And we’re back… hello?

I got a lovely little newsletter last week from our favorite septuagenarian strip writer. One of the singular perks of being on the official mailing list. I thought I’d pass on the highlights, with CBH commentary.

[I have no idea why he starts off with this strip. But if I had to suffer through reading a random strip where Les is talking to an imaginary Dead St. Lisa, and smirking while fantasizing her criticizing his parenting, then I am definitely going to share the pain.]

Hello [REAL NAME],

Spoiler alert! This is an email from someone who spends most of every day in a room by himself, and then laughably puts out something he calls a newsletter. [A promising start!]

Still here? Okay, then this is partly on you. [So sue me, this self-deprecating humor is actually working for me. I’ll take this.] My first bit of ”news” is that a few weeks ago I did my initial 2024 book signing for The Complete Funky Winkerbean Vol.13 at the Ohio Music Educators Conference.

[Can anyone hook a girl up with some Scapegoat patches? No lie.]
[Nothing goes with a black blazer over a plaid dress shirt over a black t-shirt, like a plain black ball cap.]

I posted a piece on this in my blog which you can check out for more details if you wish (there’s a pic there of an incredibly stylish electronic violin that was worth the price of admission). The convention, of course, is limited to Ohio music educators so you’re probably wondering why I’m even bringing it up. [OMEA Con is only for Ohio Music Educators? I looked it up and this is true. You have to be a member or a spouse of a member to attend.] Good question… so here’s the kicker. Some friends and I at the conference got to talking about the C.L. Barnhouse paperback book collections of Harry L. Dinkle the World’s Greatest Band Director. Together they form a sort of biography of that character, who was so crucial to Funky’s early success, as they track the arc from that character’s inception as a band director of halftime shows to a point later on where he would sell the oil rights for the football field to raise money for new band uniforms. One friend mentioned how crazy expensive those old books get.

However, in a later conversation with the publisher of those books — the Barnhouse Company located in the gleaming Barnhouse Music Palace in Oskaloosa, Iowa — I learned that there are still first edition copies of those books housed in the barn (hence the company name) next door for the original $7 price. And, even better, you can find them in the “Comic Shop” and order them directly on my website or at Barnhouse.com for the original price. It would be great to take those books from their meticulously monitored climate controlled storage facility and get them instead into the hands of people who’d enjoy reading them. So if you’re interested, check them out. [Wow, that is some SERIOUS overstock, to still be selling the first edition decades later.]

Speaking of books (is that a slick transition or what?), at that same “comic shop” on my website, along with Crankshaft coffee mugs and grilling aprons, [Also on my Amazon wish list!] you’ll also find copies of the brand new Volume 13 of The Complete Funky Winkerbean. This latest installment of The Complete Funky Winkerbean presents the comic strips from 2008-2010 and ushers the original Funky characters into middle age. In true Funky fashion, the characters have to grapple with very serious issues like nearly fatal car crashes, a war abroad, and a tanking economy at home. [IN TRUE FUNKY FASHION] These years are also where I first introduced Cayla which was a bit of a turning point for me as it allowed me to take the strip on a “time-jump” arc which gave me a lot of freedom to explore some different topics and ideas. [wat?] Here’s a teaser strip from December 28, 2008 (and if you want to go back and look, the strip at the top of this newsletter is from the previous week — December 21, 2008).

That’s about it for now. Enjoy whatever books you’re reading as the winter season winds down and stay Funky.

28 thoughts on “And we’re back… hello?”

  1. Today’s Funky Crankerbean

    Crank has much less patience when it comes to deliveries than I am

    I made an edit (I’m sorry)

  2. These years are also where I first introduced Cayla which was a bit of a turning point for me as it allowed me to take the strip on a “time-jump” arc which gave me a lot of freedom to explore some different topics and ideas.

    The time jump and Cayla weren’t an exploration of new ideas. They were the complete avoidance of new ideas.

    A new idea would have been “Les copes with Lisa’s death” or “Les learns to be a single parent” or “Les learns the universe doesn’t revolve around his writing career” or “Les loses friends because of his inability to move on” or “Les becomes an adult in any manner whatsoever.”

    The time skip, and the convenient arrival of Cayla, were all done to keep Les in his comfort zone. It enabled him to spend the rest of his life moping about Lisa, and insulated him from ever having to do anything at all as a result of her death.

    1. I read that sentence as TB claiming Cayla was the reason he was able to have the strip time jump. Might explain her shapeshifting abilities too.

      Move over Harley, you’ve got company!

  3. ComicBookHarriet,
    The moment I read your title, I thought of Groucho Marx’s “Hello I Must Be Going.” A little known fact, our own Anonymous Sparrow can sing the song both forwards and backwards, and our precious Be Ware of Eve Hill does a nice little dance to the song. She mimics Groucho perfectly. As for me: I listen attentively.

    1. Harpo has always been my favorite Marx Brother, but after recently re-watching “Monkey Business,” I have developed a newfound appreciation for Groucho. He’s constantly firing off hilarious jokes, and I can’t help but laugh out loud. Thank goodness for the rewind button!

      Speaking of Harpo, have you ever heard his real voice? Not what I expected!

      2. BWOEH,
        You perked my interest, so I watched a video of Harpo speaking. He had a much deeper voice than I thought he would. Then I thought, I never heard Chico’s real voice either. Very pleasant voice without the Italian accent. I saw him as a guest on some show that I had never heard of, “The Name’s the Same.” Very similar to “What’s my Line.” The host was a real jerk to Chico. It did have as panelists, newsman Mike Wallace, and Audrey Meadows.
        Happy weekend!

  4. Thanks for sharing that goldmine, CBH! Wow, lots of juicy info in that email.

    I’m kind of surprised that the first printings of the Barnhouse trade paperbacks never sold out. Some of our regulars can attest to the one-time popularity of the FW strip, especially for people in the school-band ecosystem. Once upon a time, before the internet, many of us grew up with well-thumbed paperbacks of favorite comics that we would read and reread. Perhaps FW just never inspired that kind of affection?

    Or perhaps the earlier trade paperbacks were popular and well-liked, but the Dinkle-focused ones were too specific, and/or Barnhouse didn’t have enough distribution clout, or….?

    Either way, this reinforces the silliness of the current situation. If the fun, Dinkle-centric books never sold out, what does that tell us about the current Kent State publishing scheme?

    You’ve heard of Champagne taste on a beer budget. Here’s a guy with 20-volume hardback omnibus ambitions on a trade-paperback talent.

    There’s no shame in the softcover trades. All of the greatest comics in history have been collected this way over the years. Is there anyone here who didn’t cherish one of the little pocket-sized Peanuts collections? Or the larger paperback Bloom County or Far Side or Doonesbury or Calvin & Hobbes volumes? Not to mention the MAD paperbacks.

    But the ego of the Grand Artiste must be fed, and so slab after slab of FW omnibuses are pumped out to an audience of … I don’t know. I don’t know who buys these things, other than: Whoever they are, they’re mighty thin on the ground.

    1. It’s the ongoing mystery of Batiuk. The mystery isn’t how he can produce work of such low-grade mediocrity (with gusts to outright awfulness) year after year, decade after decade — the mystery is how can he still get someone to publish it.

      Personally, I’d be inclined to think the publishing of $45 FW hardbacks was a cog in some sort of money-laundering scheme … if I thought Batiuk had the brains or the creativity to work something like that out. 

      1. I still say Atomik Komix only makes sense as a money-laundering scheme. Hire expensive talent to produce boutique comic books hardly anyone wants to buy. And Chester seems like he’d have some income to hide.

    2. Back in 1963, Mom and Dad got for us at Christmas, 3 yellow, landscaped copies of Peanuts. My oldest brother read them and laughed out loud. He would pass one to my older sister, and she would join him in laughter. Then she would pass it to my older brother, and all 3 would be laughing. Finally it was my turn, and I held comic gold in my hands. Perfection.
      Thank you for that memory, Drake!

  5. Or perhaps the earlier trade paperbacks were popular and well-liked, but the Dinkle-focused ones were too specific, and/or Barnhouse didn’t have enough distribution clout, or….?

    Barnhouse is a music publisher. So they were never going to have display space in Wal-Mart or Barnes & Noble or Borders or Waldenbooks or whatever. It’s another strange choice of publisher, but I can’t fault Batiuk for this one. No one else on earth would ever have any interest in publishing Dinkle books.

    The Barnhouse website also says this:

    The C.L. Barnhouse Company is unique among publishing companies for preserving a nearly complete archive of all publications, dating back to 1886.  Virtually all of these products are available today, thanks to the Archive Edition series of publications produced on our in-house printing systems.  As a result, virtually no C. L. Barnhouse publication is out of print. 

    I don’t think that’s very unique anymore, now that professional publishing tools are widely available to all. But it hints at a long-standing company culture of not letting material go out of print. So maybe “First Edition” doesn’t mean much in this case. I want to know how many First Editions are taking up space at Kent State.

  6. Batiuk seems not to be aware that his choice of publisher says something about the quality of his work. If he has to reach out to a music publisher, that should warn him that perhaps he might be part of the problem.

  7. It would be great to take those [Dinkle] books from their meticulously monitored climate controlled storage facility and get them instead into the hands of people who’d enjoy reading them. 

    Well, those people would have to exist first.

    1. I find it very difficult to believe that TomBat’s garage is “climate controlled”.

    1. By the way i love that my links somehow go through when Drake of Life’s are invariably hung up.

    2. A Mud Hens cap or a Guardians cap or an old non-Chief Wahoo Indians cap or a Kent State cap or even a Winnipeg Blue Bombers cap (to placate the Cincinnati people, I guess) would all have been fine. I had a friend in college who wore a Misfits (the band) cap backwards pretty much every single day. Nobody thought that was weird, folks liked him just fine.

      The choice to wear a plain ballcap is almost always odd and often off-putting. It makes one look strange and possibly suspicious, even in movies where it is clear the producers didn’t want to risk having to pay some pro sports team for using their logo it is hard to suspend our disbelief that someone normal would wear a plain ballcap. Well, at least TB has company in the plain black ballcap club with John Cusack…

  10. Wow, pretty much the exact same art today as yesterday. You’ve really got to admire Davis’ ability to match the ultra-low effort of the writing with his own phoned-in art.

    1. Wow, it makes for a great flip-book when you go back and forth between pages. Find the six (two) differences! 

      At last i’m laughing

      1. Funny how we’ve all been ranting about Batiuk slowly turning “Crankshaft” into “Funky Winkerbean,” when it appears that Davis has been scheming behind his back to slowly turn it into “Slylock Fox”:

        “Shady Shrew has been accused of stealing the cashbox from Lillian the Lizard’s Village Booksmith shop. He claims he was at the Valentine Theatre watching a matinee of The Killer Shrews and has a ticket stub to prove it. Why does Slylock think he’s lying?”

        1. “Shady is lying, because who’s gonna go to Animal Prison Farm over the $2.50 in sales Lillian has made all week.”

        2. Shady Shrew is lying, because there is no cash box at the Village Booksmith because Lillian has never made a sale.

          Slylock also knows that the Valentine has never shown anything other than a double feature of The Les Story, Featuring Dead St Lisa and The Phantom Empire.

        3. “Lillian is lying, because if any money was missing, Cory stole it and Funky would silently write a check to cover it.”

  11. Today’s Tom Batiuk’s birthday, so happy 77th birthday, Thomas Martin Batiuk!

    I sincerely wish the best for him on this day

    1. I like to think we all sincerely wish the best for Tom Batiuk and his family personally. I certainly do.

      For L*s M*ore, there is no greasefire hot enough. Lillian? Into the woodchipper with her.

      But for TB himself, good health and good fortune!

  12. It’s not just a notheringburger. It’s a nothingburger with entitlement sauce. The ‘wrong’ people are getting served before Cranky, you see.

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