I often speak about improv, and this is a question they teach performers to ask themselves in a scene. Especially in long-form, where actors need to construct a long scene, rather than the short games we’ve all seen on Whose Line Is It Anyway.
I think the most potent example of this concept is Monty Python’s famous “Argument Clinic” scene.
This whole hilarious scene starts with a simple idea: imagine a business where you could hire someone to argue with you. If this is true, what else is true? How much would it cost? What kind of person would work there? What would a session be like? What other services would they offer? Would it be legal? The scenario gives every character a clear role, they play their roles straightforwardly, and the funny just writes itself. This scene could have arisen out of pure improv.
We subconsciously ask ourselves “if this is true, what else is true?” all the time. Or at least, we recognize when something isn’t true, relative to what we know. When we say a story “doesn’t ring true”, it probably violated this principle. Something happened that isn’t consistent with what were led to believe, but isn’t there intentionally either.
Because you can set up expectations, and then break them. The witch scene in Life of Brian Holy Grail is an example of this. It sets the speaker up as a learned man trying to educate the villagers out of their absurd superstitions. But it turns out, he’s just practicing a different kind of illogic than they are. In the end, even the non-witch is convinced she’s a witch.
Consistency is an expectation. Much of comedy and storytelling is about raising expectations, and often breaking them. Monty Python did this all the time. But this can happen for more mundane reasons. A broken expectation can show that a character isn’t what they claim to be; can mislead the viewer, especially in a murder mystery; power a twist ending; foreshadow something; to happen just because it’s funny.
Let’s play “if this is true, what else is true” with the recent Comic-Con trip we’ve been talking about:
Let’s start with the obvious:
- Jeff has severe mommy issues. This is a huge, overarching theme in Funky Winkerbean that is never addressed, and probably deserves a deep dive of its own. For purposes of this discussion, we’ll be more mundane. If Jeff needs Pam’s permission to go to Comic-Con, what else is true?
- Pam’s concerned about Jeff going on trips after he should have died in Bronson Canyon. This gets into timeline questions, because that trip happened in Funky Winkerbean and this is Crankshaft, where they’re supposedly younger. In any event, it’s not brought up, so we can pretend this hasn’t happened yet.
- Married people don’t go on solo trips without their spouse knowing about it. Okay, but why is this being shown at all? It’s a banal, reasonable conversation that’s not relevant to the story.
- There’s more to the story than we’re being shown. Jeff’s need for this permission has some importance we’ll discover later. You only spend time on banal conversations like this if it becomes relevant to something. Like if Jeff was secretly up to no good, and Pam was suspicious of it. This turned out not to be true.
- Pam disapproves of Jeff’s comic book hobby. This is obviously what’s being implied. But 18 days later, this happens:
How can both these things be true? Pam can’t be that opposed to Jeff’s comic book hobby, if she’s willing to go to the comic book store with him. And, right after he returned from Comic-Con with a bunch of new omnibus editions! So excessiveness can’t be an issue either.
Stories need internal consistency. Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft have zero of it. Characters spend weeks fretting over things that aren’t shown to be problems at any other time. Jeff needs Pam’s permission to go buy comic books, and is worried about getting it. But Pam is never shown having the tiniest actual opposition to it. Compare this to other comic strips, where characters’ objections to things are well-known, or are so self-evident they don’t need to be explained. Lucy hates Linus’ security blanket, and it’s a common flash point for their confrontations. And still, Charles Schulz usually gave her a line like “I hate that blanket” for the benefit of anyone who might be new to the Peanuts world.
The Funkyverse doesn’t honor the storytelling points it raises. But it doesn’t subvert them either. That second strip isn’t a subversion. It looks like something that would happen after Pam gives comic books a try and realizes they’re a wonderful thing. It looks like the end of Green Eggs and Ham. Look at it without the words:
From the facial expressions and body language, you’d think something totally different is happening here! Which is another way the Funkyverse contradicts its own reality. Characters either don’t react to major trauma, or are psychotically happy about pizza and comic books. It’s Dull Surprise and World of Ham at the same time. In a world Tom Batiuk constantly declares is realistic.
Most of what went on in Act III could be described as legitimate story points that were raised and never addressed again. Or, artificial story points that characters moped about far beyond their actual importance. Just off the top of my head:
- Montoni’s going out of business… Funky just dropped this bombshell one Thursday morning. It was so blasé, I didn’t even believe it at the time. Meanwhile:
- …Funky was having no monetary problems. Within the last year we saw him pay for expensive house renovations, Holly’s ankle injuries, and his own eye surgery, never once raising any concerns about costs. And about that ankle injury:
- Holly’s mother Melinda bullied her into a serious injury… It was Melinda’s idea that Holly do this dumb “alumni flag girl show” or whatever it was.
- …and it was never brought up again. The story spent weeks showing how much pain Holly was in and how slowly her leg healed. But it never occurred to anyone that the injury was entirely caused by Melinda’s very bad idea that a 60-something woman try to do an athletic performance designed for a teenaged girl. Despite Funky and Melinda not being the best of friends already, and “obnoxious mother in law” being the kind of tired 1950s trope the strip ran on.
- Les Moore’ endless need to “protect Lisa”. This was the supposed aim of all those trips to Hollywood that Les supposedly hated so much.
- …from nothing. This was long after the Lust for Lisa episode, and the entire town was bending over backwards to give Les what he wanted. Whatever that even was. Then, after the Point Dume fire, he never even returned to the filming. But we all know what reward he got for it anyway.
If this is true in the Funkyverse, what else is true? Everything and nothing.
Son of Stuck Funky 
His mind appears to have been warped by reading comic books. Back in the day, it was just pap fed to dumb little boys who couldn’t wrap their brains around the idea of “If this is true, what else is true?” Not having to think through the broader implications didn’t matter when he was doing gag-a-day downbeat whimsy. Here, he has to fend off a question that angers him: “Why does Les care so much?”
Ironically, the characters were so much more consistent in the gag-a-day years. Crazy Harry was never soberly thoughtful. Les was never a popular jock. Cindy was never an overlooked, unattractive schlub.
It was only when he went to “1/4 inch from reality” that all realism went out the window, straight to Cape Canaveral to board a rocket where it was shot into the sun.
Now, I’m picturing Scotty telling him “the characters cannae take the strain.”
The really weird thing was that he went to a serialized format, but frequently ignored the same chronological character development he himself created. Like with Les and Bull. They explained it and they buried the hatchet and worked together for decades. Then Bull died and suddenly Les couldn’t let it go. Decades of character development, gone in an instant. So why’d he do it at all?
The de-evolution of Les and Bull’s relationship in nearly the whole of Act III was insane. In late Act II they were practically pals, Les being all supportive of Bull and Linda’s adoption efforts and Bull organizing the football team to move Les and Lisa’s stuff or to give blood in light of Lisa’s cancer. And then Bull opened Act III directing the Lisa’s Legacy run while Les and Summer were in New York…
And then it happened. Les got all weird about Bull teaching Summer how to drive at school, then he got all weird about Bull helping Summer rehab her knee. Bull stopped showing up for the Lisa runs.
Then we came back and Bull and Les reminisced about the time Bull pretended to beat the piss out of Les in a janitor’s closet to “take care of him”. They played tennis together, Bull got a case of the CTE and Les was all wistful about him as a friend.
And then back again, Les never once visited Bull after he retired (even freaking football-hating DINKLE visited him) and made Bull’s funeral all about himself and the Lisa movie movie he was endlessly apprehensive about. Les visited Linda AFTER Bull died and “learned” that Bull silently admired him or something, even going back to high school.
Les and Bull’s relationship was some of TB’s sloppiest and laziest work in Act III, it would have an argument for the worst if it was more infuriating.
First it was inconsistent, then it got weird, and it ended on a GHASTLY note. Remember Bull’s WHS farewell night, when Batiuk spent the week featuring Les and Funky making snarky remarks? He has ice water in those felt-tips.
Beady-eyed nitpick: The witch scene is from Holy Grail.
I’ll correct it. Thanks.
Even our nitpickers have nitpickers. And we all just accept it. Like those massage circles as a team building exercise, but with fact checking.
I love this place.
Maybe it’s my journalism background, but I endeavor to get things right, and I appreciate corrections. (As much as I hate making mistakes.)
I detest Batiuk’s attitude that pointing out his mistakes is some kind of personality flaw on my part. Anyone who can’t accept ever being wrong, and becomes hostile at the mere suggestion, is not a good person.
It’s part of that “commitment to the idea of lifelong learning.” You know, the idea that Puffy heard about, but “never followed the thought any further than that.”
(NB: That first sentence should really be “commitment to lifelong learning,” but who’s nitpicking?)
Seriously, I don’t like getting facts (or language) wrong either, BJr6K, and I don’t know how I, or anyone, is supposed to learn without correction. It seems fundamental.
What’s more, I’m 100% certain that if you were being paid a handsome sum to write a few dozen words a week, you would have made the effort to double- and triple-check the source of the Monty Python witch scene. Especially if you had 11 months of lead time to do so.
There are truly different standards when you’re being paid to write, and signing your real name to both your work and your hefty paychecks. It’s remarkable how high-level the writing and discourse here are — far, far more intelligent and intelligible (and grammatical) than Puff Batty’s blog. And even more remarkable when you realize that no one’s getting paid, and there’s no expectation of refinement or professionalism. But we all aim for our best anyway. Unlike some I could name.
Well Batty says this:
While technical facts are important, it’s the human aspect that drives the story. I don’t feel that any human experience is really inaccessible if you’re willing to honestly make the effort to look inside for the for the emotions that drive us all. I tend to think of it as a compassionate artifice which allows an artist to identify and empathize and tap into the core elements that define us as human. We all carry within us the seeds for growth, as well as the seeds of our own destruction.
https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/behind-the-books-book-25/
He then admits “My Name is Funky” failed to sell many copies, but not because he wrote a story that didn’t resonate, no, it was because Lisa’s Story was so good.
If I wanted to become a writer I would heed BJ’s advice and use Batty’s work as a model for what not to do.
(Batiuk says) While technical facts are important, it’s the human aspect that drives the story.
And if Batiuk actually practiced that, I wouldn’t have written this post. The lack of any “human aspect” in Funky Winkerbean is precisely the problem with it. Almost no one has any real traits. They are assigned for arcs, after which they are removed, ignored. or contradicted. Real “human aspects” don’t vanish like this.
(Batiuk says) I don’t feel that any human experience is really inaccessible if you’re willing to honestly make the effort to look inside for the for the emotions that drive us all.
I’m sure that’s what Batiuk thinks he’s doing. The problem is that his idea of “the emotions that drive us all” is pretty different than most people’s. When he approaches this concept, he instantly turns away from it.
Example: childhood nostalgia. We might all have some common memories about our own childhood passions. But that’s not the story Batiuk tells, is it? In his world, nostalgia is something to be carefully policed and enforced, to make sure everyone’s doing it the same way he is – the correct way. Nobody makes less effort to understand others than he does.
Yes, I agree 100%.
And technical facts are important in storytelling. Sorry, Bats, they just ARE. We exist in a world of facts. Human brains don’t exist in a nebulous void. We live in the physical world.
Imagine any great work of drama. Say, King Lear. He’s getting old and doubting his own faculties. Or is he? Actually, in Act II, Scene 1, he’s fit as a fiddle and swinging from the chandelier! But in Act II, Scene 2, he fears he may be losing his mind.
Fortunately, his daughters Regan and Goneril support him. Er, Regina and Gandalf. Goneril. What was her name? How many daughters were there? Wait — he was a duke, right? King? King, Duke, whatever. What’s the difference? The important thing is THE EMOTIONS THAT DRIVE US ALL, even a caveman character like King Ug, leader of Neanderthal tribe, and his 2 daughters Rug and Glug. Wait, 3 daughters. 3 sons? Was there a third daughter?
ANYway, as he was saying, only idiots are concerned with these boring technical facts instead of the important thing — the EMOTIONS that drive us all!
Sorry for replying to myself, but: No facts, no stakes.
IRL, if I’m behind on my mortgage, and foreclosure is looming, yeah, that’s gonna take a huge toll on THE EMOTIONS THAT DRIVE US ALL.
Why? Because IRL, I know that mortgages don’t just disappear and get forgotten about. I know that defaults don’t just get waved away into the cornfield. I know that if I lose my house, I will be responsible for finding another place to live, and that will be made harder by the fact that the mortgage default wrecked my credit rating. Etc etc. Every fact ripples out to affect other facts. I feel the strain, I have to make sure my family will be OK, I have to make hard decisions without knowing how they’ll turn out or whether I’m taking the right path.
In Funkywinkerworld, there are no stakes. Financial problems will either vanish inexplicably or be dispelled when some rare comic, perhaps 1948’s Deus Ex Machina #1 in Gem Mint Condition, pops out of someone’s attic to save the day.
And FW’s readers don’t feel or identify with THE EMOTIONS THAT DRIVE US ALL, because without any stakes, there isn’t anything to stir those emotions.
Batiuk’s whole “beady eyed nitpickers” thing is all just a strawman. It’s his lame attempt to disregard his critics as being trivia-obsessed nerds, when we’re pointing out legitimate storytelling problems. The lack of realistic feel is what held back Lisa’s Story and My Name Is Funky from having the impact Batiuk thinks they deserve. He really should have listened to his critics more. Or listened to anyone at all, really.
Yep. Even when Lisa died, the stakes were ridiculously muted, since TB skipped over the hard parts, including the first year — the first Christmas without Lisa, her first “birthday in Heaven,” etc. Then the Mother’s Day cards Summer’s first-grade teacher had the class make, and the tears because everyone has a mommy but Summer. And on and on, all the specific, absolutely gutting details about losing someone you love.
All we were left with was a nebulous blob of an eternal college student (?) who we never saw missing her mom, and a perma-grieving, pouty Les. No emotional stakes at all.
I can’t imagine what ten years of Les’ selfish, inept parenting would have done to a young girl. Summer would have fit right into the cast of Girl Interrupted.
Batiuk doesn’t just weave through minefields, as Harriet put it the other day. He neutralizes them. That 10-year time skip not only eliminated all the possible drama of Lisa’s death; it let Summer grow up without Les having to make a drop of effort. He didn’t have to become a single parent, or even move past Lisa’s death.
Batiuk’s editors let him have a gigantic Easy button, and he pushed it every time he wrote himself into anything mildly interesting.
Yep, I thought Batty’s post was the perfect example of what you were talking about.
This refusal to understand that if one thing happens, other things must happen even if that gets in the way of his idea of what should happen seems to have come about in direct response to mean people who lie about bull pens telling him to get his s*** together!
This refusal to understand that if one thing happens, other things must happen even if that gets in the way of his idea of what should happen
That’s a great way of putting it. Batiuk’s stories just bulldoze straight on to where he wants them to go, no matter how little sense it makes.
First of all, let me treat you to a round of virtual tumultuous applause, BJr6K. It’s nice to see you in the captain’s chair again, and with such a well-thought-out, well-reasoned, well-written entry too. And on a topic that is both relevant and dear to my heart.
I know you and I have often discussed improv scenework in the comments. The “rules” of improv scenework are just expedient, condensed versions of the eternal rules of storytelling.
One of my improv teachers had certain phrases he used to sidecoach, and I’ve so often wanted to shout them to Batiuk, especially:
— RAISE THE STAKES!
When players instinctively tried to back down from conflict or danger:
— GET IN TROUBLE!
And, whenever people started talking about what they should do, might do, could do, or would do:
— DO IT!
Another precept that is so obvious to the audience, but not to the players, is:
The audience sees everything, hears everything, and remembers everything.
That means that if someone mimes putting down a glass on an implied table, then later walks through that space obliviously, the audience will notice. The audience will hate it.
If a name changes, or a premise is dropped, the players may be too preoccupied to remember, but the audience remembers.
Batiuk has such contempt for his audience, and ultimately for his own universe, that he breaks his own established rules, tears down his own creation, then throws a tantrum when his audience gets salty because they put in the effort to suspend disbelief and got swindled.
While my other post is locked in moderation —
LEROY! THE MOP!
I can’t help but get all angried up again about the Montoni’s closure.
First, it was sadistically abrupt for anyone who was a nonironic reader and had grown up with the characters who practically lived in Montoni’s. Not even a hail and farewell — just “hey, shitcanning the whole Montoni’s thing, YAY, pack up and get out, the end.”
But the worst part was Funky’s attitude. This is the guy who waxed philosophical that his half-a-block-wide store on Madison Ave in Midtown Manhattan selling sub-Domino’s pizza somehow didn’t set the city’s culinary world on fire. He took it hard, remember?
This is the guy who acted like his cataract surgery was being performed by Dr Mengele and assisted by the Nazi dentist from “Marathon Man.” This is the guy who took up a whole AA meeting grieving his “last Sony Discman in existence” and its demise in a treadmill accident.
This is a guy who, when he counts his blessings, never gets up to whole numbers. A permanent Eeyore. Yet he was not only abrupt, but downright jolly when he closed up Montoni’s due to impending (or actual?) financial failure. His life’s work — the gathering place for all his friends, from high school to late middle age — 50 years of marriages, of joy and grief, of community — and he has no reaction but to smile and say, “Yep, closing. Bye!” And Les and the rest don’t seem to care either.
If Batiuk had just printed a beautifully inked and colored sideways strip of a middle finger, he couldn’t have delivered a more thorough FU to anyone who’d ever believed in Funky as a real person and Montoni’s as a real place.
Absolutely right, and it’s great example of Funkyverse characters having no reaction to life-altering traumas. The closure of the main social hub can be crippling to a small town. To say nothing of the many people who depended upon it for income. And it was just glossed over as irrelevant. Then Batiuk brought Montoni’s and all the employees back with no explanation, so they could have new cars to drive to Dinkle’s Christmas Messiah. Appalling.
It could have been a week long celebration that tied up the ending of FW. Heck, Lynn Johnston for all her faults ended her strip nicely.
It’s a great example of Batiuk’s complete disregard for consistency. In his AA stand-up routine, Funky says that, due to the pandemic, Montoni’s was so busy that he had to make delivery runs himself. But then the pandemic cut into his “thin-crust profit margins” so much that he had to close. Which is it, Tom? Because even if his profit margins were minimal, the increased volume of sales should have made a significant difference, not driven them out of business faster. (It also raises the question of how bad Montoni’s pizza must be to be driven out of business due to the pandemic, given that they’re apparently the only pizza place in town. They could have sold cardboard covered in ketchup and Cheez Whiz and still have gotten more orders than they could keep up with.)
And not only did Funky seem delighted at this turn of events, so did Tony. Not only was Montoni’s the culmination of Tony’s life’s work, it was also the culmination of his father’s. The place where Tony practically grew up, the place that bears his family name, is closing after… I’m gonna guess maybe 80 years, give or take? And he couldn’t look happier. (And given that we can only conclude the closing was due to Funky’s managerial incompetence, you’d think he’d have a few choice words for Funky, but… nope. Couldn’t be happier.) (But then maybe Tony was just happy to be alive again after his Force Ghost made that appearance the previous year. Has Batiuk’s complete disregard for consistency been mentioned yet?)
(Meanwhile, the closing of Montoni’s raises plenty of questions that will forever go unanswered. What happens to Montoni’s employees? Wally, Rachel, Adeela, and anyone else who might have been working there? Did they all just get jobs at the high school or the Komix Korner, the only other two employers in town? (There used to be the post office, of course, but, y’know… USA! USA!) And speaking of the Komix Korner, who is Dead Skunk Head paying rent to now? Did he buy the whole building in Montoni’s liquidation sale? Or is he just taking up space hoping no one notices that someone’s using the location and utilities and not paying for them?) (And for that matter, weren’t Wally and Rachel living in the apartment over Montoni’s? Were they out of both jobs and their home?)
(But, y’know, none of this was important enough to cover while the strip was ending. Not when we could see a bunch of imbeciles driving in a blizzard to see a terrible concert, or during the epilogue when instead of knowing what happened to everyone, we got Lisa 2.0 shilling Tom’s book. Totally worth it.)
(Okay, done ranting for now, sorry about that.)
That last two months of FW have to go down as the worst comic strip ending I’ve ever seen, with the possible exception of A3G.
Don’t forget The Toxic Taco! One of Westview’s finer dining establishments.
This is a detail, but it’s a detail that gets on my nerves — Flunky said “I’m afraid the pandemic just wiped out [sic] thin-crust profit margin.”
What the actual fuçk. Even disregarding the missing word(?), what is a “thin-crust profit margin”? It should properly be defined as a profit margin on thin-crust pizzas (vs other kinds). But it’s gibberish here. And if Montoni’s profit margins were as thin as their pizza crust, they’d be making more money than the Medellín Cartel. The crusts at Luigi’s are as thick as a hardback edition of “Infinite Jest.”
(In fact, that was one of the reasons the NYC expansion was so stupid. The NYC style actually is thin-crust, the opposite of Montoni’s/Luigi’s.)
Put all of the above together and there’s just no way to extract an ounce of sense from Funky’s dialogue, which is terrible because this is such an important event in-universe that it deserves attention. And it’s doubly terrible because it’s clear that TB thinks he’s clever and has once again hit it out of the park.
I think TB wrote “thin profit margin” and then thought (if I can use that word) that it would be “funny” if he turned “thin” into “thin-crust” because pizza, therefore funny.
Batiuk is far more concerned about being clever than he is about making a drop of sense. He thought up “thin crust profit margins” and liked it, so it went straight into the strip without ever thinking about what it meant.
Honestly, Montoni’s in New York could actually make sense. Yes, the NY style is thin-crust, but a deep-dish alternative has the potential to attract customers looking for something “different”. (I mean, Pizzeria Uno or whatever they’re called nowadays has been doing the “Chicago-style pizza” thing, so it’s not an unreasonable thing to attempt.)
But, of course, the pizza actually has to be good, which the Montoni’s franchise under Funky canonically wasn’t.
In my opinion, neither is Luigi’s pizza, so at least he got that part right.
There is a pizza shop in Fairlawn ( near Akron) that is branch of their Brooklyn location. The niece of the guy who owns the Brooklyn shop is the owner. I don’t really care for NY style pizza but their food is great and she is a hoot. Highly recommended. (I typically get a pasta dish and bring my own wine as they have no liquor license.).
https://www.mrgspizzaandwings.com/our-story
Any kind of food in New York makes sense, if it’s good. It’s a world-class city of sophisticated people, who aren’t averse to new or different experiences. The real problem with Montoni’s is that it’s crap. And New Yorkers would quickly identify it as crap.
I have a strong soft spot for pizzas and pizzarias, even if I’m picky about my preferences and don’t get them all too often (there’s a big kitschy appeal to me related to some childhood media I follow), and Montoni’s was always interesting to me in that respect, and combined with it being based on a real restaurant I can actually go to was extra fun (and made it amusing to see how much bigger and detailed/active Luigi’s is when Monotoni’s keeps showing its one room as if it was a small pub). With it being the focal point for crowd scenes and the one thing Funky’s lift revolved around outside of old man blues and a son who got offscreen reformed by some army drill sergeant, it was persistently the most interesting thing to me, and especially more amusing than Les and his yellow shirt sucking in all the attention and Oscars.
Batiuk at least had a habit of making Funky suck at management and supposedly having his restaurant struggling to make ends meet, so the end wasn’t quite unexpected (even if we’ve never followed up on it being a small pizza empire with having other franchises other than the New York debacle), but the ultimate problem was that Montoni’s was an afterthought, not even given greater context out of Funky moping about never-berfore-seen Covid stressors. One of the longest legacies of the strip outside of the characters and high school, and it’s merely the start of the end of people wistfully going “aw, memories” before the more “important” stuff of the great Timemop retcon, everyone hyping up a fucking church choir as worth brazing a blizzard over, and then 6 days of Funkyverse Jetsons literally ending the series with that damn Lisa book. And how the heck did those “delivery cars with new snow tires” work into things?!
If anyone got the John Darling treatment with the end of the strip, it was Montoni’s. It was a long, slow death where the illustrators forgot about its extra dining rooms and fancy murals, where what was supposedly a franchise was reduced to one shop in a town full of comic nerds, and something that in-universe had an extensive history got shafted for the supposed importance of a woman who I couldn’t even recognize anymore because she got redesigned off-panel without fanfare.
BTW, BJr6K, I think “mommy issues” could actually be the Ur-Deep Dive of the Funkyverse. The question is: Who will bell the cat? Who among the hosts/guest hosts has the stomach to dive deep into the Freudian morass — the eternal Id of comic books clashing with the eternal Superego of the disapproving mommy?
I have no idea how I’d tackle that without also getting into Batiuk’s own mommy issues.
It’s on my radar…for Rose and Jeff at least.
So last week i managed to tour parts of Ohio and see, as i once suggested would be part of a Funky themed tour, a Toledo Mud Hens game. It’s pretty nice! I suspect TB picked them for their silly-sounding name (rather than the Columbus Clippers, or the lower-league Akron Rubber Ducks… but i digress) but the team is taken seriously enough by it’s fans, the crowd was friendly, the stadium tidy (a little older) and seats were close to the action. Nice time all around. Unfortunately i was unable to tour some Akron or Medina hotspots or even hit up Luigi’s again, but one step at a time.
As i thought about it a little i realized one part of Crankshaft’s sudden Comic Book focus that’s particularly galling is that Crankshaft already had an obsession–baseball! The theme of it was so strong that the Crankshaft movie proposal supposedly used it to weave a coherent story out of his life. Now, which interest has a wider audience? Which one is more appropriate to a story about an elderly man and his middle-aged family? Instead of contrived trips to Hollywood and SDCC we could have Crankshaft going with the family to ballgames, Crankshaft trying to get his son-in-law and grandkids excited about it…
TB may have been an early ‘nerd culture’ guy but jumping on this over the last couple of years really made him sound like a johnny-come-lately to the MCU. I mean he doesn’t have to go crazy like the legacy strips do about golf, but I would definitely have him lean into this theme if i had my druthers.
I think Batty chose Toledo because he passed through there visiting his relatives in Livonia, Michigan.
A lot of what you’re describing was some of the better stuff the Cranky strip dealt with before it became FW lite, (now with even more Jff and Lillian!) Jeff and Cranky attending professional baseball games was one of the few interests they shared.
There was a very early arc where Cranky is discouraged with Max’s lack of talent or interest in actually playing baseball. And we had a pretty cute single strip where he was pitching to baby Mitch. I’d love it if they returned to that, now that they left Mitch in water and he grew three sizes overnight. But that would probably require more original art than the AI/Intern generated strip can make these days.
That’s exactly the sort of thing i a) expected, b) appreciate and c) would find in-character and believable. A shame they got ‘tired’ of that doing that angle. You’ll notice hunting, buying and reading comics is a pretty solitary experience, while going to a game can be group or family oriented. The sense of isolation in the strip now is stifling!
OT, but it just occurred to me. Mitch and Max. Mix and Match.
I never noticed that, but it figures considering the names of the Murdoch kids. Max and Mindy.
Oh, that Tom Batiuk, he is so witty. 🙄
I lived near Toledo in the early 80s and my then-girlfriend and I were regulars at Mud Hen games–you’re right, it’s a nice stadium and experience
Minor league baseball is awesome. A lot of cities have fancy new or upgraded parks with a lot of amenities. And you can get in for $7. As a child, I got to see Randy Johnson, Tim Raines, Vladimir Guerrero, and Larry Walker before they became major leaguers. My local team also hosted Andre Dawson and Gary Carter, but that was before my time.
I really want to see a Savannah Bananas game. But that’s a whole other post.
Savannah Bananas are fantastic. Just saw them in Massachusetts.https://www.boston.com/sports/sports-news/2023/08/17/savannah-bananas-brockton-game/
#14 is awesome. The best rule of Bananaball is “any catch made by a fan is an out”. A fan made a wicked awesome catch to get Doug Flutie out of an inning. Yes, that Doug Flutie, the 1980s Boston College and NFL quarterback. The Bananas put him into a live game as a relief pitcher. They’ve also used Bill “Spaceman” Lee, who is older than Tom Batiuk. And a pitcher who’s 11 feet tall because he’s on stilts. These guys are entertaining as hell.
I tried to see a Bananas game earlier this summer, but the rain hit hard and ended up delaying the game for an hour. Though we had some coats and an umbrella we didn’t really feel willing to withstand the downpour for so long and ended up leaving.
That’s the sort of thing Funky and Crankshaft probably would’ve gotten a decent week of punchlines out of if they wanted to still be funny. Plenty of humor in having to deal with a downpour, as Schultz and Watterson have both demonstrated.
Oh, hell, back in Act I, one of the Dinkle tropes was forcing the high school band to march in torrential downpours, and it was amusing. It seemed to ring true to people who’d known band leaders like him.
So yes, once upon a time, Bats could get a decent week of punchlines out of rain.
I dunno, the facial expressions in that Crankshaft strip seem to match the dialogue pretty well, I thought.
(I’m sure someone else can do a much better job than I did, but… it was just one of those things that had to be done, y’know?)
LOVE IT!
“From the facial expressions and body language, you’d think something totally different is happening here!”
This happened more and more often as Act III trudged along. Sometimes, the “on-screen” action didn’t really match the dialog at all, which made you wonder what the original plan was, and why he changed it, if he in fact did so. If not, it was just sheer ineptitude, I suppose.
“Sometimes, the “on-screen” action didn’t really match the dialog at all, which made you wonder what the original plan was, and why he changed it, if he in fact did so.”
It’s long been my contention that the artwork was created a year in advance, with TB basically telling his staff, “I’ve got a story set in Montoni’s with Funky and Crazy, so give me a week of that.”
When the time rolled around to fill in the dialogue, TB had completely forgotten what the story was and had to wring something out before the deadline, so we got First Thought-Best Thought.
If he can’t even remember his characters’ names, what are the chances he can remember a story he thought of months ago?
This is pretty much what I assumed happened in those instances. He just forgot, then filled in his word balloons with whatever.
Perhaps relevant to your interests:
“No one has ever accepted and returned an Oscar”
https://www.avclub.com/sandra-bullock-doesnt-need-to-give-her-oscar-back-1850743924
That thing wasn’t a quarter-inch from real life. It wasn’t even an Earth-Moon distance.
Crank, all week, punchlines only:
8/13: Seed packets, with unexplained homunculus
8/14: “Pun” that no one has heard since 1985.
8/15: Punny pineapple joke! that no one has ever wanted to hear
8/16: Crank smiles, like a badly nursed baby with gas. Surely this will set-up a pay off!
8/17: Credit card call! No, it does not pay off. It’s called Chekov’s Gun, Bats! Look it up!
8/18: “Whichever blond lady you are, we’re abandoning your Gramps in the part of the forest where the starving bears are!” SMIRKS
Gather ye rosebuds, kids, but I think Tom might have been told “If we wanted Funky, we woulda PAID for Funky! No more Lisa’s Story! Make Crank a GAG a DAY!” And Tom did his best Lisa’s Story pout. And wrote…whatever these punchlines are.
Maybe this strip will be gone by 12/31/23. And, given the last week of FW–he’s gonna burn it all down on the way out.
Lookin’ forward to it, buddy!
Climate Damage? I thought that was Westview slang, not Centerville slang.
“Oh, not in Utica, no; it’s an Albany expression.”
It’s a regional dialect…. Upstate New York.
Well, I’m from Utica and I’ve never heard anyone use the phrase “climate damage”.
Oh, not in Utica, no. It’s more of an Albany expression.
I love “ steamed hambs “
I got that reference.
Steamed hams are not an upstate NY thing. That’s actually a CT thing! No, really, there are 2 restaurants that make them.
https://www.tastingtable.com/1186615/the-storied-history-of-steamed-cheeseburgers-in-connecticut/
From what I’ve heard, super tasty and moist, with little fat, and don’t taste like Krustyburgers.
I haven’t been there. It’s a 45 minute drive, and if you don’t you live in teeny-tiny New England, to us that’s like driving to the damn Moon.
(Friend from CA: “Your state is smaller than my county!”)
Thanks for the link. They sound delicious.
I think there are certain comedies where you don’t have to follow through with the “If this is true, what else is true?” Any Zucker brothers movie, for example. Relying on stupidly zany sight gags and wild punchlines, once the scene cut away it was usually safe to ignore any questions the punchline raised.
Why is a Nazi some kind of pottery homunclulus? Are all Nazi’s pottery creations? How is he alive? Doesn’t matter. In a Zucker type movie it’s understood that certain jokes go leaping out of the actual storyline itself.
There are other hilarious stories that take, “If this is true, what else is true?” to amazing heights. Where something you THINK will be a throw away gag, is taken again and again to crazier and crazier places by doubling down on the crazy being TRUE.
In Act I, and some of Act II, Batiuk was firmly in Zucker territory, and that was fine. But no one ever told him that just ignoring everything you’re establishing doesn’t work with serious drama.
Because it should be obvious.
I would call the Zucker Brothers oeuvre a subversion of expectations, not a complete disregarding of them. The point was to resemble a serious story, so the wackiness would hit harder. The genius move was hiring mostly non-funny people to do the funny stuff in Airplane. And holy cow, did it work.
That, and buying the rights to Zero Hour! and then making only minor changes to the plot.
Yeah, for those who didn’t know: Airplane! is technically a remake. The ZAZ guys would record random things overnight for inspiration, and one night they happened to record an old movie called Zero Hour!, about Ted Stryker, a fighter pilot with PTSD, who gets on a commercial flight to keep his wife from leaving him. But disaster strikes when everyone onboard the plane who ordered the fish for dinner comes down with food poisoning, including the flight crew. So Ted has to overcome his trauma to land the plane, under the guidance of his former commanding officer with whom he shares mutual antipathy.
They outright bought the rights to remake Zero Hour!, and kept a lot of the script intact. (“Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking” was an actual line from Zero Hour!, though references to drinking, popping amphetamines, and sniffing glue were added for Airplane!.) (In Zero Hour!, they were flying in a DC-4, as the movie was from 1957. Hence why, despite Airplane! being set on a 707, it uses the sound of prop engines instead of jet engines as background sound. An attention to detail that probably 95% of the audience would never even notice.) (Yes, I had to look up what types of planes were used in each film. Why do I do this? We may never know.)
But, yes, hiring serious, dramatic actors (Peter Graves, Robert Stack, Leslie Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges) to read the serious, dramatic script in a serious, dramatic way helped make it one of the funniest movies ever made. 40+ years on, and people still quote the movie, whereas Funky Winkerbean is a random reference in The Simpsons.
Yes, Leslie Nielsen really was a serious dramatic actor before Airplane. People don’t know that now, because that movie redefined him as a comedy superstar.
I remember watching an old episode of 70s cop show Streets of San Francisco. Nielsen was cast as a mean, bitter, dishonest, alcoholic ex-cop. His acting was fine, but all i could think was… when does he walk into an open manhole? I couldn’t take him seriously anymore. Even in a grim, decidedly unfunny story.
I also live near a bar that likes to show old movies, and one day they had Forbidden Planet on. Despite its 1950s cheesiness and poor special effects, it’s a classic, and it starred Nielsen in a hunky proto-Captain Kirk role. Some bar patrons said he looked familiar but couldn’t quite piece together who he was. I took great pleasure in telling him that his name definitely wasn’t Shirley.
One of my sons is a big fan of “Forbidden Planet,” having watched it with me when he was 5. Only last year — 20 years later — did he finally realize that the star was the same guy who was in “The Naked Gun.”
He has good taste in movies, even if he’s a bit oblivious.
Anyway, here’s a video for anyone interested in seeing just how closely “Airplane!” follows “Zero Hour!”
Leslie Nielsen played an outright villain (though clearly having the time of his life) in “Creepshow.” That was a post-Airplane role, though.
Top Secret! is built on “but this doesn’t make any sense”, starting with the very setting. It’s explicitly set in East Germany, yet it’s being run by the Nazis who are opposed by the French Resistance, which makes no sense whatsoever. (It’d be like setting a story in 1980, yet having a Defender arcade machine around and a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 on a spinner rack. Ludicrous.) But, y’know, the sheer nonsensical nature of everything in the film is a strength, because you never know what the creators are going to pull. (Man, those early ZAZ movies were genius.)
I’m a big fan of Ruthless People, which i think is the most underrated comedy of the 80s. It’s not a zany spoof like most ZAZ movies, but a dark, complicated farce. It also suffers from being extremely dated, with its references to spandex miniskirts. But it is viciously funny. It’s a great comedy to watch if you’re in a “the entire human race sucks” mood.
so not really relevant to anything, but I live in a vaguely vacationy area and the new(?) pastel-rainbowy Ohio plates keep throwing off our license plate game. The weird thing is in a weird coincidence each one we’ve seen says it’s from Medina, a place I’d never have heard of but for this site.
I doubt it’s Batiuk though, as I feel like it would be too far for him to travel. I mistakenly thought he had managed to get to actual Chautauqua the other day, but no, he only managed to get to the Chautauqua of Ohio
CS 8/19:
Was somebody here recently talking about Jeff/Tom’s Mommy issues? Because, that last panel…Well, you kids today are too young, but in MY day, the 1999s, we’d say
“VOMIT”
So sue me, today’s Crankshaft got a chuckle outta me. Pam’s dead-eyed, world weary expression in that last panel is what sells it.
I’m not a fan of every time Batiuk fishes humor from the Lame Pun Reaction well, but I’ll admit it worked on me this time.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LamePunReaction