Here’s the last Mother’s Day adjacent strip that ever appeared in Funky Winkerbean!
I spent time with my mom and siblings today, and it turned into an impassioned debate on what would make the greatest Mother’s Day movie. I argued that the James Cameron double feature of Aliens and Terminator 2 would make a great afternoon for an action movie loving mom.
Friday the 13th (the first one) was considered but my mother said, “That doesn’t sound like a very nice movie about a mom at all.”
Longer posts coming soon! Happy Mother’s Day everyone!
Son of Stuck Funky 
Given the idiot’s mother issues, it doesn’t make sense to him that their would be a day celebrating someone angry and mean for no reason that makes sense to him. It’s not that he’s a dull-witted snot who doesn’t know what he’s doing to piss people off, people just bully him for no reason.
You would think that he would have forgiven her by now. She was only trying to get him to grow up and be a productive adult.
Neurodivergence does not allow for motives that make it the problem. He can’t see this because he can’t ask the question “what does this person actually want?”
There’s something nasty about it all. Blog stories like “I joked around with my father but my mother was never involved in this” feel like she was actively excluded from things. Not merely that he connected better with one parent than the other.
Any parent of that era (late 1950s) would have had the “it is time to put away childish things” talk with any child who acted like Tom Batiuk did. He talks about comic books as if they were his inhaler.
And adulthood has given him no perspective on this. He doesn’t realize this was the parenting mentality then, and how much it has changed over 50-60 years. Or that comic books ultimately overcame the “kid stuff” label they had, making this attitude look anachronistic on its own.
I’d kind of like to explore this topic, but I spend enough time in Batiuk’s twisted, selfish head as it is.
He doesn’t want to know that the stigma went away. He can’t jolly well enjoy feeling like a mistreated and maligned martyr if people approve of his interests. Why are they bullying him by not wanting to bully him?
That’s a great point. Some people just love to be martyrs. Except that they won’t die.
What is going on with Crankshaft today? The dialog is so odd it’s almost like a foreign language. And with Mason in town, can Lisa’s Story be far behind?
Will the non ironic readers still defend the strip? Probably, but it will ge fun watching them squirm!
What is “obviousy” supposed to mean? At least the crappy theater is showing a good movie. Much as Batiuk disdains it.
Tom Batiuk relies on sitcom cliches… and then gets them completely wrong.
This is a classic Double Take / Delayed Reaction gag. The male theater operator (I’ve honestly forgotten their names, because who cares) should realize in Panel 2 that he screwed up by addressing his boss in an overly familiar way. Then that panel could show an annoyed-looking Mason reminding a sheepish-looking Whatisname of his place in their relationship. Instead, we got a pointless exterior shot. Because those are easier to make from clipart, I assume. And, they leave room for huge word bubbles. But cutting away from any emotion shot is also a defining trope of Tom Batiuk’s career.
The third panel is full of mistakes. Whatisname continues to act snotty to his boss when he ought to be shutting up now. Whatshername should be telling him to shut up, not telling Mason to ignore him. She’s her boss too, remember. Do you tell your boss to ignore your co-workers? Mason is smirking when he should be furious at all this.
And this is a much worse than usual boss-employee relationship. Mason restored these two idiots to the movie theater they ran into the ground, and this is how they treat him? And he doesn’t even care? He needed a Panel 3 line like “clearly the theaters needs to be checked on.”
There are no boss-employee relationships in the Funkyverse. They’re all one big happy family. They mock and smirk at each other all the time. Is this realistic? Not really. But let’s face it. When was the last time Batiuk had a boss? Back in the 1970s, when he was a teacher?
Before making fun of your boss, it’s a good idea to make sure they have a sense of humor. Otherwise, your actions may be brought up during your review or even sooner. It’s crucial to show a certain level of respect towards your boss as they hold a position of authority. They need reassurance that their employees are taking their responsibilities seriously.
In real-life these two clowns should show some level of gratitude and respect for being allowed to continue working in what was their failed enterprise. But this is the Funkyverse. If they fail at this job, someone is always willing to hand them another.
Person #1: Oh, foo. I just lost my job.
Person #2: What do you know. I just so happen to have an opening.
It’s a miracle!
=====================
I know you don’t care to know their names, but I have to share this because it is so Batiukian.
You most likely remember Mopey Pete’s fiance is Crankshaft’s grandaughter, Mindy. If her name is Mindy, how could Crankshaft’s other grandchild be named anything other than Max? Max and Min? Get it? (insert groan here)
If the Murdochs had a third child, would they have named it “Median”? “Average”?
I also have a device to remember Max’s spouse Hannah’s name, but I won’t bore you with it.
I remember “Max and Min”, but I failed to see it from the perspective of them being cousins. In the Funkyverse, a man and a woman with that name should be husband and wife. That would be more Batiukian IMHO.
Is this your device?
Banana Jr. 6000:
I miss Robot Chicken (when it was good and not mostly penis jokes).
Naw, her name is a palindrome, but I remember Hannah’s name because she works in a theater. In downtown Cleveland, one of the theatres in Playhouse Square is named the ‘Hanna Theatre’. Despite having no second “h” in the name, that’s my device. I told you it was boring.
Max and Mindy are brother and sister, not cousins. Batiuk would never have them marry. Taboo subjects such as incest are more up Brooke McEldowney’s alley. The perv.
Incest!
Cancer incest?
And Max has a son, Mitch. Mitch and Max. Like “mix and match”.
Yeah.
He’s had problems with dialog before but this is pushing it. Trying to figure out if the two of them have had a stroke got in the way of my following the story.
Just to take a few more swats at a dead horse:
What, you didn’t see “Mason Jarre announced Starbuck Jones III and ripped off Star Wars by name and wants to hire Dinkle to put Claude Barlow’s music in it and wants to premier it at the Valentine again and teased some family drama about Cindy and apparently didn’t bring Cindy on the trip” coming?
It’s like a trifecta of Crankibean glurge this week. On Monday, Masone pulls up unannounced in his Porsche (did he drive the Porsche up from Malibu, or does he keep a Porsche at the airport to use when he visits?) and engages with some meaningless banter with Max and his wife, then on Tuesday he goes into exposition overload in the second panel, first stating that they have some ominous “news” to deliver to Cindy’s family, then for some reason he thinks he needs to talk to Claude Barlow’s biographer before he uses his music for the upcoming blockbuster third Starbuck Jones feature, which of course will be premiered at his half assed theater that likely doesn’t have the proper equipment to even show a modern sci-fi movie.
It’s anybody’s guess what Cindy’s family news will be, but I will bet that it’s not important enough to fly across the country to deliver in person.
I will predict that Dinkle will be called upon to adapt Barlow’s music into a film soundtrack and suddenly become the next John Williams.
And of course, one of the first things that a producer does during movie planning is determine where the world premier will take place.
It’s going to be a long week.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
csroberto2854.exe has stopped working
Reason?: The wordplay in today’s strip
will you reset?
> Yes
> No
COMICBOOKHARRIET,
Here are some films with terrific mothers, your Mom would recognize.
1. 🎥 Every Which Way but Loose🎥. Ruth Gordon steals the show in that movie. Competes against top competition. In the cast list, she is far below the others, but milks every drop of ability from her lines. (After the biker gang confronts her at her home, she finishes the scene holding a shotgun. “First the police, and I told those boys not to leave a vulnerable old lady all alone!”
2. 🎥 I Remember Momma 1949🎥. Memories of immigrant Norwegians. Great cast: Irene Dunn, Barbara Bel Geddes (before ‘Dallas’ fame, Oscar Homolka (he steals the show!), Edgar Bergen, Cecil Hardwicke, Rudy Vallee, and many others including Ellen Corby!
3. 🎥 White Heat🎥. James Cagney at his very best! Has a mommie fixation on Margaret Wycherley playing the mother. She channels Ma Barker to perfection. There is a scene in a prison dining hall where the director and Cagney were the only ones that knew the action. His mom is cold, vicious, and smart, but she tugs on your heart strings because she is his mother.
M-the Many ways she loves her kids.
O-the Only mom for CBH.
T-the Tenderness she shows to others.
H-the Heart that is pure as gold.
E-the Extra portions she slips on your plate.
R-the Righteousness she instills in her family.
(and the Dad that lets Mom do her thing!)
SP:
The ghost of Elia Kazan would want me to note this.
Marlon Brando was in the original stage production of *I Remember Mama* as Nels.
Barbara Bel Geddes would be the first Margaret (the Cat) Pollitt in *Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.* Kazan chose her because he knew that she’d once been fat, and he felt that a fat woman, even after she’s lost the weight, never quite gets over the earlier obesity.
(Coincidentally, I was watching “The Big Country” recently and while Burl Ives won Best Supporting Actor for that, he could just as easily have taken home the statuette the same year for playing Big Daddy in the *Cat* film.)
Have you ever seen the 1947 “Kiss of Death”? Nick Bianco learns of a personal loss in prison in a way that anticipates Cody Jarrett’s discovery in “White Heat.” “White Heat” does it better, of course (and fine as Victor Mature is as Nick, he’s most certainly not on a par with James Cagney), but it’s good in its own way, and it also uses a woman’s voice-over effectively.
(The voice is Coleen Grey’s, who was in a greater picture in 1947, the original “Nightmare Alley.”)
In your spelling out of MOTHER, I found it impossible not to think of Madeline Kahn on “Saturday Night” ending the list with “P is for all the presents that she gave me.” Making “Motherp,” which sounds like something Starbuck Jones might encounter.
(The Motherp’s already swallowed Isaac’s voicebox! What will she do when she’s consumed his positronic brain? And why is she looking at Jupiter Moon that way?)
Top of the morning, sir, and top of the world, too!
Anonymous Sparrow,
1. It is so difficult to picture Marlon Brando in “I Remember Mama”. It would have been a totally different film, if he played Nels as Terry Malloy or as he did Don Vito. (Going through IMDB, I ran across “Julius Caesar” with Louis Calhern as Julius, and Brando as Marc Anthony. I gotta watch this film. The cast is a Who’s Who of Hollywood. Each character is played by a master. It even has Ian Wolfe! I have great hopes for this film. I hope it matches the Claude Rains’ film “Caesar and Cleopatra”.
2. Victor Mature. I could never picture Cagney as Doc Holliday. 😎
3. Burl Ives. To me he is perfection. I have enjoyed him in everything I have seen him. From Sam the Snowman to Big Daddy. I remember him as pure Evil as the poacher Cottonmouth in “Wind Across the Everglades”. It even has Emmett Kelly. If I remember correctly, Burl came on the Tonight Show on the same day as his divorce. He seemed very shaken.
Happy Motherp Day to you Sir! Next year, we will arrange for Be Ware of Eve Hill to send us a half gallon of her world famous Egg Nog, so we can celebrate properly. Til next time.
❤️💖🩷🫂🌺💐🌹
SP:
Marlon Brando and Richard Burton both acted with Elizabeth Taylor in 1967, in “Reflections in a Golden Eye” and “The Taming of the Shrew.”
A fun fact: both Edmond O’Brien and Carroll O’Connor played Casca, the least admirable of the conspirators against Caesar (the former in “Julius Caesar” and the latter in “Cleopatra”).
It is always a pleasure to be reminded of Ian Wolfe. So much fine work in such a long career, with my personal favorites probably Hawkins in “They Live By Night” (he’ll sell anything, but he won’t sell false hope) and law clerk (pronounced “clark”) H.A. Carter in “Witness for the Prosecution.” As Carter, his devotion to Sir Wilfrid Robarts was a beautiful thing indeed.
I think Tom Batiuk would agree with me if I likened it to that of Wong to Dr. Strange.
Burl Ives’s Rufe Hannassey lives on in “Ren & Stimpy.”
Anonymous Sparrow,
1. I did watch most of *Julius Caesar* last night. I left off just as Octavius is introduced. Powerful contrasts and comparisons in Brutus and Anthony’s speeches. I don’t know the name of that script writer, but I must check out more of his work.😉 I have had no contact with the play since high school, many years ago. Initially, I was disappointed with Louis Calhern’s portrayal of Caesar. Very soft, passive. I was expecting more like the actor’s portrayal in the film *Asphalt Jungle*. But I gave it more thought, and realized Caesar was near 60 years old, and had spent most of his life under hardships, such as being hostage and campaigning in wars. He probably was more frail. Calhern sold that very well.
2. *Witness for the Prosecution*. Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, and Charles Laughton. Superb film. TCM showed the German version of *the Blue Angel*. Marlene had me falling for her! So I am not a proper judge of her acting ability, but with her, you take the entire package: actress, singer, and personified a living F. U. to Hitler. I have an album downloaded on my phone of her singing. It has the English and German versions of “Falling in Love Again”.
I must take my leave. Sir, you are a joy!
SP:
Don’t forget that Brutus addresses “friends, Romans, lovers” while Antony talks to “friends, Romans, countrymen.”
Brutus also speaks in prose while Antony employs verse.
I like your take on why Louis Calhern’s Caesar works. It allowed me to think of Gaius Julius’s behavior in Shaw’s *Caesar and Cleopatra* where he’s careful with the Egyptian queen: he may dally with her, but her serious relationship will have to be with Antony.
(EC’s *Frontline Combat* #8 contains a historical exploring the career of Caesar. The artist is Wally Wood. Also in the issue: Alex Toth, Jack Davis and John Severin and Will Elder.)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz is the writer, with Shakespeare, of the screenplay for “Julius Caesar.” He also directed the movie. Without Shakespeare’s help, he wrote and directed “A Letter to Three Wives” and “All About Eve.”*
Dietrich, along with Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland, contributes stellar supporting work in 1961’s “Judgment in Nuremberg.” (And Wilder used her splendidly in “A Foreign Affair” from 1948.)
Umlauts forever!
*
“A Letter to Three Wives” was almost “A Letter to Four Wives.” The story comes from a book called *A Letter to Five Wives.*
Just wondering. The comic strip cliche is that the kids will serve their mother breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day. Has anyone here been served breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day (or Father’s Day)?
The only time I’ve ever been served breakfast in bed was when I was in the hospital. Am I missing something?
Maybe it’s just me, but I’d rather be invited to be seated in the kitchen than being awoken from a slumber and have a breakfast tray plopped in my lap while I’m half awake. Then having everybody stand around in the bedroom and watch while I eat it.
I think that was the joke. It’s sitcom fodder because it’s a bad and unintentionally back-handed gift. It obligates mom to consume whatever awful breakfast the kids cooked up. It’s an obligation dressed as a gift.
That’s why we always went out for breakfast on Mother’s Day.
Going out for breakfast was probably the better idea. We always went out for brunch after church when the restaurant crowds were the biggest. I read somewhere that Mother’s Day is the biggest restaurant day of the year. I believe it.
My son no longer lives in the same state as us, but he always has Mother’s Day covered, even when he remembers at the last minute. Sometimes, he has flowers delivered. This year, he paid for overnight delivery on my card.
I often have breakfast in bed. The trick is to not roll over on the pancakes and bacon in the middle of the night before waking.
(Your comment today on GoComics was hilarious BTW)
test test test
Have I been banned or does WordPress just hate me?
I’m surprised no one suggested “Psycho” as a Mother’s Day movie, as Mother is quite prominent. As I recall, she even stabs something! I think it was a coloring book.
That was the last Mother’s Day Sunday strip, eh? Come to think of it, he stopped doing those maudlin Lisa ones quite a while ago. I guess it just seemed like every year.
That was, of course, the great and now long-forgotten Starbuck Jones Collection mega-arc, one of Act III’s longest story arcs. That thing dragged on for-e-ver. Then, it wraps with Cory selling the collection (heretic) so he could buy the excerable Rocky an engagement ring. I assume they’re at the “arguing a lot and considering taking a break” stage of their honeymoon by now. Although, Rocky was quite doormattish, so you never know.
Funkyshaft could be building up to something exceedingly snark-worthy at this rate with Tuesday’s word-zeppelin droppings. Mason Jarr the Movie Star is no doubt confirming with Cindy’s family she’ll be part of a Hollywood family now, but more importantly Starbucks Jones continues to be a blockbuster franchise despite never coming back to it past the first movie (did Pete get snubbed from the later films? How can he not profit off the nepotism of keeping up that association to avoid restaurant-running minimums?) that once again is coming back to the damn Valentine theater to give Centerville overblown credit.
But oh boy are we not going to escape Dinkle; Mason actually thinks Harry’s beloved Claude Barlow’s music is perfect for Starbuck, and is coming to Dinkle for permission to use it?! Did Dinkle put copyright on a composer that sounds like he’s from the era where such music is mostly public domain now!? We really are getting peak Dinkshaft if this is the kind of attention he’s getting for Cranky story arcs now…
Also what poster is on the Valentine walls now? Another Radio Rance variant or are they actually playing something outside the status quo?
Dinkle is to Crankshaft as Les is to Funky: someone annoying and overrated displacing a main character Batiuk has grown tired of.
Yeah, it looks like Dinkle is going to be the star of Act IV. And The Looming Burnings. Because there just aren’t enough media stars in Westview!
May 14 strip. Ahhhh, so many word balloons, so little information being conveyed. I’ll repeat what others have said: Where’s Crankshaft.
Apparently he’s guesting over in “Gil Thorp,” where today (5/14) the Milford High team bus was shown to be breaking down on the way to a ballgame. I for one would plotz to see Ed drawn GT-style on the strip.
Aren’t Cindy and Mason already married? (I could just be assuming they were, though. I really don’t feel like looking it up.)
Me, I’m calling that the news is Cindy’s pregnant. Because if there’s one thing this strip needs it’s for Batiuk to forget that she’s 70 friggin’ years old.
Yeah, they were married Starbuck Jones style.
My guess would be that Cindy has cancer. Can’t go to that well often enough.
ComicBookHarriet had a post here a few weeks ago which mentioned that Claude Barlow supposedly died in 1627 (albeit with many anachronisms along the way, such as his being a rival of Mozart, who was born in 1756).
Even a composer who had died in 1927 would have his music in the public domain by now.
LOL, very true. Though Claude Barlow music can apparently be hard to find as much of it was destroyed, and importing it is occasionally illegal.
But not the recordings of said music, they would be held by the record companies and/or performers. Of course, Jarre is going to get Dinkle to perform the score using the Old People Band.
Wait, I just noticed now that Starbuck Jones’s third movie has the subtitle of “Rise of the Bandoloreans”… is that a combination of “band” with “Mandolorians” I’m spying?!
If this is part of the subtext behind getting Dinkle involved with sci-fi movies, that may just be dumb enough to loop back on hilarious (with extra humor to me since despite my love of Boba Fett, Mandos in general never interested me that much, so their prominence in Star Wars content atm is a tad dry to me).
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Max: Mason, how old is Cindy?
Mason: She’s 58 years old.
Max: Her parents are probably long dead. I also talked to her ex-co-brother-in-law (Wally), and he told me that Cindy’s sister, Sadie, killed herself.
Naw, Baby Boomers often had younger parents, totally believable she’d have some old folks in their 90’s that she refuses to see.
But instead by ‘Cindy’s family’ we’ll get Cindy and Masone telling a Funky and Holly who are inexplicably in Westview instead of Florida about their impending adoption of a rainbow of ethnically diverse children from several third world nations.
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Masoné: (now somber) The guy who played Jones’s nemesis in the latest movie is none other than Steven Motherfuckin’ Seagal!
Max: Why the fuck would anybody let that fat asshole in any movie?
(Note: I’d rather meet Tom Batiuk than Seagal because Seagal has much less self-awareness than Batiuk, His ego is the size of the Sun, and he kicks people in the nuts)
Also the Komix Thoughts blog has been fairly quiet the last few days outside the usual features. Even an ongoing special feature he’s been doing (reposting Crankshaft’s Kent State shooting story from 2000 in reference to the May 4th anniversary, though I found it mildly odd already that he started two days after the day and not on or before it) has stalled with its final post not having gone up for days now, interrupted by only the latest John Darling Sunday repost. Little curious, I suppose.
Why did he choose to start reposting the Kent State story two days after the anniversary? Because “THE RULES” say you can only start a story on a Monday, so he had to wait until a Monday to start putting them up.
I honestly have no idea is this is a joke or the actual reason…
I think Batiuk thinks that people have forgotten the “Kent State Storyline from 2001”
Also, did he forget to post the last week of the May 4 story? Or does it just end that abruptly?
He’s forgetting the last week thus far. This link covers most of the remainder, though it doesn’t seem to have the Sunday/Saturday strips from said final week:
Daily Kent Stater 5 May 2000 — Daily Kent Stater Digital Archive
Still, the important bit is visible: after Pam gets pulled out of the National Guard’s way, she lingers to get more photos as the moment of the shooting approaches. Jeff pulls her into the safety of the building seconds before the shots fire, leaving them reeling at the near-miss. (I’ve snarked about the “They just killed four kids” line as far as accuracy and overlooking the wounded alongside the dead, but I’ve since been corrected that the line is part of Chuck Ayers’ personal experience of having been on the scene of the shooting himself, so I’ve resigned from comment there). Then there’s the bit about Tommy dying in ‘nam.