Oh Lord, we’re getting a Loathsome Lil, and Dinkle go to Ohioana arc this week! Can someone check in on be ware of eve hill? Make sure she survives this with at least enough sanity intact to operate a motor vehicle.
Even worse, we’re starting in that darned choir loft again. So Davis can pull out the half dozen Ayers panels he has of Harry and the Harridan gabbing, and reuse them AGAIN. Putting the dinosaur into the Dinosaur Comics formula.
Makes you long for the good old days of last week, when we just had Cranky time traveling 20 seconds in a single strip to buy one tiny piece of hardware.
Buying metal fasteners in the exact opposite of bulk is apparently an old habit for Cranky going back decades.
But even if the execution was botched (as always), I found myself somewhat sympathetic to the sentiment. As Rusty Shackleford (You’ll never catch me Shackleford!) brought to our attention, the arc was based on the real Medina Hardware store closing down after 150 years in business, with the proprietor in the strip visually based on owner Rick Stephenson.
While I agreed with the numerous comments that the tired implication that a chain hardware store is soulless and without merit is just plain false, I also know what it’s like for a small town to lose a long-running mainstay. My own little town just lost their Mom and Pop hardware store a couple years ago, one that looked almost identical inside to the one in Medina. The store was old enough that when I was digging through a random box of my grandparents’ old farm tax returns from 1966, I found handwritten receipts from the place. And if my little town’s 70 year old off-brand Dairy Queen ever shuts down, I will likely fall to my knees weeping clutching handfuls of chocolate stained wooden sticks. Continuity of place is precious.
Crankshaft lately has had a lot of Ohio specific pandering, and topical plotlines, and I’ll take those over comics wankery any day. The eclipse plot for example. In retrospect I have to laugh at the way Cranks actually had an entire tent-revival style crowd in his lawn. Because I drove down to Little Rock for the eclipse this year and my older sister was playing it up like the crowds were going to be insane, with gridlock traffic and sold out hotels galore. Heck the schools were closed for the day. But I got a hotel no problem (though they’d jacked up the price.) Traffic was lighter the at 4:30 P.M, the day of the eclipse than it was at 10:30 the morning after. And one little street fair we stopped at a couple hours before the eclipse began was a ghost town.
Not saying there wasn’t anything going on anywhere, but it wasn’t a state of emergency, and you could sense that some places had made much ado about nothing. Would have been great to have that happen to Crankshaft, a houseful of empty chairs and deflated, unused, air mattresses.
We watched the totality from my sister’s backyard. Lawn chairs, iced-tea, and microwaved moon pies. Just her, her husband, my housemate, and me, and my nearly 3 year old nephew. Seeing him gradually realize that it had gotten so dark, and then staring up at the glowing ring of the corona in the sky, made the whole trip worth it.
Act I Funky Winkerbean used to make topical references to astrological phenomenon. In early 1974 there was a series of strips on the Comet Kohoutek, which was apparently played up as Comet of the Century, but then turned out to be an underwhelming dud.
Then in 1986, Batiuk ran a series of strips on the return of Halley’s Comet. Which, due to the position of the Earth and the sun, had the worst possible viewing experience for the last 2,000 years.
Batiuk extensively covered two comets that were pretty unspectacular. So what did he do when Hale-Bopp lit up the sky in 1997?
Nothing.
I spent an hour pouring over 1996 and 1997 in Funky Winkerbean, and I guess he was too busy with post office bombings, weddings, and murder mysteries, to notice the giant blazing ball of light streaking across the night sky for an entire year.
Such are the ways of Batiuk.
Son of Stuck Funky 
This was back in Era I when it was funny and enjoyable. Dinkle used to be funny and enjoyable back then too because he was a plot device and not a character: “that ONE teacher who takes his job a bit too seriously for his own good.”
Now, he just looks like a sad old man who doesn’t get that he’s kind of a punchline: the man so in to being King Of Big Deal Mountain that he let it take over his life.
What’s worse is that none of the other characters get it either. Lillian should be taking Dinkle down a peg, not encouraging him.
Dinkle is such an extreme invocation of Small Name Big Ego that he should be an in-universe laughingstock. Really, a 17-part biography? A pun-filled book about an obscure topic? A moving truck full of books, when an acknowledged successful author brings one box? And to a general-purpose book fair?
These are things a scriptwriter would have Ron Burgundy do, to show the audience how over-the-top egotistical and clueless he is. In the Funkyverse, nobody bats an eye. In part because this a ordinary event in this world.
The fact that people don’t laugh their asses off in his stupid face says that Batiuk has forgotten that even in a serious work, people are allowed to be joke characters. Larry Gelbart and Burt Metcalfe didn’t forget that….or what’s a Ferret Face for?
Dinkle’s biography is 17 parts… I wonder how many volumes The Complete Funky Winkerbean will have upon completion? Volume 13 runs through 2010 and you get 3 years per volume, hmmmmmmmm.
TB writes what he knows, I guess.
Makes me wonder if TB knew the end was coming as far back as when he was writing that 2020 strip about Dinkle’s autobiography. That would make every strip in those last 3.5 years worse, actually.
You have to wonder who he thinks he’s competing with. You also have to wonder the same damn thing about Dinkle.
Harry and the Harridan. Ha! I love it.
1. CBH, you and Banana Jr. 6000 have been blasting home runs this month. They are a joy to read.
2. Someone should organize a 24 hour telethon to rescue Be Ware of Eve Hill from the double dose of Lizard Lillian and the Dinkle. (I see today, 4/16, that Dinkle nauseated us 2 days in a row with his nonsensical gestures: the finger pinch!)
Stand Tall, BWOEH! We Support You!
3. It is refreshing to read TB, when he was good, creative, and funny. He is hitting on all cylinders in these strips. What happened? At the next Cranky Awards, CBH, I bet you won’t find 5 examples of best strips of the year. Apparently, he must still be popular. Comics Kingdom still pays him. Even Dinkle was featured at the Rose Bowl. Why? He puts so little effort into his job. My guess is that he works a year in advance and is finished by January 2 each year. Sad, really. I can’t help but compare TB to Schultz, and he was dying.
4. CBH, I always enjoy the stories about your family. Heart warming.
5. You are loved! Give a fist bump to BJ6000 for me. 🩷💖❤️🫂🌺💐🌹
A few comments on your third point.
I remarked on Batiuk’s “humor” yesterday in the GoComics Crankshaft discussion. It seems the only “humor” in Batiuk’s tool box nowadays is exaggeration. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen Ed inflating an exaggerated number of air mattresses. We’ve seen Ed purchasing a ridiculous quantity of eclipse glasses. We’ve witnessed Dinkle bringing an excessive number of books to the fair. In the same vein is Dinkle’s over-the-top exaggerated terrible behavior at the book fair. Somebody please give TB a nudge because his phonograph needle is stuck.
Every cloud has a silver lining: Loathsome Lillian is her usual idiot self, stating the obvious, but my usual deep hatred of her is muted by my intensifying dislike of Dinkle.
Scenes I’d like to see:
TV News Teaser: Harry Dinkle, the self-proclaimed ‘World’s Greatest Band Director,’ was found dead in one of the restrooms of the Columbus Metropolitan Library, where the Ohioana Book Festival was taking place. Reports are that Harry Dinkle was bludgeoned, shot, stabbed, decapitated, eviscerated, skinned, and had his remains set on fire. Festival attendees are quoted as saying he got what was coming to him. The police are on record stating, at this time, there are too many suspects to comment. Please join us for Eyewitness News at eleven.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
the only way for this week to get any worse is for Dick Facey to show up
Oh, I think this week can get a lot worse without any help from Dick Facey. I think this week is already shaping up to be an all-timer of an awful arc.
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Dinkle: What can go wrong? (makes the most punchable smirk known to mankind)
(a bunch of pissed off zoomers and millenials break in and start beating the crap out of both Dinkleberry and Loathsome Lil)
Lillian: YAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
And that is exactly what I fear will happen. With any luck, he will simply tuck Les’s Dead St. Lisa’s Story table into the background, but we all know Batty don’t do subtle.
On the subject of disappearing hardware stores, I am suddenly reminded of a song that a local Asheville NC artist wrote about our local hardware store, which eloquently expresses these sentiments.
While I agreed with (commenters that) numerous comments that the tired implication that a chain hardware store is soulless and without merit is just plain false, I also know what it’s like for a small town to lose a long-running mainstay… continuity of place is precious.
Exactly right. Traditions and history have value, but so does human progress. There’s a line between wanting to preserve something from the past because it still has value, and wanting to preserve something because too many people can’t deal with change.
Change doesn’t scare me. People who insist on making things the exactly the way they were scare me.
The Centerville Hardware story would have been improved if it had acknowledged that the decisions that local customers make affect whether local stores stay in business. Something like this:
Ed: “This is awful! Centerville Hardware is going out of business!”
Pam: “But Dad, don’t you usually buy hardware online from Bean’s End?”
Ed: “What’s that got to do with anything?”
That would have been fully consistent with Ed’s character — that he is often seen shopping online from Bean’s End and that he doesn’t care how his actions affect anyone else.
Thank you for the commiserations, but I’m coping. Today, I read the first panel of Today’s Crankshaft, screamed and pulled out a clump of my hair, then took a break and made myself a nice cup of tea. I returned to to read the second panel. I released my frustration by screaming into a pillow, then took a short walk around the building to refresh my mind. After returning from my walk, I read the third panel, took a deep breath, and threw a brick through the computer monitor.
I tried explaining what happened to tech support. I told them I had no idea where the brick came from. It seemingly came out of nowhere.
Tech: Say, that looks like one of the bricks from the parking lot.
Anyhoo, my workplace is now blocking GoComics.
Dinkle: I just found out that I’ve been accepted as an author at the Ohioana Book Festival.
Wow! How unexpected! Who saw this one coming? /s
🤦♀️Yeah, suuuuurrrre. C’mon TB, you’re pulling our legs with that one. Was there ever any doubt?
Time to unleash the bwoeh jinx. My Batiukverse predictions are usually 95% wrong. I hereby predict that Harry Dinkless will win some kind of award. Most likely best of show.
Or Harry could be the hit of the festival with all of the ladies.
Dinkless: Ladies! Please! There’s enough of me to go around!
Loathsome Lillian: Back off you vultures! He’s mine!
Get a room you two. (puke emoji)
I’m just covering all of my bases here.
An unexpected guest arrives and, as per usual for him, gets showered with undeserved gifts.
Les Moore: An award for me? Gee, thanks. I didn’t even write a book.
Festival Award Presenter: It’s for ‘Lisa’s Story.’
Eve,
Apparently, disgust, revulsion, and involuntary, explosive, expansive retching brings out your creativity. Not to mention the color of your eyes.
🤯🤢🤮🤮🤮
What a coincidence. My eyes are green.
I fibbed for the sake of a joke. My eyes are hazel. At least, that’s what my driver’s license says.
It reminds me of a friend whose driver’s license had “blue” listed as her hair color and “red” as her eye color.
For some reason, this morning I actually did a deep-ish dive (that is, googling and reading the official site and–urk–Tom’s blog) on this “Ohioana Book Festival” thing, that I, despite living only eight hours from Columbus, have never heard of outside the Funkyverse. The result was a load of posts on GC and ArcaMax (under my alternate screen names). Perhaps y’all already know this stuff, but if not… more than anyone really wants or needs to know about the Ohioana Book Festival:
First: Google delivered 18K hits, which is really not that many all considered. Of the first 20 hits, 8 were from the official event website (not counting five sub-hits under the first hit). Hit number 18 was Batty’s blog entry in which he informed us he will be there, making the thirteenth volume of FW reprints avoidable to the general public. Plan your visit accordingly.
Second: Wikipedia does not have an Ohioana Book Festival page. This surprised me, given the trivial nature of some of the things that rate extensive Wikipedia entries.
Third: the selection process does involve judging and approval (of more than just the credit card number used to pay the fee), and takes some time. The site says most invitations (that is, approved submissions) are sent in January, so the whole idea of going from Lillian suggesting Harry submit his book (Monday) through getting accepted (Tuesday) to the Festival (today) is a bit absurd even by Batiuk’s standards.
Fourth: even though the name “Ohioana” suggests a bi-state event, the site says entry is limited to authors born in Ohio or who have lived in Ohio for the last three years. Or, perhaps, it was originally the “Ohioan Book Festival” (emphasizing its focus on Ohio authors) until Tony Montoni said it with his stereotyped Italian accent.
Fifth: the website specifically states that the books be original, which makes it interesting that Batiuk has participated several times (including this year) with collections of previously-published (in the newspaper) strips. Evidently there is a loophole for such collections. I wonder if any newspaper columnists have ever used this loophole, or if it is a uniquely Batiukian thing.
Sixth: the page also states “It is Festival policy to not repeat a book that has already been featured in the Festival” (boldface in the original), so it will be interesting to see if the inevitable blog-entry photo of his booth features Dead St. Lisa’s Story yet again.
Seventh: the premise of today’s strip is undermined by the policy that “all sales are handled by the official festival bookseller, The Book Loft of German Village” and “authors will have ½ of an eight-foot-long table to display books (which will be sold or made available for sale by our official bookseller).” It appears the “unloading boxes of books in the parking lot” trope is (like the AtomiK KomiX “bullpen”) a figment of Batty’s fevered imagination.
That’s about all I dug out of the Festival website. For those who’ve made it this far, a joke:
Scrape away the “U-Maul-It” sign from that truck, and underneath it says “Bean’s End Organic Fertilizer Home Delivery.” Y’all deserve a chuckle for reading this.
The dialogue in Wednesday’s strip was painful.
“Hey there, Lillian … I see you brought your own books to the Ohioana Book Festival, too!”
First of all, Dinkle is standing just in front of a sign that says “Ohioana Book Festival.” He doesn’t need to specify which festival he’s talking about. If he had just said “the festival” instead of “the Ohioana Book Festival,” even someone who had never read a comic strip before could guess which festival he was talking about.
Second, in the previous day’s strip, Dinkle and Lillian had talked about how they would be colleagues (or competitors) at the book festival. He knows Lillian is an author. Did he think Lillian would go to the festival as an author without bringing her books? Or perhaps that she was going to bring potato chips to sell instead of books?
It’s like the first line of a commercial, isn’t it?
HARRY: Hey there, Lillian … I see you brought your own books to the Ohioana Book Festival, too!
LILLIAN: Why, yes, Harry! I always bring my Ohioana Book Festival award-winning books to the Ohioana Book Festival!
(Crowd shot. Ohioana Book Festival sign in background)
ANNOUNCER: It’s the Ohioana Book Festival! Come on down and sample all the greatest self-published books Ohio has to offer! Meet your favorite smug, condescending author! There’s something for everybody, whether you enjoy comic books, the comic book creation process, The Phantom Empire, or reading Lisa’s Story again! Oscar “recipient” Les Moore is back, for the 18th straight year! Meet Ohio’s own Pulitzer Prize nominee Tom Batiuk, who totally isn’t bitter that he lost! Conveniently located in Ohio! All this week!
ANNOUNCER: The Ohioana Book Festival! It’s the most Ohioan book festival there is! Ohioana Book Festival!
(DISCLAIMER: Les Moore appearance is tentative, depending on whether or not he thinks Lisa would like it.)
Shut up, Funky.
I am old enough to have witnessed all those astronomical events you described, CBH. I think I actually did (with the help of binoculars) just make out a smudge of Kohoutek. Halley was indeed a dud. Hale-Bopp… don’t think it was visible from the Chicago area. The strips you dug out came from the days when I read Funky in the newspaper and thought it a credible gag-a-day strip. Even then it struck me as displaying more effort by the artist than, say Beetle Bailey (which, I think, was a better strip back then as well).
Of course, the over-hyped astronomical phenomena are an easy target. The “supermoon,” for instance. I still think that when astrologer Richard Nolle coined the term in 1979, he did so as a joke, just to see if he could get people to make a big fuss over a normal astronomical phenomenon that is not (to the naked eye) discernable from an ordinary full moon.
I saw this year’s eclipse from my daughter’s front lawn in Indianapolis. I think totality was a good twice as long as in the 2017 eclipse, which I watched from the banks of the Mississippi in Chester, IL (on my way back from a weekend of kayaking in the Ozarks). And this year (since we weren’t going anywhere afterward), the totality of the eclipse was accompanied by a jug of “Totality” barrel-aged dark Belgian ale from the local brewery.
I remember Hale-Bopp, learning about it in school, standing in the night cool grass of my front yard, staring up beyond the old elm tree to see it, and can still hear the the adorably nerdy class clown who was my elementary school crush chanting ‘Hale-Bopp, Hale-Boop.’ in a nasaly creaky little voice as we joked about what the aliens aboard the spaceship following it would sound like.
Cue a few years later, when a Middle School me learned about Heaven’s Gate.
Thank you for sharing your eclipse experience. I’m a little disappointed more people didn’t share theirs.
In my town, we were only expecting about 3/4 partial coverage of the sun. I was lucky to see the partial eclipse at all. Here I am in a historically sunny region of the country that regularly experiences 330 days of sun every year. So, what happens? We experienced cloud cover almost all day due to a rare incoming severe weather front. The one day we especially want clear skies, we don’t get it. There was a brief opening in the clouds where we could see some of the eclipse. The clouds were high clouds so, at times, we could see the sun behind them.
Mr. bwoeh and I could have made a 10-hour trek, similar to CBH, but I’m glad we didn’t. The place I had chosen to possibly watch the total solar eclipse had cloudy skies all day, and we didn’t have any family in the area to visit. As a matter of fact, viewing parties were canceled in that city due to the expectation of severe thunderstorms.
In a Freaky-Friday occurrence, my Ohio friends and family experienced the sunny weather we typically enjoy. They were expecting the typical April weather forecast of clouds and rain. Instead, they were greeted with clear skies and temperatures around 70 degrees. I’m jealous, but I’ll happily trade a clear view of a 73% partial eclipse any day for my Ohio peeps witnessing a total solar eclipse. Especially happy for my in-laws, who are both in their 80s.
In thinking this week about Dinkle’s writing career, I just realized something about this strip:
https://skyfutonsockfun.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/200703.gif
17 volumes, with 9 published as of 2020. That the same as Batiuk’s The Complete Funky Winkerbean books, isn’t it?
Apologies for the response above that is made redundant by this.
Did TB know the end was coming years in advance or was he just anticipating the strip’s 50th anniversary with that reference?
Of course, the truly rank thing about the walking punchline called Dinkle is not just that people don’t ask “Is you for real or is you just pretending?” because they don’t react to Crankshaft or Les the way they ought to either. What bothers me is that he has no awareness that he’s wasted his life being the moron in the monkey suit taking himself too seriously.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Les: (at the top of his lungs) I CANT FUCKING TAKE IT! ALL OF MY STUDENTS ARE MORONS! THEY’VE BEEN SCREECHING AND THROWING SHIT AROUND BECAUSE THEY CAN’T WATCH SKIBIDI TOILET ALL DAY! IF I HAVE TO BE AROUND THOSE GEN ALPHA KIDS, I’M GONNA FUCKING LOSE IT!:
Cayla: Maybe, you should take a break from it. Maybe try focusing on Li-
Les: FUCK THAT! I DONT FUCKING CARE ABOUT HER ANY MORE! I JUST WANT THIS SHIT TO END! ALSO, I FUCKING QUIT THIS GODAWFUL SHITHOLE OF A JOB!! FROM NOW ON, I’LL FOCUS ON MY CAREER AS AN PATHETIC AUTHOR WHO DESERVES TO BE MADE FUN BY THE INTERNTET!!! FUCK THIS SCHOOL!!! SOME BRAIN DAMAGED TEENAGERS WERE LEFT BEHIND!! FUCK MY ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE! SOMEBODY JUST PUT ME OUT OF MY MISERY!!
(Les storms out of the school, trashing everything in his way, and drives off at 73 MPH)
Cayla: (sigh) I fear for the people who are at the Ohioana Book Fair.
Related To The Batiukverse: The Seven Deadly Sins
Funky: His deadly sins are greed and gluttony (I think he wanted to expand Montoni’s to NY because of the money he would gain, and for Gluttony: He got very fat during the second time-skip)
Cindy: Her deadly sins are Pride, Envy and Wrath (for Wrath and Envy: She gets insanely mad when Mason is simply talking to another woman (even if it were Loathsome Lil or Maris Rogers) and for Pride, I think if someone made a slightly less-than-flattering comment towards her, she would beat her up)
Harry L. Dinkle: His deadly sins are Wrath and Pride (For pride: his nickname (The Greatest Band In The World) pretty much says it all, for Wrath: He screams at anybody who doesn’t want to listen to him)
Les Moore: his deadly sin is Pride (He’s a smug bastard who once called himself “The Lord of Language”)
Eric “Mooch” Myers: His deadly sin is Sloth (He mooched off his friends during high school)
John Howard: His sins are Lust and Envy
Batty’s Blog!
Have we reached peak Batiuk?
(the sudden, jarring reference to feeling sorry for “yourself”, which should be “myself”)
(the bit where the entire universe is working to deliver some irony specifically to T. Batiuk)
(“…atop a really high building in a really big city somewhere…”)
I missed the totality, despite living in its path. On Eclipse Day, I was on a beach, several hundred miles to the south. Ahh, the sacrifices we are forced to make…
I vaguely recall seeing Hale-Bopp and can’t remember if I tried to see Kohoutek, but I definitely recall my failed attempt to see Halley. I was in my back yard, watching for the comet when three glowing, football-shaped objects flying in a triangular formation shot across the sky. I was stunned.
I believe life does exist on other worlds, but I also doubt anyone has ever traversed the vast distances between planetary systems just to check us out and then head home. To this day, I have no idea what the heck I saw that night.
I’ll bet T Coronae Borealis going nova will be a bust as well.
For a brief moment, it will flare with a brightness unmatched by anything besides Tom’s self-opinion!
We strike up the bland today with another reminder that Dinkle’s not very well hidden fear is that no one will pay him any sort of attention. His whole life has been wasted shouting Look At ME!!!!!!
Here’s a belated post on the hardware store from last week’s Crankshaft. I had intended to share it earlier but ran out of time and ended up forgetting.
Here’s the cash register that was seen in Crankshaft.
Here’s the cash register in reality.
I won’t fault any readers for believing the cash register in the strip was contemporary. Although Dan Davis drew the cash register relatively well, he failed to show its appropriate wear and tear, which would indicate that it was old. I won’t blame the colorist for getting the color wrong. They probably had no idea that the cash register was old or had a wooden finish.
Dan Davis also did an unremarkable job of reproducing Rick Stephenson’s beard. It looks fake and resembles a clip-on. Why is his smile nonexistent through the beard but extends past his beard?
As usual, Batiuk completely misses the point. He loves to declare slightly outdated objects as long-lost, irreplaceable artifacts. He completely ignores the reason why they kept this ancient thing around, even though the story would have made his point much better than he himself did. He can’t write his strip when other people write it for him!
Figures. I finally find a business that will welcome my BankAmericard and it’s closing!
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Les: This is so boring. But hey, at least no Gen Alpha kid or Zoomer is having a meltdown because they can’t watch LankyBox or Skibidi Toilet. (smirk)
Some random 15 year old: I’M SO FUCKING PISSED OFF!! MY PARENTS CUT MY IPAD TIME FROM 17 HOURS TO JUST 14! RAGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!
(Les asks Lillian for a pencil, she gives it to him, and he slices his throat with it, while the angry teen flips Lillian’s chair over, instantly killing her, and shrieks for the everyone to beat up Harry L. Dinkle, which they do so)