What a week it has been.
So many interesting things we learned this week as we travelled through the fever dream that is current era Crankshaft.
Monday we learned that Marianne Winters still hasn’t thrown herself off the Hollywood sign in despair, and that she’s still starring in Starbuck Jones sequels. The status of her mother is unknown however. Since poor Marianne is wearing the same get up she did for the first Starbuck sequel, her mommy obviously couldn’t have made her anything new, so I have my concerns about her mother’s health.
We learned Tuesday that the premiere of the third Starbuck Jones sequel was big enough news to be covered by Entertainment Tonight. Which means the movie is sure to be a success.
We also learned that Cindy Summers Winkerbean Jarre has a magic shapeshifting nose that she can grow and shrink at will for the amusement of the masses.
Wednesday we learned that Masone has a life goal of never attending a Starbuck Jones Convention again. So after three movies, he hates this franchise and fandom and also sees being a convention guest as a pathetic and mercenary transaction. Which makes sense. Masone has been shown to hate making public appearances and meeting fans.
On Thursday we learn that Masone finds it challenging to portray a character that appears to age over time. This is understandable, as his wife seems to have inducted him into the cult of ageless vampires, and he has not noticeably aged in years.
Then on Friday we got final confirmation that somehow, in some way, Cindy and Masone are indeed expecting a child. At last we can put to bed the remaining outside chance that the May 18th strip was an out of season April Fool’s Joke. Though I’m leaving gestational surrogacy on the board until we actually see Cindy’s septuagenarian womb swell with Jarre’d Summer’s Fruit.
I demand all of you in the comments answer Joshua K.’s poll. (My vote is C, btw)
And today… today we learn that TIME MOP is still kicking around in Westview. Still stuck in the past, while a tiny black garbage cat quantum leaps through time and space using his time helmet.
Back in January Banana Jr. 6000 gave Les Moore a 99% probablility of showing up in Crankshaft this year, and didn’t even give ol’ Harley the Time Janitor a mention.
So if you ask me ‘What are the odds?”
I’d have to shrug and say, “The Batiuk Works in Mysterious Ways.”
Son of Stuck Funky 
With the presence of TimeMop now securely in place in Crankshaft, the poll answer has to be C)
(Well, okay … possibly A and/or B — but with a “take that, beady-eyed nitpickers!” retcon explanation that invokes C.)
I’m agreeing with Y.Knott in that the answer is clearly C for the poll now.
Ed is a WW2 vet but that Matty guy was shown as distinctly older than Ed a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, Lillian and Cindy have remained the same age for the past twenty years, when realistically for now, either Cindy should look like Lillian and/or Lillian should be dead.
I was hasty in writing my post last time and I didn’t want to get verbose yet again, but to drive my point home regarding Tom’s obsession with signature events – the last time that I specifically waited in line to get someone’s autograph was when I was no more than ten years old, which was more than thirty years ago now. It was for a recent Chicago Cubs rookie pitching phenom, the up-and-coming Greg Maddux. After that? I never bothered. Obviously I don’t think the same mentality I state here applies to literally every other human on the planet and events surely show a level of interest of some kind, but how many people today have the celebrity draw where people would care enough to seek an autograph? How many people today actually care about having someone else’s autograph? Is that actually still a big deal and I’m completely ignorant of it, or is my presumption accurate in that the entire function of getting and possessing someone else’s autograph is not as valued today?
If you’re a real fan of, say, Calvin and Hobbes, wouldn’t you spend a little time in line to get your C&H book autographed by Bill Watterson?
For certain items, there’s still a real interest in signatures — an autographed baseball from a big star, a signed copy of a book from a famous author, a movie script (for a big movie) autographed by the cast.
But while there are certainly still autograph seekers out there, I’d say many of today’s celebrity hounds are really after a postable photo: ‘look at me and this celebrity together!’
An autographed C&H is probably one of the rarest flexes you could have with how private Watterson is. Either there was some charity or publicity thing he might’ve done during the strip’s run, or the known instances where he quietly took to signing books at his local bookstores before fans caught on and started trying to flip them online. He is probably not going to be handing them out anytime soon, if ever.
Good response, thank you. It is interesting that you mention baseball stars in part of that, because I think some of that allure is allegedly dying off, depending on who you ask and if you use the market prices as a barometer of interest. But then the forgery issue is to be considered as well.
I don’t know. Part of Tom’s basis for repeatedly brining it up has to be that it does put him in direct contact with people who genuinely like his work, part of it has to be that it makes it easy to depict two people physically talking with each other in a single comic strip panel, part of it has to be that there are very few other ways in which two people who would otherwise have no reason to talk to each other are presently doing so. There is a logical basis to it. The frequency of showing it, though. The fixation. That is what makes me think.
With the sports stuff, now there’s a whole sub-industry of “authenticated” autographs and memorabilia that didn’t use to exist. Even the MLB itself has gotten into the act, certifying game-used gear. So I think there’s a lot less forgery then there used to be.
I also think there’s less demand for autographs than there used to be. eBay makes available almost anything you’d want to have, with the authentication protections above. And modern social media offers better ways to get your Stan on.
It is always interesting to me how often I encounter folks who are devoted fans and collectors of incredibly minor pieces of pop culture. Granted, I have my minor pop culture fandoms too (I’m not much of an autograph seeker, though, outside of autograph sessions at auto races where I mostly wait in line to say “hello, thanks, good luck” to the drivers), so these things should never surprise me, but they still do sometimes.
This past weekend I went to a kid-oriented craft fair/market where part of the draw was for kids to meet and get their picture taken with folks dressed up in costume as Disney princesses and Pikachus, and some poor fellow in the saddest-looking Bluey costume you can imagine. There were also a handful of “meet-and-greet” opportunities with a Youtube gamer and some comics artists of little note… and Melanie Kohn, whose entire pop culture career consisted of voicing Lucy Van Pelt in 5 Peanuts animated films in the mid-70s (most notably the feature-length slog that is Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown). I never saw much of a line at her table, but I passed it multiple times and saw Gen x-aged folks who surely grew up watching those Peanuts specials chatting, getting autographs, and posing for photos. Several were even wearing Peanuts merchandise, implying that they had come to this event specifically to meet Ms. Kohn.
Any time we discuss autographs here, I like to fish out this eBay listing that has been up for probably a decade. A signed letter from Tom Batiuk himself, responding to an autograph request and dated 2990 (TimeMop strikes again!). “$120!!?!” you’re probably thinking, and you’re right… but when I first saw this listing the seller was asking for over $400. It’s practically in the grocery store clearance bin with the dented cans!
The joke in Saturday’s strip is that Timemop is a time traveler from the future. The problem is that the joke’s only prayer of working is for the reader to know that. How many “Crankshaft” readers do?
Waaaay back in “Thor” 341, Walt Simonson had the Thunder God bump into a reporter, knocking his notes from his hands. The reporter, who humbly took the blame for the accident, was dark-haired and wore a suit, tie and glasses. A dark-haired female reporter called him “Clark.” Odds are good that even non-comic nerds would get the joke. Timemop doesn’t have anywhere near that kind of recognition factor.
It’s always good to remember Walt Simonson’s *Thor,* and such gems as Nick Fury giving Thor (as Sigurd Jarlson) a pair of glasses to protect his secret identity, which Nick pronounces the “greatest idea since pizza.”
(Nick’s cousin Jerry Sapristi thought that Sigurd was secretly either Captain America or Spider-Man. His kids knew better!)
Not to mention the classic defiance of the Midgard Serpent in *Thor* #380:
You said it yourself, Jormungand! The trouble with godhood is that it robs you of your finer judgment! And that is why we will never be the same. You are a mighty fighter, but in the end, you are only a selfish creature while heroes…heroes have an infinite capacity for stupidity! Thus are legends born!
All that said, one of my favorite in-jokes in comics comes courtesy of Jim Steranko in *Strange Tales* #163. The barber shop front for S.H.I.E.L.D. denies entrance to a customer suddenly (the Yellow Claw is up to no good!), and the customer tells the staff member to take it easy and not to act as if he’s some kind of an enemy spy.
The customer is a dead ringer for Sean Connery, who played James Bond, and whose “You Only Live Twice” reached movie theaters about three months before this issue arrived on the spinner racks.
When I’m wrong, I admit it.
Jim Steranko’s Sean Connery joke occurs in *Strange Tales* #164, not in #163.
For those who care, Clay Quartermain was introduced in the *S.H.I.E.L.D.* series in *Strange Tales* #163.
I said before that CS would end on 12/29/24. I take that back.
It will end with “Lorain County Police Arrest 76-Year Old Lunatic Who Thinks Someone Stepped on his Imaginary Star Wrong, After 15 Stabbings.”
The thing about the movie that irritated me is the lack of motivation of the villains. Brak from Space Ghost is a bank robber with a raygun. The jerks Starbuck fights have no purpose other than to get mowed down. Batiuk just doesn’t get that without context, we don’t actually know who the hero is.
Yeah, it’s C. Batty seems to be proud of the fact that he can just change the past on a whim.
I’m voting B, but TB is possibly retconning it to C. There was never a plan, he just plain forgot Cindy’s age, later remembered it, and is now stubbornly plowing ahead even though it would be easy enough to wave it away as a joke.
while a tiny black garbage cat quantum leaps through time and space using his time helmet.
(meanwhile, the garbage cat tries to scratch the leg of the Tenth Doctor, prompting him to throw the cat into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy)
Tenth Doctor: As I said, NO FECKIN’ SECOND CHANCES.
If I remember my “Dr. Who” history correctly, the Doctor was only supposed to have a certain number of regenerations (twelve) but the character is on his sixteen incarnation.
So perhaps Cindy is actually a regeneration of the woman who spent New Year’s at McArnold’s with Les Moore, and is thus capable of reproduction.
Outlandish? No more than Alfred becoming the Outsider…or Fourth Doctor Tom Baker becoming Puddlegum, the marshwiggle in an adaptation of *The Silver Chair.*
The Doctor’s actual 9th incarnation was the War Doctor (played by the late Sir John Hurt, or as I like to call him, Sir Dies-A-Lot, because most of Hurt’s characters died), and Ten and Eleven didn’t want to talk about him because he single-handingly killed all of the Daleks and Time Lords, until all thirteen doctors (at the time, which were One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, War, Nine, Ten, Eleven and Twelve) put Gallifrey into a pocket dimension, which didn’t stop the Spy Master from killing all of the time lords
Tenth Doctor used the regeneration energy to create the Meta-Crisis Doctor to prevent himself into regenerating into Eleven, which meant Eleventh Doctor was the last one, until the Doctor got a new regenerative cycle
I also think that if a FW live action series was made, Jodie Whittaker (The Thirteenth Doctor) would play Cindy Summers
CSRoberto2854:
Maybe it’s because of an imminent documentary about Brian Eno, but writing that makes me think of a lost David Bowie lyric, perhaps the ur-version of “TVC 15.”
“Oh my CSRoberto2854/Resurrect Major Tom once more…”
You were very enlightening about the career of the Doctor, and I thank you for the details. Being of a certain age, I can remember when it looked like Sylvester McCoy was the last Doctor viewers would ever see, and I’m fuzzy on the revival.
Now I am less so, and that is good.
My reaction to the Sunday strip: Well, now we know what Tom Batiuk wants for Christmas.
Wait, wait, wait. They interrupted his interview with ET in order to tell him about that? They never came up with a plan to reveal this thing that was beyond “we’ll just grab him and show him sometime when he’s around, whatever.”
If people in the FunkyCrankerverse couldn’t half-ass a job, nothing would ever get done.
And sure, Mason has a star on the Walk of Fame. Mr. “Dino Deer”: sure, Tom. Right next to the star of Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, right?
Oh, and the answer is C, that Batiuk doesn’t really care about continuity anymore. He needed Cindy to be pregnant to give us an update on her relationship with Mason, so that’s what she’ll be!
I have to agree. He decided he wants to do an arc where a pregnant Cindy goes into labor at Montoni’s and gets driven to the hospital in the Batiukmobile, so by God, Cindy is preggers. I guarantee this WILL happen. Bank on it.
I can’t picture the 70 something Cindy going into labor and having to be driven in the fucking Batiukmobile to the hospital to give birth at Montoni’s
Given that Mason himself apparently interrupted his own interview so that he could schlep on over to Westview and the Komix Korner, I don’t see any reason Chinbeard and Generic Blonde couldn’t interrupt it again for this nonsense.
(Seriously, when was Mason’s encounter with Timemop supposed to have happened? We went from the premier to the Komix Korner and then back to the premier, so… what gives? Either Mason skipped out on his own premier to waste time at the Komix Korner, the chronology of the strips doesn’t follow the order they’re printed, Timemop is really screwing around with the timeline, or someone (Tom) messed up the story. Whatever the case, it’s pretty ridiculous.)
“Here’s something else for you, Mason.”
“What’s that?”
“The bill. The city agreed to install the star as long as the Valentine paid for it. It’s $3,697.19 and they want it by the end of the week.”
Oh, and I vote C because that’s our Batty.
I think it’s none of the above. B and C require Batiuk to remember something, D requires him to make an intentional decision. A requires him to forget something, but that implies that remembering it would have changed the outcome. None of these things are consistent with Batiukian Logic. So I’m going to propose an “E” answer:
E. He remembered Timemop exists.
If Tom Batiuk wants to do something in his strip, he does it, all other considerations be damned. And, he was just so strangely proud of Timemop. He thinks he wrote himself a permanent irrevocable license to make the timeline whatever he wants. He didn’t just use A Wizard Did It; he acts like he invented A Wizard Did It.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Cindy reverted to her age 46 look the same time Batiuk dragged Timemop out of mothballs. It feels like a story decision Batiuk made: it makes zero sense, tries to justify something unjustifiable, and is actually counterproductive.
Because it goes completely against the “recycling art” technique. There’s no artistic reason to revert one character to her Burne-era appearance. There’s plenty of Act III art of Cindy they have could re-used, and there’s no art of her being pregnant ever. Any future art would have to match the old artist’s style, be off-model, or be made from some Frankenstein process. (Every other adult woman in the Funkyverse is pudgy enough to pass for pregnant, so he could just ‘shop Pregnant Cindy’s head onto Holly or Donna’s body.)
But Batiuk doesn’t care about any of that either. He wants Cindy pregnant, so she’s pregnant. And Timemop justifies it. The end. I bet Batiuk writes a Komix Thoughts blog post this very week, to explain how he’s brilliantly out-maneuvered us all.
This is really just a different way of saying “C”. I’m sorry for being so pretentious.
As i surmised at some point revising as he goes aka C is my vote; twisting the world to fit a new continuity by fiat. I have to admit much as i used to enjoy an occasional retcon or reboot the repeated use of such tactics really distances the reader from further investment.
You know, science fiction used to be considered the domain of ‘smart’ kids, but as the ‘science’ has progressed the SF has sort of regressed to be indeed indistinguishable from ‘magic’.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
The Daily Bleak
Local Blond Woman Found Dead After Otherworldly Being Gave Her A Botched Lobotomy, Husband Takes Own Life After Finding Out What Happened to Her
Also, Happy 33rd birthday, Sonic the Hedgehog!
Please Sega, don’t leave me with Dick Facey
I vote C. Because, now that Time Mop is invlved, Bathack will simply act like time continuems don’t matter
I suppose that as the originator of the poll, I ought to say C, but that’s because Timemop showed up the very day after I posted the four choices. If he hadn’t, I don’t know what I would say now.
Good ol’ Marianne Winters, quite possibly the dumbest Act III character arc of them all. Sexy sci-fi space sex vixen-turned ludicrously homespun ingenue to a degree no sane person could possibly accept or believe. That bit where Mason was coaching her on how to win an Academy Award was maybe the most regressive, reductive “boy shows girl” moment in FW history, at which point it ACTUALY GOT WORSE when she gave the award to another man, who saved her from a wildfire AND cancer. I’m halfway surprised he never did an arc where Marianne was tied to some train tracks.
So Mason Jarre hates being involved with the whole Starbuck Joes fan community, eh? What a stunner. Hating his fans has always been par for the course with BatYam, like with those book signing arcs where Les was forced to mask his contempt and disgust for the slobs who bought his cancer book.
I vote mostly C. Mason having a much older wife no longer fit the story so TB made Cindy younger because he can.
I have no idea if I should vote A, B, C, or D
they’re all equally stupid
Even with the warning we had in May, this week feels egregiously lacking in the Cranky side. Valentine makes token cameos at best, the young-Shaft owners making token appearances, and just feels like larking around with your own in-universe equivalent of Chris Pratt. The Sunday strip sure encapsulates it; I’m sure this small-town Ohio village appreciates this Mason Jarr the Movie Star (JARR JARR JARR JARR) enough to give him a little bit of tribute, but this still radiates massive “self-congratulating” energy (though since IRL actual Hollywood Stars have to be paid for by applicants or a related project, there is truly a level of vanity to them so that checks). And THIS is what brought Timemop back? Man…
My answer to the Cindy poll is probably a hazy A; as much as it feels intentional and how it lined up with earlier timelines of Funky being a certified 65+ Lisa’s Legacy runner, I think Batiuk wants to play off a bit of vague certainty on the ages and other dates as part of the logic of Cindy’s late pregnancy. This seemed somewhat implied when that final reunion only showed the reunion date and milestone cropped and incomplete, as if it was an easter egg, even though what was shown couldn’t be anything but 50 years from 1972. Clearly even in Act 2 he was more than willing to abuse Comic Book Time to get to a story he wants (I recall Boy Lisa being shown as like 9-10 years old and then 2 years later he’s already a high school freshman, as well as Funky & Crazy recalling getting TMNT’s first comic ((the violent original incarnation?!)) in their childhood despite being 70s kids). Combine that with FW and Crankshaft tackling current issues concurrently and he just doesn’t seem to think a consistent timeline is as important as the Very Special Episodes on proms and CTE.
I don’t have access to all the strips from the 50th reunion, but I found one that shows banners with both “WHS Class of 1972” and “50 years” in the same strip:
https://joshreads.com/2022/08/changing-lanes/
Nice work. Both are absolutely clear!
My God. Pete and Mindy are moving in to the Montoni’s apartment.
So many different people have lived in that apartment, including Pete himself back at the beginning of Act III. Amazingly (or not), Mindy is one of the very few characters TB has left who would be new to the place.