.
“You son of a b*tch! I’m in!”
On a side note: that’s one of my last favorite episodes. Meta-commentary on writing tropes is NOT what R&M does best.
Though if they only bought “fan” tickets (i.e., they’re there as attendees, not guests), there’s no way they could have brought Jff along, as that would require a third ticket. (Which would have sold out months ago, usually the day they go on sale.) (Whether professional guests can just bring people along I couldn’t say, especially since Jff has never done anything for Atomik Komix or in comics in general.)
Basically, they HAVE to be there as professionals in order for it to be even remotely plausible that they could bring Jff along, but they’re also doing absolutely nothing that would warrant them being there AS professionals.
It’s almost as if Batiuk doesn’t know how SDCC works. (Shocking, I know.)
I suppose, a la Batton Thomas, the personal nature of climate damage prevented Jeff from buying these Omnibus volumes at Komix Korner or online from Amazon (Hippolyta here? Or Themyscira?).
It does seem an awful long way to go, but then people used to walk a mile for a Camel.
I’m not generally one to toot my own horn… but I’m also rarely so prophetic.
What a blast from the past those old Stuck Funky posts are. I really do wish I could read O.B. Dan’s view on last year’s finale, and how that compared to his glorious vision for Funky Winkerbean‘s TGF (The Grand Finale).
Come to think of it…have we ever seen BJ6K and OB Dan in the same room together?
Krankenschaaften recap for the week ending 21 July:
Monday: Pete Rattabastardo’s height is retconned to 4-foot-11… Interesting that all those years working high-profile gigs in Hollywood and for the top comics publishers and being at the epicenter of sci-fi geekdom celebrity and making millions upon millions of dollars has managed to make Pete even **MORE** uncool than he was before, which is really saying something… Also, where’s the rest of the Atomikkk Komixxx Krew? And why is he in line with the unwashed masses instead of flaunting his usual VIP/Industry Sponsor badge and going through the VIP entrance? What happened to the private party flights on some rich guy’s Gulfstream?
Tuesday: Did this asshole really buy a $75 pass plus airfare ($550) and a three-night hotel stay ($1200) just to say aloud to nobody in particular that he used to own this or that comic as a kid??
Wednesday: And I used to collect baseball/football/basketball cards… Gave the entire collection away to a friend when I was 24 and never looked back — SO QUIT BITCHING ALREADY AND GROW THE HELL UP!
Thursday: Douchebag Alert… I do feel sorry for vendor bro since he’s probably heard “I HAVEN’T SEEN THIS COMIC ISSUE SINCE I WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD!!” about 10,000 times today.
Today: He knows that he didn’t have to fly all the way to Sandy Eggo just buy some hardcover comic anthologies, right?? Also, are Pete and the wifey in two of the absolute fucking WORST zero-effort homemade cosplay outfits in the history of forever? And who the hell are they supposed to be anyways, Captain Marvel and Scarlet Witch? And why has Pete been aged to look like Sam Waterston but naturally the wifey still looks like she’s 22?
Generic Blonde Woman is, indeed, supposed to be cosplaying as the Scarlet Witch, whereas Mopey Pete is supposed to be her brother, Quicksilver. It’s just that nobody bothered to inform the colorist for the dailies what Quicksilver’s costume actually looks like, so it’s colored in red and yellow instead of light blue and white. (The costumes were colored correctly in Sunday’s strip, at least.)
Someone forgot to explain what costumed PLAY is to our heroic colorist. He’s not supposed to color around trademarks but since he doesn’t know what’s going on, we get DC-ized Pietro.
Holy damn I completely skipped over last Sunday!
1. Antisocial geeks would usually never make such an open play for a woman; especially a woman walking with her man, but maybe Comic Book Store Guy assumed from their cosplay outfits that they were brother and sister??
2. Mindy isn’t “hot”. She’s not even “convention cosplay hot” and she wouldn’t even be “convention cosplay hot” at my little local rinky-dink small-time convention.
3. “Back off, Bluto?!” I fucking guarantee you that this is the first time in his 45 years on Earth that Pete Rattabastardo has ever formed his hand into a fist…
3a. But let’s be honest here — Pete secretly paid CBSG to do this so he could inflate his ballsack and make a big public show of pseudo-manliness, didn’t he?
“I just remember the times when the sun is shining, brother,” said Aimee Semple McPherson, and maybe dealers take comfort from this story.
Geoff Johns was writing Black Adam in, I believe, *JSA,* and felt he needed to get a handle on him in his Golden Age appearances.
So he went to a dealer and asked for Golden Age books featuring the character. The dealer handed him a copy of *Marvel Family* #1 and then went off to deal with other business.
When he came back to Johns, Johns asked:
“Is that all you have?”
And the dealer replied:
“That’s all there is.”
Johns didn’t know that Teth-Adam/Mighty Adam/Black Adam appeared only in that issue. The character wouldn’t be revived until 1977.
You beat me to the Omnibus purchase punch. I must learn to read through before posting. But I am a sputtering old fool who got no powers from Hamshaz, or Mazahs, or any other wizard called Great Sir…
7/22 CS:
“Yesss…Live in MY world, mortal! Let the madness devour you! Scream ‘SAN DIEGO!’ from the gurney you’re strapped to! Off to Bedside Madmanor we go!”
WHAT IS GOING ON
So, 15-20 years of Les not just imagining his very dead wife is alive, but dancing with and having loud public conversations with her invisible corpse, and now how many years of Jeff talking to the dread Homunculus as if it’s real? The one who can physically carry things? Why does Tom act like schizophrenic hallucinations are not just only normal, but apparently desirable? And no one thinks it’s not something he should have looked at under a lot of anti-psychotic meds?
Why is this presented as normal? Or even adorbs?!
I’m glad to see that Jim Henson’s Tyler Durden Babies got his copy of “G.A.R.F.I.E.L.D.!”
Since Batiuk is a doof, he’d probably turn into the Exploding Man from the anti-hate PSA Hate Hurts You if you were to tell him that Jeff is feeding us straight lines about how five seconds with him would seem like an eternity.
I’m really curious to know what long-time readers of Crankshaft make of the comics-related arcs. Based on a cursory look at the comments section of the GC site, it seems that they are stunned into silence.
I guess it could be the practice of what’s preached in not saying anything if you don’t have anything nice to say.
Every “Where’s Crankshaft?” post is an implicit statement of displeasure with those arcs, though. It’s too bad that the people who have direct control in answering that question have no interest in doing anything to prevent that question from being asked.
It’s just another week of Crankshaft Minus Crankshaft and TB gets paid. He couldn’t even bother following through with the item that Crankshaft last spoke about, regarding a “comic investment list” (which would have been fulfilled with Jffs collection before it was sold, right? hello? this thing on?). Two weeks about a comic con and all we get is some panels about cosplay and buying comics, the latter of which happens constantly, globally, outside of conventions. Awesome. What a great story. Glad he got to tell it. We’re all richer for it.
Rictus Homunculus is giving me some serious Popsicle Pete “NONE OF YOU ARE SAFE” vibes today.
I noticed that there was a comment from a CS stalwart who asked “Who is this kid?” Because Tom “John Darling/Butter Brinkel” of the endless exposition bombs never explained who the freak was.
When he loses this strip too, Bats will to be baffled as to why no one else loves what he loves. Then shake his fist at the unfeeling universe, yelling “BUT I’M RIGHT!”
I tried explaining it to them, but somehow my comments seem to mysteriously disappear by tea time.