Hey! Remember when Act III was mainly about Les Moore’s struggles as the single parent of a precocious teenage daughter? Well, then, go visit “The Komix Thoughts” right now and check out BatYam’s ad for “The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume 3”, which drops on January 2nd, just in time for the holidays! He thoughtfully included a few holiday themed “teaser strips” in that post (just go there yourself, I don’t feel like linking to it) featuring Summer’s stunning election to the sophomore Winter Court, and going shopping for dresses with her bearded simp of a father. Those strips really took me back, and likewise reminded me that maybe getting away from Summer wasn’t Batty’s worst idea ever.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Certainly is a throwback, seeing Les’s “awkward dad” habits on display and actually being recognized as an issue. And of course Ghost Lisa advisory, as of course we’ve learned is canonically a thing even if Les doesn’t ever fully realize it (thinking she’s just filling birdfeeders rather than stopping his death by plane).
And of course Crankshaft’s going to finally be interesting again as Batiuk insists that Mopey Pete is a “modestly successful” writer who will set up a good family life by barely just sustaining himself running a pizzaria as a better alternative than riding out declining comic work to using his Hollywood contacts for more industry gigs. Bro must have wasted his Starbucks Jones paychecks on an Action Comics #1 copy or something.
I think Les’s incapability of letting Lisa go caused Lisa to not pass on into the afterlife
I think once Les realizes it, he’s probably gonna kill himself
That would be a Twilight Zone-like twist. Les’ needless obsession with protecting long-dead Lisa turns out to be exactly what she needs protection from. Would be a nice commentary on selfish, misguided do-gooders who don’t care if their efforts help anyone or even harm them, as long as you notice they’re “helping.”
Huh. From the perspective of someone who never read the strip until the last few years, the strips posted on the Batiuk blog entry are … a different kind of bad. Not really so much GACK!-How-does-this-even-get-published bad, as it is MEH-why-would-anyone-bother-to-follow-this bad. Although the Sunday strip is actually mildly funny and even self-aware, as it invites us to laugh at Les’ smug jerkishness.
Summer being the anti-Les was an early Act III running gag. She was popular in school and good at sports, thus making Les’ already perilous single fatherhood journey even more fraught with irony and peril. The Universe just kept toying with him, like a cat killing a bug.
But alas, it was all way too much for TomBan to keep up with, so eventually he just more or less ignored Summer (until the lamentable end) and focused more on ninety-year-old comic book artists instead. It was considerably, uh, “slower paced”, let’s say, and required a lot less, you know, imagination, continuity and stuff like that. But for a while there, Summer was front and center all the freaking time.
Well, I suppose it was a reasonable idea in theory — focus on the next generation, and have some fun with them defying our expectations because they’re NOT like their parents.It does not surprise me in the least that Batiuk screwed up the execution of that idea.
In his interviews, Batiuk is weirdly subdued about Les. He never talks about Les, and interviewers never ask him about Les. It’s all Lisa Lisa Lisa, even though the storytelling focus of her death was almost entirely on Les and what he did in response.
Your comment hints as to why. He introduced a character that was the anti-Les… and readers liked it. It was the kind of wry, ironic, the-universe-hates-me humor the strip used to be good at. It was a harsh statement on Act I Les: Summer had a successful high school life by inherting as few of his genes as possible. (Not that Lisa’s were much better, but TB had already reinvented her into a lawyer.)
I think Batiuk couldn’t deal with that. He couldn’t deal with Les not being the hero. He couldn’t deal with any joke being at Les’ expense, not matter how harmless or how truthful it was. So he did what he always does in life: he retreated into his comic books. The last decade of FW was all Phil Holt and Flash Freeman and Starbuck Jones, while Summer came out only for “changing my major again” jokes.
Funky Winkerbean‘s last act was turning Summer back into Les. She wrote a book, even though that was completly contrary to her established personality. And of course, the book was so good it literally redefined what it means to be human. And attracted the attention of multidimensional time travelers. Because Les’ genes were good after all.
It’s almost a redemption arc.
The phrase solo car date hints broadly at something people would have suspected: a dumb bastard like Les would be a hapless fuck up as a father. Rather than realize that his hero is too stupid to live, we had to pivot to comics and movies.
Les would be much worse than a hapless fuck up. He’d be downright toxic. He would have driven Summer into a mental institution.
Also, we have to deal with something else: Ed was never told that Tony sold Montoni’s to Funky. If you were to ask him what happened last year, he’d tell you that Tony finally retired…..because, having never actually allowed high school kids on his bus, he has no idea who Funky Winkerbean is.
And there’s more to deal with than that: We know from Funky’s history of renting out that upstairs apartment and the basement that the restaurant owner owned the whole building. It’s telling that the real estate market in Westview is so soft that, even after a year, a beloved location hasn’t sold.
The question is: Will TB ignore the fact that the restaurant comes with the entire rest of the building, OR will he use that (vacant?) space to install Centervillians into Westview, advancing the progress of Crankshaft into FW Act IV? Isn’t Komix Korner still renting space there?
I vote for ignore. TB is proud of his ability to just rewrite history whenever he feels like it.
How do you solve a problem like Tom Batiuk? Oh, that’s easy.
Fire him.
Batiuk and people like him are supposed to be providing entertainment, not ruminating endlessly about their hobbies that nobody else on earth cares about. Batiuk’s comic book covers, and his relentless shilling. McEldowney’s tiresome kinks. Rex Morgan and its “roots country.” Pluggers and its inability to write its own jokes. Whatever the fuck 6 Chix and Gil Thorp and Gasoline Alley and Judge Parker are about. All the undead legacy strips that stopped making sense in the 1960s, and should have ended then: Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois, Crock, Dennis The Menace, Blondie. All the snotty, condescending boomer strips that shouldn’t have survived Y2K, led by the aforementioned Pluggers.
I’ve come to realize that the entire comics page suffers from the same problems the Funkyverse has. The problems manifest themselves differently, but they live at the same intersection of self-interest, editorial indifference, and lack of talent. And like the Funkyverse, some of these things used to be good.
I have wondered about this for years. How, exactly, does Tom Batiuk help anyone turn a profit? And not just him, but all the other comic strip creators who keep cranking out the most culturally irrelevant crap imaginable. How is it profitable? How does it generate income? How can someone collect paychecks for DECADES by writing stuff that no one reads, and most people have never even heard of? I mean, imagine a band who started out in the early 70s, and still had a recording contract despite having a miniscule fan base. It’s impossible, no?
I wonder this a lot. It seems like a lot of things are in a speculative bubble and cost waaaaaaaay more than they’re worth. Low-end housing is unaffordable to working people, because rich people are buying it in hopes it will get even more expensive. How is Shohei Ohtani worth half a billion dollars, no matter how many World Series he helps you win?
As for Funky Winkerbean and crap like it: I saw that Crankshaft got added to some newspaper because it won a reader poll. It got 45 votes. I remember such polls when I was a kid in the 80s, and at the time they got thousands of votes.
Such reader polls miss the bigger point: nobody cares about the comics page anymore. The few people that do have an outsized influence on what remains there. You want to know the other new strip that newspaper added? Beetle Bailey.
Didn’t mean to step on your toes with my Wigransky post my dear captain, ED! With the stupid CrankerBean universe getting so dumb with Montoni’s nonsense, I imagine we’ll all have a lot to talk about this week.
No worries CBH, spur of the moment. His blog is even slower-paced than FW was, so you can’t really plan ahead. My favorite part of his latest post was how “Volume 3” goes on sale on January 2nd. Everyone will have used Aunt Helga’s gift card by then. Perhaps he’s marketing it to the Eastern Orthodox community or something.