Some of you were wondering about Tuesday’s Crankshaft strip.
And yeah, this is a reference to an old Funky Winkerbean arc from 1996.
Boy, what a great arc. And by great I mean terrible. But terrible in that old school early Act II way that gets me feeling nostalgic. The bribes and favor asking at the highest echelons of power. The one armed newspaperman Skip, and Cindy the hot young reporter getting the media on side.
The Westview Nepotism Mafia is truly an ancient institution.
Son of Stuck Funky 
It’s vaguely terrible, but you can at least see that there’s a sense of story here. There’s a crisis; our heroes swing into action; there are various attempts to fix the problem before a definitive solution is found; and there’s a denouement that wraps it all up.
Sure, almost all the story’s specifics are very, very stupid. But there’s at least a recognizable framework that indicates the author has read a story at some point in his life, and is trying to work within that format.
And was this really a week-and-a-half arc? I mean, if so, it least it moved along. Or did you tactfully omit a week-and-a-half of strips where a mailman delivered the letter; Tony received the letter; Tony put down the letter; the letter sat on a table for a while; Les noticed the letter; Les asked Tony about the letter; Tony decided to pick up the letter; Les noticed the letter had a return address; Tony decided to open the letter….
TB’s gross misunderstanding of the powers and responsibilities of both municipal and federal government is pretty terrible in that story arc, but at least it wasn’t the service of some grandstanding “substantial ideas” plot. Plus, there are some actual jokes in there, some of them are even funny.
And it gives us some of the context that makes today’s Crankshaft strip look especially egregious. Tony Montoni didn’t know anything about running a pizza business… because when he started working there he was literally a child? Whatever.
I humbly withdraw my earlier criticism that the landmarking of the sign was an “informed attribute.” I see that the whole process and the rationale thereof was shown, albeit nearly 30 years ago.
The reason I assumed that the landmarking was pulled from Puffy’s posterior is that I assumed he would have mentioned this salient point during the Montoni’s bankruptcy arc. He showed the auction and even named the auctioneer, but never mentioned anything about the sign. In fact, didn’t Les say he wanted the sign (because of Lisa memories, natch)?
The vintage arc is miles better than anything we’ve seen in recent years. As Y. Knott points out, it’s ridiculous but coherent. I don’t mind that it’s ridiculous; after all, it’s a comic strip. And it’s not so pompous, taking itself so damned seriously. Bill Clinton putting Boris Yeltsin on hold to deal with the more urgent matter of Montoni’s sign makes it clear that the author’s intent is for the audience to take the whole story with a giant grain of salt.
The rest of the current arc is, of course, nonsensical gibberish. Tony Montoni grew up watching his father run the business but knew nothing about it. The restaurant kitchen is the size of a hockey rink. There are still supplies and boxes all over the kitchen. Etc, etc, etc. But hey, at least the sign landmarking makes sense.
I humbly withdraw my earlier criticism that the landmarking of the sign was an “informed attribute.” I see that the whole process and the rationale thereof was shown, albeit nearly 30 years ago.
It’s not informed ability, it’s a new TBTrope I’m planning to write about. And it’s very sneaky and dishonest. So don’t apologize yet.
Yup, Bill Clinton’s appearance (and the line about putting Boris on hold) was genuinely funny! It plays into the same sort of Clinton image Phil Hartman plugged into with the Clinton-visits-McDonald’s SNL sketch … perhaps accidentally, but the result still worked.
It’s always interesting to see moments from an era when Batiuk’s work wasn’t always crushingly, unremittingly terrible.
I found myself wanting to snark on the old strips, but being 30 years late takes the fun out of it. I like how the city passed an ordinance making his sign illegal, and they give him ONE WEEK to replace it. Also, the whole “president just declares something a landmark on a whim” seems like it’s not a thing.
In Tom Wolfe’s *Bonfire of the Vanities,* someone in, I think, the Mayor’s office decides to “landmark” a building an African-American clergyman wants for another purpose. (The clergyman’s annoyed the government official to the point that he’s feeling vindictive.) “Landmark that mother!” the chapter ends, and I suppose that the President can do it just as arbitrarily and perhaps even more quickly.
We also didn’t make up the gazpacho pizza. That was just someone forgetting to turn the oven on.
I think Funky calling Clinton to save Montoni’s was really stupid
It *was* stupid … but for me, it falls in the area of funny stupid. Bloom County could do this sort of thing quite well. Not that FW is remotely in the league of Bloom County, but at least to me, this specific gag has a certain slightly Breathedesque flavour to it.
I found the idea of the POTUS dropping everything to save a shitty grease-araunt funny. Like the hall monitor machine gun, it’s not trying to be “a quarter-inch from Tolstoy.”
But what is with this guy and his obsession with unearned awards? “POTUS saves lousy pizza dump” is funny. “I got a Best Actress Oscar in the DTS Lifetime movie” is equal parts stupid, ludicrous, and has never happened with the Oscars ever. Also funny as heck…but not for reasons the auteur thinks it is. “WHERE IS FATHER?!” indeed!
Crankshaft 12/6
Fat Fucking Fuck Funky: If it makes you feel any better, Generic Blond Woman, Tony didn’t know jack-shit about running an business. He only knew how to run it down to the ground! (laughing)
Mopey McMopester: And that’s coming from the fat fuck who TOOK THE REPUTATION OF OHIO-STYLE PIZZA AND WIPED HIS ASS WITH IT!!
(Pete marches up to Funky and knees him in the nuts)
Considering there was a gag with some of the California-bound characters getting Montoni’s shipped out from Ohio, one has to wonder what sort of equivalents there are in reality to getting a pizza sent cross-country in an edible state that doesn’t involve freezing or wasting private jet resources on. I’d like to have seen Batiuk write out that process to illustrate.
Another fascinating memory-lane trip that shows how oddly selective the continuity callbacks in the Funkyverse are (and once again begging the quesiton regarding Les being offered the sign via auction in the first place). I guess at this rate we can expect a more definite answer to whether Tony’s dead or not, unless we need another surprise reveal of a man in a mask at the grand-reopening press conference.
Were it to come up later there’s something that could be said about the contrasts of this arc and the later one we all remember where Bill Clintion was important to saving the day in 2020. Putting up enough of a fuss over your restaurant’s sign to the point that you somehow have a landline to the (current) President to stop it is very ludicrous and silly, but in a fun way where you just shake your head at the zany world. Whereas doing it again when you try to be a serious drama about serious issues and the culmination of the Very Special Episode about the very contentious issue of deporting minorities and alleged-illegal immigrants with “So we called an ex-president and everything was fine and the ICE people loved our pizza and bought more!” Is exactly the kind of tone-collision that gave this blog and David M. Willis over on twitter a fine few weeks of roasting material.
That Adeela deportation arc chafed me just about raw.
I think it was supposed to be making some point about immigration policy being unfair? But NOBODY, not even the staunchest advocates of tight immigration policy, wants legal, documented, working immigrants with advanced degrees to be deported. Who was even the villain there? Damned if I could figure it out.
So… what was the point of the arc? Batiuk is always seeming to undertake a Grand Social Justice Statement and then muddling it to the point of incoherence. Remember the classic
“White Store Clerks are Racist Scum!” arc? That was a real baffler. I think even the characters themselves couldn’t figure out the “lesson” there.
The lesson of that arc was “racism is inevitable as long as humanity exists, so you all just need to shut up and take it like the dogs you are”, which would probably have caused a legitimate and justifiable stir on Twitter and the like if anyone besides us paid attention to Tom Batiuk anymore.
Yeah, that was appalling. Especially coming from Cayla, a character whose backstory (child of a baseball integration pioneer; played the mostly-white sport of softball herself; in an interracial marriage) suggests she should be very acquainted with racism, and be able to help younger people with it.
But Tom Batiuk doesn’t know the answer, so none of his characters do either. Things like “research” and “talking to other people” are dead letters to him.
The stupid Funky Trivia monster inside me feels the need to remind everyone that Cayla’s dad was Smokey Williams, a pitcher mentored by an aged Crankshaft into winning the World Series for the Cleveland Indians somewhere about 1998-2001. He never encountered any racism in any of the strips he was in.
Jefferson Jacks was the integration era minor league player Crankshaft was teammates with.
They’re easy to confuse as Smokey Williams at Cayla’s wedding looked identical to Jefferson Jacks in the Crankshaft storyline.
Even Tom Batiuk seems confused by the distinction.
Unless the Time Moppening merged the two men into one…which is both nonsensical and borderline offensive.
So yeah, Jefferson Jacks probably DOES equal Smokey Williams at this point.
NEVER FORGET! In an arc about racial profiling, Tom Batiuk seems to have gotten two black characters confused with each other.
“Characters” is overstating the case a bit, I think.
They weren’t so much characters as Proofs of Tom’s Good-Guy Bona Fides.
He can’t write a black character for the same reason he can’t write a female character or a 21st Century young person character or a Muslim character or an old Ohio guy who doesn’t love comix.
The only character he can write is Tom Batiuk. Tom Batiuk in blackface, Tom Batiuk in drag, Tom Batiuk in a hijab.
In the immortal words of Dan Ronan, “It was a huge slap in the face to the African-American community.”
More to the point, it was never apparent that the EEEeeevil store clerk was EEEeeevil at all. I remember this ambiguity being discussed at the time.
If he was trying to make the point that she was a racist, he could have shown her obsequiously waiting on a young white couple, then flying into her rage when a young black couple walked into the store.
Or he could have not shown Malcolm Ecchs twisting his face up like the Joker while manhandling the merchandise and moving it around, which would upset pretty much any store clerk.
For me, the takeaway from the arc was: White assholes and black assholes both assume the worst about everyone they meet. Not necessarily because they’re racist, but because they’re assholes and everything makes them angry and paranoid.
Remember Chien, the skinny high school Goth girl? Some time jump later, she got replaced with another Goth girl, but she was plus-sized. And then, of course, was completely forgotten. Was Bats disappointed that he didn’t get an award for putting in a character that was overweight, and yet under the age of 65? The age at which everyone gets fat according to lore, except Les and Wife?
I liked Chien, as I worked in record stores back in the 90s and knew some. But New Goth girl existed to be abused. There was a strip where she got screamed at, insulted, and pummeled with food in the cafeteria. The teachers did nothing, which probably happened when TB was in high school in 1965, but seemed rather unlikely in the 2010s.
I’m surprised Tom dumped her. When all this blatant bullying and abuse happened–She did nothing. She just accepted it, much as one would racism or, dunno, cancer.
About the only reaction Bull, Susan and Marianne did was attempt suicide. What a great therapist Tom would make! “Have you tried not being depressed? If that doesn’t work, I’ve got a Smith & Wesson .38 right here you can borrow! I want it back, so have your next of kin return it.”
Actually replying to billthesplut but there’s no Reply button under that one – New Goth Girl, if I remember correctly, did respond to one bully by letting him take and swallow her pills, which were Metamucil or something. The most passive revenge possible.
Kind of like Ruby Lith making coffee with the water the paintbrushes were washed in.
Poison – it’s a woman’s weapon.
The Adeela story was just so monumentally idiotic it almost defies description. The idea that Bill Clinton, as a sitting President, could arbitrarily declare some terrible suburban pizza place a historic landmark is dumb, but you could at least pretend it was a shortcut to say it got declared a landmark thanks to the support of the sitting President. But the idea that a FORMER President could get someone released from ICE custody during the administration of THAT President? A President who campaigned on anti-immigration rhetoric and ran against Clinton’s wife? We’re expected to think Bill Clinton had enough pull to accomplish… well, ANYTHING under that administration? Nope. Not buying it. (I mean, not even the former REPUBLICAN President still alive at that point could have pulled that off, let alone a Democrat.)
(Sorry, I know the comments aren’t supposed to be overly political, but there’s simply no way to describe the sheer idiocy on display in that story without talking about the politics involved.)
Also, it needs to be pointed out just how badly Batiuk screwed up his own timeline. Thanks to all his time skips and retcons, Act III lasted 22 years, ending in 2022, and followed a 10-year skip. So Act II ended 32 years before the end of the strip, i.e., in 1990. Which historians will note was well BEFORE Bill Clinton was ever President. Whoopsie! Better break out that Elegant Solution™, Tom!
It’s not exactly world-famous but a local (Pittburgh) landmark pizzeria does indeed ship overnight, albeit in a half-frozen state. If anyone’s interested
https://mineospizza.com/fedex.html
I think it is a specialty of expat Steelers game-watching parties.
Does it have fries in it? It’s not from Pittsburgh if it doesn’t have fries in it. That city puts fries in EVERYTHING.
Have I secretly been from Pittsburg all this time?
Do you put french fries in salad? No? Then you’re not from Pittsburgh.
That was my first experience with this phenomenon. I visited PGH for about a week on a work trip. The first food I ate there was a salad, at a charming little mom-and-pop Italian restaurant that had no reason to even make fries. (They didn’t offer subs, wings, or anything like that. Just Italian food.)
Big thick salty steak fry, right out of the Ore-Ida bag. In the middle of what was a lovely green salad with homemade viniagrette dressing. I thought it was a mistake, like it fell off of someone else’s order. Then I found another one. And another. I asked one of the locals, and they explained this is standard in Pittsburgh. Over the next week, everything I ordered came with fries in it. When in Rome…
Don’t get me wrong – I love fries, to the point where they’ll be my secondary cause of death after high blood pressure. But man, Pittsburgh is WEIRD with that.
I was trying to remember if it’s fries on sandwiches or fries on salads that is our specialty. Turns out it’s both! I haven’t really indulged myself sorry to say.
I have been here for a good while but can’t say i understand all of it either. It is culturally mostly Midwestern, Akron is not far from here.
I’m never wondering about “Crankshaft”. Still, though, it’s hard not to notice how unbelievably dumb this is. That “Montoni’s is closing” arc last year was one of the weirder things he did in 2022. It was like it only existed so he could show the band box and the junk on the walls one more time, as if anyone else cared. Story-wise, it was just baffling, and another massive missed opportunity.
I think the junk on the walls was the driving force. Batiuk needed The Spawn of Les to write the defining book of human history. But he couldn’t have her simply go to Montoni’s and observe it all. (Never mind that she already knew most of it anyway.)
For some reason known only to Tom Batiuk, Montoni’s had to close, so Summer could *correctly* process all the things that inspire her “algoirthm that redefined humanity as our nation”, or whatever the fuck it was.
Jeez, BJr6K, I think you’re right. It would never have occurred to me, because the obvious way to handle this would have been to have Summer drop by to chat with Funky and have him nostalgically go through all the doohickeys that inspired Summer to write her book that had more impact on Humanity than the Bible, the Koran, Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, and Mein Kampf all rolled together into one turgid tome.
Thank you so very much, Ms. Harriet! Always so fascinating to see new-old material.
I still cannot stand Act II’s art style, but I’ve said that enough. Act II Skip is grotesque all the same.
The juxtaposition between the current CS strip saying “we worked to have it declared a historic landmark” and the original strip showing that it was just a phone call is interesting. The strip with Cindy flirting with Funky is also singularly appalling… maybe I’m just too ugly, but I know of no human female who talks like that with a man. Never ever.
Anyway, thanks again. One more arrow for the quiver.
Ah, Batiuk and the Ladies Of The Funkyverse…how I do miss goofing on that whole thing. There may be writers who are just as bad re: writing for female characters, but no one is any worse. The “Skunky Funkybuns” parody just totally nailed that. He added “girls”, then had absolutely no idea what to do with them. And when they stopped being caricatures and became real characters, it just spiraled downhill, rapidly. Every female FW character does that thing where they’re always a step ahead of their dunderheaded male counterpart, but they dumb it down just to be nice and demonstrate affection. I mean think about it, they all do it, all the time. The exception is when any female character interacts with Les, in which case she needs to know her place in the hierarchy.
It’s interesting to note how the Act II arcs were equally as stupid as any Act III arcs were, but so, so much more was actually happening in Act II. It was so much busier that it’s downright jarring to read them now.
Well, I figured there was an actual story arc involving the Montoni’s sign, but I never would have guessed all that!
In the immortal words of Tom Servo from MST3K’s “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die,” “Boss, you’ve broken the Goofy Meter again!”
+”Signs can’t extent past a storefront” – Bad news for the Valentine Theater.
+ So if the sign was a caricature of Tony, who was a child when Montoni’s opened in 1949, he must have had it installed in the late ’60s or early ’70s at the earliest. Woulda made more sense to say it was a caricature of his father, but what do I know?
+ Exactly when did Skip Bittman get canned from the Westview “The Paper” and wind up in Centerville?
+So Batiuk double dipped his “Clinton Ex Machina” way to end storylines. Of course, it’s the Interior Dept. that designates national historic sites, while the President can declare national monuments, for which Montoni’s wouldn’t qualify.
+ And, naturally, the daily strips ended with a lame joke by Funky and a half-face smirk from Cindy. By the way, that’s not your sign, Funky, it’s Tony’s.
So Batiuk double dipped his “Clinton Ex Machina” way to end storylines.
Which makes it all the more baffling that would Batiuk would draw attention to it, by referencing it a story it’s irrelevant to. It’s amazing what he thinks people remember (obscure strips from decades ago), and what he just assumes they don’t (a large, recent story that was widely criticized in the only place that bothers criticizing him anymore).
I didn’t remember Bill Clinton being in the strip before the Adeela rescue.
First the Secret Service, then ICE.
I always liked this one:
Looking back at David M Willis’s tweeting about this arc, which I think was the most reactive him and his followers ever got with the strip, this story arc honestly could be something that really spoils the well on Funky’s legacy if it got exposed to the right crowds via a video essay or something. An incredibly contrived narrative mixed with an altogether-empathetic take at one of the most controversial government organizations is far more impactful than the lukewarm “gay prom without actually showing the gay students” arc could ever hope to be.
I was too overwhelmed with the many gleaming facets of horribleness when I first read the Adeela arc to even notice the gem of shittiness within: The White Savior Complex. Adeela should have a community of Muslim immigrants that she knows and can turn to, who would certainly have contacts with immigration lawyers who understand the complexities of the law.
One of my dear friends is an (undocumented) immigrant from Trinidad, who has been working towards a Green Card. She has a huge community of connections from Trinidad and Guyana, and although I’ve offered to help any way I can, she relies on people she knows from her neighborhood network, who speak her language, are from her country and culture, have been through the same process themselves, and know what resources are trustworthy and effective.
Seriously, it seems like every Trini in NYC knows every other Trini. Imagine how tight the network of Muslim immigrants must be in West Butthair, Ohio. Not to mention, wouldn’t there be some resources at the university?
But no, “these people” can’t take care of themselves. It’s the White Man’s Burden, you know. Yes, it takes a pure-hearted, right-thinking, not-like-the-others-who-are-all-undoubtedly-bigots-and-not-good-ones-like-me guy like Funky to save her.
Yuck.
Ah, crap. There’s a clog in the torso chute! Leroy! Get your ass in gear!
What the hell is it with Batboy and one-armed people? I noticed the guy at the typewriter from 40 years ago has a pinned up sleeve. FFS
Today Funky assures Popey Meat and Jennie Rikblonde that they will do well at running Montoni’s. “Just make a good pizza… and the world will eat a path to your door!”
So why did Montoni’s fail in the first place, then? What about the lamentable “thin-crust profit margins” that spelled the end for Funky?
The very idea that “good food” is all it takes to run a restaurant is laughably detached from reality, even in a comic strip context.
It’s all so devoid of any emotional or storytelling weight whatsoever.
“I want to quit making comic books, the thing I love more than anything in life which also pays me a ton of money, and run a failed pizza restaurant!” “And finally propose to my longtime girlfriend four years after I failed, even though she’s been acting engaged all this time!” “And force her to quit her similarly high-paying comic book job!” “I’ll just be a freelancer and make comic books in my spare time!”
“I’m here to buy a pizza restaurant!” “Oh wait, I have no skills in running a pizza restaurant!” “That’s okay, just make good pizza, even though I failed at this twice! Which hasn’t affected my ability to own a huge house, retire in Florida, or pay for Holly’s needless cheerleading injury!”
There’s never any consequences for anything. Les could take a direct hit from a Howitzer and just walk away from it. Or more likely, carry on about Lisa in the next day’s strip like nothing happened, and without any explanation.
Yes, BJr6K. As a fellow improv student, you know the name of the quality that’s missing: Stakes.
In improv scenework, we are taught to quickly establish stakes. What will the consequences be to the characters? Why do they care? Without some stakes, nothing means anything to the characters, and thus nothing means anything to the audience.
TB is the world’s undisputed champion of setting up a situation where the stakes should be high, and then eliminating all of them instantly.
Mopey quits his comix job to buy a restaurant, and simultaneously proposes.
Stakes should be astronomical.
— Jennie Rikblonde already hates the idea. Will this wreck their marriage before it starts?
— What about Durwood, his childhood friend, and his heroes Flesh Floppyhead and Dead Guy? And his benefactor Chester Bestertester? Will this destroy all of those friendships? Is he letting them down?
— Will the restaurant succeed? The highly experienced former owner couldn’t even make a go of it. Is Mopey ready to work the 16-hour days, 7 days a week, that are required to get a restaurant off the ground?
Etc — any of us could list about 20 ways this could blow up.
But wait — here comes Funky to wipe away all the stakes with one word of unironic assurance. Tom is letting us know that everything will work out 100% fine.
No stakes = Nothing interesting can or will ever happen.
Funky will refuse to admit that the thin crust margins caused Montoni’s to go out of business
Or that his extra-thick stuffed crust expenses might have been a factor. Funky handed out jobs to anyone with a sob story, on top of all his nepotism hires. And all the freebies he gave his upstairs renters (the apartment and Atomik Komix). And maintaining the stupid bandbox and jukebox. And the complete failure of the New York branch of Montoni’s. And the entire new fleet of vehicles he somehow bought after Montoni’s closed.
And all his unnecessary personal expenses. Letting Holly’s mother live with them, presumably even after she caused Holly’s expensive ankle injury. And his oversized McMansion. And his flights to get medical treatment he could have gotten locally. And his pointless abuse of that financial advisor who could have helped him plan. And his expensive home renovations.
But hey, none of these dreadful decisions ever inconvenienced Funky in any way, so why should he admit it?
Because Fat Fucking Fuck Funky thinks he’s the most important man in the world when he’s just another human being
I think this is what kept Montoni’s going.