Don’t forget to vote in the 2023 Crankshaft Awards! Voting remains open for about another 2 days.
I recently made my predictions of which Funky Winkerbean characters are likely to appear in Crankshaft in 2024. A major factor in these predictions was my guess at what The Burnings will be about, and which characters they will affect. And I already think I was wrong.
The Burnings are the event that occurs between the contemporary end of Funky Winkerbean, and a post-apocalyptic future in which Summer Moore’s granddaughter Lisa (the great-granddaughter of Les and Lisa themselves) acquires a copy of Summer’s book Westview. In the process, she also discovers a copy of Lisa’s Story. Tom Batiuk said on his blog that a greater exploration of the Burnings “will run in the Fall of 2024 in Crankshaft.“
It’s implied that the Burnings is a dystopian, book-burning, Fahrenheit 451-like future where there is hostility to books and literature. Interest in same must be pursued in secret. I was working from this assumption when I made my guess at character appearances. This story aligns well with certain characters, like Les, who I picked as the #3 most active Funky Winkerbean character in Crankshaft in 2024 for this reason.
But the Burnings could be something else entirely, or a giant nothing-burger. Poster Andrew provided a good summary:
The immediate guess [is] that it’s a legit societal disruption disaster where literature of a sizable amount gets angry mobs that cripple the industry of written world.
The minority guess is that the Burnings is a less-serious incident that actually doesn’t involve the world’s literature becoming scarce, and turns out just to be some major but otherwise inconsequential incident.
Andrew
I was assuming the first view, but I now lean towards the second view. The Burnings won’t be about book-burning at all, but rather window dressing for yet another Crankshaft barbecue mishap. To quote Andrew again: “It’ll be hard to top [Ed Crankshaft] nearly getting Earth hit by, and then saving it from, an asteroid.” He makes a valid point that it would be hard to top the stakes we’ve already seen. That won’t stop Batiuk from doing it, though. He lives to lower the stakes.
Also, when it comes to predicting the import of future Funkyverse stories, “nothing” is always a solid contender. Tom Batiuk loves to imply interesting things, and then never follow through on them, or even acknowledge what he’s implied.
But if the first interpretation is correct, what can we guess? What do we know about the Burnings now? You can see the strips yourself on each day’s commentary, starting here on December 26, 2022. Here’s my summary:
Descendant Lisa appears to be writing on some floating electronic paper, in 1961’s idea of a futuristic bedroom. Her mother (probably also named Lisa) offers her a “solar scooter” ride to “the outskirts” to pick up her birthday present. Descendant Lisa remarks she’s “never been this far into the outskirts before.” Mom says they’re going to an “antiquarian bookstore”, which was “one of the last to survive the burnings” to acquire an “old tree copy” of Summer’s book Westview. This bookstore is revealed to be the Village Booksmith, the bookstore Lillian McKenzie runs from her house in Crankshaft. They discover Lisa’s Story on the shelf next to it (despite not actually looking at the shelves because the robot got the book for them), and bring it home as well. Funky Winkerbean ends with Descendant Lisa rapturously reading Lisa’s Story.
There’s a lot of nonsense here. Let’s start with this bit:
I am really bothered by “one of the last to survive the burnings”. It sounds weird. I would accept “one of the few to survive” or “one of the last surviving” but this wording doesn’t make sense to me. How is it different from, oh, “one of the first to survive the burnings”?
Batgirl
She’s right: this is an awkward word choice. When Village Booksmith survived the burnings isn’t relevant, but rather that it survived it all.
Which is problem #2: Why did it survive? Why was Village Booksmith not promptly eliminated by the Burnings? The “Village Booksmith” sign still hangs on the post, brazenly announcing its forbidden products. Also, its founder Lillian McKenzie was an author of note. For the Burnings to work at all, they also have to work like everything else in the Funkyverse: it’s a problem, but we’re too lazy to do anything about it. Yeah, they’re overtly selling forbidden books, but it’s way off in the outskirts, so I guess we’ll just wryly smirk about how hard life is.
On to problem #3: outskirts of what? We’re explicitly told this is Summer’s grandchild, of approximately high school age. That puts this scene no more than 45-60 years into the future. It’s not the 2200s, where major shifts could have happened over time.
Given the timeframe, it’s hard to imagine any societal upheaval that would change the basic pattern of human settlement this much. We’re never told exactly where Westview and Centerville are, but we know from Dinkle’s backstory that he commutes from Westview to Centerville for his job at St. Spires church. And, Crankshaft characters make arbitrary trips to Montoni’s. So it can’t be that far. It’s hard to envision a scenario where the core of the Cleveland metropolitan area, or any rural part of Ohio, changes so much in 50 years that one exurb is now the “outskirts” of another exurb.
Problem #4: writing and reading don’t seem very repressed in this world. The phrase “dead tree copy” implies that electronic publishing still exists. In fact, we saw Descendant Lisa using some technological means to write. Descendant Lisa is called a “budding writer”, something that would be problematic in a world where the written word is under attack. Maybe the robot-staffed Village Booksmith is a safe space for such declarations. But it’s still a risky thing for Descendant Lisa to aspire to, if the Burnings are about censorship.
I can imagine a totalitarian world where electronic publishing is tolerated, because it can be easily monitored and controlled, while “dead tree” publishing is subversive. But that goes straight back to problem #2: the Village Booksmith would have been promptly stomped with an iron boot.
If the Burnings was anything real, samizdat would exist. Samizdat, literally “self-publishing”, was the means by which dissident writings circulated in the Soviet Union. The government tracked individual typewriters and photocopy machines, so self-publishing wasn’t easy to do. Low production values, necessary to avoid detection, became a hallmark of samizdat. But Descendant Lisa seems to face no such obstacles in her writing career. Or to acquiring all the “dead tree” books she wants to read.
Problem #5: how does Descendant Lisa not already know Westview and Lisa’s Story? They were written by her own direct ancestors! She’s even named after the Lisa in Lisa’s Story! This is like Vladimir Guerrero Jr. being surprised to learn that his dad was good at baseball. Even in a world that represses the written word, this would be a defining aspect of the family. If anything, it would bring them to the attention of whatever ruling class made the Burnings happen.
Problem #6: When, exactly, does Westview “spark others to build on it to create a science of behavioral-patterned algorithms that will one day allow us to recognize humanity as our nation”? This can’t have happened instantly, if literature immediately went dark afterwards. Does Westview languish in obscurity for 45-60 years before being rediscovered by Descendant Lisa? That fits the story, but good lord, this is arrogant. We are to believe that the two books that redefined humanity were about Lisa, written by Lisa’s husband and daughter, and rediscovered by Lisa’s granddaughter. As arrogant and undeserved as Les’ Oscar was, Westview pushes it off the medal stand of the Mary Sue Olympics.
Problem #7: What is Timemop’s role in all this? Poster Y. Knott rightly asked why Timemop wasn’t in my top 25. I admitted this was an oversight. (Or, as Y. Knott suggested, I was manipulated by Timemop himself.) But I don’t really think he’s going to appear in Crankshaft this year, because how does this fit into his story?
Timemop went to great lengths to ensure Westview got completed and published, to the extent of manipulating Summer’s birth. It’s plausible that the book needed to sit dormant for awhile to make its impact at the right time. But how is an era of book-burning not “the right time”? It seems to me that society needed to absorb its message as soon as possible, and that a lot of knowledge was lost in the interim. He also has broad time-altering and mind-control powers. Seems awfully blase’ of him to do nothing about this, considering how hands-on he was otherwise.
Second, why is Westview so important, when Descendant Lisa immediately put it down to read Lisa’s Story instead? And why did Descendant Lisa write a biography of Summer rather than about the rediscovered books themselves?
Look how crestfallen Summer is when she learns she only writes one history-altering book that attracts the attention of time travelers. Then look how delighted she is at getting a biography. She’s Les’ daughter, all right. The Moores are the Kardashians of this world.
Here’s what I’m getting at with all this: the Burnings imply a book-burning scenario. But Tom Batiuk has put so little thought into this story that it unravels under analysis. The only thing he cares about is how he can make Les and his offspring the literary saviors of humanity. How the Burnings actually work is of no concern to him. There’s no reason to infer anything about the Burnings. So my guesses about characters appearing a lot in 2024 because of the Burnings are probably way off. I’ll let them ride, though.
The Funkyverse, by its nature, defies the intellectual rigor we pay it.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I can tell you this much, and I’d bet my very life on it. Whatever The Burnings turn out to be, I 100% guarantee it’ll be WAY more anti-climactic and stupid than anyone could have possibly foreseen. Way more. You’ll finally see it, and your first thought will be “huh?”, followed by “this can’t be it, can it?”. He does it every time, and I seriously doubt he’s gonna suddenly change now.
Very much agreed. 100x more thought was put into BJ6K’s post above than will be put into the actual burnings story arc, and that may be a conservative estimate on my part.
This is Batiuk’s gift. No matter what your expectations, he can limbo under them in a way that’s not only more of an anti-climax than you imagined, it’s more stupid and more anti-climactic than you can imagine.
The Batiuk Paradox: no matter how stupid and anti-climactic you think a story will be, it will exceed those expectations. Just by reading that sentence, you’re expecting something even more stupid and anti-climactic than you initially were, and it’ll STILL exceed the new expectations.
(Unless he manages to come up with something SO batshit insane (Batiukshit insane?) it defies all logic and reasoning. Like Zanzibar The Talking Murder Chimp or The Gun That Murdered John Darling Who Was Murdered. I mean, yeah, they were stupid, but I wouldn’t call them “anti-climactic” at least.)
They were anti-climactic, in that a climax is expected to be a function of consistently rising story action reaching a peak. There may be a twist that leads to that peak, but a climax still comes out of the story elements that have been steadily building.
An illustration might help. Let’s say you watched the film Broadcast News and in the last minute of the film, out of nowhere someone randomly shot and killed the William Hurt character. There’s no explanation, just BOOM. And then we did a smash cut to a brief shot of a funeral. And … that’s it. The end.
That would definitely qualify as an an anti-climax. It absolutely doesn’t come out of anything that happened before, and it doesn’t reach any kind of story peak. It has action, sure — but it’s not a climax. It’s just an event, and it’s really the opposite of a climax. You could theorize about what happened, why it happened, and who pulled the trigger, but there’s nothing in the story or the characters that’s going to lead you to any kind of satisfying conclusion here. It’s just a thing that happened, that’s all.
“Zanzibar did it — oh, did I mention he could talk?” is also not so much a climax, as it is a desperate move to end a story Batiuk had no ending for. It’s memorable in its moronic stupidity, but whatever it is, it’s not a climax.
Fair enough, I guess I was assuming “anti-climactic” was more akin to “boring” or “mundane”, but that actually makes sense.
(Oddly, in the case of John Darling Who Was Murdered – and I’m embarrassed to admit it took me longer than it should have to make the connection there – there was something of a purpose to the ending, besides Batiuk thinking the syndicate couldn’t work around his pettiness. It’s still completely out of nowhere with no setup, but the point was that John Darling Who Was Murdered strove to achieve fame but failed, only to become well-known as a result of being murdered. (You’d think with that name, he would’ve seen it coming.) It was supposed to be “ironic” that he could only achieve his dream by dying, but Batiuk, of course, didn’t devote any time to actually exploring the theme.)
Good breakdown. I’d go one step further and say Batiuk is incapable of writing a story where anything builds to a climax. There’s no rising action, because his stories are just a list of “and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened.”
And these things are random plot points of no apparent relevance. Or things Batiuk thinks are important but never explains why. Or are important, but are promptly ignored. Or actively undermine where the story appeared to be going. Or never add up to anything. Or just stop dead in the middle.
And end the story it did! I have never thought about this before, but I don’t think the Butter Brinkle documentary that was the framing device for Cliff to recall Zanzibar was even mentioned once after the big reveal.
That anecdote from Cliff may have killed the whole project… both in universe and in TB’s mind. Cindy should know releasing a documentary that contains any footage at all of a doddering nonagenarian seriously claiming a chimp pointed a prop gun at him with intent and literally spoke English (much less the pivotal moment of the film) would make her a laughingstock (even in a universe where she won an Emmy for her spectacularly uninteresting Cliff Anger documentary). And, as you point out, TB had no clue where to take the story so he just ended it outlandishly and moved on. Gotta stay 1 year ahead of print time…
Gotta stay 1 year ahead of print time…
Did you notice that was Batiuk’s first priority in the car crash story? “Fortunately, Chuck Ayers and I were ahead by a year with the art on Crankshaft and the penciling on Funky, so immediate deadlines weren’t a concern. That said, neither one of us was eager to engage in the effort to get the strips back to being a year ahead…”
You know, YK, that’s how Kevin Smith almost concluded the original “Clerks,” with a random robber coming into the Quick Stop and shooting Dante. After a pre-release showing Smith was convinced to delete the downbeat ending.
I wouldn’t say “downbeat” but rather “jarring and confusing.” Because death is played for laughs the entire movie. The funeral, the guy in the bathroom, the conversation about independent contractors on the Death Star.
Which is basically what Batiuk does. Lisa’s death is the greatest tragedy in human history. Everyone else’s death is a joke (Pop Clutch), an excuse for the main characters to whine about their lives some more (Mary Sue Sweetwater), temporary (Phil Holt; maybe Tony Montoni), an opportunity to trash them (Bull Bushka) and commit insurance fraud (Bull again), or a middle finger to the syndicate (John Darling).
Didn’t know that, J.J.! Smith definitely made the right choice in ditching that ending.
The original Clerks ending was supposed to be something of a dark joke, but it probably wasn’t easy to figure out. It’s the punchline to running gag of the movie: “I’m not even supposed to be here today”. Dante repeatedly bemoans the fact that he allowed himself to get called in on his day off, and, in the end, what’s his “reward”? He gets randomly murdered for no reason.
Not that I blame audiences for missing that punchline, or even getting it and just not liking it, and I wouldn’t want to see that have been the “official” ending. (Though it probably would have spared us the sequels.)
I personally thought the original Clerks ending was a callback to the Empire Strikes Back conversation, about it being the best one for having a bleak ending where everything goes to hell.
It never failed to amaze me. No matter how weak, lame, nonsensical or stupid you expected his stories to be, he always lowered the bar, often to an astounding degree. Regular people simply aren’t capable of thinking that way.
It’s almost a childlike degree of freedom. Small children can come up with some crazy stories, because they’re not restricted by having to make sense. Nor do they percieve things adults would see as obvious dead ends.
Batiuk is very id-motivated. He does what he wants to do first, and retcons it later. In the case of the Burnings, he wanted Funky Winkerbean to end with Lisa’s Story and Westview saving the world from a dark future. So he did that. He never thought one second about what the Burnings actually were. Then, he wanted to depict the Burnings in Crankshaft, when most writers would immediately realize it’s a story you can’t return to the status quo from.
At the same time, Batiuk suffers from self-imposed restrictions that most people don’t have. He can’t back down from an idea. He can’t say “I know I promised a Burnings arc in Crankshaft, but I realized this wasn’t going to work.” He has to try. In his mind, a good writer never admits error.
Nor can he depict Lisa’s Story as anything less than the greatest narrative humanity has ever produced. That kills the best possible angle of the Burnings: that it’s a backlash against this book. And as I said in the first “predictions” post, it’s a book that attracts backlash by its nature.
So the question becomes: which immutable truths is he going to mute?
You’re forgetting the first rule of Tom Batiuk: no matter how lame and trivial you imagine “The Burnings” to be, Batiuk will exceed your predictions effortlessly. And no one will be able to guess beforehand.
Remember his big “climate damage” worry? That he wouldn’t be able to get his “vintage comic strip collections.” Imagine someone, somewhere, who is struggling to feed his family and survive, reading that.
To reference one of your other posts BJ6K, here’s a new T.B. Trope;
TB’s Hammer – The likeliest answer is TB has no idea what he’s doing.
I love it!
I love it too, but I want to call it Batiuk’s Razor. “It is futile to do with more effort what can be done with less effort.”
That kind of feels like a truism, though? I mean, if you can achieve the same result regardless of how much effort you put into it, why would you put in more effort? In Batiuk’s case, it seems more a case of “it’s futile to put in any effort if you’re already convinced the output will be high quality (no matter what anyone else thinks of it)”. Or something.
You’re right, the way I said it sounds way too noble. I was aiming for something “never attribute to malice what can be attributed to laziness, and the desire to read comic books instead.”
By TB’s hammer….
By the stepsons of Winkerbean…
You will be healed of your immortal wound!
Repeat after the computer, Lieutenant Tawny Madison…
Reading something like this is WHY I love everything about being a Funkysnarker so much. The logical, almost scientific, analysis of something that doesn’t really deserve it.
But yet, you can learn so much from it. Like dissecting a Hostess Snack cake to learn about the ingredients and their history and function, and writing a book about it.
That does exist, BTW.
You’re right, the wording of, “one of the last to.” is weird, BJ6K. You’d use it to describe something that had both survived and yet is still in danger of being destroyed/dying. Like ‘one of the last’ Titanic survivors, one of the last Yetis, one of the last comic strips.
The problem isn’t that The Looming Burnings will be the most baffling and anticlimactic things ever. That’s a given. The problem is that The Delicate Genius will think they’re the best things anyone ever could have written.
This morning, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed asked me why I was staring (absent-mindedly, she assumed) out the window as my coffee grew cold.
I explained I was parsing BJ6K’s rigorous analysis of “the Burnings.”
About how insubstantial the event will be, no matter my non-expectant expectations.
…And how stymied I was that much of L.A., from Malibu/Santa Monica east to West Hollywood(?) was incinerated during the “Lisa’s Story” filming… started by a spark from a golf club hitting a stone(?!).
…And how the firestorm destroying a major part of America’s second-largest city was less than an afterthought to Les being gifted the Oscar won by the actress who played Lisa in the movie (even though it bombed at the box office).
The more I tried explaining, the more concerned she became.
What I should have said was nothing.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Pedoskunk Johnny: Well look who it is. Jeff, why the fuck are you here?
Jeff: The police are at your house, searching everywhere in it because somebody who wants to keep his identity tipped them off that a comic book owner attempted to molest them when they were young. They found evidence that you were the comic book owner that the anonymous person was talking about, and 29 gigabytes of CP.
Pedoskunk: WHAT!? I would never do such a thing!
Jeff: Try telling that to the police when they arrest your fat ass.
And we’ve got an early contender for Most Punchable Jeff Murdoch Face of 2024.
It is too much to hope that The Burnings will consume Komix Korner and all of these characters… but I cannot help hoping anyways.
I detest how Komix Korner treats children. I had a discussion with my Lyft driver about this yesterday. I was shipping some of my old baseball cards to my little cousins. The driver immediately recognized the long, white boxes I was putting in his trunk, and we struck up a conversation about it. He had two sons who loved to open packs from the late 80s/early 90s (widely known as the “junk wax era”). They didn’t even care about value, they just loved the cards and the sport of baseball itself, much like I did when I was a kid. (I gave him two boxes as a tip.)
Anyway, he was telling me some card shops in town weren’t very “kid-friendly” and he didn’t go to them much for that reason. I said that was actually kind of sad. And impractical! Children are the most passionate collectors of things like these. If you’re a store owner, it’s in your own interest to encourage that passion, and to make your store a welcoming place. Because kids are constantly aging out of/into the hobby, and often have younger friends/siblings who’ll remember their experiences when they become collectors themselves.
Komix Korner is the most unfriendly, unwelcoming, unenjoyable hobby store I can imagine. The employees don’t know (or care) about anything current that a kid would be interested in. All they want to do is yell at clouds that comic books today aren’t the way they want them to be, and try to recruit you into their cult of dusty, long-forgotten crap on spinner racks.
To say nothing of the store’s intimidating location behind a closed door atop a flight of stairs, its sloppy decor, its lack of fixtures or besty practices to protect comic book value, and the complete rudeness of its staff. Remember when they insulted that guy for buying a (very expensive) lifesize Iron Man figure?
Batiuk took a potshot at The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy, but John Howard is far worse.
The model railroading hobby is similar. So many rude old Batty’s hanging around in stores and online telling younger people that they were not enjoying the hobby the right way.
Don’t like steam engines? Prefer to buy your structures rather than kitbash them? Then you are a fool who deserves to be shunned. Great attitude.
I think it comes from guys who just can’t move on, they became stubborn and closed minded and hence the world has moved on without them. This makes them bitter and they end up pining for the good old days when they understood the world. So as a defensive measure, they criticize anyone who doesn’t share that similar worldview.
I am happy for the good old days of my past, but I realize that they are not coming back, and that’s ok, today has a lot of good things too. In the meantime, I try to encourage young people to have real interests.
Yeah, that’s Batty all right. He makes comic book fandom feel like a tax audit.
billytheskink:
Maybe the Burnings are–ONLY OF COMIC BOOKS?!
This would explain why book stores still exist. All they took from The Lizard’s Lair was that “Hey Kids! COMICS” spinner rack. It explains the amazement that Loser’s Story still existed, and why Lisa the Third was fascinated by it. She’d only heard of comics from the legends!
And which do you think Tom would be more upset by? The burning down of the Library of Congress, or some pizza-stinking Ohio comical book store?
Lisa 3.0 sadly placed down Lisa’s Story, the Diary of Anne Frank in this benighted universe, and sighed. This is the Last Comical Book left. Now she will never read what happened when the Flash’s head got huge!
(Schrodinger’s Cartoonist Phil Holt: “Screw that Flash #123 crap! This is the one that immortally wounded Tomato Bat! And by gum, did his head ever exceed that one!”
Oh, we can’t link again. It’s Flash #177.
I think the burning of libraries terrifies Batiuk more than the destruction of all comic books (then again, I could be wrong and the opposite is true)
Oh yes, implying there’s some big event leading to society losing most bookstores/books…..and then when we finally get the story it will be lame and nothing nearly that interesting. My money is on one of Ed’s grill launches burning down a few bookstores. In one city. The end.
The Burnings almost HAS to be lame and uninteresting, unless it’s also going to be the end of Crankshaft.
The idea of books being restricted is too much of an upheaval to continue with the status quo. Being a Mary Sue tract, the Funkyverse revolves around the creation, sales, discussion, consumption, and signings of books (including comic books). If an opposition group comes into existence, it can’t then be ignored. Nor can it be defeated, because these restrictions are still in effect in the future when Descendant Lisa re-discovers Lisa’s Story and Westview.
Batiuk has once again written himself into a corner. The Burnings can’t happen yet, without completely changing the Funkyverse. But it’s obvious why Batiuk concieved the Burnings: so four generations of Moores can single-handedly save humanity from the dark ages. He can’t go back on THAT.
The question is, what’s he going to do to make the story work? “Making it make sense” and “admitting he was wrong and dropping the idea” definitely aren’t in play. And there’s no indication Crankshaft is going to end.
True, but then again, two years ago, there was no indication Funky was going to end, either, and Batiuk would have already written the finale by that point. The first inkling we had of the end was the closing of Montoni’s, which didn’t happen until October. (Though maybe Mason buying the Valentine could be considered a hint, as it was Batiuk explicitly ignoring the time gap between the two strips?) And even then, no official announcement was made until some time in November, I think?
So Batiuk could have already written a Crankshaft finale, and we’d have no idea unless he told us. And since he clearly very deliberately didn’t tell us about Funky ending until almost the end… he’s not going to tell us about Cranky ending, either.
All true, but it is theoretically possible that news of Crankshaft‘s end could come from someone other than Batiuk.
Re: “one of the last to survive the burnings”. Tom Batiuk’s writing style is all awkward word choices. It’s what he does.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
John: Jeff, I have the last of the silver age comics!
Jeff: I’m still not talking to you.
(Jeff leaves and the police come to arrest John’s fat ass)
John: I’VE DONE NOTHING WRONG!
Cop 1: You do know what happens to people like you in prison, right?
John: What?
Cop 1: You’re better off not knowing. Besides, nobody will come to your side this time.
We all know how Les Moore centric Batiuk made Funky Winkerbean in Act III. Including about how all the most mundane of things affected “Poor Les.” (I really miss The Comics Kingdom Funky Winkerbean archive. I’d love to post a pouting Les right here.)
I predict the “burnings” will involve Les biting into a Hot Pocket® out of the microwave too soon.
Les: (screaming while on fire) IT BURNS IT BURNS ITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSITBURNSOHGODMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOPMAKEITSTOP
(Les runs around Westview, Ohio, while screaming his ass off all the time, setting Montoni’s, The Komix Korner and Lillian McKenzie’s shit store on fire and cooking Lillian well done, Jeff )
Jeff: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Who’s going to bet that “the burnings” was just something Batiuk threw into the strip because “It’ll sound so cool! And like, future-y or something. Like, uh, The Walking Dead or like that!”
And it will never be referenced again. It’ll never be referred to again. And once again, the commentors at SoSF will have proven to be more imaginative and creative than Batiuk managed to be for over 50 years.
As far as Tom Batiuk is concerned, I used to be disgusted, then amused, but I have to admit the hate in me is swelling.
The Burnings were Batiuk’s mechanism to make Funky Winkerbean end with the world literally revolving around Lisa’s Story and Westview. I doubt he put a second of thought into what they actually entail. If he did, he’d realize it’s a story Crankshaft can’t survive.
I’ll admit I’m really not that into The Burnings, unless they’re followed by The Itchings and the Swellings.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Harry: (notices Mitch stacking a bunch of fragile shit and runs towards him in slow motion) NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!
Oh dang! That is Mitch! I thought when we saw him enter with Jeff on Monday that he was Jeff’s inner child astral projection.
Kudos to TB, though, for referencing one of the worst arcade fighters of the early 90s (though the gratuitous gore gave it some personality).
Jeff: Harry, did you hear about what John did? You do know that he had molested a ton of children between the 90’s and 2023, right?
Crazy Harry: I bailed him out! He would never, ever EVER do something like this.
Jeff: (sigh) So you’re on his side until the day either you or John dies, right?
Crazy: You’re damn right I am!
Jeff: You know what? I’m out of here. Mitch, we got to go home.
Mitch: Oh, SON OF A BITCH!
(both Mitch and Jeff walk outside the Komix Korner, and then Wally Jr. walks up and throws a trombone at John’s head, knocking him out cold)
Wally Jr.: John, I hope the cops arrest you and send you straight to hell.
John: WHY CAN’T YOU JUST CALL ME “DAD” JUST LIKE RANA DOES!?!
Wally Jr.: You don’t deserve to be called “dad” after all this shit you pulled, from forcing Mom to marry you and all this depraved shit that you did to all those children.
I’m really of two minds about The Burnings.
On the one hand it sounds like something very final, the last strip of John Darling writ large. TB wanting to go out with a BANG and leave nothing but ashes. Since he’s actually done this before it would be possible.
On the other hand despite the influx of Funky characters my sense was that he was trying to get the strip into shape to be farmed out or passed along, that any sense of character development or time passage was being removed. Back to the eternal present of the gag a day legacy strip. (If he can’t interest his family into taking it over i wonder if he could sell it?)
That he seems to want both at the same time (Schrodinger’s Batiuk) is not out of character either. All i can say is that obsessing about it (this means you, GoComics commenter who leaves daily “yeah but wheres the BURNINGS” notes) is probably just gearing you up for a letdown.
DSH Johnnie in panel 2 of the February 7, 2024 strip has the same exact expression and pose as in the strip for March 23, 2023. Also notice that DSH is not looking at any of the actual people in the room; he appears to be admiring the Iron Man full-size figure.
Glad to see my words continue to inspire others. Always fun to see.
I’m inclined to want to think the Burnings will be something interesting, a few weeks of flash-forward into the future maybe revisiting the epilogue future in a way while somehow grounding it in typical Crankshaft gags. Something more serious I could see happening only if the strip is ending, which considering how Funky wrapped up I think we’ll only have weeks in advance if things seem suspiciously status-quo shaking enough. But it would be equally funny as well if it’s a nothing burger where its like the old trope of history being inaccurate due to incomplete records and exaggeration; legendary Burnings being what the Centerville paper chose to call Ed burning down the town hall or something.
Also what fun to see Komix Korner again on this week’s Cranks /j. Kinda wonder what a retrospective look at the strip would say about Jeff’s nerd habits. They seem to have grown over time for sure; perhaps a sign of mid-life crisis or just Tom’s expanded sense of comic nostalgia, but I would find it remarkable to see just how far the roots go and how much it took for them to bloom for us to have a middle age nerd hog the limelight.
I think the Byrnings will happen one strip and the next day it will be forgotten like tears in the rain