Happy May The Fourth to all of you!
What once was a cute inside joke among Star Wars fans has now turned into a legitimate and corporatized holiday that I’m guessing more people notice than Martin Luther King Jr. Day. To be fair, Disney can’t use MLK as an excuse to sell branded enamel pins, or goose viewership numbers on their streaming service. At least, not yet.
Still, allow me to mark the occasion. After all, I’m a child of the 90’s who loved Star Wars back when it was still charmingly commercial and not an omnipresent soulless mega brand selling tiny Benjamin Button frogman plushies to soccer moms who’ve never even heard of KOTOR. I have the action figures, the t-shirts, the comics, the beat up old paperbacks novels now punted by the UberMaus into the abyss of ‘LEGENDS’ canon. I have a VHS player so I can watch the series PROPERLY, without all the Special, Specialer, and Specialist edition bantha crap.
But, no matter what some of you in the comments section might think, I do not, NOR HAVE I EVER HAD, any sort of risque Slave Leia getup.
I do have a custom Boba Fett swimsuit. A tasteful one piece, as befits an elder maiden shaped like a handful of cookie dough.
ANYWAY! Here are some Star Wars/Funky Winkerbean crossover strips, from Act I. When both Star Wars and Funky Winkerbean were better.
I’m missing a Volume in here, waiting for an edition to pop up for cheap. So I’m not sure how much more Empire Strikes Back content we got.
Return of the Jedi got quite a bit of love. Including a week starring The Eliminator, I pulled my profile pic from.
After this week, Tom Batiuk ran a contest where he asked for Jedi Jokes submissions. And we learn that Tom Batiuk isn’t the only person in this country with no sense of humor willing to destroy logic, reason, good sense, good taste, the English language, and the Star Wars canon in service of a lame pun.
These were presented as a quiz of sorts. As your educator, I’ve sought to correct this quiz for your edification.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Oh, CBH, you don’t know what you missed not being around in the ’70s and ’80s. Efforts to post a link went south for some reason, so I’ll just direct you to search for Chrysler Cordoba ads on YouTube starring the late, great Ricardo Montalban.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfKHBB4vt4c
Soft, Corinthian Leather has been discovered. Pop Culture knowledge has been unlocked.
I remember seeing The Empire Strikes Back in a movie theatre before Lucan new-and-improved it. Batiuk isn’t the only person whose creative license needs to be reviewed.
As an Ohio child of the 70s and 80s, and especially given the connection of the strip(s) and Kent State University, I’d like to remind readers (and authors) that May 4 has different memories and connotations to some of us.
I’m basically too young to have any memories of May 4, 1970, but (when asked) my stepfather would briefly tell how he almost got killed as he was trying to make his way around the crowd as he walked from lunch to his job in the Chemistry Lab.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
Thanks for the reminder, Fan Fan. I just brought up Kent State with my mom a few days ago. She was saying she was glad she no longer had any kids college aged after watching all the recent war protests. She was leaning toward, “Boy times these days sure are ‘blank'”
All I had to say was ‘Kent State’, and it put everything in perspective.
I recall the Kent State gym annex protest of 1977, also known as Tent City. There was a controversy that arose from the University’s proposal to build an annex to the gym on part of the site of the 1970 Kent State shootings. During these protests, some objectors camped out on the building site, hence the name Tent City. My high school held a banquet in the student center, and you could see Tent City from the banquet room windows.
My parents expected me to attend Kent State because that was where my older brother decided to go. I pushed back because I didn’t want my choice of school limited to what was convenient. I decided to attend Ohio State because they offered me a textbook scholarship, and I wanted a little more freedom. Mom and Dad still paid my tuition, but room and board was on me. My rebellion had a price. 😒
I always found it bemusing how ”Star Wars Day” grew prominent enough to gain dominance of publicity over this day. Becoming acutely conscious of May 4 during my own KSU scholarship always kept it on my mind, particularly how I attempted to keep up with all the tribute events. A shame i haven’t been able to get back for more recent ones.
Batty braved the crowds to buy comic books.
This block of strips reminds me. I actually saw the 7/25/83 strip before in an actual Star Wars book! “The Star Wars Vault” was a 2007 scrapbook-style volume that collected artifacts, notable images and item reproductions that covered the first 30 years of the franchise’s stretch. A very fun book for my youth, and they reprinted the Funky strip in a passage about the film’s impact in newspaper media alongside other strips (I believe there was a Bloom County one too at least.)
Not planning to go big or anything for this day myself, but despite what’s mentioned above about the Kent State contrast, it is a rather fun thing to reflect about, since I still keep up with the broad series even if I don’t watch or read everything. Certainly aim to catch one of the showings of Phantom Menace’s rerelease this week, can’t miss my favorite of the films. Dunno if I’d be crazy enough to do the 9-film marathon some theaters have done though, I don’t have the overnight strength I used to have
Oh! Outside of maybe-too-mainstream sci-fi, no doubt even Batiuk is excited that today is Free Comic Book Day, with all the comic shops preparing freebies for the kids and collectors to get with entry. My library’s pitching in with a local comic shop to help celebrate, I’ll be seeing if I can’t pick up a few things myself or not.
CBH,
“But, no matter what some of you in the comments section might think, I do not, NOR HAVE I EVER HAD, any sort of risque Slave Leia getup.”
Oh, my dear! I feel as if my childhood suddenly ended.
Why did Batiuk feel the need to use every Jedi joke submission? Some of them are terrible.
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that terrible as some of these jokes are, there were some rejected which were far, far worse.
In 1970, Bob Dylan put out a much reviled album of largely cover material called *Self-Portrait.* A few years later, Columbia, not having him for the nonce, put out *Dylan,* an album of outtakes from the *Self-Portrait* sessions, and a critic observed:
“If there’s anything worse than *Self-Portrait,* it’s the material left off of *Self-Portrait.*”
On the first BBC Beatles collection, the presenter asks the group if they felt that the best bits of “A Hard Day’s Night” were left on the cutting room floor. John Lennon assures him that “the good bits are in the film.”
Tin Soldiers and Nixon coming…I should revisit the Mott the Hoople cover of “Ohio” before the 5th comes and I mourn the fact that Kinsey Millhone never reached forty and the letter Z…
Given the “jokes” he wrote himself (both Star Wars-related and otherwise), and the fact that his was pretty low-effort for him (he only had to draw one panel, with a lot of text in it, for each submission used, and several of them used art that was almost certainly traced or otherwise copied from other sources)… really, I’m surprised he didn’t do this more often.
As terrible as some of those Jedi jokes were, they’re still better than any “joke” featured in Crankshaft over the past three weeks.
I hope Batiuk will take some pity on us and moves on from “The Signings.” Except for the snark, the last three weeks have been an utter waste of bandwidth.
Dinkle: What should I do with all of these unsold books?
Answer: Stick ‘em up your backside and swivel. You inconsiderate and overentitled a$$hole.
I’ve got the original unspoiled trilogy on DVD, thanks to when they were offered as “bonus” material on the Stupid Editions.
If only there were other ways to see the original versions.
https://archive.ph/H9jFd
If only…
Many years ago, I read a very interesting theory about why they are, and are likely to remain, unavailable in an official version.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
(grabs Harry Dinkle by the neck and hurls him into a active woodchipper)
Lillian in Unseen Panel Two: “But, I’ve already got several shelves filled with unsold signed copies of that windbag cartoonist’s “Three O’Clock High” comic strip collections!”
May 4th Crankshaft:
Scenes we’d like to see:
Harry Dinkle entombed in a wall using the unsold copies of his books.
The third strip posted. I don’t understand the “Nelliebell” joke.
Apparently it’s some Roy Rogers callback. Nelly Belle.
That Crazy wouldn’t recall the name of the Millennium Falcon is a far stretch.
“Nellybelle” was the name given to the Double R-Bar Ranch jeep comedic sidekick Pat Brady drove on “The Roy Rogers Show” in the 1950s. Why Batiuk thought a high school student in the late 1970s–by which time Rogers was known primarily as a fast food spokesperson–would make reference to it is anyone’s guess.
Considering that name is nowhere close to Millennium Falcon it makes no sense he’d say that.
I kinda like some of the first group of SW strips. They’re like the type of joke a little kid makes–funny not just because of the dumb joke, but because little kids are dumb and say goofy things. The Jedi ones are like AI trying to force out out a Dad Joke. Did you get that? “FORCE” out?! “I am your father!” “Hello, I Am Your Father, I’m Dad!” “Oh, SOMEbody’s losing a body part for that!”
Did you smile at that? Then yuk it up, furball. I have the higher ground, and a fistful of sand. And IT WILL GET EVERYWHERE!
The “Nelliebell” thing and Roy Rogers? Remember the Gilchrist years of “Nancy?” She and Sluggo were obsessed with Roy Rogers. As any 6 year old in 2010 would be. Almost as if–The writer’s tastes just stopped evolving in 1962? Almost reminds me of…(shrugs)…some guy somewhere. Except one less obsessed with Aunt Fritzi’s…tshirts.
There is (was?) a Facebook group called Friends of the CC. Once, there was a challenge to write a haiku. I only remember 2 of mine.
“Gilchrist’s fans miss just
Two things about Aunt Fritzi:
Her lower back pain.”
The only other one I semi-remember, and if you don’t read the Phantom, stop reading:
“Eric Sahara
Ass so kicked by Heloise
(in the Bandar tongue)”
Getting old(er) i have a greater understanding now of pop culture in the 70s-80s still using pop culture callbacks from the 1950s or even 1930s! Obviously the writers, like us all, were still infatuated with their own youths — which in those cases were 2-4 decades prior to when they could finally write a show themselves.
I mean we’re looking at strips talking about a movie that’s 45 years old at this point…
I actually remember those Star Wars gag strips. Thanks for dredging THAT memory up. I assume most municipal water supplies were contaminated with LSD back then. Something certainly was.
for this one FW star wars joke strip:
I think R2-D2’s dialog was translated from Binary
for the “luke and Santa enter a Sarlacc”
A.) Slowly digested over 1000 years. With Santa.
I think that only happens in Star Wars Legends, in the current canon, you’ll suffocate within a couple of hours or days
Depending on your level of tinfoil and crayon eating, Korkie Kryze. For a further listing of potential Kenobi love children, contact fanfiction (dot) net.
(starts retching and throws up)
Thank you for the post! My two main takeaways –
Reading these older strips with that in mind makes it clear that he never had that intent in the beginning and found it to be so clever when he mopped that into place.
Ditto for Lisa’s pregnancy becoming date rape; Les suddenly becoming valedictorian when Barry Balderman had a breakdown; John Darling being killed by Plantman; Bull Bushka actually being Les’ friend all along; Cindy Summers actually wanting Les all along; Roland becoming transsexual at the end; Timemop’s very existence; and so many other inept retcons that completely invalidated the story.
These “Star Wars jokes” feel like a bad joke book for small children in 1980. Except that bad joke books for small children in 1980 may have had the right to used the licensed characters.
Meanwhile, we’re in for more misery with Dinkle and Lillian Lizard. It’s as if the original cast has to make way for the idiots from the parent strip.
Why in the world Batty thinks that his readers want more Dinkle and Lizard is beyond me.
I wonder what true Crankshaft readers think about this?
I don’t think they matter to him any longer. He stopped pretending that he cared what the readers liked quite a while ago.
True, once act 1 ended and he fancied himself a artist, he just started doing things to stroke his own ego and chase awards. I’m surprised he didn’t need rotator cuff surgery from all the back patting he has done over the years.
Some idiot talked him out of doing what he was good at and he blames things on the readers he’s alienated. He ain’t changed since he started pouting about being bullied by his own mother because she wanted him to get off his rump and do things.
Q: If the Death Star uses a tractor beam to draw ships toward it, what does it use to repel them?
A: A Funky Winker-beam
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Week three of this Dinkle nonsense.
I just wanna fucking beat the shit out of him like this:
or better, like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_6U707mpr0