Happy New Year, all! The state of the Funkyverse is “still dead”. Dead as John Darling, Coach Stropp, and Bull. Not Lisa, as she never really died. But that’s a whole different story.
It’s been a year now, and SoSF is still here, and actually seems kind of solid. Thanks to all who made that happen, especially Banana Jr. and Harriet, who’ve gone above, beyond, and back again. Also, thanks to the commenters, who continue to adhere to SoSF’s very reasonable standards. Not a single reprimand or blockage in 2023. Well done, by all.
I still miss it. Not the strip itself so much, but the daily SoSF routine. It was always a mission to me, as my hatred of FW was organic, and personal. The fact that I only succeeded in fighting FW to a draw will never not irk me. And I miss the challenge involved with trying to make every daily FW strip funny somehow. It kept me on my toes, and got me through some hellish times. IMO, he ended the wrong strip, but then again, of course he did. What a jerk.
Speaking of which, while I’ll never stand for daily “Crankshaft” coverage, I’ve learned to tolerate it, as well as those who (gak) enjoy kicking it around FW style. And it’s the only remaining Batiukian game in town, so whaddya gonna do? So while hell will freeze solid before I start reading it, I’m giving the “Crankshaft” content my half-hearted blessing. I mean, everyone seems to like it, so what the hell. So carry on, and best wishes for a hilarious 2024, from your pals at SoSF HQ.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I have total respect for everyone at SOSF-HQ.
TH Hackett, Epicus Doomus, ComicBookHarriet, Banana Jr. 6000. You all are good in my book.
ED, you are so right. TB ended the wrong strip. I am probably wrong, but last week’s reopening of Montoni’s seemed to me like an end of the story. A final coda, as they say. We will find out next week to see if Westview returns. Smart money says yes. Yet I wonder if maybe Crankshaft and his buddies take back the strip. Maybe just for Be Ware of Eve Hill, we will get a 6 week long arc of Lillian straightening her bookstore. (Any more than that requires a plot.) [or perhaps for Anonymous Sparrow, she will find in her study the original statue of Confederate hero, Jubilation T. Cornpone.]
The only clue that leads me to the idea of a final coda, one that one of you posted a statement recently. There has not been a single Les sighting all year. I think TB has got FW out of his system.
The Funky Winkerbean invasion wouldn’t be so bad if the writing wasn’t so sophomoric. So childish. So cringe. The “Mopey Pete buys Montoni’s” arc had me throwing my hands in the air in disgust every day. Dreadful stuff. As my first boss, Mr. Pitts, would say, “It’s crap.” (disapproving head shake) “It’s crap.”
Most likely a six-week-long story arc featuring Lillian as she ascends to the top of all the bestseller lists. She writes “Murder at Montoni’s.” Eventually, she wins Batiuk’s ever-elusive Pulitzer. Lillian fires up her AMC Rambler and drives over to Westview to personally hand her Pulitzer over to Les Moore. The perfect other book-end to his Academy Award.
I can see the headline now. be ware of eve hill electrocuted after biting chunk out of computer monitor.
“I can see the headline now. be ware of eve hill electrocuted after biting chunk out of computer monitor.”
Eve, I can promise you, if I saw that headline, I would read the article. I would hope that you have Anonymous Sparrow as your polish officer crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s. 😎😂😜
Found your movie recommendation, Carol For Another Christmas. TCM on demand.
Good movie. Thanks!
Yes. I kept thinking that actor is acting the pants off the previous performers, until the next one comes out. I think if I had to choose one, I would land on Pat Hingle, yet Peter Sellers has the most difficult role, and is perfection. Yet then there is Robert Shaw. Razor thin differences in abilities.
Did you complete the perfect holiday reunion?
@sorialpromise
Almost the perfect family reunion. They left Tuesday morning and wouldn’t take me home with them. 😭
Living almost 900 miles (13-hour drive) apart from them sucks. At least the DIL isn’t based in Guam or something.
At least they were home for Christmas, and it wasn’t in your dreams. 🫂
Happy New Year Lord Doomus. You and the other creators of SOSF made a warm and eclectic place for a wide-ranging set of viewpoints. Imagine any other blogs about a lousy collection of strips could attract comments from a spectrum of intellects like CBH, BWeoh, Sorial, The Duck/Drake, Anonymous, fellow Gator BJ, Luther, Beckoning, etc, etc, etc, etc
Thanks for a place of amusement and serious comment
Thanks everyone for all the laughs! This is a very sane community. No personal attacks, no unhinged political rants.
Just lots of laughs and deep dives into long forgotten characters. Tom should be happy that we exist.
I love this site. And I agree with ED (that sounds funny, ha) that I rarely read Crankshaft. Only when it has some kind of crossover with FW, as it did last week, and I only knew it because of comments here.
CBH, and everyone else did a fantastic job this past year.
Looking forward to more deep dives into characters.
Cayla, perhaps. Her character as Bathack wrote her, always confused me. Was he making a racial statement, a female one, second marriages, or what?
I’ll say it for the record: Crankshaft will not live to see 2025. I think it’s already been cancelled.
That’s why Batiuk has already announced “The Burnings” will happen in 2024. Ed Crankshaft himself will only appear in pointless filler like this week’s drivel, and as a background character to events he has no business being a part of. Batiuk has reduced the strip’s title character to a contractual obligation. Ed has to appear occasionally, so Batiuk can claim he’s doing the work he’s being paid for. I hope that “Where’s Crankshaft?” poster on Comics Kingdom is happy this week.
Ed, Lillian, Lena, Pam and Jeff, the other bus drivers – they’re all in purgatory, waiting for the sweet release of death. Which Batiuk will never give them, because he has more important work to do: make his final pitch for that Pulitzer. Or any award, really. We already know the Funkyverse is going to end in a fit of book-burning, and probably “climate damage” too. And we know how Tom Batiuk’s mind works. Mark my words, this is going to be the mother of all award-whoring arcs. And as such, a fitting end to it all.
If we’re posting our predictions, here’s mine:
Crankshaft continues into 2025. It’s picked up papers, and the syndicate owners (and Batiuk and I assume Davis) are making enough for the venture to still be profitable … in fact, it’s a little MORE profitable than when they started.
The comic will continue to slowly re-introduce FW characters. Now that Montoni’s is re-opened, this shouldn’t be that hard.
Bold predictions on the order in which some absent characters will reappear:
1. John
2. Batton Thomas
3. The third guy from the left in a panel of some 1986 FW comic that CBH will be able to identify at a glance, because she’s astonishing that way
4. Les ‘n’ Cayla
.
.
.
326. Zanzibar the murder chimp
I predict that Crankshaft (the comic strip) is just gonna fizzle out after 2024 and will end with the most anti-climatic ending known to mankind
Hey, I never said it was going to be climactic.
So, a victim of climax damage?
Although if I were to write the ending of Crankshaft, It would end up with Les Moore, Cindy Summers, Frankie Pierce, Ed Crankshaft and Lillian dying in the most horrific ways possible
“Climax damage”? Is that like when Les calls out Lisa’s name when he… you know what, I can’t even finish that sentence, it’s too gross to even contemplate.
Her character as Bathack wrote her, always confused me. Was he making a racial statement, a female one, second marriages, or what?
“Give me an award.” That is the statement. And when he didn’t get it, Cayla became a background prop for the 20-year award pitch that is Lisa’s Story.
Thanks captain Epicus. Hope you meant what you said when you gave Cranky Awards your blessing as I’ve been working on them as much as my Covid/sinus infection will allow.
It’s been an endless cycle of wake up hacking, chug hot tea, read Crankshaft, pass out in a blankeritto, wake up hacking, etc. Truly a hellish existence…
And all of pray for your recovery.
I would assume the passing out and hacking is a sharp and welcome relief from the reading of Crankshaft…
Don’t push yourself too hard! Though we all love the idea of the Cranky Awards, a healthy Harriet is way more important to us than the awards post. Take all the time you need.
CBH, if you haven’t done this already, look into whether a course of antibiotics would kick the sinus infection. I’ve known several folks who didn’t feel right post-Covid until they were treated for a secondary sinus infection.
Nothing qualifies me to dispense medical advice other than being married to a retired EMT and life experience as a mom, Grammy, and patient. That’s never stopped me.
Thanks for explaining Dead St. Lisa’s prognosis, complete with visual aids! My next question is: would it have been in character for TB to have her sue for malpractice, if only to prevent a future patient from the same sad fate? It doesn’t seem like she did anything like that, did she?
You don’t have to answer. You need to rest and guzzle more tea!
Thanks Mrvy, and sorry you got stuck in the torso chute during the ‘collapse’ phase of my latest cycle.
Now that I’m on the ‘Cranky’ phase I’ll take a welcome opportunity for a break from figuring out which puns were the most tortured.
It would have very much been in character for Lisa to sue for malpractice. She’d been presented, in her defense of DSH for hentai, and her defense of Danny Madison, as someone who will fight injustice and the cold unfeeling system that messes things up. But instead she sucks her anger down and just folds, when she has every ground to sue.
She doesn’t even change doctors or get a second opinion.
Maybe we’ll get into Lisa’s Story in more depth this year, but for now I’ll say it is THIS fake out followed by a lack of realistic fall out that ruins the narrative for me. If not for this, I feel the story would be tolerably told with maybe a few tweaks to clarify why she stops chemo.
But the dumbass hopespot was stupid, unrealistic, and unnecessary. If he wanted a hopespot, all Batiuk would have had to do was have the treatment appear to be working for a few months, making her think she possibly has years, something that can happen in cancer, before realizing how aggressive her type was.
But no, he loves cruel twists of fate, no matter how asinine.
Remember that poster from the 80s, with a kitten dangling on a clothesline and the words “HANG IN THERE!”? Lisa’s version said “GO HANG YOURSELF.”
Why did she quit chemo? When I was in a clinic for a slip&fall (and had covid, coughing is fun with 4 broken ribs!), they had another unit for mental health issues. There were always more openings on our PT floor than there. They’d keep new patients in ours if there was no room. You could tell real quickly when someone was there because they decided to stop taking their meds. “Silver Linings Playbook” is a good movie, but man, did it do harm to people who decided to just quit meds after seeing it. I had a coworker who saw it and stopped. One night it was busy. A cashier asked him “Are you going to help us ring, or just stare into space?!” He just walked out. We got a phone call from a county sheriff the next day. After leaving, the guy drove over 3 hours to turn up at the home of a woman he’d known briefly 20 years before.
I would ask again WHY Lisa stopped taking chemo, but Shakespeare could write tragedy. Tom just writes misery. And, as always, not so we can care about the person it happened to, but to throw another pity party for Les.
To step on the defender box for just a second, (GASP,) Lisa was told she only had months to live before she decided to quit chemo. So presumably that prognosis was taking treatment into account.
Chemo isn’t really a maintenance med, like insulin, antipsychotics, or anti-depressants. It’s carefully designed poison that’s supposed to kill the cancer better and faster than it kills your healthy cells.
And the more aggressive the cancer, the more aggressive the chemo and the harder it is on your body. That damage accumulates.
I lost an acquaintance of mine this year to a long hard 10 year fight with sarcoma. He had to go off chemo to rest, or switch chemo drugs, many many times because his body just couldn’t take it. And by the end he choose to stop, because further chemo would just make the time he had left that much more miserable.
The problems with Lisa’s Story isn’t the final decision. It’s that we’re shown her making that decision based on a single prognosis from a dingbat doctor that couldn’t even tell she was reading the wrong chart for months. No second opinion, only the weakest nod to alternative treatments that fizzle out off screen. Going gently without ever having an active moment of raging against the dying of the light.
Seems appropriate to throw this in here…
The problems with Lisa’s Story isn’t the final decision.
I would argue that it is. Her decision was never made very clear; it was never reacted to by anyone (least of all Les); and Lisa did nothing of value with her remaining time.
Declining further treatment is a valid but difficult choice many people make. And you could make a good dramatic story out of it. But Batiuk did what he always does. He’s laser-focused on unimportant things, uselessly vague on the important things, and left the reader to try and guess his intent.
Get well soon! And easy on the Crankshaft, you don’t want to tax yourself with all that eye-rolling. Hey, remember a year ago when everyone was speculating about how BatYarn would “integrate” some beloved old FW characters into his other comic strip, and I (probably) said it’d be so unbelievably stupid that no sane person could possibly predict it with any accuracy? Well, Pete now owns and operates Montoni’s, thus proving my point.
Glad to see you feel well enough to write. Please don’t tax yourself, though.
Hopefully, as I’ve read, this COVID strain is not as virulent as previous ones. I contracted COVID-19 back in 2020 and was completely out of it for about 72 hours straight.
Hope you fell better soon. Wish I knew where you live. I’d send you a fruit basket or something. The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume 13? 😂
Tom Batiuk: I sold a book! (performs a Crazy Harry happy dance)
C’mon, TB. It’s the 21st century. Offer an e-book sales option!🙄
CBH-I hope you’re on the mend. COVID has hit me twice-both times as a miserable sinus infection. Last go round I got prescription zinc and cough meds, plus over the counter Sudafed to fight it. Take it easy and rest up…
Thanks to all the contributors and commenters here! I have truly enjoyed the deep dives, since I only really read FW in the old gag-a-day days of the 80’s and then in the circling-the-drain days of the last decade or so. So learning about all the Act II horrors is fascinating.
And, Epicus and others have pointed out, this is a nice bastion of friendly conversation when so many blog comment sections are frankly deranged.
I think this comments section is plenty deranged. In the loveliest and friendliest and most beautiful ways.
It’s totally deranged, but very civil, and at least 80% on topic. Some leeway has to be given with that particular bylaw, what with the subject of the blog no longer existing and all. And ya gotta jabber about something, you know?
The subject matter is deranged. The people are great.
I don’t mind when the subject matter goes off topic a little bit. Even if it’s something I’m not necessarily interested in, I appreciate learning something new. I love how knowledgeable and polite everyone is here: respectful of viewpoints with no name calling or assumptions that we have miserable lives offline.
And to top it off, the Burnings will be drawn by Byrne. We can blame all of this on that sack of bastard.
We don’t know that yet. Byrne may get called up to do a different strip where they want characters to have eyebrows that can best be described as “forehead pubes.”
Today’s Funky Crankerbean (01/03/2024)
Lillian: The fact that you have the SLIGHTEST smidge of intelligence and knowledge of historical people terrifies me.
Crank: It really should, because I’m ab-
(Something happens which causes the racoons to go feral and lunge towards Lillian and tear her apart and eat her alive)
Today’s Crankshit (01/04/2024)
Never have I gotten so sick and tired of people like Lillian The Lizard (BURN THE WITCH!) and Ed Crankshaft rambling on and on about raccoons
Late to add to this conversation, but happy to hear all the appreciations. I’ve enjoyed coming in on and off with my thoughts, particularly when Crankshaft is at its most Funkiest, and CBH’s recaps certainly have been engaging to dwell on as well. Curious to see what 2024 has in store for this blog, feels like we have plenty of energy left going forward, which i’m excited to keep up on.
I wanted to thank the whole SOSF team for getting us through 2023. When I found out FW was ending, my first reaction was sorrow–not over the comic strip which I liked back in my salad days in the 80s and early 90s, but over this site. I came to SOSF later than many here, but it always made me laugh and nod my head during some long days in 2022 and 2023 when I finished up my doctorate and dealt with some health problems. I sighed and suspected the site would go away or focus on CS, which I had always found dull. You guys did an amazing job of keeping the site together even without the daily material to respond to. Thanks for all you do and I wish you and yours all the best for 2024.
And I want to thank you, KMD, and all the blog readers who stayed with SoSF in the first Year Without Funky Winkerbean. This is a great community, and I’m proud to be a part of it. I want to keep writing about the Funkyverse as long as you want to keep reading about it. I’m delighted to be part of the team.
HUZZAH to all of our gracious hosts and bloggers. Even though I can’t post daily, I have visited and read first thing every morning for a few years now. First, I check Crankshaft, which usually irritates me, and then I click immediately to SoSF, which never fails to put me in a good mood.
We all need an alternative to doomscrolling. For me, this is it. It’s not just entertaining; it bouys my mental health to see such a functional community in an increasingly bitter and divided world. So thanks to every single blogger and commenter and of course to our beloved Snarker Emeritus TFH.
Now, having written richly deserved encomia to all of SoSF’s wonderful leaders and denizens, it’s time to plunge all the way down to the depths.
To today’s Crankshaft. Suddenly, Crankshaft goes from talking about squirrels and birds to citing William Gibson on futurism.
It happened again, folks. Puff Batty was listening to his local NPR affiliate and they had some po-faced hipster blurbing about Gibson, and it tickled Bats’ fancy and he thought it sounded really clever. Normally, he’d put these hot takes in the mouth of Kablichnik, but now there’s no one left to utter them but Crankshaft, established character be damned.
Crankshaft? The guy who first learned to read in his 60s? The crotchety, tech-distrusting guy who’s content with his world of bus driving, bowling, birdwatching, and kibitzing about the old days with his altekacker cronies at Dale Evans?
Yeah. He’s a huge fan of William Gibson. Because Batty wants him to be, today. Tomorrow? Well, just remember that “the future hasn’t been evenly distributed yet,” and you won’t be surprised when tomorrow finds him complaining that the Junior Jumble in the Centerville Sentinel is too damn hard.
And what’s this weird word choice he uses? “As the climate changes…”
I mean, “climate change”? What kind of weird and unnatural thing is that to say?
“As climate damage continues….”, surely!
Clearly Tom’s trying to drop the hints to the soap opera drama Mason Jarr’s going to guest star in between Valentine visits; “As the Climate Changes”
Today’s Funky Crankerbean (01/05/2024)
Lil The Lizard: I thought you were illiterate. What happened to you
Crank (the most serious he has ever been): One word. Timemop.
Tom,
Having a character lampshade to the other character that they just spouted off something really uncharacteristic for them doesn’t change the fact you only included it because YOU wanted to say it to your audience and a more believable mouthpiece wasn’t available.
Krankenstein: I’m pretty sure Eddie read that Gibson quote off some school bus kid’s T-shirt