Happy End To Harvest!
Yup, out here in hicksville, we’re juuuuuuuuust about done. We’ve got one field of corn that we’re running through the chopper to bag as cattle feed, but that endeavor has turned into Zeno’s earledge. Like a shriveled baby carrot left in the back of the crisper drawer for a year, the corn is way too dry and old. Meaning we’re not chopping and crushing yummy moist corncobs, but grinding kernels into flour. The wind has to be out of the right direction, at the right speed, or both the chopper and the tractor get lost in a huge white cloud of potentially explosive cornmeal.
Fall is winding to a close, we’re less than one week away from the Nationwide Food Coma that heralds the beginning of the holiday season.
Tom Batiuk loves fall. Of course. More than any other season. He’s had some winter wonderland strips, some spring has sprung strips, some summer heat strips. But the sheer number of fall strips outweigh all others. Year after year, he revels again and again in the liminal nature of it’s natural beauty.
Batiuk loves the season where everything is tragically dying. Shocker.
In 1975 we got the first of ‘Existential Leaves’ week. The first of MANY.
Son of Stuck Funky 
It’s what they call a deepity: something that has the appearance of depth without having actual depth. Comic strip artists specialize in churning them out.
Growing up in the 1980s, I generally enjoyed the leaf strips. I remember one where a leaf quoted “Turn, Turn, Turn” by the Byrds to another which hit home. My grandmother–basically my second mother–passed away when I was seven. A very religious woman, she loved that song and I remember that strip made me wish she was still with us. While I think TB is too often stuck in the past, I’ll give a pass on that one. Ecclesiastes deserves to go the distance more than Flash #123 or “Phantom Empire.”
What is with Funky and clapping for autumn? One of the most baffling Sunday strips in the dying days of FW had the namesake character and Holly walking in the woods and looking at the trees before breaking into applause. Holly usually ranked as one of the characters who least annoyed me in the last days of FW. My wife lost her mother early and her aunt became a second mom to her. We’re seeing the aunt for Thanksgiving and the relationship between Holly and her mom (Melinda, I think?)–even the arc where middle aged Holly put on her old uniform to do the baton trick and ended up breaking her ankle–reminds me of them.
Very thankful for this site, the posts, the time and thought the contribitors offer, and all my fellow commentors.
I have always liked the leaf strips and I can understand why Tom did so many strips like this. Fall is beautiful in Northeast Ohio, especially this year where we had lots of sun and mild temperatures. We did get our first snowfall yesterday but it was beautiful as well, mainly because I did not have to leave the house!
The leaf strips were like a certain class of <i>The Far Side</i> strips, where tiny creatures would face existential crises. The leaf conversations were basically examinations of life, that anyone can relate to. We all have our time to turn color and fall off the tree. And this was a very sweet, gentle way of examining it. Highly derivative of Peanuts, but creative enough.
This has been a highly unusual autumn here in The Garden State. It’s been typically November-y for the last few days, but for a while there it was more like San Diego or something. High 60s-low 70s every day, maybe 45-50 in the evening, no humidity. And it didn’t rain at all for almost two months. This being NJ and all, everyone complained about it because it “didn’t feel like fall”, but now that it’s all blustery and rainy again, we already miss it.
KMD,
Rusty Shackleford,
I want to thank you both for posting personal reflections today, both of family and students. This is why I stay with SOSF. I come for the snark, but remain for the personal insights. It brings joy to my heart. Thank you both, again.
My pleasure. Constant snarking is bad for your mental health.
Thanks for the kind words. This has really become one of my favorite sites thanks, in large part, to the great community here.
I always like to hear this.
Related to the Batiukverse: Week five of the Chien Gets Suspended storyline
Jerky McJerkface: I meant to say your full legal name.
Crazy Harry: It’s Harold Benjamin Klinghorn Jr.
Jerky McJerkface: Let me guess, you snorted 300 lines of cocaine and got higher than a kite as well?
Crazy Harry:
Les, SLWLSLAMOKFAHCP and Lisa: WHAT!?
I can say with full confidence that it is a catastrophically bad idea go to into court while drunk
Jerky McJerkface: I have no idea for what the fuck the drunk asshole just said.
Chien: Me neither.
SLWLSLAMOKFAHCP: I have something to ask you, Heather, Have you ever thought of taking your life?
Chien: Yes, several times since I became a freshman in high school.
This arc fully fell into my black hole of Funk-reading. I’d cancelled my newspaper sub, and there was no web that published comics. Well, there was no web at all. And, thank you cs, for bringing these strips to light.
Jesus, Tom sure hates his characters.
I get that he cannot understand the differences between Drama, Tragedy, Utter Misery, and flat-out Cruelty. A person’s soul broken to the point of despair is exactly the same as a fifth-grader getting laughed at because he still reads comic books. I swear this guy creates characters that exist just to make them suffer. I assume…this makes him feel better? A teenaged girl going to a full court trial because she said something about the school dress code? Martyr much, Tommy?
What do you think the WORST thing that ever happened to this 76-year old toddler was? He stubbed his toe while reaching for his binky? I always thought his older strips were his best, but No. The cruelty is the point. Tom loves suffering. As long as it doesn’t affect a Tom.
And fuck you, Cardboard Machine Gun. FW shouldn’t have ended with whatever TimeMop was, but Les letting loose with his Vickers .303. “I TOLD YOU IT WAS REEEEAAAL!” he shrieked through maniacal laughter.
Oh, I detest the cardboard machine gun. The hall monitor machine gun was an exaggeration that was perfectly consistent with Act I’s tone, but aged badly in light of real-world events. It happens. You can either admit the joke doesn’t work anymore, or defend it. Of course, Tom Batiuk chose a third option: act like it didn’t happen, and write his 4,600th lazy chickenshit retcon. And yet, he completely fails to recognize how problematic characters like Dinkle and Mort Winkerbean are.
As for Chien, she never actually said anything about the school dress code. She dared to acknowledge that social classes exist, started to almost write a sentence about it, and then looped back into repeating herself like a DVD menu. And then the entire world got insulted by her high school newspaper article, because that’s how the world works.
In your taxonomy of “Drama, Tragedy, Utter Misery, and flat-out Cruelty”, we need a “Writyr” category. That’s a portmanteau of Writer and Martyr. Writers suffer a lot in the Funkyverse, but only because they have near-fatal cases of Dunning-Kruger.
I couldn’t agree more. FW should have ended with a giant meteorite strike, one they all knew was coming. At first, everyone would have been in a big panic, then they’d all shrug, and accept their inevitable fate. Then, on December 31st, boom.
Great……It’s “Inherit The Wimp”……and where Batiuk first started to get really ashamed of Act I.
Is it not written that “he who shall taj moore the hal shall inherit the wimp, and the fairgood shall be servant to the scorch?”
You can’t say “God” on the radio, Mr. Drummond.
Selah, selah.
Batty just can’t learn anything new, can he? This week was another look at “how things are supposed to be done”, that being how it was done when Batty was growing up. For sure we also need to learn from the past, but Skip is a failed journalist and as we saw, he has little real knowledge to share.
I mentor young engineering students and while I try to give them practical advice, they often teach me a new and better way of doing things. One showed me how to use an AI assistant to automate some of my workflows. It has totally changed how I work.
Batty often portrays the youth as being stupid and foolish, but there are a lot of bright kids growing up and I am happy to help them start their careers.
If he were to learn new things, it would mean his mother was right.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Ed: Some jackass in a blue suit tried to kill me!
Skip: I missed the part where that’s my problem. (smirk)
Oh yeah, there’s no question re: Batiuk’s favorite season. Spring is all annoying and full of itself with all the promise and rebirth and etc. Summer is a band camp nightmare, and winter is all white-out conditions everywhere you go. But fall truly has it all. Everything fading and slowly dying in radiance and beauty, the foreboding gloom of winter looming on the horizon, it’s easy to see why BatYam looks forward to it so much. Autumn, especially late autumn, is Funky weather. Cold, inevitable, irreversible, band turkeys…it’s everything the man loves.
And that fact really shines through when reading those dying leaf strips from back in the day. At the time, who knew he’d eventually have HUMAN CHARACTERS slowly dying, eh? In hindsight, it was a natural progression. IMO, his biggest mistake, aside from creating Summer Moore, was not killing off everyone when he ended the strip. Betcha he wishes he could have that one back.
Tom always has A Point To Make. Serious Subjects Getting Serious Looking-Ats. What the blimey was last week’s point? Newspapers exist, at least in some weird fantasy where cranky old men defy giant corporations? And publish a weekly one-sheet of how arson almost happened, but, y’know, not really?
This is where I’d normally recap my theme. Well, Cha-Cha, I ain’t got no theme. What was the point of last week? Was he trying to disprove Chekov’s Gun? If you introduce a loaded gun in Act One, just do nothing? I leave this as a mental exercise for the reader, because the longer I think about it, the more mental I become.
Chekov’s Cardboard Machine Gun? No, that’s not it.
Related to the Batiukverse: The final week of the Chien Gets Suspended storyline
Les: After Funky fucked up and Crazy was no help, I’m prepared for a disaster.
Jerky McJerkface: I have to agree with both Chien and the lawyer that Les pulled out of his ass with the notion that this court case is a mistake and shoulda never happened.
and then Bull sulks out of the room, and Funky is still shitfaced and Crazy is wondering why this court case is happening
SLWLSLAMOKFAHCP: So, Chien, it wasn’t that bad, wasn’t it?
Chien: (curls up into a ball and breaks down crying)
Les: I’m gonna call her parents to pick her up.
Les: You know about the Cardboard Machine Gun thing, right? I lied. It was a real machine gun that had no bullets in it.
SLWLSLAMOKFAHCP: WHAT?!!?
FIN
What an asinine story. Les loses his after-school role (not even his actual job) over an incoherent, banal essay in the school newspaper. (Because being a faculty advisor is a rare privilege, and not mandatory unpaid overtime.) Then he lawyers up for it, even though these lawyers apparently don’t know what the word “objection” means, or that they should say it when their client is being browbeaten with irrelevancies on the witness stand.
Then he brings “character witnesses”, as if this would ever happen in an H.R. proceeding. Speaking of which, why the hell are they interviewing Chien? And why aren’t any adults standing up for her? Les has representation, why doesn’t she? Where are her parents? This is sick.
Of course, things go wrong for Les in every possible way, because he’s spineless and incompetent. But Bull Bushka shows up on cue to say OH BOO HOO HOO I WAS SO MEAN TO LES IN HIGH SCHOOL AND I DECLARE THIS THE BESTEST HIGH SCHOOL NEWSPAPER ARTICLE EVER. Sheesh.
Les gets what he wants, because of the well-known scholastic justice principle of The Head Football Coach Is Always Right. Not that Batiuk noticed this, or thought it was worth commenting on, despite over-emphasis on football being a major theme of Funky Winkerbean. Which could have tied a nice bow on the story, since it nicely illustrates Chien’s “point” about popularity being king in high school.
Yeah another dreadful arc where realism is thrown out the window in order to fellate Les. And of course we have to have big, bad attorney being permitted to badger the witness—something that is not permitted in a real courtroom.
As for the football coach, he is typically the highest paid member of the teaching staff, while the Les Moore English teacher is typically one of the lowest paid. At least that is how it is in my local school district. Make of that what you will.
The biggest problem with the courtroom scene is that this isn’t a court case. It’s a Human Resources hearing.
Let’s ignore the absurdity of this even being a punishment. “Oh no, no more unpaid overtime, anything but that!” Les should be ecstatic to be kicked off the damned newspaper staff, or at least have some reason for demanding to stay. Every teacher I’ve ever met, going back to my own days as a high school student, would be.
That aside, this isn’t how HR proceedings go. For one thing, they’re not held in a gym anybody can walk into. Some people sit in a room, discuss the particulars of the case, discuss the applicable policies, and the arbiters make a decision. Les may be entitled to representation, but that would almost certainly be provided by the teacher’s union. Because teacher’s unions are the ones who negotiate these rights in the first place.
Chien might appear at such a proceeding, but only to discuss the basic facts of the case. She would not be asked personal questions by an adult. Again, where are her parents? Where is her representation? Les’ lawyers should stop this, if only because it’s in their client’s interest to not let a friendly witness be badgered.
This “prosecutor” is even more incompetent. He calls witnesses who vouch for the defendant, and asks questions he doesn’t already know the answer to. That’s the first thing you learn if you’ve ever taken a law class, or if you’ve ever seen the movie My Cousin Vinny. But Not-Yet-Dead Lisa and Student Lawyer Woman wince painfully at this, failing to realize this idiot is handing them an easy win.
When the only thing you’ve ever read in your life is comic book stories for 9-year-olds, all you ever write in your life is comic book stories for 9-year-olds.
Ok, I admit I wasn’t fully paying attention. Yeah definitely the teachers union would provide representation and there would be a set arbitration process to follow.
Ah, it’s all so dumb and boring.
@Rusty No worries. It’s almost impossible to pay attention to stories like this, because the Funkyverse is full of mixed messages about how realistic it’s supposed to be.
If we watch a courtroom tv show, whether it’s pseudo-reality TV Judge Judy or the fictional JAG, we rely on our personal knowledge of the legal process to understand how things work. Or, exposition tell us things we need to know to understand the story, like what a “Code Red” is.
Tom Batiuk does neither. His work pretends to be realistic, then throws this bizarre “histrionic criminal trial at an HR hearing about an inane high school newspaper article” scenario at us without explaining anything. It’s almost like something out of Harvey Birdman, except Harvey Birdman would tell you what the hell is going on. And is at least trying to be funny.
And the real magic is that nobody learns anything. Fairgood goes right on denying that popularity is all important and the social order he frets about is an absurdity. Les gets to skate on being an incompetent idiot who doesn’t understand social norms. Drunky Loserbean gets to go on transitioning into a dry drunk.
If anybody ever learned anything, it would prove that their mothers were right.
Given how Batiuk can’t quite manage to get it through his thick skull that his only real connection with his dad is othering women because Rosie The Riveter scared the ever-loving shit out of the Johnnies who came marching home, that would be terrible.
@pj202718nbca That’s very insightful. There’s nothing about Batiuk’s blog writings that indicates what connection they had, beyond “sharing jokes.” And that seems more like a potshot at his mother’s percieved failings, than anything positive about his dad. He certainly doesn’t tell us anything about how they connected over a shared sense of humor. Though that could just be Tom Batiuk’s complete inability to write anything his readers would actually want to know.
Understanding why people do what they do isn’t something he does. He can slobber over veterans without understanding why they built the world the way they did.
Les has representation, why doesn’t she? Where are her parents?
I headcanon that Chien’s mother is a doctor (who works from 5 am to 5 PM), her father (who I headcanon is a U.S. Veteran who served in Vietnam) would be thrown out by Jerky McJerkface (my nickname for the tall guy who looks like a jerk and who was asking Les, Funky, Crazy, Bull and Chien questions) so Chien wouldn’t have any represenation
An adult who ejects a parent from a formal public school proceeding involving their underage daughter, and then behaves like this while interviewing her, is going straight to jail. If he’s lucky, and this veteran dad isn’t the overprotective or violent type.
Les’ behavior at Bull’s funeral just keeps getting more and more deplorable. Thank you for sharing!
So Les and his “character witnesses” all talked him into losing the case, until the opposing council decides to call Bull to testify despite having no idea what Bull would actually say, and Bull makes Les’ entire case for him? At least his tradition of lazy-ass writing has a nice, long history to it. What a moronic story. Deus ex asspull.
But at least Les paid back Bull for completely salvaging the case that Les and his lawyer completely bungled by… pissing on Bull at his own funeral. (Figuratively, but it wouldn’t have surprised anyone if Les had done it literally, too.) What a guy, that Les.
TB is at least consistent in depicting all lawyers as being about as competent as Amicus Breef. And yes, I’m including Lisa in “all lawyers” (and not just because the state hoodwinked her into speeding up Danny Madison’s execution).
TB is consistent in depicting absolutely everyone as incompetent, except his Mary Sue writer characters, and his Walter Mitty comic book creators. (Even his hero characters like Les, Lisa, and Dinkle are incompetent; it just never holds them back in any way.)
Today’s Crankshaft/Funky Crankerbean
I’m more of a 2000’s Emo Music fan than Christmas Music fan
Going by this sequence, it would seem that Bull Bushka’s actual name (“Jerome”) didn’t come out until he retired as coach at Westview.
That’s odd — Dum Dum Dugan’s actual name of “Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader Dugan” wasn’t mentioned very often, but it was there early. (At least the “Timothy Aloysius” was — I think “Cadwallader” comes with the S.H.I.E.L.D. series in 1966.)
Then again, going by this, it would seem that the eponymous Funky’s actual name is “Funky.” Maybe like Ritchie Petrie, it was a concession to folks who suggested names, and it’s fully “Franklin Ulysses Nathaniel Kenneth Yancy Winkerbean.”
“Rosebud” isn’t just for Charles Foster Kane.
(“Oh, Rob!”)
Other than an excuse for TB to inflict the unlikable Skip Rawlings upon his readers, I have no idea what last week’s Crankshaft story arc was supposed to be about. All I can say is I’m grateful it was only one week long. It was even more boring and pointless than The Burnings©.
Dull, …dull, ……..dull. 😴😩
RE: Crankshaft, Monday, November 25th.
So, I guess the indistinguishable blonde Emily “Reynolds” is a recurring character now? It sure would be nice if Batty gave them name badges so we could tell them apart.
Me: Mr. Batiuk, who is this blonde woman? Which one is she?
Batty: It really doesn’t matter. She’s a blonde. Her identity is irrelevant to the story. She’s just there to be a blonde.
My guess? Since this story takes place at the Village Booksmith, I assume the blonde character is one of the Mathews twins, specifically Emily. After experiencing yet another TimeMop time flux, Emily earned a Bachelor’s in Library Science from Kent State University. Her friendship with Lillian motivated her to pursue this degree. Emily is now part owner of the Village Booksmith. She is happily married and has taken her spouse’s last name of “Reynolds”. They have two children, a son Cuthbert and a daughter Prudence. They also have a cockerpoo named “Cocker Doodle Doo”.
Meanwhile, her twin sister Amelia, who still plays electric guitar, dyed her hair black, and is now heavily tattooed. She is playing lead guitar and is touring with her death metal band ‘Skullslinger’ somewhere in Germany. Also spurred on by her friendship with the witch Lillian, Amelia now goes by the name Lillith ‘Axelina’ Von Hellstrom, the solo slayer.
(shrug emoji) 🤷♀️ ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Enjoyed your future timelines for the Midwich sibs, but I still think Monday’s G-Blonde is Mindy. She would logically accompany her Grandpa next door while he does his Christmas shopping, and seems familiarly ready to correct his latest “muddled aphorism.” It would have helped if she had her son in hand, but I guess by now Mitch is also attending Westview High for some reason. At least today’s strip was a simple done-in-one pun and Ed was back in the forefront. I call that an upgrade.
These G-Blondes all have the same role anyway: stand around and be inexplicably single until some comic book-worshipping manchild needs a wife/mommy figure.
Thanks!
It does make sense if the indistinguishable blonde is Mindy, tagging along with her grandpa, serving as a chaperone and translator. As you know, Mindy has also been shown hanging out at the Village Booksmith, where she often hands out unsolicited advice to Lillian (creating a Village Booksmith website, getting Mopey Pete to write Lillian’s bio, etc.) I used to be able to tell which indistinguishable blonde was Mindy. Her hair was feathered and more of an amber color. She used to have freckles. Jessica Darling Fairgood’s hair used to resemble Farrah Fawcett’s.
Mitch is the spawn of Mindy’s brother Max and his wife Hannah, another indistinguishable blonde. I wouldn’t rule out that the blonde in today’s strip is Hannah. She has been shown hanging around Ed before without Max present.
Mitch is currently on the Kent State campus working on his engineering degree so he can design those murder-death-kill flying cars made out of old handguns.
There’s no way Dan Davis can keep all of these indistinguishable blondes separate. He must throw up his hands in frustration, then copy and paste artwork from his indistinguishable blondes folder.
Dan Davis: Tom, which one is Hannah Murdoch? What does she look like?
TB: Don’t worry about it. Nobody will notice. She’s just a blonde.
Dan Davis: Just once in a while, it would be nice if you made one of your young female characters a brunette.
TB: There’s Summer Moore. Les’s and Lisa’s daughter. She’s a brunette.
Dan Davis: Summer is a woman? I thought she was a dude. A wuss like Les! Oops!
TB: I should fire your ass. You’re lucky nobody else wants the job of illustrating Crankshaft.
That’s right. What was I thinking, eve? How could Mindy have a child? She’s with Mopey. Lord, I hate trying to keep all these blondes separate in my head. It’s easier to remember which member of BTS or One Direction is which.
How could Mindy have a child with Mopey Pete, indeed? I imagine the sight of Mopey Pete in an amorous mood would be laughable to Mindy.
Mopey Pete: Say, Min. You wanna fool around?
Mindy: Ha ha ha haha! Oh… you’re serious. Yeah, not tonight. I have a headache.
Mopey Pete: (pouting) Again?! You sure get a lot of headaches.
Ew. The very thought of Mopey Pete procreating has put me right off my breakfast. Just black coffee for me this morning. No cream or sugar.
So, of course, today we see that it actually was Emily. Guess we forgot to consider the “Batiuk Factor”: if it makes sense, it can never be the right answer. (Or, as the great D. Tective said, “Once you eliminate the logical, whatever remains, no matter how moronic, must be the truth.”)
Round and round goes the indistinguishable blonde spinning wheel. Where it stops, nobody knows. They need to wear name badges.
Emily was wearing black pants and a white hoodie with pockets yesterday. In today’s strip, she’s wearing faded blue jeans and a white long-sleeve t-shirt with no pockets. A minimum wage color monkey’s boo boo makes it appear as if Emily is wearing a white long-sleeve turtle-neck.
(be ware of eve hill throws up her arms in exasperation and storms out of the room)
Tom Batiuk is logical; it’s his goals that are illogical. He is very methodical about achieving his stupid, petty, and self-defeating ends. Like the huge amounts of time he spends schlepping his books around to these bottom-tier book signings. If he’d just let a publisher print mass market soft-covers like every other B-tier comic strip does, he’d probably double his annual income.
But he’ll never do that, because then he wouldn’t have total control of everything at all times! And he couldn’t involve Kent State, Luigi’s, and Akron Comic-Con! Or set up a big pretentious table so you can see how important he is!
If you told Tom Batiuk “a broken clock is right twice a day”, he’d break his clock instead of just setting the time correctly.
“If you told Tom Batiuk “a broken clock is right twice a day”, he’d break his clock instead of just setting the time correctly.”
PATTON: “BJ jr, you magnificent bastard! I read your book! Okay, I would read it if you wrote one and that quote was in it.”
Jessica Darling Fairgood’s hair used to resemble Farrah Fawcett’s.
One of my nickames for Jess (who’s father John Darling was murdered) is Blondie McBighair (her hair reminds me of the hairstyles of Glam Rock/Hair Metal musicians era of the 1980’s)
I thought Amelia plays rhythm guitar for Mystic Spiral these days.
Yes, but they’re thinking of changing the name.
Man, you guys know all these cartoons I never really heard of.
I like my idea of Amelia, as Lillith ‘Axelina’ Von Hellstrom, playing Ave Satanus with her tongue stud. 😈
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Crankshaft: Lillian, I need your help. Some guy in a blue suit and a american-themed cape who can fly and shoot lasers from his eyes tried to kill me and some bearded Englishman who loves saying the C-word and the word “diabolical” attacked him by turning into some form of Venom-like creature, Can you purchase me a bazooka and some Compound V to make me strong enough to kill those two bastards?
Lillian: What the hell are you saying?
Several of those talking leaves strips are quoted nearly verbatim in the Funky Winkerbean’s Homecoming stage musical, as an interlude while costume or set changes are being made. It’s actually a pretty clever way to tie the play to the strip, and a more creative and higher effort interlude than most of the others in the show, which are simply humorous school announcements being read through the loudspeaker.
Must have been Andy Clark’s idea…
Sadly, Crankshaft appears to be backsliding. Less than a month ago, we saw this former (?) illiterate eagerly taking on a Ray Bradbury novel. Now, it all appears to have been temporary, “Flowers for Algernon”-style, as we learn today that he can’t even read the simple word “Christie.”
He needs to be trundled off to Bedside Manor. It’s time, Pmm. Something tells me Jff won’t be too cut up about it.
Actually, on second thought, who knows? Ed’s brief bookworm phase may actually have been brought on by the magic cigarettes smoked at the Manor. They apparently cure all manner of dementia.
Ed Crankshaft is a problem that would take care of itself, if the town would just stop coming to his rescue every time he blows something up, or leaves himself hanging from a roof.
Fun With Continuity Time™!
Going through some old strips randomly (don’t ask why, I doubt any answer is good enough)…
Lillian “USED TO” have a bookstore over her garage? Did Batiuk intend for there to be a time when Lillian’s illegal deathtrap of a store was no longer around?
“You’re the only signing I ever held.” Damn it, Batiuk, YOU PROMISED! (Also, if that were the case, why would you refer to Les as the “FIRST author to do a book signing” in the PREVIOUS DAY’S strip? Once again, Batiuk can’t even remember what he wrote ONE STRIP EARLIER.)
Good dear Jeebus, Batiuk not only thought that was a good “joke” in 2017, he actually was REPEATING HIMSELF when he made the same “joke” earlier THIS year!
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Emily: Lillian’s neighbor told her about something that happened a couple of nights ago. Apparently, Homelander came to his house to lure him out to kill him, but some bearded englishman named Billy Butcher, who loves saying the c-word, came up and started attacking Homelander with Venom-like retractable tentacles from his torso, causing Homelander to flee in terror, and Butcher to follow him in hot pursuit.
Ameila: We need to get out of here, NOW.
Was there a joke in the November 25 strip? Or even a point?
Ed: “I want to get Pam one of those Agatha Crispy mysteries.”
Blonde woman: “No … you mean …”
Lillian: “I know what he wants …”
Now, if the joke was just supposed to be that Ed got the name “Agatha Christie” wrong, that should have been the punchline:
Panel 1: Ed: “I’d like to get Pam a mystery novel.”
Panel 2: Ed: “What do you have from Agatha Crispy?”
Or if the joke was that there really were “Agatha Crispy” books, then that would need to get resolved the next day. It wasn’t.
But what’s the joke here?
I’ve heard that Agatha Crispy’s mysteries abound in snaps, crackles and pops.
I wonder whether a joke about Ngaio Marshmallow will come our way in the future.
No, that would be ridiculous. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to have a hearty breakfast of bacon, toast, juice, milk, and a big bowl of Georges Simenon Toast Crunch.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Homelander: Where the fuck is that old bastard?
(out of a sudden, he gets hit by a Korok who’s strapped to a burning cross, Homelander turns around and sees Link (the incarnation from Breath of the Wild and K̶o̶r̶o̶k̶ T̶o̶r̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ S̶i̶m̶u̶l̶a̶t̶o̶r̶ Tears of the Kingdom) using his right arm to create weapons of mass destruction to use against him)
Related to the Batiukverse: A week-long storyline from 2000 where Pete and Jess/Blondie McBighair/80’s Glam Rock Female Frontman/Generic Blond Woman (Who Looks Like She Came Straight from the Eighties With That Hair Of Hers) work on a assignment in school
Les: Here are the teams I assigned: Jess Darling and Pete Roberts, Darin Fairgood and Chien Parks, Bulk Dombrowski and Nicole Franklin, Dave Haller and Ally Roberts,
Jess: Pete, isn’t Mega Man a video game character owned by Capcom?
Pete: Shit, I forgot.
forget about what Pete and Jess wrote, what did any of the other students write?
“no, we don’t like what you think is exciting and fun!”
God, Tom Batiuk needs to hear this soooooooooo much.
RE: Thanksgiving Crankshaft:
An old man tries to stuff a turkey into a microwave oven, despite it being obvious that the bird is too big for the oven.
That’s gold, Jerry…Gold!