Meanwhile back in 1973, Donald/Donna has beaten Crazy Harry, whose young self must have already stormed out of the pizzeria. Mister Tony Montoni is not impressed; he’s only concerned that The Eliminator’s prowess deprives him of revenue (hey: a single quarter in 1973 represents $1.77 in today’s money). Speaking of money, I believe that time-traveling Donna and Harry are visible to everyone else. Did they order a slice? Did they bring some pre-1973 currency with which to pay their tab without revealing that they are from the future?
It’s been fun (mostly) posting this week’s “Untold Tale,” and I hope TB has some more of these in the works for us to rip apart. Thanks to you all for reading and commenting!
Son of Stuck Funky 
I do hope he does more of these, and I’m calling dibs on the next one, if such a thing happens. Someone alert me if and when.
At first, I wondered what Crazy was praying about, then I got it. Sigh. It’s still hard to figure out why he couldn’t find room to run this arc in 2022, but then again, it was pretty disposable as far as weekly FW arcs go. With all those ideas, a few are bound to not make the cut.
If I see a new story starting on Komix Thoughts, you will be the first to hear about it!
You’re a king among snarkers, Banana.
Braving Batiuk’s blog on a daily basis … that’s dedication!
(More dedication than Batiuk, who seems to post on a whenever-I-get-around-to-it basis….)
It’s funny, but every time I check out Batty’s blog, he has nothing going on. I’ll pop in, see one of his thrilling photos of the sidewalk outside his book signing venue, and immediately lose all interest. Then, when I’m not paying any attetion, the hack drops a new FW arc on us. It’s like he knows.
What are Donna and Crazy supposed to be doing in the foreground? In panel one, it looks like Donna’s… showing off a cigarette? Is she glad that they’re in a time when you could smoke in restaurants? And then in panel two, she… stuck it up her nose? (Okay, in fairness, it’s probably not a cigarette, but what is it? A French fry? Did Montoni’s serve fries?)
Crazy meanwhile, looks completely blitzed out of his skull in panel one. Maybe that really is a cigarette, but not tobacco, if you know what I mean? And then in panel two… I guess he’s found Jesus and is praying?
I’ll freely admit I could be the stupid one who can’t tell what these obvious actions are supposed to be, but… what the heck are they supposed to be doing?
(And, of course, the all-important question: WHY? Why were these strips made? What was the point? Especially since it further broke Batiuk’s already-shaky continuity and chronology. Maybe they’ll be more strips coming that offer a better explanation, but… given the track record, I’m not betting on it.)
P1, she’s pantomiming blowing the chamber off of a smoking gun, as if she’s a hot shot sheriff with a six shooter.
P2, Harry is praying for a quick release from everything.
Ooohhh… okay, that makes sense. There was that white line that’s apparently in the background, but Donna was positioned such that it made it look like she was interacting with it. Once that’s taken out of the equation, it makes a lot more sense.
(Crazy still looks like he’s blitzed out of his gourd in panel 1, though.)
Looks to me like he’s praying to Donna, his Goddess of the Video Game. But I like [0]’s explanation better.
Yeah, at first glance, the whole thing was visually really confusing. I thought Harry was praying, and I just didn’t get it. I didn’t even notice Donna, but it really DOES look like she’s taking a drag there in panel one.
Not that we can expect him to know any better or care to look it up, but the world records for Defender have an average of roughly 1 million points per hour, and established records have play lengths greater than 24 hours. The Wiki cites one play lasting 38 hours. Two hours on one credit is hardly poor but certainly not at the point where global records are set. Somehow I doubt that Tony would have let Don(na) stick around in the store for 30+ hours straight but whatever. Maybe that’s what makes Defenders different from Defender.
(Besides, what would Tony care if Donna was hogging the machine. The fewer people playing, the more people are buying food, right? Having a spectacle like that draws people to the restaurant where they buy more food, right?)
Anyway, after I wrote that other response, I came to realize that P2 Harry is making the hand and nodding pose that I believe other people like Darin and Pete made to show deference and announce that they “stand in line”, so that’s probably what would have been stated by Harry there if he was to speak.
Also anyway, here we are at this story again with absolutely no attempt whatsoever to explain why Donna felt compelled to use the disguise. And here we are again with Donna being someone who is good at video games and that novelty not being utilized in the slightest outside of this particular tale.
Yeah, but they’re in 1973. The top five scores for the real Defender weren’t achieved until 1982 or later. Harry and Donna could have set a world record by successfully rescuing one humanoid. Two storytelling wrongs make a right, I guess?
This whole story is especially stupid if you experienced Defender in 1982, as I did. That game was straight-up intimidating, and still is today. Even people who were used to playing Space Invaders and other shooter games found Defender absurdly difficult at first. I can’t imagine how the public would have reacted to Defender being the first video game they ever saw.
I did as well and you are totally correct. Many would not waste their money trying to learn how to play when other games were more accessible.
It’s a shame the Funkyverse never did anything with its Defender lore. Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and other games like Q-Bert are still well-known today; Defender isn’t. But it was just as big as those games were at the time.
Batiuk probably picked the name because it was a recognizable placeholder for “video game.” Or worse, because it was what they had in Luigi’s. But Defender is forgotten nowadays, even though it was highly influential. It would be fun if this story did something with that. Even if it was just Tony Montoni commenting “I could never get more than 3,000 points on this thing.”
Batiuk could have given a nice little nod to its role in video game history, in addition to its role in Funkyverse history. But Tom Batiuk can’t even get comic books right, so there’s no reason to think he can get video games right.
Yes, that is totally outside Batty’s sphere and so he ignores it. I remember when PAC Man and Donkey Kong came out. Fun times!
But Batty wanted to focus on girl beats boy at a boyish activity. As I have mentioned before, I never saw video games as a strictly male activity. The neighborhood girls joined us often to play.
Most girls I knew didn’t like video arcades, because (to put it more nicely than they did), their patrons tended to be undesirable males. But when a girl did want to play video games, or pool or pinball, it wasn’t very noteworthy. There were some arcade games girls liked, like Pac-Man and Centipede.
Fox Trot did a much better version of this story, with Jason coming to grips with playing as a female character (Lara Croft).
Defender was probably the most physically demanding of the old arcade video games. You really had to work that fire button, and those quick changes of direction could be pretty dramatic. It required a lot of concentration, too, especially when the aliens grabbed one of your little guys and you had to snipe the alien, then race over and snag the guy before he fell.
And if you failed to save the humanoid, the alien became a mutant, which were vicious bastards. That game was HARD.
But I have a pet theory about Defender: it made Street Fighter 2 possible. How? After Defender and its sequel, no video game had that many buttons until Street Fighter 2 ten years later. (Not even Strike Force, the 90s-rrific spiritual successor to Defender.) Players would have been challenged with a six-button cabinet for the first time ever. Big companies tend to be risk-averse, so I wonder if some suit would have talked the programmers into an easier, less compelling, watered-down version.
(Besides, what would Tony care if Donna was hogging the machine. The fewer people playing, the more people are buying food, right? Having a spectacle like that draws people to the restaurant where they buy more food, right?)
I wonder about that. I heard from a guy today that the owner of one of the fancy and rather expensive restaurants in our town confided in him that they barely break even on the food; they make all their profit on other things, particularly alcohol.
The real-world Montoni’s (Luigi’s in Akron, or so I’m told) does sell booze (according to pix in its Google reviews). I’m not sure if Funkyverse canon says Montoni’s is dry because Funky’s an alcoholic, but in Act I Funky was in high school and Tony ran the restaurant so that doesn’t matter. I can somehow see Tony selling liquor.
Anyway, another profit center is pinball machines and video games. Pure money. So if Montoni’s is in fact barely breaking even on the food, yeah, he’s probably lost the gross revenue of one or two pizzas, and the net profit of five or ten, from Donna’s hogging the game for two hours.
In Ohio, most old school pizzerias would serve beer and wine only. A full scale liquor license is very expensive. Alternatively, you can bring your own beer and wine to places that lack the beer and wine license. Places that are just starting out would have this arrangement until they were able to buy a beer/wine license.
Luigi’s does have a full service bar, but I have never seen anyone drink coffee there.
Nice to see that food was as commonly present at Montoni’s in 1973 as it is today.
But… where’s the coffee? They’re not drinking coffee!
The refusal to articulate why she wore the helmet in the first place should have been a warning of the excesses to come. He’s no Schulz to say “What if a child got Christmas and Halloween confused?” He just puts a helmet on a girl when there are simpler, less dorky ways of being androgynous.
I would think if you were trying to hide that you were a girl by wearing a dumb helmet (and why isn’t she time-traveling? Is Batiuk making this all up as he goes? My worldview’s shattered!), you wouldn’t call attention to yourself by challenging the idiot you’re trying to hide your gender identity from to a game a “Defenders”. I think your average teenager would be able to determine whether a kid’s a boy or a girl fairly easily through things like their voice or mannerisms or style of dress. And if he couldn’t, putting on a helmet and asking your mom to call you by a different name are not going to be necessary to fool him.
If Crazy’s this much of an idiot already, why would you need a disguise? Just tell him that boys wear shirts like that or have their hair like that or that they’re called Donna and he’ll believe anything.
Crankshaft’s been awful this week too. Mindy moves into Pete’s apartment above Montoni’s to witness, apparently for the first time, the shabby lifestyle of her successful comics author and screenwriter fiancé of five years.
And actually she can eat the leftovers from Montoni’s “all you can stand to eat” buffet. When she needs to lose 150 pounds of ugly fat, she can just dump MoPete (insert rim shot here).
Dammit.. forgot to include a couple words and an emphasis in that comment. Here is how it should have looked:
And actually she can eat the leftovers from Montoni’s “all you can stand to eat” buffet every night. When she needs to lose 150 pounds of ugly fat, she can just dump MoPete (insert rim shot here).
Shame this platform doesn’t allow editing (or even deleting and replacing, like GC) comments.
Good Lord. Pete should be worth millions of dollars by now. He wrote big-time comic book titles, and blockbuster screenplays. And now he’s eating shitty pizza and using a cardboard box as a table. Batiuk’s “young kids just starting out” fantasy is spiraling out of control.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
(Crankshaft tries to leave but encounters a lanky man)
Scout: Hey lard-fat, how many bats does it take to beat a moron to death? (imitiates buzzer sound) Time’s up, you’re dead.
(The scout swings his bat and sends Crankshaft flying at 300 MPH)
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Pete: Watch as I try to play call of duty, Min-duh!
(A few minutes pass, and Pete is acting like the angriest 12 year old kid after dying to a actual 12 year old player)
Re Saturday’s Crankshaft [sic] strip, which I assume is the end of this mini-arc, to be followed by something unrelated (Dinkle, I fear), I posted this lengthy critique on GC:
Imagine what a cartoonist not hobbled by Batiuk’s self-imposed rules might do from this starting point: it’s pretty generally agreed that newlyweds have to either get a new house/apartment or do a major renovation. This avoids conflicts over “she’s changing his house” or “he’s changing her house.” I got married 39 years ago, and my bride moved into my house because we both liked the location. Within two years we had gutted the house out to the shell, completely revised the floor plan (laying the new rooms out together), and installed structural bracing to support a second floor we designed and installed eight years later. We are still living in that house today.
My point being, a skilled writer could use this week as a jumping-off point for a long and interesting story about how MoPete and Minty eventually come to turn his dismal walk-up into their home. Or how they eventually locate and move to their Dream House, which the highest-paid artist in the Komix business should easily afford. Maybe buy an abandoned church (St. Spires after Harry’s awful choir direction drives the congregation away—I mean, this being the Battyverse, after Harry’s superb choir direction grows the congregation to the point where it needs a bigger building) and turn it into a neat and quirky home befitting komix artist/pizzeria owners. There could be conflict along the way, even threats of breakup (one of the leading causes of divorce, right up there with money, is remodeling or moving), with resolution. There could be the opportunity for original art. There could be growth and choices…
Oh right. This is Batty. Forget I said anything.
Ran out of space before I could add that Davis probably wouldn’t be able to find any appropriate clip art in the C.R.A.P.* anyway.
*Crankshaft Reusable Art Portfolio
This is the final strip in this “untold story”? Really? Having seen these six dispatches, we are meant to think, “Ahh! A satisfying end to this tale! One that casts new light on some beloved characters and situations, while also serving to entertain and amuse!”?
There was no story here. A story is distinct from “a bunch of stuff that happened”, and this barely qualifies even as that.
Please preserve the mystery, Tom. Keep any further “stories” you have in mind … untold.
ZZZZZZZZZ *snort*
What? That’s it? We waited over a year for this? Crumbs from the table of the self-proclaimed “storyteller”? Typical Batiuk ACT III FW storytelling. It’s no risk, all reward for the characters.
Imagine what a talented storyteller like Ray Bradbury, Rod Serling, or Stephen King could have done with this premise. An insignificant encounter by an adult Harry, or Donna, unintentionally alters the past, resulting in the butterfly effect. When they return home, they discover that someone else is living in their house, which no longer belongs to them. Harry and Donna never fell in love and are now married to other people. Maddy and their two (or three) other children no longer exist. Oopsie!
Tom Batiuk, despite his claim to the contrary in the New York Times, is no storyteller. His endless trips down memory lane are like watching somebody else’s vacation slides. These stories are lazy and boring.
The eternal optimist in me hopes this story continues tomorrow or Monday to give TB a chance to redeem himself. I give those hopes a .01% chance. Shock me, TB. Shock me.
Despite my criticism, I hope TB does more of these. It’s nice to have something to discuss here besides the current abomination on GoComics that used to be Crankshaft.
I hope that Batiuk gets around to having either Owen, Alex, Cody, Mooch Myers/Sir Nuts-A-Lot, Chien, Ms. Lee, Wally and Rachel appear again
Yeah, wasn’t the apartment above Montoni’s last occupied by Rachel and Wally? They were hit with a pink slip and an eviction notice on the same day? I guess Tom Batiuk wasn’t done abusing Wally. 😂
I think Wally and Rachel moved out into Funky and Holly’s old house in Ohio
When I was in high school, a lot of kids talked about how “If I had a time machine I’d go back and buy this company’s stock, and I’d be rich!” I said “But what if buying it led to company becoming overconfident, taking bad risks and bombing?”
The company was IBM. Ten years later, no one was wishing for IBM stock. I’ve heard it ever since: “If only I had bought stock in Apple or Microsoft! Or MySpace or Twitter!” I’ve never heard “If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t be rich because I’d give all that up to be a poor slob with furniture made from boxes again!”
One of the biggest time traveling tropes is going back in time to kill baby Hitler. Sure you might be saving a lot of lives but think about how many other lives would be affected. I’m 100% sure I’d cease to exist.
The place where I worked in the mid-1990s had IBM OS/2 loaded on our desktop computers. At the time it seemed like a decent operating system. Remember when Gateway shipped computers in cow-spotted boxes?
Once time travel is perfected the chronal continuum will be overloaded with folks trying to kill Baby Hitler and folks trying to save him (see the “Rick & Morty” snake aliens episode). Me, I plan to cut out the middleman and go back to fall 1894 Bosnia, where I will assassinate baby Gavrilo Princip. Not only will this stop WWI from starting, but it could halt the Russian Bolshevik Revolution, keep Adolf from becoming a frustrated ex-soldier and instead pursuing an art career, save Hall of Fame pitcher Christy Mathewson’s life, alter the Fascist takeovers of Italy and Spain, and more. Of course, it means Peter Lorre may never come over to Hollywood, but no plan is without minuses.
“Not only will this stop WWI from starting…”
Nothing could’ve stopped that war. Every major power wanted a war, because War is Glorious and We Will Win because We’re Better than Those Guys; Home By Christmas.
The 30 years before WWI were basically just everyone looking for an excuse to start it. Look at the Balkan Wars, the Moroccan Crisis, etc.
The fact that it started over some minor Archduke so much hated by his own royal family (he married a COMMONER!) that they sent him to the Balkan version of rust belt Ohio shows that. They would’ve found an excuse, any excuse to blow shit up. “The Kaiser burped in the Tsar’s face! TO ARMS!” I think it was best described once, regarding Europe’s massive & shiny new armies, as “What’s the point of having expensive toys if you can’t play with them?”
Now, if the Versailles Treaty was reasonable, then maybe there wouldn’t have been a WWII. Or if that one U-boat hadn’t sunk the Lusitania, then the USA would’ve stayed out, and the Germans would’ve won. But fascism also rose in the UK and France, so maybe they could’ve been WWII’s baddies. Or Mopman could’ve nudged it, who knows? That guy’s nuts!
(Suddenly realizes that we went from “Funky is dumb!” to the Balkan Wars just like that, but that’s SoSF!)
I like the creativity of JJ’s angle. But I also agree with billthesplut that most history can’t be averted, because most history isn’t triggered by one event. The US Civil War is another major war that had many underlying causes, and can’t be rewritten/avoided by time machine. (Though maybe you could change the reconstruction, if Lincoln lived.)
I think the most interesting time travel paradoxes have to do with who is alive, and who is never born. The mechanics of initial attraction, conception, and death, are just so random. You wouldn’t have the people you have in your life, and you might have never existed, if not for a few unimportant split-second choices here and there. If you’ve ever been in a car crash, or nearly missed one, you know there’s a whole other series of events that could have played out. The idea of revisiting even a minute of the past throws all those dice again. I think you’d come back from 1894 to an unrecognizable world.
BJ6K: “I think you’d come back from 1894 to an unrecognizable world.”
The worst time travel stories are the ones, as in the aforementioned “The Final Countdown,” in which nothing happens. So, this one bad guy goes back to1939, and the Nazis conquer the world. Then the heroes go back, and bang! the present is exactly the same as it was. They defeat Hitler, and never come back to a world where this meant Stalin conquered the world. So they go back to 1939, and when they return, some evil weirdo no one has ever heard of runs the world. So they go back again… Wouldn’t it be like a Xerox of a Xerox, just getting more degraded every time?
Looping this back to WWI, my father’s father was in the BEF in France. He was badly wounded, and sent to a hospital in his native Scotland. There he met a nurse, a bonnie lass from the Borders. She married him. I heard this during Xmas or something, and looked around the room. If he’d died, or even just been sent to another part of the hospital, half of the 18 people present would never have been born. Four generations worth…
One weird thing about pre-WWI was the absolute obsession people had about an 1870 pamphlet called “The Battle of Dorking.” It sounds like a sci-fi con argument about whether Star Wars or Star Trek is better, but it was a cautionary tale how Germany could invade Britain. It was a surprise hit, especially in Germany. For 40 years this sub-genre of imagined wars sold like crazy. It eventually devolved to war porn, which led to the “War is Glorious!” idea that led to WWI. Here’s a brief description:https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/169260
(“The Swoop!” was actually written by Wodehouse, not Chesterton, glad I could clear that burning question up)
I thought Mopey Pete starred in “The Battle of Dork King.”
“His endless trips down memory lane are like watching somebody else’s vacation slides.”
Yes, and that somebody never learned how to focus the lens. Or move their thumb out of the way. For years and years.
If 2024 Crazy and Donna hit on 1973 Crazy and Donna, what does that count as? Adultery, or incest, or just masturbation?
Obvs it’s the third. Every strip Tom has done for years is him just rubbin’ one out.
One week of Funky’s return and we close out on an open ending. No idea of this temporal trip will continue or if Timemop is going to be on Crazy’s ass for having gotten the helmet back. Or if this all ends up being a dream again, like usual.
And of course Pete is relying on spare pizzas he eats for his old bachelor life. Why has he just now been made a loser at home, was a serial writer’s-block problem not enough bad karma for him?
You know, he already did the cardboard box furniture bit with Pete, back when he first moved to Hollywood with Boy Lisa. That was years ago already, and he’s still doing it. The more I learn about Crankshaft Pete, the more I hate him. And I wasn’t especially fond of him before, either.
So the Montoni’s apartment. I’m not 100% clear on the overall history there. I know Pete lived there before, then he left when he made it big in the comics business. I think Boy Lisa and Jessica were next, then Wally pounced on it as soon as they fled. But it’s all kind of a haze now.
And fill me in on this, too: is BatBrain really trying to pretend this is the first time she’s visited Pete in Pete’s home? Where did he live before? And if Mindy was still a Crankshaft character this whole time, aren’t there all kinds of incongruities with her character arc over there too? Jeez.
Over at Judge Parker, a bump on the head lowers Parker’s inhibitions, bur not his sense of fashion!
I don’t know why I said that was from Judge Parker. I hated those characters so much that I stopped hate-reading the strip several years ago.
The panel I posted is from Rex Morgan, M.D.