billytheskink
June 26, 2024 at 12:22 pm
Given what Donna had to say about the helmet in that April 2022 story arc where Crazy creeped out Act I Lisa…she pretty much considers it to be a hallucinogen. Or at least that’s her cover story.
So: skeptic Donna acknowledges that the helmet is indeed “scientifically advanced” and “magically endowed,” and that the time travel effects are in fact not hallucinations caused by the trippy and possibly toxic fumes emanating from the helmet’s cheap plastics. Also, she’s time-traveled with Crazy on prior occasions. Got it. At least Batty and Burchette have taken the effort to change the appearance of Montoni’s storefront between the present and the past.
Son of Stuck Funky 
1973? Aren’t they (presumably) going back to when they first met? If Crazy graduated in 1972, and they first met while he was still in high school, how can it be 1973? Also, Defender was released in 1981. Did they still meet while playing Defender? Or is Batiuk revising the continuity yet again?
Oh, right. Timemop. Elegant Solution™, blah blah blah.
Yeah, not so much “revising” the continuity, and more “not even bothering to check any continuity there may have been and just scrawling down whatever vaguely half-formed memories of this endlessly regurgitated plotline any remaining neural synapses managed to spew forth.”
Do you think Rob Ro ditched colouring duties before or after seeing the work he was expected to colour?
I think you have to be holding on to someone for them to be transported with you while wearing the helmet of TimeMop (The Elegant Solution)
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
(Meanwhile in 1949)
Shemp Howard: What is this garbage?
(Shemp grabs a gun, and tries to shoot the newspaper containing Crankshaft, but ends up shooting Moe in the ass)
Moe: WHY YOU-!!
(caption: ‘five years ago’)
Mindy: I hope you have at least gotten a bed!
(meanwhile in 1996)
Pete: The mattress isn’t a bed?
(scene changes to a campsite)
Mindy: We’re done camping!
(Pete is wearing bell-bottoms and a leisure suit)
Mindy: I’m going to call Lisa to pick me up!
Un Droopy Andalou. That’s one way to take care of those eyebags.
It’s a rehashed premise that’s been retconned into complete nonsensicality. Batiuk hasn’t lost a step.
And he’s doing the exact thing in Crankshat. Mindy is seeing Pete’s apartment as if for the first time, even though they’ve been together for 5+ years and they’ve been on trips together. Because they’re young people just starting out, you know.
I just do not understand how a man can be so bad at a job he’s been doing for literal decades. Seriously, FW is older than my dad by 5 years and only 6 months younger than my mom and yet Batbrain can’t get his own timeline correct.
I don’t understand why Batiuk obsesses so much about details, when he gets them wrong constantly. Like many of his continuity errors, the year didn’t need to appear in today’s strip at all. Why is it even there? Either get the year right, or leave it out. Or shut up about being “the only comic strip where characters age realistically*”.
*- except for For Better Of For Worse, Gasoline Alley, and others.
Both Pete and Darin were high school kids in Act II. So if they were 18 when Act II ended in 2007, and we include the ten year time skip, they’re easily in their early-to-mid 40s by now. Yet, for reasons known only to the Medina Madman, he retconned both characters into “young kids just starting out”. Plus, he retconned Pete AFTER THE STRIP HAD ENDED, which I would wager has never been done before. Probably because no one is dememted enough to do it.
I like to imagine that somewhere out there (not here, but out there), there’s an old loyal FW reader who’s seeing these Pete and Mindy Crankshaft strips and thinking “WTF?? Pete is a big-time screenwriter, not a young kid just starting out!”. Once again, BatYam spits in the face of his loyal readers, ignoring his own history and essentially telling longtime readers that they basically just wasted their time on his idiotic strip. None of it meant anything, nor does he care.
Mopey and Boy Lisa have to be over 50 by Batiuk’s own timeline. Remember, Boy Lisa was born while Dead Saint Lisa was still in high school. (Batiuk is proud of that “teen pregnancy” story, so he can’t really change that Dead Saint Lisa was in high school at the time.) And Dead Saint Lisa was in the same class as Funky, Les, Cindy, Holly, Crazy, et. al. The same class that had their 50th reunion during the last year of Funky Winkerbean. If they graduated high school 50 years ago, and Boy Lisa was born while Dead Saint Lisa was in high school… unless Batiuk wants to erase that 50th reunion, Boy Lisa MUST be over 50 now. (As does the rest of that graduating class, like Mopey.)
I know I’ve said this before, but…
The premise doesn’t get less stupid just because you hang a lampshade on it, Batiuk.
Today’s strip is yet more proof that science fiction is philosophy for stupid people. It must be what attracted Mopey Pete to the comic book industry.
Can I point out that the first panel looks far more “1973” than the third panel does? The smaller “Montoni’s” wordmark inside the rectangle in third panel is probably right. But that cartoon chef head looks anachronistic for 2024.
There’s already plenty to shake your head at with the 1973 date. Two years ago Crazy describes these events as being in the 80s, then months later implied their high school years ended at ‘72, and now the Eliminator saga “starts” in ‘73? Does he really think it’s not a big deal for longtime readers to keep dates straight? Is this what his Silver Age upbringing did, think true fans don’t really care about timelines?
(also as far as my comments last time to how the dates were mentioned in the final reunion, I concede the banners were perfectly clear and legible as far as the 50th milestone. I still speculate though that Batiuk wrote that as a meta Easter egg first and retcon second, as far as specifics. It seems based on this week he still wants the wiggle room of comic book time to let him change whatever he wants “for the story”)
I have thought a bit more on Pete’s deal in Funkshaft. As far as living like this, I guess it’s fair he only moved back to Westview in the last… five years. Chester must’ve written him a real bad contract if his savings were so funneled into the ring and Montoni’s and all the comics he kept selling. But has he been doing this long term enough to think it’s normal like some college-fresh-first-apartment guy? And yeah, he fiancé really should have been at his place before by now. Ridiculous.
Chester must’ve written him a real bad contract
Even if he did, Pete also wrote for mainstream comics, and the first Starbuck Jones movie. They can’t *all* have stiffed him. Even if Pete took the Donald Sutherland option (RIP).
But he’s a young man just starting out! Low salaries come with the territory. Never you mind that Mopey graduated from high school around 30 years ago.
I wonder how much his portrayal is due to how little Mindy has advanced in Crankshaft. I posted way back about how she was going to effectively be a kid living with her parents until Mopey takes her off their hands, and because of this he has to portray her as a kid just starting out. Her lack of development in Crankshaft led to Mopey devolving from a successful man around 50 years old with a career to a poor sadsack child who can’t even afford basic furnishings for his bargain attic first apartment. Bet you thought he’d transfer over from FW to Crankshaft whole, but the joke’s on you!
What’s ridiculous about it (well, one thing) is how BatYarn has plenty of actual young kid just starting out characters he could have used in another “young kids just starting out” story. Or he could have (ugh) created a new one. But, being the unbelievably lazy sop he is, he chose to just totally undo a thirty year character arc for no real reason, continuity be damned. And he wonders why no one takes him seriously.
To hopefully clarify part of my point:
When this couple was in FW, Batiuk largely wrote it from Mopey’s perspective. Things were happening to him and it was him doing things.
Now that they’re in Crankshaft, however, it’s coming from Mindy’s perspective. And she’s devolved from her FW form. She’s moved back from a “serious adult” (I know), with a job with her “serious adult” character look to an overgrown child living with her parents with her overgrown child character design. So Batiuk was obligated to send Mopey back with her. Otherwise, he’s got this borderline teenage girl marrying a 50 year old man with a long, successful career, and we’re not supposed to notice.
Donna: Y’know, I was lying about my old Eliminator helmet’s “off-gassing plastics” causing you to hallucinate. It’s a real time machine! You really did travel back in time back when you tried it on in the attic. I think we can both use it if we hold hands while it’s on.
Crazy: Whoa! WHOA! Really?! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?! We gotta go do it right now! Think of everything we could do and see! Woodstock… the invention of the light bulb… the fall of the Berlin Wall… the Browns’ last championship… We could save Abraham Lincoln’s life! We could… no, that’s too cliche. Aw screw it! We could kill baby Hitler!
Donna: I was thinking Montoni’s, actually.
Crazy: Well, I do love that salad dressing…
WRONG AGAIN DISHPAN BREATH!
Talk about consistency: my predictions regarding Batiuk’s storytelling are consistently incorrect. This untold tale has turned out to be more bizarre than I anticipated. The current mundanity of the Crankshaft strip must have misled me into the above prediction.
So why did the couple travel back to 1973? To play Peeping Tom on their younger selves? Ick.
The only consistent way to correctly predict what will happen in Batiuk’s writing is to predict it will be both wildly stupider and yet somehow more boring than anyone else can imagine.
They’re going to eat pizza and reminisce. And this mundane activity will happen and will be the only thing that happens despite the fact that they’ve literally time-traveled to 51 years in the past.
Oh, and they’ll look at something like a newspaper dispenser and marvel at how things have changed over the last 5 decades.
I eagerly anticipate the actual strips being even dumber and more boring than this. It’s like playing Keno: at some point, it gets so bad that you win!
You’re right. It’s a generalization, but your statement is a safe bet. There are decades of TB’s “storytelling” to back it up.
Crazy Harry and Donna are sitting in a pizza parlor booth fondly observing their youthful selves arguing. How can it be more stupid and boring than that? Is TB is up to the challenge?
Tom Batiuk: Hold my cocoa. Watch this.
Today’s Funky Winkerbean
Pete doesn’t have a mattress, instead he has a sleeping bag, which smells like ass
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Mindy: Hey, Peet! This guy looks a awful lot like you!
Pete: He looks nothing like me! He’s 5’4″ and I’m 5’8″!
(Moe Howard walks up to Pete, and eye pokes him and slaps him)