A Big Hit!

I hope that all of you who celebrate the season had a very Happy Easter. I made the mistake of offering to host our family’s celebration at my place this year, and I was exhausted last night! After cooking enough steak to choke a T-Rex, and littering my house with so many ceramic bunnies you’d think I’d petrified the cast of Watership Down, I collapsed.

So just a short post today. While I was melting together an unholy concoction of Velveeta, butter, sour cream, and sharp cheddar, I was talking to my housemate and we realized that she had never seen the Skunky Funkybuns stand up sketch by the late, great Dan Ronan. So I pulled it up for her to watch real quick. She thought it was amazing, but wondered if the part where the Batiuk expy hit a guy with his car was based on anything. I didn’t used to think so. I thought it was just a funnier stand in for Batiuk using his own experiences with cancer to write Lisa’s Story. But last week I did a little archive dive to that had me flipping through some volumes of Funky Winkerbean that I hadn’t looked at quite as closely before, and maybe Dan was referencing this arc from Act I instead? Anyone else remember this one?

P.S. April Fools!

35 thoughts on “A Big Hit!”

  1. So… Les hit someone with his car, just drove away, and then felt sorry for himself?

    Yeah, that tracks.

    1. It sure does. Wow, Les causing a hit and run. I had no idea the self-absorbed behavior stated that early.

  2. Holy smokes! The depths that Dan Ronan plumbed for a six and a half minute comedy routine… it just continues to impress and astound me. Somehow that already perfect routine gets even more perfect the more we dig into it.

    Also, this is great example of an Act I Les story arc where we’re not supposed to like Les. It’s not hilarious, but it commits to the character of Les and the tone of the strips matches the awfulness of his behavior, so it works well regardless.

  3. I think that Batiuk should’ve seen how Les would react if the person he hit by accident died

    Teenage Les: If the person I hit dies from their injuries, how am I going to deal with that?

    (Les looks at a rope, and immediately tries to hang himself)

  4. Belated Happy Easter and nearly-belated happy April Fools! Crazy what could happen in Act 1, I suppose, everything is as surreal as a Loony Tunes cartoon, sometimes.

    Meanwhile, another Match to Flame post shows some more info on Batiuk’s motive for the Mt. Kilimanjaro arc. Apparently it wasn’t just that he did it himself, but that the prospect of climbing it was yet another childhood dream from reading a Tarzan novel where he fought Nazis around the mountain in WW2 (and here I thought George of the Jungle was a wild adaptation). Fair play to him, apparently climbing it and sticking a broom handle on the summit was one of his motivations to pull through the physical therapy following his car accident, so good method of following up on childhood ideas, at least.

  5. Hunh. I don’t remember Les hitting anyone with his car. The comics were too long ago, I suppose. Shades of what is to come for Les. He hits a guy with his car and faces no consequences other than facing his guilt. It’s all about how it affects him.

    It’s too bad we never got a chance to see Les’s parents. What if they shared Les’s glasses and helmet hair? Imagine Mrs. Moore with a beehive hairstyle. Her helmet hair would resemble the Pope’s mitre. Suppose Mr. Moore was balding. Would he only have partial helmet hair?

  6. So what happened to the victim of the car accident? Did Les ever find out that the man had survived?

  7. This foreshadows all of his later terrible behavior: he doesn’t understand or like social norms because he can’t see past his nose. When Weird Al sang “Why does this always happen to me?”, he knew the joke was on the person whining about himself. Batiuk and Les….not so much.

  8. That’s it? That’s the end of the arc? He potentially seriously injures someone, drives away, the end? No repercussions or resolution? Almost as bad as Ed killing Pops Clutch by driving too slow.

  9. I just wanted to let you all know that the guy Les hit was okay. He was, in fact, perfectly fine the next day, once April 2nd rolled around…

    *winkwink*

    3. Guess who was disappointed when she discovered no April Fools joke on SoSF yesterday morning?

      Ya got me. Big time. 🏳😊

      1. The fact that I put up a fake arc where Les commits vehicular homicide and the reaction from everyone was, ‘yeah, that tracks…’ was absolutely priceless to me.

        1. ACT III Les was so despicable he’s ruined all other versions of the character for us.

          We know Les is going to make an appearance in Crankshaft any day now. He’s out there. Waiting. Lurking. 😱

        2. This was brilliant, CBH! Consider me duped! Silly me, I should have known better! The fact that it was considered it a plausible plot probably says something disturbing about us or Les-probably both. Well played!

        3. You captured the tone of Act I Les so perfectly that it was tremendously believable, especially with the meticulously faithful photoshopping work. Major kudos!

          My only disappointment is that Dan Ronan did not pull out the vehicular manslaughter bit from some ancient corner of FW lore… but it’s not like “Skunk Funkybuns” lacks a wealth of FW deep cuts.

    5. It’s like Farley Mowat said…..even if it didn’t happen, it should have.

    7. You certainly got me good. It’s actually A dark that on its own terms it’s a pretty great series of strips. Thanks for the fool.

  10. I came across this picture of Mr. Baseball, 90-year-old Bob Uecker…if Batiuk ever gets that Crankshaft movie made, I think we have our leading man! Much more convincing than George Kennedy (and no prosthetics required).

    1. He’s got the nose and the jowls for it, but that mischievous glint in ol’ Uecker’s eye is a shade too kindly. Can we give him the eyes of a cracked out Kevin Spacey?

  11. Speaking of Crankshaft, is it just me or does forcing Pam to set up arc by asking obvious questions like someone who has no damn idea who her father is make her look stupid on top of being dead inside?

  12. I enjoyed the Act II attempted vehicular manslaughter arc better, the one where Les ran over Wally, because of course he did. It took almost three years for Wally to learn to walk again, only for him to trip over Montoni’s newly-installed wheelchair ramp on his first day back. Then he decided to join the army, and yadda yadda yadda he lost his job when Funky sold the place to some comic book asshole.

      1. The fact that you’re not sure says plenty about Wally, Les, and Batiuk himself. Because it’s not totally implausible.

        1. That and I also dont have much information about Funky Winkerbean Early Act II from 1992 – 1998

          1. Lucky you! If I told you that Lisa was instrumental in saving Wally’s life and teaching him to walk again, would you believe it? Because that’s how it would have played out.

          2. “If I told you that Lisa was instrumental in saving Wally’s life and teaching him to walk again, would you believe it?”

            No, I wouldn’t

  13. The fact it took me until today to realize that this post was the april fools post-AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

    (shrieks and decides to punch DSH John, Paul Rabin, and/or Skip Rawlings in the nuts)

  14. Of course, in the end, Timemop had to alter the timeline so that this never happened. Memories of the “Les Moore driving incident” were erased, and any vestiges of proof of its onetime existence were retconned away as “an April Fool’s joke”. 

    But we know the truth. The man Les hit was the inventor of the spinner rack, and his life had to be protected at all costs.

  15. CBH:

    I knew it was a joke pretty quick, but–How did you do that? The art and even the speech fonts are perfect. You going all AI on us?

    If so, call GC, maybe for once this strip will get BETTER. Or, at least, Davis will ask you about improving Crank via AI. Though in a few days, he’ll need to sell you some AirB&B air mattresses, where the “B” is bedbugs.

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