Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or at least a nice weekend.
I had family in town, was used extensively as a jungle gym by my toddler niece and nephew, and then my housemate caught Covid. Longer post is incoming. In the meantime…enjoy.
ADDENDUM!!
FUNKY WEPT!
Son of Stuck Funky 
Seeing yesterday’s Crankshaft was both dull yet surprising enough that I have a new theory: Funky and Holly are all but implied here to be living in their Florida home that’s apparently right up near the shoreline, which in this economy surely can’t be cheap even with all that retirement money. Clearly Montoni’s failed on purpose because he was funneling the money for his great escape from Westview, selling and ruining all the franchises in the process so he could afford everything he needed (including flights back to and from).
And today: Yawn, Tom’s doing a victory lap with how wholesome/moving his Christmas-charity moment of Westview’s support for the unfairly-shuttered town staple business. At this rate the daughter of John Darling doesn’t have to worry about that old portrait, the collector guy will have a Grinch-heart-growing moment and give it back too.
Mitchell Knox: YOU CAN HAVE THIS PHOTO OF JOHN DARLING WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD, AND VERY FAT HANDS!
Fat Fucking Fatass Fuck Funky: Very well. Wally, you know what to do.
(Wally snaps Mitchell’s neck and Funky grabs the picture of JDWWM and sprints
This is a sick burn.
That panel of Funky got me to thinking: How could Batty have ended FW better?
It took maybe two minutes to come up with a scenario in which Funky decides to retire and wants to sell Montoni’s. The entire cast (Pizza Monster included) ponies up cash to help Wally afford to buy it. Everyone gathers at the restaurant to celebrate the new ownership and Christmas. Cut to Funky and Holly on the beach. He smiles with a tear in his eye as he looks at a photo on his phone of the party. Finis.
Okay, maybe not great, but at least it didn’t have any nonsense about humanity being our nation or whatever. And, as I said, I only spent two minutes on it.
Three minutes in, I decided it would’ve been better to just duplicate the end of “John Darling,” but with Les taking the bullet. Three minutes, 12 seconds in, I decided the bullet should’ve passed through Les and took out Dinkle, too. Merry Christmas!
By the way, in the last installment, Fan Fan mentioned the address Batty used was for Reed Brennan Media Associates. Yes, RBMA handled electronic distribution of King Features materials and may still for all I know. I’ve not dealt with them for almost four years now, but I remember their customer website was extremely well run and user friendly. For years it was managed by a guy called Windy who made sure every feature was available at the exact same time every week. You could set your watch by him.
Oh, and CBH? I TOTALLY agree on Lichtenstein. Had he tried to pass off the pieces by Van Gogh, Monet, Leonardo or even Norman Rockwell as his work, he would’ve been pilloried, but he only ripped off artists who worked in comics. Well, that’s alright then!
Anyhoo, hope one and all have been having a great holiday season!
It was baffling. The story practically writes itself, A weary Funky has had enough, and says he’s ready to sell. Wally, with some help from Rachel and Adeela and Cory and maybe even Pete, puts together an offer, and buys the joint. Everyone smirks.
But he decided to do a weird Sunday strip featuring a bunch of greedy slobs grabbing at Funky’s old pizzeria detritus instead. And that was that. And then Summer came back, and just shit all over what was left. But that’s a whole different story.
I couldn’t help but do a little chortle-barf when I saw that unearned, meaningless gibberish-glurge tear trickle down Funky’s fat, jowly face.
Where’s a greasefire when you need one?
“I know! I’ll draw a tear onto the smirking potato-blob! People will be profoundly moved — weeping in sorrow and nostalgia! Pulitzer, here I come! It’s called WRITING!”
Have to love how Holly’s mom (I can’t be bothered to remember her name) moved out of Florida to avoid the ravages of climate change, only for Funky and Holly and presumably Holly’s mom moving right back there to a house that’s certain to be wiped off the map the next time hurricane season hits them.
Today’s strip reeks of clipart. Specifically, it looks like a repurposed scene from Mason Jarre’s house in California. Middle-class houses with a fenced-in backyard open to the beach like that simply don’t exist in Florida. Also, palm trees don’t randomly grow right next to the ocean like that.
*Climate damage
Holly’s mother is Melinda Budd.
Holly and Funky forced Melinda into moving to Ahia. They even remodeled a bathroom, and more, for her in the Funky mansion.
Two years later, the whole kit and kaboodle moves to Florida.
This is typical Batiuk writing. He has no sense of continuity whatsoever. For the story! Continuity be damned! Continuity is for lesser writers!
Batiuk is a self-proclaimed “storyteller.” His son must have dreaded story time at bedtime.
Brian: Gee, dad. Can you please let Mommy handle story time tonight? Please!
Batiuk: Nonsense, son. I’ve got this. Hold my cocoa.
(Brian pulls the bed covers over his head)
Funky and Holly sold the house and moved to Florida, but never bothered to tell Melinda. Boy, were the new owners of the house going to be in for a surprise!
You know, Funky should be something other than happy here. He’s just now finding out his failed business was brought back to life, for someone else’s benefit. “Where was all this generosity when I was dying out there? And after all I did for that town? All the jobs for people who needed them? All the rent breaks for struggling comic book artists? All the special catering deals I did for the high school and everything else? NOW they think it’s worth saving?”
Funky’s always been kind of an asshole, but this seems a little cruel. Some of you wanted to see him retire and get a nice send-off at the end of FW. Today, it’s implied he was forced into retirement because of the town’s indifference, and today he gets a giant middle finger from them all.
This is the send-off Dinkle deserved. I’d love to see Dinkle make a huge ego show out of his retirement from Westview High School, and then everybody throws a kegger when he’s a foot out the door.
Funky is probably supposed to be happy that his teenage haunt looks the way it did fifty years ago. He should be livid that people treat him like a caretaker owner.
There is a cogent reason that success is for everyone who isn’t Funky. Said reason is a moron creator who blames his lack of plaudits on the title character’s name and not on people getting sick of morose, gutless nitwits who blame The System for their being incompetent.
Not for Funky or Wally. The curse of the Winkerbeans, born of TB’s resentment for going with a strip name he wasn’t able to think of for himself.
And of course, Montoni’s is packed now that Funky is a distant and unpleasant memory. Batiuk calls that the universe unfolding as it should. I call it giving a straw man the middle finger for daring to try to better himself.
I call it giving a straw man the middle finger for daring to try to better himself.
SEE ALSO: Becky. She tried to escape Kent State, and go to an actual good school to build on her genuine musical talent. Tom Batiuk will tolerate none of that! Her punishment was to become Dinkle’s assistant for life.
We’re rapidly approaching the dreaded Valley of Unsnarkability on Crankshaft. It’s that bad.
Only Tom Batiuk could tell this story:
[blockquote]World’s most successful comic writer abruptly decides to ditch his blank-check dream job working with his best friend and lifelong idols. He immediately gets engaged and in the same breath announces to his skeptical fiancée that he has unilaterally decided to partner with a faceless cardboard-box man to buy and relaunch a failed restaurant, despite knowing nothing about the restaurant business.[/blockquote]
… and make it 100% free of tension, action, or drama. I don’t know how it’s even possible. It’s a Christmas miracle.
There’s plenty to snark on today if you wanna get really beady eyed about it.
For instance, Minty’s insane wide-eyed expression in the second panel like she’s been replaced with a Cthulhu fish person from Innsmouth wearing a bad wig.
There’s also the fact that the classic Monotoni’s Apron has been colored green now – colorist not knowing better (hence we may never see that one pitcher again?) or part of the “new Montoni’s style”?
Drake does carry a good point of course; with all the lingering and self-“awwwing” over the “everyone returns the old junk” strip, we actually skip the reopening and any pomp and circumstance that would’ve had, and we’re further left with the implication that these two losers with the presumed recipe are able to easily recapture the “magic” ICE-charming taste of Monotoni’s pizza and other foods with ease, enough for at least 3 days of jam-packed business.
And since we still haven’t been shown if Pete’s even done some darn hiring at all, we’re being left to assume today that he’s the one scrambling in the back to make all these pizzas while Minty is fighting off Innsmouth’s call to take orders and give people a number for when a table is ready. Wonder how he feels now about quitting Atomik Komix?
Now I’m wondering what happened to everyone who used to work at Montoni’s. Moved on to better things? Died penniless on the streets? Placed in cryogenic storage?
Yeah, if Mopey’s Token Generic Blonde in panel 2 WASN’T a typical Davis swipe, I’ll eat my hat. No, wait, I’ll eat a Montoni’s pizza. That’s far less food-like.
The Funkyverse is basically Sonichu at this point. Tom Batiuk’s work is only interesting anymore as a window into the mind of a disturbed manchild. And Batiuk is a lot less disturbed than Chandler is.
“Batiuk is a lot less disturbed than Chandler is.”
I think that’s an massive understatement
I spent a few hours today catching up on Crankshaft on GoComics. Reading one Crankshaft strip a day requires a bit of resolve. Reading five days’ worth is a truly nauseating experience. This story arc, ‘The Return Montoni’s’ is totally repulsive. Cringing all the way through.
The reopening of Montoni’s is an unmitigated success. Why? Because it’s Mopey Pete. With a lifetime career in Pizza making, Funky could no longer make a go of it. All Mopey Pete has to do is make a wish on the golden horseshoe up his backside, and good fortune is his. People who don’t even know Mopey Pete are coming out of the woodwork to shower him with gifts. Mopey Pete receives more gifts than Jesus Christ, our lord, and savior, on the night of his birth. Ugh.
I’ve reached a new level of hatred for Mopey Pete. Never has an individual received so much and given so little in return. I want to sew a Mopey Pete doll and beat the ever-loving sh*t out of it.