Saturday’s Crankshaft is a great example of a comic strip that is innocuous, but infuriating if you ever paid attention to the Funkyverse.
On the surface, it looks like a particularly mawkish installment of Pluggers. Oh, for the good old days, when store operators used mechanical 1970 Grocery Game-style cash registers and memorized where everything was. (Implied: instead of using computers, which Tom Batiuk is known to dislike.)
Remembering things sure is a lost art, isn’t it? Like…
- Ed calling Mitch his grandson when he’s actually his great-grandson (see second link above).
- Ed admiring two 1958/1959 Cleveland Indians as a child, when his own extensive backstory has him playing professional baseball in pre-revolution Cuba, and as far back as 1940.
- Mindy ordering pizza from the restaurant she just bought and re-opened barely 100 days ago.
- Mitch’s age fluctuating.
- Skyler’s age fluctuating.
- Flash’s surname changing.
- Pete’s surname changing.
- Phil Holt and Tony Montoni both being drawn transparently, respectively confirming and implying they have died, and later appearing fully alive and opaque.
- None of this is ever justified or explained in the story. And if any of these things is supposed to be a retcon, it’s not clear or consistent enough to work.
For a guy who writes comic strips about the importance of remembering things, Tom Batiuk sure doesn’t remember things.
Does he not realize he’s a frequent violator of the principle Saturday’s Crankshaft claims to value? Does he not realize his 11-month lead time (which he brings up constantly in interviews) makes these mistakes look even worse? Is he this lacking in self-awareness? Has he failed to notice he didn’t get criticism like this in Act I or even Act II? Does he not realize that calling fans “beady eyed nitpickers” and the like comes off as insulting? Does he think we’re all idiots? Why can’t he just admit he made a mistake every once in awhile? (A mistake the world widely recognizes as a mistake. Not the long-forgotten Sadie Summers.)
Epicus Doomus had an insightful comment in yesterday’s anniversary post:
The secret (to writing/snarking about Funky Winkerbean) is that you have to care on some level.
https://sonofstuckfunky.com/2024/04/10/sosfs-14th-anniversary/#comment-169279
I’ve expressed a similar sentiment: that you had to like Funky Winkerbean before you could hate it. To see how far it fell, you had to know how good it once was. Act I was likeable, insightful, fun, and gently subversive. Act II was overwrought with drama, but passable for a soap opera strip. Act III (and IV) are almost entirely an Author Tract of Tom Batiuk’s opinions. (Most of his opinions are about silver age comic books, and that he thinks he should win more writing awards. But opinions they are.)
I think we all are, or at least were, genuine fans of the Funkyverse on some level. “Knowing it by heart” is the only thing we ever wanted from Tom Batiuk. His failure to do so – and his sanctimonious attitude towards anyone who suggested he should – is why he lost or alienated most of his readership. It’s at the heart of all the storytelling problems of Act III.
We wanted him to know his own world enough to get basic facts right, and finish the stories he starts. Not throw out and re-write character details to make today’s lame joke or forced drama work. Not forget, ignore, time-skip, or conspicuously walk away from unresolved story points. And for cryin’ out loud, could some character please get mad at someone who badly wronged them? Or call out obnoxious behavior when it’s done to them? Or act like a real human being in any way?
Saturday’s Crankshaft is a benign comic strip by itself. But if you ever cared about Funky Winkerbean enough to know the full context, you can’t help but be struck by the naked hypocrisy of it.
Son of Stuck Funky 
If TB thinks he knows his strips by heart, he needs to schedule an appointment with his cardiologist…
I recall one of the rare times TB admitted a mistake. Granted it was mistake that he caught before our beady eyes got to nitpick it, so he got to pat himself on the back for catching it and making Davis swipe some different artwork to correct. It was also just the absolute stupidest continuity error to care about.
Don’t get me wrong, we would have noticed it and appropriately taken to TB to task for it… but it wouldn’t have made the top 50 mistakes we had ever found.
I still find it difficult to believe that he doesn’t keep some sort of reference guide around, a notebook or something containing pertinent information about his massive, overwrought cast of characters, that he could refer to from time to time. “Oh, OK, Skyler is eleven years old now” or “Pete’s last name is Roberts”, things like that. But, as evidenced by his frequently laughable writing and his obvious disdain for detail, I guess it was just too much trouble and/or not worth the bother.
One of my blog posts here suggested that Tom needed to get a Universe Bible. He kind of started to write one for Atomik Komix, but it was way too detailed to be useful, and he lost interest in it anyway.
Or even some Post-It notes stuck to his monitor. “Funky owns Montoni’s”…”Pete is a comic book writer”…”Lisa died in 2007″…just some brief notes to ensure (guffaw) continuity. Or some vague semblance of it.
Good memory. But I think that’s another case of “not a thing the world recognizes as a mistake.” Even if there were no men in the choir, this man could easily been a non-choir member of the church. Especially considering he’s talking about “God working through Sally”, which is something a priest would say. He could have just had the artist add some minor detail to his clothes, to make his non-choir role more obvious. Batiuk made Davis do more work than he had to. I suspect this happens a lot.
But yeah, it’s irritating to read stuff like this when Batiuk is so supercilious and lazy the rest of the time. It feels like another case of him knowing he needs to do something, but not understanding why.
It’s simple. If TB is going to call his work “the only comic strip where characters age realistically”, then he has to put in the effort to make this happen. He doesn’t even do the bare minimum amount of continuity work, like getting characters’ ages right, or not introducing characters who already know each other.
For that matter, he could have easily reconciled the two. There was still the “10-year gap” thing between Funky and Crankshaft at the time, so the guy being in the choir in Crankshaft could easily have been the same guy who quit “years ago” in Funky. Had he wanted to show the guy quitting (and why) in Crankshaft, he could have No-Prized his “mistake” away without much effort. But, that might have required some effort on his part, when he could just push it off to Davis.
Instead, we get his 11-month lead time, in which apparently no proofreading gets done. (Like the Subterrarium cover with the word “bowles” on it. Good a call, Tom.)
Nearly everything about every St. Spires story arc demonstrates that TB has no idea how churches typically work and (like with so many things) he will not be bothered to learn. Unlike with a lot of things he does, he’s not actually alone in that. Uninformed (usually in a fairly harmless way) depictions of religions and their practices are pretty common in popular culture.
But TB is such an odd duck that he actually made the rare effort to review his St. Spires story arcs… not to improve or better inform them, but to catch a continuity error of the most minute (and, as you mention, plausibly deniable) proportions. That he fixates on such a small thing (and pats himself on the back for it) while missing and screwing up genuinely consequential things on the regular is both wild and wildly on-brand for the guy.
Funky Winkerbean ended with Muslims going to Dinkle’s Christmas messiah! More than one, I think (both Rana and Adeela IIRC). Which might be considered haram. And they rode there in a new cars bought by a broke, out-of-business pizza restaurant. In a dangerous blizzard. Batiuk screws up so much that pointing out the religious stuff seems overly specific.
A strip that starts with high school characters in the 1970s while I was in grade school, involves two time skips, and ends with their high school graduation year being two years behind mine cannot truthfully be called a “strip where characters age realistically.”
Mopey McMopester/Mopey Pete’s surname changing from Roberts to Reynolds is why I headcanon his actual surname to be Reisberg
The very real problem is that he has gag-a-day habits in a saga world. The same problem made For Better Or For Worse fodder for snark. We even have the same “Hey……we care about this so you should too, Creator” being called “bullying” by “mean people” who “don’t understand” the stress caused by slipshod and counterproductive ways of going about things.
Which is another thing Batiuk can’t commit to. He sniffingly calls himself “not a gag-a-day writer”, but he’s still reliant on that structure as you point out.
Why couldn’t he just commit to Funky Winkerbean becoming a soap opera strip when Act I ended? It’s exactly what he wanted to do, and more or less what he did. If he’d committed, did the other simple continuity work to make the stories make sense, and ended after Act II, FW could have gone down in history with a positive reputation.
I feel I must disagree, Banana, I never read the early ‘bean. To the extent that I knew of it, it was a comic strip about a marching band, which did not interest me. I only started with the soap opera days, which seemed ridiculous and overblown to me. The most striking character for me was not creepy Les Moore, or Harry Dinkle (the worst thing ever created by man, including the hydrogen bomb), but Wally Winkerbean.
Wally was dumped on by Batiuk repeatedly: a POW twice, the second time for what would be a record period of capture. He came home understandably messed up and unable to recognize anyone’s face except his ex-wife’s, who had remarried a komix-selling schlub. This is the stuff of which mrder ballads are born, but it which was all just dropped. He got a magic dog that instantly healed him, and a second wife was dug out of the background, complete with kid. And after that, his first marriage was treated as if it had been a regrettable but amicable split.
That’s forgetting.
Anyway, before it got to that point I already disliked the strip and read it only for the ridiculous depth of misery through which the characters were put. I pretty much always disliked it because it was poorly written and maudlin. And then it became mostly about grown adults who would not shut up about superhero komix written for 12-year-olds.
So, if I joke about Ed Crankshaft being a WWII vet with a great-grandchild, or the fact that it was stated last year that there’s is only one kid in Centerville who takes the bus to school despite there being 4 bus drivers and a manager for those drivers, it’s mockery of a writer who can’ keep his continuity straight, yet expects to be praised for his writing. And that’s how it’s always been for me.
I might have oversold Act I a little, but it was basically competent. It was definitely a B-list comic strip, even before the real AAA comic strips (Calvin, Far Side, Bloom County) debuted in the 1980s. But well worth reading.
And Dinkle’s marching band was a secondary storyline that made a lot more sense in Act I. It was broad enough to be a satire of over-demanding, egotistical high school teachers in all fields.
Otherwise, I’m in total agreement with you.
Act I was Batty’s best work and I can see why he got the job. The cast of characters was well defined, there were decent gags, and some of the bits were timely.
He should have started a new strip that was more dramatic if that is what he wanted to do. Instead he ruined FW with inconsistencies, poorly thought out stories, constantly creating new characters, etc. He littered the Funkyverse with his own opinions on things, this normally would not be a bad thing, but his opinions are just so out there that the average person cannot relate.
Anyways, I do agree that Wally was treated as a chew toy.
To do so wouldn’t have been a bad thing. It would have been a better thing. The Funkyverse people would be over the horizon from the new people not realizing that they’re a damn sight better off than the people they envy.
It’s funny because TB started TWO new comic strips after FW, each broader and more gag-oriented than FW ever was (with the occasional exception story arcs) rather than more dramatic.
I’m with Bannana Jr. and Rusty on this one. Act I spoke to me at a time when I needed it. It served as something of a welcome relief from the insanities and inanities of jr. high and high school. It offered knowing smiles–which have desceneded into smirks–about all that teens were going through, and it usually did so with good cheer. For someone who was (much later in life) diagnosed on the autism spectrum, it conjured the same feelings of when I read Spider-Man or listened to U2 or watched the original Star Wars trilogy. It was a reminder that I wasn’t alone and there were better days to come. That’s why I am so harsh of TB and Act III. TB used to offer hope. There were better days to come for Funky and Les and the rest of the gang and laughs along the way. Now, TB offers smug complacecy, maudlin nostalgia, unsubtle (and usually irelevant opinions), misery, and strange swings between envy and self-satisfaction. I’m not sure if TB likes the blues but he would do well to listen to the wise words John Lee Hooker offered (and which Van Morrison covered, including a great duet with Hooker) in “Don’t Look Back.”
I was in Marching Band and so the strip really resonated with me. One of the students painted a silhouette of Dinkle on the band director’s office door.
Of course, back then, Dinkle hadn’t morphed into a complete horse’s a$$. There was enough silliness in the strip to keep him balanced. Then Batty decided he needed to butt kiss the Ohio directors in order to score an invite to the annual OMEA conference.
I was in band too, and something about Dinkle rang very true. My band directors weren’t the worst, but they did share his nature: overbearing, pompous, egotistical, results-driven. I did a couple music electives in college and their directors were the same way.
I remember my band directors used to tell us “our school has gotten all 5s (the top rating) for 10 years.” That can’t possibly have been true, but that’s what they told us. “Us” being an intermediate 7th-grade class that was at least two years away from being in a competition. I had lost interest in sports because it was too competitive; band turned out to be far worse.
In high school I got interested in school plays, which combined the stakes of live performance with a more laid-back, supportive culture. It was the niche I needed.
Yeah by senior year I dropped out and joined a wedding band, I also played in the pit band for the school plays and I really enjoyed that.
I genuinely enjoyed early Act I’s satirical bent, with the zany gags and “fourth wall” breaking. It was fun, and sometimes funny. Then he ruined it, and began patting himself on the back constantly for doing so, like it was a good thing. And that’s how I grew to detest it so much. It was personal.
And I’m with you. In Act I, when I was in middle school, I actually related to Les Moore. He got picked on a lot (like I did), and the universe seemed to be against him (like I often felt), but he maintained a certain dignity. I’m also a huge fan of Peanuts, and Les echoed some of Charlie Brown’s quiet indomitableness.
Which is Les becoming a complete shitbag as an adult offended me so much. You know the saying “don’t meet your heroes”? Les wasn’t my hero, but he was once someone I looked up to. Seeing what he became – and for no good reason – really bothered me.
Maybe Charlie Brown grows up to become a shitbag too, but Charles Schulz had the good judgment to keep him a child. Tom Batiuk did not, because his ego got stroked into exploring grown-up stories he had no ability to write. And, he wanted to use Les as his personal avatar to settle all his own petty scores. Neither Les nor Batiuk ever grew up. Or even tried to.
Exactly. I can’t understand why he turned so many of his characters into such unlikeable people. It’s truly puzzling to me. I liked nerdy Act 1 Les. I related to him on some level, and I rooted for nerd guy to do well. Why did he turn him into a jerk? Same with Dinkle. I was a band kid too. Our band director was for the most part likeable, but he definitely had his Dinkle moments so those strips were funny and relatable to me. Now Dinkle is insufferable. And many of the “Cindy”s I knew now fill their Facebook feeds with pictures of their grandkids. They’re certainly not whining about no longer having a 25 year old body while being married to a movie star. The only character FW character that was allowed positive character growth was Bull, and we all know how that turned out.
Why did he turn him into a jerk?
I think Les deals with grief in a extremely unhealthy way
Same with Dinkle. I was a band kid too. Our band director was for the most part likeable, but he definitely had his Dinkle moments so those strips were funny and relatable to me. Now Dinkle is insufferable.
I think Dinkle is very well of hiding his nastiness, but it came to the surface during Darin’s time in high school
Related to Cindy Summers: I think Cindy is extremely racist, ablest and homophobic and only cares for fame and being loved on her own terms, and I also think that she was fired from ABC news in 2015 because of her repulsive behavior
I think the ultimate answer is that Batiuk lacks sufficient self-awareness to realize that he DID make all the characters unlikeable. I’m pretty sure he thinks we should be rooting for them just as much as he does.
(I mean, even Ed and Dinkle, probably the two biggest “in-universe” jerks – i.e., the ones that even other characters would dislike – are probably supposed to be of the “love to hate them” variety, not the “utterly loathsome” variety. They’re not, of course, but that doesn’t mean that’s not what Batiuk thinks he writing.)
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
At least it wasnt an ad for Skibidi Toilet or other Gen Alpha Brainrot
Good post, BJ6000!
As for Sunday’s Crankshaft, I liked how it ended.
I do agree with JJ O’Malley that today’s strip made last week a waste of time. This somewhat reminds me of Chester Gould “Dick Tracy” and how VT Hamlin “Alley Oop” used to summarize the week on Sunday for those who only got the Sunday paper. I envy those readers who only read Crankshaft once a week. I could show stronger character, but then I would miss SOSF too much.
💎I may be wrong about Alley Oop. If I remember correctly, VT did a separate story on Sunday. It was the later writers that did a catchup for the previous week.💎
I am way late, but “Happy Anniversary, SOSF!”
🌺💐🌹😎🧢🥳🌘🤩
I was hoping that CBH would post her modeling ’Slave-girl Leia’ again. Good times. Good times.
Agreed on all counts. Ed would be confused that his small town can support a niche cat boutique, but not a hardware store. We know why this happens in real life (the answer to both is “mail order”) but Ed wouldn’t.
It’s a rare case of Batiuk’s overbearing “things were better in the old days” attitude being consistent with an opinion a character would actually have. It results in a nice strip, and a candidate for the best Crankshaft moment of 2024.
RE: Sunday’s ‘Shaft:
If that had been the lead-in to several days of hardware-themed nostalgia and social commentary, okay. But here’s the problem with the 1/14 strip; when Ed and his grandson/great-grandson were about to enter the hardware store in Wednesday’s installment there was no “Cupcakes for Cats” sign in the window, just one for “Going Out of Business.” So why is it there in Sunday’s version of the story? Was it put there while they were standing outside? Is this Batiuk’s tribute to “Rashomon”? Or is it just more sloppy presentation of non-existent humor?
“Or is it just more sloppy presentation of non-existent humor?”
JJ O’Malley, I know where the smart money is going!😎
“At least it’s not Lillian at Ohioana!”
No, it’s Lillian at Ohioana with Dinkle. MUCH worse.
That reply should be under billthesplut’s post below.
I think the Sunday strip was supposed to be on a different day than the weekday strips, indicating that Ed went back to the hardware store (because he didn’t bother to find out when it’s final day was?), only to see it closed and the space had already been leased by the Cupcakes For Cats people.
It sort of makes sense that way (as long as you ignore the parts that don’t) and can actually be explained reasonably enough. (Except for why Ed went back to the store as if he didn’t know when the final day would be. Though honestly even that could fit with Ed, not caring enough about another person to ask such a basic question.)
I just read April 15 Crankshaft.
It has TB’s 3 most horrible, disgusting items. 🤮
1. The arm of sincerity! 🤢
2. Humble Dinkle! 🤮🤮
3. Sister hating Lillian! 🤢🤮😤🤯
(Somebody better check on Be Ware of Eve Hill.
This is gonna be a bad week for her!)
Eve said of the Hardware Store arc “At least it’s not Lillian at Ohiano!” I warned her it still could be!
And now let me warn you all: It lasts until 4/27. Which is a Saturday. I get the feeling it’s going to be a bad TWO weeks.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
It looks like it’s going to be a terrible week for everyone and especially for be ware of eve hill because Loathsome Lizard Lillian is here and so is that uber-punchable Harry L. Dinkle
Loathsome Lil and Harry Dinkless in the same strip? Ugh. How can Batiuk believe readers actually like these two? Gross.
By all means Tom, why don’t you add insult to injury by including the insufferable smirks. /s
Scenes we’d like to see.
Why don’t you throw in Batton Thomas while you’re at it, Tom. Shame!