I promise that someday soon you all will get an incredibly detailed, thoughtful, and well researched post on David Pace Wigransky.
It’s coming as soon as:
1.) Harvest stops being kinda insane.
2.) Crankshaft stops being absolutely batshit insane.
In the meantime, drone dropped munitions will have to tide you over!
(Also, notice the palm trees outside the window? Guess Funky and Holly retired to Florida. After spending a minor fortune, and days of work, moving Melinda Budd out of that state in 2019)
Son of Stuck Funky 
The Funky invasion begins with the Funkmaster himself making an appearance. And boy the comments section is on fire over there with lots of Cranky apologists weighing in. Funny that so many of them say that they like the strip but haven’t kept up with it, nor were they fans of Funky Winkerbean. Maybe Batty got some friends to come in and comment.
Man, if I wasn’t shadowbanned on GC…
I will brook no petty flamewars against defenders here. Discussion, and debate, yes. But NO PERSONAL ATTACKS.
We’re never gonna convince defenders that ‘haters’ are happy, well adjusted, humorous people who simply enjoy nitpicking if we act like a bunch of assholes. We’re never going teach them that art is not the kind of thing where, “if you don’t have anything nice to say…” applies, if we put them on the defensive.
We must, with love and respect and reason, teach everyone The Joys Of Hate.
I have no hatred of Batty, I just always found his writing bizarre and until I found this site, I thought I was the only one who felt this way. Why him? Well it’s the way he doubles down on his bad ideas, the way he props up his ego on his blog, the puff piece interviews, it is all humorous to me. But hatred, no..
I actually do harbor a legitimate hatred against that entire ecosystem. I honestly do, and I’ll own up to it. TB himself may or may not be a milquetoast person on an individual level, and I’ll never know first hand. But how he has managed to make a living writing what’s been overall an incredibly unhumorous and illogical comic strip with unlikable characters, and how there are people out there who defend his work on the basis that it has been allowed to exist all this time, and how TB and his supporters and puff pieces never call him out on his straight up unadulterated bullshit, makes me full blown angry every time. Every time.
I’ve said it before – it’s like I’m at the wrong end of some sort of massive psyop conspiracy where there’s a group of people out there who all have a secret clandestine task to act like TB’s work is good just to see how people will react, because I cannot believe how anyone can look at his work and have any kind of response above outright repulsion. TB himself, his supporters in comment sections, and his puff pieces all act like TB’s work is good, and it is not, and I will not be preached to over why my stating that it is not is wrong. I am not wrong about this.
Practically everyone else here has disclosed making some kind of artistic creation (if not still doing so now), yet none of us have been paid 50 years to make the kind of objectively awful garbage that Tom Batiuk has made in that time. Don’t tell me that it’s good when it’s not. Don’t tell me that I can’t say that it’s not good when I can show you exactly why it is not good.
I have no issue with you not liking him. The newspaper comics page is like university tenure, once in, you are free to wallow in your mediocrity if you so wish. Of course people like Watterson and Breathed never did that and that is why they got burned out and had to retire. But Batty’s time wasting method of telling a story allowed him to coast and accumulate a year’s worth of strips.
As for why nobody calls him out? I guess it is because most people don’t care about Batty and his strips. Certainly the people who interview him don’t care, heck one interviewer called him Todd!
Yeah some of the newspapers used his strips as fodder for writing articles about whatever serious topic Batty was pushing in Funky Winkerbean. In the main, nobody bought his books. His supposed triumph in bringing misery to the comics page has already been forgotten.
“Hate” is such a strong word. I’ll tell you that even though I doubt I’d want to be friends with TB in real life, I’d be legitimately sad if I found out he was very ill or had died. I think many of us would feel the same way. That’s not anything I could describe as “hate.”
I don’t even hate the work. If I did, I wouldn’t read it at all. I think it’s often laughably poor, and I like to make fun of it, but, again, that’s not hate.
I think some people just don’t recognize subtle gradations of emotion. There are a LOT of emotional states between love and hate.
Perhaps the commenters who call us “haters” enjoy the the strip so much for that very reason — their emotions are stunted and they can’t recognize any feelings more nuanced than “love” and “hate.”
The “Hate” is obvs not directed to ol’ TB, who I have a rotten little soft spot for. “Hate” as in hatred directed toward the comic itself. A strong hyperbole for the joys of mockery.
It’s weird. We’ve all seen toxic fandoms; the internet is notoriously full of them. The obvious solution is to just avoid them. I seldom read any comics’ comments on GoComics. They just don’t interest me. CK in its heyday had some lively convo, but GC comments, not so much.
Why do these TB fans feel compelled to read comments that infuriate them, just so they can snap, “if you don’t like it, don’t read it”?
Why can’t they recognize the irony?
Hope the harvest goes well! If it’s a bumper crop of zucchini, I plead that you not give us 2 weeks of strips wherein your sociopathic 107 year old father tries to give them away. We’ve been there! And remember the old farmers’ motto: “Harvest the Triffids before they start walkin’ and eatin’.”
And then tell us how you got banned? I’ve literally given up on my hope to get GC-banned, without actually saying something ban-able. Has anyone else been banned? I think that the lone comments moderator, Petey-like bags under his eyes from his endless job, reads the complaints about us, then laughs at how we’re really not the aggressors here, and goes back to trim arguments about Marvin lore. “NO, you FOOL! Today’s bowel movement wasn’t solid! If you don’t like hearing 40 years of baby poop jokes, then don’t read them!” Moderator sighs: “Oh gourd, now I have to do Luann.”
This one is my favorite from those defending CS:
“I was always taught that if you cannot say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. If that were the case, you would never talk at all.”
I love the ‘holier than thou’ approach she directed at our own Bill the Splut. (I added spaces. I hope THAT does not offend.😎) I believe she also tried once battling the sweetest, kindest, woman, whose strongest 4 letter word is ‘gosh’, the beloved Be Ware of Eve Hill. The best part is she finishes with her own insult to Bill. But that’s okay, because she brought up her morality training first.
DonkeyKong1 has never said anything positive, so I guess her sanctimonious advice doesn’t apply to herself. She was responding to my comment, “As to “animosity,” I’ve been accused of having no friends, being hated by my family, having no wife (?!), and of traumatizing a Cranker so badly that she could never forget it, despite her not being able to remember a single detail about it.” All said by her. She doesn’t remember what she says, a la Mr Bats.
Dear Bill the Splut (all the Splut, but none of the bts!),
ArcaMax comments cannot hold a candle to GC. You attract most of their ire. I do not get it. You comment directly on TB or the strip, and the attackers believe you are attacking them. They say they just want to enjoy the strip, so why read the comments in the first place? Nothing good can come from that plan.
I have even seen some that wonder why JJ O’Malley hasn’t commented. Then attack him the moment he does. Ire, my friend, ire. (I know I am using ire correctly, but have no clue what ire actually means.)
Sorial:
Her comments are…oddly specific. “I bet you’ve never been married!” is a very weird flex. I know CBH said no personal attacks–which is pretty much the go-to for GC commenters–but that sounds like it’s being said by a thrice-married person waiting for her third divorce to finalize. I think her insults are things about herself. Driven away her friends, her family going NC. Like that Matt Bors comic from 15 years ago:
CANDIDATE: “Hi, I’m running for Congress on an anti-porn, anti-‘Gay Agenda’ platform!”
VOTER: “Oh, can I see it?”
“My platform? Sure!”
“No…your collection of gay porn.”
I think if someone tries to stab you, you have the right to knock the machete from their hand. Notice how in every case the personal invective comes from the Crankers, and not us. Well, I suppose that if they had senses of humor, they wouldn’t read CS.
Perfection!
Ha! You should hear me when I bang my shin on the sharp corner of the coffee table. Mort Walker would run out of grawlixes. @#$%&!
—————
I can recall @DawnQuinn1 proudly boasting about accurately predicting something in a comic strip (not Crankshaft). The comic strip has been in reruns for years. The particular strip was published more than five years ago. Someone sarcastically replied, “Figured it out all by yourself, did ya? We’re proud of ya.”
Some acquaintances in South Carolina would use the phrase “Aw, bless her heart” in the most patronizing manner.
Despite me, and you Eve, and JJ, being her Most Mortal of Enemies, because…I have no idea. The first time I heard of her was the first time I’d heard of her. But, you know, I caused all that”trauma” she can’t remember.
I ain’t poking that bear no more. As I literally was told “Sit down and Shut up” yesterday by another of them, the Shakespearian sonnet height of Cranker comment, this is now my response to these autoreply comments:
“Woof woof woof, my name is Rags!”
It’s from–yeah, um, eww Woody Allen’s “Sleeper”. If you have not seen it, Rags is a very cute robot dog who instantly becomes more hateful than Poochie. “Woof woof woof, my name is Rags!” is all it says. I would buy one, if it could only program it to say “IF YOU DONUT LIKE KOMIX STRIPE, THAN DONUT READ–!”
I’ll see how long I can keep doing this. I’ll stop when they go “…Hey…Whut”
I wouldn’t list myself in the same category as you, and J.J.
Doctor Quinn, Medicine WomanDawn Quinn, Negative Woman has never replied to me directly or even mentioned my name.She most likely read my comment and wondered in her inimitable way, “Who is this? Why are they attacking me? What have I done to make them hate me?” She then made a cup of herbal tea and took a nap.
And I haven’t commented on “Crankshaft” in… 11 days?
It’s kind of bizarre. I snarked on Funky Winkerbean for almost five years, but the sight of Mopey Pete and Montoni’s drove me away from reading “Crankshaft”.
Where do I turn in my snarkers badge?
Glad to see the story arc from hell is over. I was terrorizing my friends and coworkers by grabbing them by the lapels and shouting in their faces, “IS IT SAFE?! CAN I START READING CRANKSHAFT AGAIN?!”
“Sit down and shut up”? Bill, do you type your comments standing up? 🤔
Yeah, not exactly Shakespeare. I can imagine them angrily hammering their keyboards as they hunt and peck for the right characters. Faces contorted with anger.
I haven’t seen Sleeper in years. Here’s Rags.
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
But they would be the sweetest, kindest grawlixes ever heard: aromatic as a flower, and comforting as a meadow.
Bill the Splut was correct. Just the other day, GC had 50 or more comments on Crankshaft. Half like Bill commented on the strip. The other half called the first half names, and demanded that they be nicer, just like them.
What does “the other half” want? A comment free comments section?
No. They want comments that magnify their opinion. Barring that, they want to read comments that lack any criticism at all. They have a mindset that any negative thoughts upset their day. I notice that GC has a like button. I could not find a dislike button. Maybe I am not looking hard enough. I do not post on anything other than SOSF. BWOEH, I know that here you never get downvotes, (bless your little heart!) but coming from someone that gets lots of downvotes, (he is such a martyr!) the folks at GC could not hang with that pressure. It would overwhelm them. I can’t imagine that Dawn of the Dead 💀 surviving such an onslaught of negativity. (By the way, I loved “ DawnQuinn Negative Woman!)
Funky: THANK GOD I PULLED MY FAT ASS OUTTA THE VOID WHERE I WAS SENT AFTER THAT STUPID FUCKING SPIRES PREFORMANCE IN 2022!
Wally: Not so fast, Funky. Timemop is here to bring you back into the void.
Funky: WHAT!?!?!
Eve: What does “the other half” want? A comment free comments section?
Yes.
Hey, anyone remember that “Free Speech Absolutist” who bought A Big Social Media Site, and his first act was to ban anyone who said they didn’t like him?
Him: “You have the freedom of speech…To say how much you love me.”
Yes, we have freedom of speech. But that doesn’t mean I have to agree with you. That doesn’t even mean I have to even listen to you. The Crankers have no valid arguments for the strip, so this is all they do: yell “Sit Down and Shut Up.”
Sorry, CBH, but: These people are fucking morons.
I got a big kick out of Doonesbury on Sunday. Especially the last panel. Well played Alex.
Killing off the nice twitter birds with a solitary “X”? How in the hell was that a good decision?
Comic Book Harriet wrote:It’s coming as soon as:
2.) Crankshaft stops being absolutely batshit insane.
Wow. The Son Of Stuck Funky community is sorry to see you go, Harriet. But we congratulate you on your apparent retirement from long-form posting!
I’d say today’s strip (November 5) is less “batshit insane” and more “batshit inane”.
How very odd that both author and defenders think alike. It is as if they do not understand that we are not obliged to agree with every stupid thing the man does. They whine that he tries; they do not admit he should try harder!
That being said, the Winkervasion will not be complete until Dick Facey makes the scene whining about how much he hates dealing with the public.
I was going to call it the Crankschluss but I thought that went too far.
I hereby formally petition that Saturday, Nov 4 (a day that will live in infamy) be officially named the Crankschluss (Crankschluß if you’re a stickler; Krankenschluss if you’re Hitorque.)
Anschluss is a perfectly cromulent word that just means unification or joining. The additional historical associations just make it more apt, not less.
All in favor say “aye.”
Herr Tom: “Westview needs lebensraum! Today Crankshaft–Tomorrow, MARVIN!!”
Ein Funk!
Ein Crank!
Ein Lisa!
What is with that 3rd panel? Does Funky have “Pizza Monster” on Google alerts? (Good luck; the phrase turns up 171,000 hits)
I imagine that Bats has heard of these new-fangled drones and streaming, so, research done!
All things considered its impressive that Funky himself managed to reappear in Crankshaft before Les did (albeit premited by the damn Lisa movie)
Actually, I think Les showed up at Lillian’s bookstore, long before the FW balloon phlughed out its last phlugh.
I hope I’m not posting too much, but I find this highly relevant to our interests: <a href="https://www.cracked.com/article_40100_garfield-minus-garfield-the-man-who-popularized-the-most-famous-garfield-meme-is-still-at-it.htmlCracked interviews the Garfield Minus Garfield guy.
GOURDDAMMIT!!
I don’t “hate” BatYam at all. In fact, I’ve remarked many times that he seems like a decent enough lug, despite his obvious and visible dullness. But I’ll never forgive him for ruining FW. I used to unironically like it, then he put it through his (at the time) brand new Batiukinator, and all of a sudden it was a maudlin, tedious, trite, predictable and really stupid piece of shit. And I’ve carried a grudge over that ever since. And I’ll never, ever let it go.
The dopey little stories he began to write after his big tonal shift weren’t just dull, predictable, stupid, boring and lame. I would posit that his “dramatic” writing was, without a doubt, the worst storytelling that occurred in the world during that span. THE WORLD. It was so inept that it often defied belief, to a point where I seriously believed he was just f*cking with everyone. I’m still not 100% sure either way.
I’ve gone through phases on TB and his work. Obviously, there was a time when I enjoyed the strip (it ended shortly after the middle of Act II), which gave way to a brief period of indifference and then puzzlement as the Lis-apocalypse approached. I was puzzled by the subject matter, I was puzzled by TB’s approach to it, and I was puzzled by the acclaim his puzzling story was getting (at this time I still considered Crankshaft genuinely funny, so what did I know, really?).
That puzzlement gave way to a genuine disdain (hate? at times my attitude approached that, sure) as TB grandstanded endlessly about Lisa’s Story, relentlessly attacking strawmen in his strip and in the press. And the conclusion of Act II and beginning of Act III further fueled that disdain because the strip became actively off-putting, as TB channeled his self-importance further and further into Les. It was this disdain that brought me to the original Stuck Funky and then initially kept me here, the infamous cease-and-desist cementing my disdain… or so I thought.
But sometime around 2015-2016 or so that disdain began to morph into the morbid fascination I hold for TB and his work today. The whole existence of Funky Winkerbean became this bizarre thing to study, to try and fail to figure what makes it tick, an excuse to come to this site and have fellowship over the mocking of this disintegrating piece of serial fiction being published in a dying medium… using an endless stream of slang terms (Lefty, Durwood, DSH, etc.) coined specifically by and for the small group of people here holding the strip’s faults and flabergastings up for criticism.
This is close to my opinion. I think you had to like Funky Winkerbean before you could hate it. I can even remember the exact strip that turned me against it (which will be the subject of a full post someday). It was way before you’d think.
I too have a morbid fascination with what FW turned into, and why it was allowed to keep existing anyway. It’s awful, and sometimes offensive, in ways that are hard to quantify. It’s an interesting challenge to write about. Hence my “TBTropes” series, which is an attempt to capture the unique qualities of the Funkyverse.
Do i hate Tom Batiuk? No. I’m just not a hateful person, believe it or not. And to the extent i am, I don’t waste my energy on hating things i can’t change. I think he’s an awful human being, but i also think he has an untreated condition. (His recent blog post about being the kind of person who sorts leaves by color has only cemented this assessment.)
I don’t hate TB. I regard him as a sad, pathetic man who is desperate to be as highly regarded by others as he regards himself. He peed on his talent to chase awards and in the end, he has a handful of nothing.
His characters, on the other hand…I absolutely loathe them, particularly his favorites.
Oh, lord, not Skip again.
I’m probably in a minority of one, but by my lights smug Commie Skip has the most punchable face in all of the Crankerbeaniverse. Yes, more punchable even than Dick Facey’s own eminently fist-inviting smirk.
Speaking of “hate,” I’d be ever so happy if Skip lost the rest of his limbs one by one. Hey, Bats! You know, you might get some awards if you did an arc about double — er, triple — uh, make that quadruple amputees!
Maybe
Why wasn’t this Crankshaft reading the paper? At least that would have counted as Ed appearing in his own strip. Tom Batiuk doesn’t even pretend to give a shit anymore.
Your Grease:
Perhaps Skip should engage King Arthur in mortal combat.
I doubt if he’ll succeed any better than the “Holy Grail’s” Black Knight, but as in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases, so for Mr. Rawlings are all injuries “flesh wounds.”
And he’ll bite you to death!
Ah. The other problem I have with Batiuk: he has some idea of who we do not like and doesn’t understand WHY. Instead of quietly dropping a character that’s ill-conceived or annoying, Batiuk doubles down on including him because he won’t be bullied.
Yeah, Batiuk seems like a case of Oppositional Defiant Disorder. You tell him he needs to outgrow his comic books, and he’ll devote his entire life and career to them, and still hate you long after you’re dead.
Maybe this is why no one has ever bothered trying to edit him. He’ll just double down on whatever he’s told not to do.
Back in the day, they called it being a spoiled brat.
That’s exactly what Jim Davis did in Garfield. He introduced Odie and Lyman at the same time. Readers liked Odie. They didn’t care for Lyman, and he got dropped.
He got a lot of mileage out of making the man vanish. At one point, he implied that Lyman was chained up in a basement.
No, I’m in your corner on that one. Skip is absolutely vile. And apparently he’s added to his crime spree by selling shares of the hijacked newspaper. And I’m guessing nobody’s showing up to arrest or sue him this week, both of which he richly deserves.
I’m guessing he’s going to stand around all week and congratulate himself for being such a publishing success, and for doing the right thing by the “returning” the newspaper to its “rightful owners.” What a sociopath.
Perhaps Skip will show up at the Montoni’s Grand Reopening and pay for his pizza with another sock full of pennies.
I think Dick Facey is far less deserving of a simple punching and more deserving of a brutal beating
He’s named Skip, not Bob!
Apologies in advance. Your comment reminded me of a couple of riddles that are in incredibly poor taste.
Q: What do you call a swimmer with no arms or legs?
A: Bob.
Q: What do you call a water skier with no arms or legs?
A: Skip.
I have no idea where that “maybe” came from. I’d swear I never typed it. WordPress moves in mysterious ways, its wonders to perform.
The problem I have with Batiuk is that he isn’t what you’d really call a big picture thinker and tends to view a problem in simplistic terms. Climate change is climate damage because it makes it harder for him to live HIS life. As we’ll see this week, local news is being killed by computer people and not the hedge fund managers who buy up newspapers to gut them and thus game the system.
Welp, the Montoni’s Party is over, now we’re getting more journalist Skip or other miscellaneous Crankshaftland stories. A “fine” demonstration of Batiuk’s understanding of nonlinear storytelling, as one of his Facebook posts explained recently.
Back to anticipating the next DSH John update, I suppose.
So Funky can afford a place on the beach in Florida–and my guess is with that palm tree, he is not hanging out on 30 A in the Panhandle or the northern part of the Sunshine State. Funky had money? Who knew?