Today’s award is near and dear to my heart. Because it’s all about the long suffering ladies of Crankshaft.
I’ve said before, and I’ll reiterate, I do not believe that Tom is a misogynist. I don’t think he hates women, or thinks that they are less than men, or even that they should be treated any different than men. He cognitively knows and understands that women are just people and can do, and be, and enjoy a whole lot of different things. He doesn’t want to be bad at writing women. But he is. Granted, he is bad at writing any character at this point. But his poor ladies are suffering more and more as the male characters in the Funkyverse lose themselves in a inane orgy of nonsensical and self-satisfying pursuits.
And these poor ladies don’t get mad, don’t rock the boat, they just die a little more every day.
Your nominees for 2023’s,
Most Dead Inside Woman
1.) Pam in, ‘I Don’t Give A Beep.’
2.) Lena in, ‘Why Do I Bother to Show Up?’
3.) Pam in, ‘Hungry For Silence.’
4.) Pam in, ‘Same Old Speed-dial.’
5.) Bank Teller in, ‘The Work is its Own Reward.’
6.) Mindy in, ‘Why Am I Marrying This Idiot?’
7.) Mindy in, ‘Why Am I Marrying This Idiot, Redux?’
8.) Mindy in, ‘The Killing Joke.’
And your winner for Most Dead Inside Woman 2023?
Pam in ‘I Don’t Give a Beep.’
True confession. I actually like this strip. Sue me. It is almost a beat for beat recreation of me ranting to my own mother about Funky Winkerbean itself.
Me: “Squee!!! I accidently got sent an email from Tom Batiuk he intended to send to someone else, so now I know all the hot goss!”
My own mother, heavy lidded with a lack of enthusiasm bordering on annoyance: “Wow.”
And then, after a pause, we both laughed. Because sometimes you’re really happy the garbage man beeped, and sometimes the person you tell wonders why someone they love so much could be so obnoxiously weird.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I think i voted for “I Dont Give A Beep”
I think I voted for the bank teller, because, in her lone appearance, she managed to be just as dead inside as characters who have had decades of appearances. The Funkyverse is so soul-crushing that the poor woman has had her spirit pre-crushed! (She’s even making terrible wordplay, and can’t hide her utter despair at life.)
I also kind of feel that #7 and #8 should be considered one entry, since Generic Blonde (I wanna say… Mandy?) is using the EXACT SAME ART in both. (Guess none of these poor women are as dead inside as Dan Davis.)
Just for the heck of it, I’ll repost my own take on the Dead Inside Bank Teller strip. Enjoy, or don’t. I think I was in a weird mood that day.
https://i.imgur.com/k5Mwmhm.gif
Bah ha ha, I love it!
i enjoyed it.
Classic
I think Dan Ronan summed up TB’s approach to writing for women perfectly.
“I didn’t know what they would say… the same things a guy would say, but in a higher pitched voice?”
Oh, if only we could have reached out to him somehow. Dan Ronan was so obviously and clearly one of us.
Ah yes, the ladies of the Batiukiverse, forever destined to deeply sigh in resignation, smirk beatifically, or roll their eyes in gentle disgust. Such is the life of a gurl in TomBan’s sick, twisted fantasy world.
It’s always amused me how TomBan simply cannot abide a happily single female character. The only one of any consequence was Summer, and he had no idea what to do with her for a solid nine years or thereabouts. Otherwise, all the gurls get paired off with someone. He even paired Susan Smith up with Crankshaft at the end of FW’s run. So, are those two still an item?
“He even paired Susan Smith up with Crankshaft at the end of FW’s run. So, are those two still an item?”
Epicus, the thought of Susan and Crankshaft being paired together in any form makes me want to throw up
Also, I think Susan made another suicide attempt after Crankshaft helped her out of Westview, only this time, nobody came to save her
I barely remember it, as we’d all pretty much checked out by that point. The last few months of FW were really weird, in a boring, distressing kind of way.
Ed Crankshaft is far more likely to kill someone than keep them alive.
Hm, he thought he was keeping Susan alive, but she wasn’t actually going to kill herself anyway, so that doesn’t really count. And Ed DID kill Pop Clutch. So… it does look like the math checks out there.
I also feel like Crankshaft would try to cover up a murder just to get away with it, only to fail miserably
I had no idea when the “winning” strip referred to. I’ve lived in many cities in many states in several countries and none ever beeped, twitted, messaged or did any other kind of “ed”
If I may, I will politely disagree. I hope
P-m gives J-f-f *beep* all the time.
This speaks to something wrong about Batiuk himself: his inability to quite get that people who don’t go berserk with glee because of the ‘nifty’ contrivance Gardner Fox used to allow Flash to use Implausible Speed to defeat Rainbow Raider aren’t dead inside. He has no idea that he looks like an annoying little boy excited over something kinda cheesy and dumb and ascribes his being described as such to an instinct to bully and to deny life.
This is why his female characters are so off: he doesn’t ‘get’ women because doing so means that his interests are just his.
What are you doing, Harriet?
AaWAAARrdZ!
(I am certainly not drinking in the bathtub)
I voted for the bank teller, because I like the subtext. She looks really fed up with Crankshaft, even though he’s behaving here. I suspect she’s had enough of his obnoxious, unfunny behavior every time he visits, and insults him today by demonstrating what good wordplay looks like. Judging from his dumbfounded reaction, it sails over his head. Which is fine with her. In retail jobs you have to relish the little victories.
BJr6K captured the reasoning behind my vote extremely accurately.
But this is the third straight category where my vote ended up being for the second-place candidate. Now I’m wondering…if the pattern holds, how I should actually vote in an election if there’s a candidate I really want to win? Should I cast my vote for the person I want to come in second?
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Man I wish they just do a story arc about bowling because I dont want to talk about that despicable lizard being that calls herself Lillian McKenzie
“Hungry for Silence” had my vote just because it showed Pam getting the last word in on Jeff’s shenanigans, which felt like a nice retort moment. The “Don’t Give a Beep” one is equally good though, so I approve of its victory.
I voted for “I Don’t Give a Beep “because I thought Pam’s face best portrayed “just kill me now”. But all of the choices were good ones.
{Me: “Squee!!! I accidently got sent an email from Tom Batiuk he intended to send to someone else, so now I know all the hot goss!”}
CBH, I need to know the dissection of the ‘Squee!!!’ Was it an upward squee? That would indicate joy, exhilaration, jocularity, and extemporaneous glee. (Sqees are so complicated to define.)
Or….is it a downward squee? That would tell me that the squee was full of bathos, an articulation of rumination, or an anticipation of expanded contemplation into our vast universe. (Squees are so simple to define!)
I squee in expectation of your reply!
Definitely squeed in an upward direction. Batiuk has accidently emailed me about three times, and every time is a joy.
CBH, getting emails from TB, might be even better than 2 Super Bowl wins! Right BWOEH!
(I might have done some upward squeeing myself, tonight!)
Sorry, SP. Not even close.
Every silver lining has a cloud, though. The office was hit hard by the Super Bowl Hangover today.
I am in solidarity with your coworkers. I did not go in to work today.
Dearest SP,
As a manager I don’t have that luxury. It was a slow work day where I spent most of the day on the phone. Sometimes doing the work of somebody who was “sick.”
Also, some idiot(s) in IT decided it was a good time to to bring down the network to make server modifications in the middle of a work day. I guess they thought they could squeeze them in over the lunch break so they wouldn’t have to perform them outside of normal work hours. Nice idea, except when the upgrades fail, and have to be backed out. We had no network until almost 3:00 PM. Ruh roh, somebody’s in deep doo doo.
At least, they cannot blame the hardworking manager who came in to work when all others failed. (Mal probably had to prod you Monday morning.)
With my hospital experience, I began to believe that everyone in IT thought we all worked for them.
Are you going to the parade tomorrow?
I will look for you!
Just for you, listen to Marvin Gaye’s cover of “Yesterday”. Then follow with “(You make me feel like) A Natural Woman.”
To friendship!
Anything funny or interesting in those emails?
PS: thanks for the Crankies! Fun stuff.
Learned that Tom does actually have an editor who proofreads his strips and asks about spelling, formatting, and visual continuity errors. She seemed nice. Learned that Dan Davis is still the acknowledged artist, and can be asked to alter artwork to fix errors.
NGL, it was a real treat.
CBH:
“NGL” here means, I think, “not gonna lie,” but my initial thought was of “no great loss,” which I encountered in the description of the mini-Captain Trips virus in Stephen King’s uncut version of *The Stand.”
I have to admit that I’d be more likely to use the “no great loss” myself, because it conjures up listening to Julie Brown’s “Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun”:
“An hour later the cops arrived —
By then the entire glee club had died!
No big loss…”
Which, in turn, leads to the joke about Alexander the Great being Alexander the Pig in *Henry V,* because “Big” and “Great” mean the same thing, no?
My current reading is David Nicholls’s *Starter for Ten,* which has chapter headings offering questions you might find on Britain’s “University Challenge.” There is one about the Fantastic Four (beady-eyed nitpicker that I am, I think that the question in 1985 would call Susan Storm Richards “the Invisible Girl” not “the Invisible Woman,” though by the book’s publication date in 2003 the nomenclature fits), but so far none about the Flash’s weight problems or John Darling’s Channel One colleagues or Harry Dinkle’s view of the role of football fields.
Thinking of *The Stand* has changed my current earworm from the Shangri-Las to the Alarm. Make of that what you will as you make sixty-eight guns your battle cry!
Anonymous Sparrow,
I find myself watching more than reading.
1. Season 4 of “All Creatures Great and Small.”
No spoilers, but the writers have adopted Dickens worst characteristic: unrequited love, or love afar, “I love her, but shan’t say a word. It is done over scenes of long meals and small bites. (Shan’t is little used in my world. Somewhat like NGL, which I took for “No Greater Lasagna”. (I gotta stop staying up all night watching “Garfield!)
More on ACGAS: In the earlier episodes of season 4, there could be quite the drinking game for every smooch and kiss James gives Helen. Overall, pretty good series even with the writers relying too much on Dickens.
2. I found “One Step Beyond” on YouTube TV. I remember it from the 50’s. I did not associate it being a competitor to the Twilight Zone, yet it was. Also in some ways to “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”. All 3 were usually strong half hour episodes with strong writing, and wonderful casts. I watched one last night starring Barbara Lord, who later becomes Patrick Warburton’s mother in real life. I think Twilight Zone had the better production values being mostly made in the 60’s.
SP:
Your timing is remarkable.
For my last birthday, one friend gave me a collection of three short Charles Dickens pieces about Christmas, while another gave me Marc Scott Zicree’s *Twilight Zone Companion.*
I don’t think there is a “One Step Beyond” study (I hear Madness singing…do something from *The Liberty of Norton Folgate* next, guys), so I did some research of my own. It overlapped with “The Twilight Zone” (1959-61), and almost reached 100 episodes. I can only remember one episode (a look at the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which Professor Roy Hinkley failed to prevent in “Back There” on “The Twilight Zone”).
The best comment on Dickens for me is Orwell’s: ”Rotten architecture, wonderful gargoyles.” You tolerate the first because of the second, because at his best he’ll do something no one else can do. In that regard, he reminds me a lot of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who knew Dickens’s work well (whether Dickens knew Dostoyevsky’s work I don’t know: my guess is he didn’t): at his best, no one can touch him.
(I’m William Shatner, and as the portrayer of Alyosha Karamazov in the 1958 “Brothers Karamazov,” I support the preceding paragraph.)
The “All Creatures Great and Small” books have different titles in the UK (making much less use of the hymn). I read the first one a long time ago and only remember two things from it:
That the Siegfried Farnon had a brother named Tristan, and that it could have been worse (Parsifal, anyone?); and
That Herriot did get married, finally, and that he felt a great joy in a patient’s owner calling Helen “your missus.”
Elsewhere, I mentioned my pleasure in “Starter for Ten,* and you came to mind, SP, as Brian Jackson reflected that his favorite Thomas Hardy novel was *Jude the Obscure* while Alice Harbison, the student he’s interested in, selected *Far from the Madding Crowd.* I think it’s foreshadowing, because Hardy stopped writing novels with *Jude* and enjoyed his first great success with *Crowd.* If her favorite was “Tess of the d’Urbervilles* or *The Mayor of Casterbridge,* I’d feel much less apprehensive.
Brian’s favorite Dickens novel is *Bleak House,* which is mine, too. (Dickens’s own favorite was *David Copperfield.*) What his mother will make of it as a Christmas gift I have no idea, but as Catherine Tate plays her in the movie, let’s just hope that, like her Lauren Cooper character, she’s not bovvered by the unrequited love there.
“Alfred Hitchcock Presents” became “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” but I’ve never had the good fortune to see any of those episodes, and only one of the hour-long “Twilight Zone” shows from that series’s fourth season (“Miniature,” with Robert Duvall).
(Ah, Madness is singing their “Forever Young,” which is not Bob Dylan’s…nice to know what you can do away from that heavy heavy monster sound, lads…)
The Alarm is a great little band that’s been forgotten.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Crankshaft: FEAR ME, FOR I HAVE BECOME DEATH, DESTROYER OF WORLDS.
(Crankshaft goes around Centerville and Westview, killing everyone he sees)
Pam: WHY DID YOU GIVE THAT TO HIM?!
Guy Who Had A Chainsaw But Gave It To Crank: I THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA!!!!!!
Today’s Crankshaft: Oh great, now Batiuk’s doing time skips within single strips.
Now, if the first panel had the ice sculpture intact, but instead showed Becky and/or Skip standing in front of Ed… THAT might have been funny.
(meanwhile in Westview City, Ohio)
Les: Cayla, why do I smell doom?
(Crankshaft barges in and brutally murders both Cayla and Les in a fit of bloodthirsty and sadistic glee)
For some reason, I find it especially horrifying to see a woman, eyes wide open with years’ worth of overwhelming evidence, preparing to enter into a zombie marriage with a worthless, unloving manchild.
Even more horrifying than seeing a woman living out her retirement years in a zombie marriage to a worthless, unloving manchild.
I mean, maybe there was once some love and optimism between Pmm and Jff. It would’ve been shown before my time with FW, so I don’t know.
But Mindy has positively reams of evidence that Pete is an emotionally stunted, immature idiot. And yet, expressing reservations all the way, she seems grimly determined to go through with marrying this fool.
And that’s why I had to vote for Mindy over Pmm.
Pmm and Jff’s marriage was decently portrayed in the past. Pretty typical comic book couple fare. With them displaying affection, consideration, mutual support, and shared interests slightly more often than they were shown annoyed at each other for the sake of a joke.
Mindy and Pete’s relationship is absolutely baffling. Even Becky and DSH on paper make more sense. And the way the entire proposal and buying Montoni’s thing was handled this last year was DISGUSTING, where Mindy was alternating between limply voicing reservations that she didn’t back up with actual resistance, and actively sucking down her fears and refusing to communicate them at all.
I feel like Mooch/Fappy McFapface would be better than Pete/Mopey McMopester as Mindy’s girlfriend/wife