Oh goody. That wacky Dinkle is overworking high school students again. I would roll my eyes, but in the Funkyverse that’s interpreted as a gesture of approval. I would yawn, except that Dinkle’s behavior towards his performers makes me want to call the police instead.
The punchline of the December 2 strip was that Centerview High School’s band was being conducted by the industrial arts teacher. Dinkle reacts snidely to this, because he’s a complete jackass, but also because this is Not Doing Things Correctly. And if there’s one thing the Funkyverse will not stand for, it’s people Not Doing Things Correctly.
When I heard about the industrial arts teacher conducting a band, I immediately thought of this:
I imagined this industrial arts teacher was a secret John Cage fan, and started to put together a performance of holiday music played entirely on tools from shop class. He worked all night on it, and was all ready to present it to the principal, when he was told “Uh, yeah… about that…. Harry Dinkle waltzed through the front door and demanded to be put in charge, so now he’s conducting the holiday concert. Sorry.”
For a comic strip that runs on mundane tragedies, it sure does ignore mundane tragedies. Because they’re not important unless they’re happening to Les, Dinkle, Lillian, Funky, Skip, Batton Thomas, or a comic book.
All of Dinkle’s failings as as a character have been pretty thoroughly documented here by now. My main beef with this week’s travesty is something else that’s been pretty thoroughly documented too; Tom Batiuk’s inability to get to the point. It took six days to get Dinkle waving his little stick again. It could have been done in two panels:
Dinkle conducting a high school band is Tom Batiuk’s idea of fan service. He thinks everybody loves it when Dinkle or Ed Crankshaft gives children PTSD. So why does it him so long to get on with it? Dinkle had to learn about the opening, be bribed into pursuing it (huh ??!!), show up at the school office, walk into the band room, and announce his rules before the first note is played. Which was terrible of course, and was met with his usual response.
You know what we didn’t see, though? Dinkle convincing this school to give him the job. Say what you will about Dinkle; he’s persuasive. He can sell the stupidest things door-to-door, and talk people into giving him jobs when his reputation should make him radioactive. This is the part of the Dinkle story I’d actually want to see: the snake oil salesman making his pitch.
Think of John Candy in Plains Trains and Automobiles. He talked strangers into helping him, sold shower curtain rings to raise money, and made Steve Martin see the value of keeping him around. He was a genuinely good salesman. He pulled his weight in getting them home, despite being extremely annoying.
But that’s not what gets emphasized in the Funkyverse. What does get emphasized in the Funkyverse? The main character being catered to. It’s always the same template. Character shows up, announces how talented they are, gets everything they want handed to them, and the world fawns over them. Even people who would have way more power, like Les Moore’s Hollywood overseers. Automobiles would been way less charming if John Candy just showed up everywhere and said “Hi, I’m the world’s greatest salesman, and I demand your only hotel room.” Then it cuts to the “two pillows” scene. (Actually, that scene would never happen in Funky Winkerbean, because it was legit funny.)
This is why Tom Batiuk can’t get to the point. He thinks “The talent is here, kiss my ring now” is the point. And if you know Tom Batiuk’s real-life frustrations with Hollywood, and with never getting hired by DC or Marvel, you can see why he thinks that. It’s the reaction he thinks he should get.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
The Daily Bleak
Local Hated Disgraced Band Director Found Dead With Severe Head Trauma From Being Beaten Up By Pissed Off Centerville High School Principal
If Centerville has a high blood why did the double nut twins go to Westview High? It’s called writing?
Blast. I meant high school.
The Mathews twins went to Westview HS after they moved from Centerville back in 2016. At the time they were still appearing as Lillian’s inexplicable elementary-aged groupies in Crankshaft.
This event may have actually occurred in one of those bubbles that TimeMop popped or whatever… which I’m good with since it eliminates at least one of those interminable “ol’ what’s-his-name, the cranky bus driver” gags from the canon.
Wow, I wasn’t expecting to see Dinkle until February for the annual OMEA arc. Tom just has to keep shoving FW characters into our faces for some reason. He is hoping band directors across the country will print out this strip and tape it up in the band room.
“He is hoping band directors across the country will print out this strip and tape it up in the band room.”
From anecdotal testimony here and on GC, apparently that was a thing. Like 35 years ago. If he can’t get his deserved Pulitzer, Tom’s gonna make Dinkle relevant again! Keep chasing that dream, Tombo! Might as well as chase the wind while you’re at it.
In the EXTREMELY unlikely event that this is noticed by anyone besides us and some pro-Crank GC geezers, it’d be by abused bandmembers. “This guy’s even worse than our douchey leader! Put it where he can see it!”
As I’ve mentioned before, RiffTrax Live made a FW joke. It got the biggest laugh in a packed theater! From about 6 people. Everyone else was baffled. “Funky…Whatamabean?”
I can testify that it was a thing 40 years ago, because my middle school band room had them. But that was Act I, when this made sense.
if anything, Dinkle is too on the nose. He’s an amalgam of all the worst qualities of scholastic band: way too competitive, and way too abusive. And hazing cases like Ohio State and Florida A&M put his awfulness into even sharper relief.
Batiuk should have left Dinkle at Bedside Manor, with 20% of his hearing. That was a good way for him to go out. He’s still doing what he loves, and bringing joy to people who don’t get much. Of course TB couldn’t leave it alone
Heck, we had a silhouette of Dinkle painted on the band director’s office door! But of course, back then the strip was humorous and full of satire. Nowadays I cannot imagine any band directors relating to Dinkle.
And here again, we have another example of Batty showing a teacher insulting his students. I mean if your students are doing poorly, doesn’t some of that reflect back on you and your teaching methods? When my students do poorly with a concept, I pause and try to find another way of explaining it or I give them e exercises to help reinforce that concept.
Tom Batiuk doesn’t seem to realize that Dinkle is not a flattering comparison! Especially not in the 2020s. He worked in Act I, and somewhat in Act II. Now he’s just an obnoxious bully. He also sucks at his job and abuses his performers. Making people practice long hours isn’t a virtue; it’s a sign of incompetence. Dinkle also never gets any comeuppance, so he doesn’t even work as a counterexample, like Dilbert did.
There’s another thing he doesn’t really want to face: what a colossal waste of time it is being Harry Dinkle. He play-acts as if he regrets the time he squandered but if he had it to do all over again, he would do the same damn thing.
He’d do the same thing because he doesn’t know anything else. Nor does he care to learn.
Learning things is a no-go because it implies needing to.
All of Tom’s “heroes” are obnoxious, self-obsessed bullies. But they’re also PUBLISHED AUTHORS with SIGNINGS of BOOKS who are never wrong. So, as like Tom, they are like unto gods. Ecce homo, ecce Tom. Chien was the last likable, relatable character (as in someone with a discernible personality) in the Funkyverse. So she was disappeared 30 years ago. Might distract from Les.
There’s no introspection in the Batuik Compound.
What really sells it is their belief that they are victims. A four-eyed blowhard who reduced his teenage daughter to tears because he can’t see her as the near adult she is ain’t no victim. A pompous, strutting popinjay dressed like an organ grinder’s monkey angrily berating people because they get in the way of people fellating him ain’t no victim. A simpleton braying because he’s the only man on the planet who doesn’t realize that Batman is fundamentally absurd isn’t a victim.
The Funkyverse really is a window into Tom Batiuk’s sick little mind. This is how he thinks the world should work, and what his place within it should be. “Stand back everyone; the writer is coming through! Everybody defer to my opinion, swoon over how good I am, and give me awards!” Then this takes two weeks to unfold. Not but because he needs to justify any of it; he needs the ego nourishment of every little step of the process.
And in the process, he revealed himself to be unworthy of the adulation he lusts for. None of his heroes should hold a job that doesn’t involve scrubbing commodes.
Dinkle is basically J.K. Simmons in Whiplash, only without the comedy.
Now you’ve got me imagining JK Simmons playing Dinkle in the Crankshaft movie. He’d be a good choice.
Absolutely. Because J.K. Simmons is an awesome actor. He could probably make Dinkle watchable on-screen for upwards of ninety seconds, maybe even a full two minutes — a stupendous technical achievement.
I can imagine Dinkle standing above a semi-unconscious Becky yelling “THINK, BECKY, THINK!” or Dinkle yelling at Chien/Ally/Cody/Malcom for photos of the PBM
Or he pushes… well, anyone really… too far, and they beat him senseless and defecate on him. (I would imagine the characters would argue amongst themselves who gets the honor.)
I just wonder where the parents are. If a whole band’s worth of high schoolers never went home one night, and couldn’t call home because Dinkle outlawed phone use, there would be a citywide panic. And once they found out these kids were being detained by a goddamn substitute band director who walked in off the street, the town would be livid. Firings and lawsuits everywhere. And Dinkle would be in jail.
By the way, it’s a high school band concert, not the Middle East peace talks. The school can just cancel the fucking thing. Especially if the students are this woefully unprepared for it, and the director’s serious illness gives you a convenient reason to do so.
And when people don’t genuflect to a blundering, thundering mediocrity like him (or Les), the clown in the monkey suit gets surly and claims athletic fields in the name of his monstrous vanity.
This is in order to avoid admitting how much he has in common with Roberta Blackburn. Both of them have an excess of self-regard blooming against a leafy green background of contempt for anyone who gets in the way of a pea-brained and unnecessary crusade.
“a performance of holiday music played entirely on tools from shop class”
Check out a guy named Woody Phillips, who does exactly that.
I added a link to it in the story. Thanks for sharing that!
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
And almost 2 years after their last appearance in FW, Becky and Wally appear in Crankshaft (though it’s in a flashback)
Related to the Batiukverse: I think the closest thing to a counterpart of Dinkle has is Killer Diller from Beetle Bailey
Before Holly grew a deinonychus claw out of her hair (which became one of my favorite SOSF tags to use), we had Wally and Becky both sporting the look!
Did Davis actually have to draw those two early Act IIers and their hair horns or did he have to smash his copy of The Complete Funky Winkerbean into a single sheet scanner?
Before Holly grew a deinonychus claw out of her hair (which became one of my favorite SOSF tags to use)
It actually took a while (and by a while I mean from a couple years ago when I first discovered FW to a couple of weeks ago) to realize that Holly’s early Act III haircut was identical to Lisa’s (I assume that Holly styled her hair like that to remember her by)
Gabby says: Army friends aren’t the same as “real” friends. You didn’t choose to be together, but you rely on each other to survive (sometimes literally). There is (was?) a saying—Never **** your buddies
There was an excellent comment on joshreads today, by TheDiva:
“This strip demonstrates where Batiuk went wrong with Harry Dinkle. When he was in uniform it was easy to read him as a blustering caricature of weirdly militaristic band teachers. His behavior made sense in that context. In civvies he becomes an angry, egotistical old man who gets his kicks from insulting teenagers. Which is probably a more accurate portrait of weirdly militaristic band teachers, but not a very entertaining or amusing one.”
Which is another thing: in the 20s, “wacky abusive band teacher” is like “wacky sexual harasser movie producer.” It hits way too close to real-life events that aren’t funny in the slightest. Most of the world may not be familiar with Jon Waters, like they are with Harvey Weinstein. But the band director community is, and I imagine they’d rather distance themselves and their profession from this behavior.
How sad that the Dinkle arcs have declined from “infuriating” to “maddening” to “eye-rolling” and have now settled on “stupefyingly boring.”
But there’s one intriguing aspect of Tuesday’s strip: Is that a brand new Dinkle face in P3? Has Davis actually picked up a stylus and created a face himself? I don’t think I’ve seen this Dinkface before. Any Funkaeologists recognize it?
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
I’m sure that if Dinkle was a real person, he would’ve got into serious trouble with the world and penguinz0 would’ve made a video about it titled “Harry L. Dinkle Situation is Crazy” (this is the greatest band director situation of All Time)
Batiuk has always liked to do a handful of music oriented strips getting closer to the holidays, but I am baffled as to why he thought he needed an excuse for Dinkle to bark orders at random students at a random school. Dinkle runs the choir, the old folks Jazz Band, and could easily still be running the community band. Just have him bark these recycled jokes at those somewhat vaguely familiar faces.
What is with the avatars?
It’s not weird for them to occur in a strip. Bill Griffith fully admits Zippy and Griffy are his id and ego. I would guess the same for that other Bill’s Calvin and Hobbes. You’re a cartoonist; the vast majority of your conversations occur in your head. Maybe the intellectual Goat, obnoxious Rat and kind Pig are all parts of Pastis. But how many Mary Sues do you need?
Five?
It really seems to have stepped up. Has Tom decided the raisonne d’jour that FW flopped after a damn half-century wasn’t naming it Funky Winkerbean, but that the world was not ready for the Power and the Glory that is LES? It’s there in the name: You think he’s Less, but oh he is so much More.
But Ayers said F-this-S and walked. Davis said You want me to draw, you pay, or I ain’t doing crap. Someone must be blamed, and not Tom! So it’s Funky. He’s gone. But…what if it was Les. Impossible, but let’s shelve him for a coupla years. And replace the demi-god with:
Batton Thomas. And we thought the name “Amicus Breef” was too on the nose. He’s a quiet, likable, self-effacing, very egotistical comics artiste. (It’s canon that Batton’s nickname is “Hawk Batuik”)
Lillian: A snobby old whiner who judges you all for not Liking Things The Right Way. The Right Way peaked in 1963.
Dinkle: High scool kids, YOU FUCKING MAAAAAGGOTS! Bile rage machine of pure hatred and impatient sociopathy who hates children, all humanity, but likes puppies when they’re close enough to kick.
Ed: Senile rage machine of pure child-hating, mother-hating…Whoa. Two in a row, there’s a coincidence! Is Ed getting phased out for Dinkle, because…readers like Ed more than a blatant, angrier Tom? Does Tom get jealous when a character who isn’t based on him becomes more popular? (Chien: “Tell me about it.”)
Are they all Tom? Just quadfurcated into separate parts? Batton, the friendly face that Tom shows at signings? Lillian, the snob who looks down on anyone who likes Tom’s work “wrong”? Dink, the Tom grocery store workers see when he thinks the cabbage heads are below his standards, the Tom screaming and manager-demanding? And also Tom…really did NOT like the kids he taught for years. The first sign of a good teacher.
What kinda fucked-up Voltron does that combine into?
What kinda fucked-up Voltron does that combine into?
probably Dick Facey if he were multiplied by 3.14^10
I think there are some underlying themes in all of Tom Batiuk’s Mary Sues:
They don’t combine into a Voltron so much as they are slightly different strains of the same virus. They’re Batiuk’s general attitude to life, from slightly different ways he envisions himself.
Les and Lillian are “Tom Batiuk if he were an elite writer for whom things must be done the right way”. (Additionally, Les Tom Batiuk if he suffered more than anyone in human history because Lisa died.)
Pete and Darrin are the “Tom Batiuk if he got that DC/Marvel job” perspective.
Funky, Dinkle, and Ed Crankshaft are the “Tom Batiuk if he was put-upon everyman, loved by everyone, but annoyed by everyone else’s stupidity” perspective. He’s basically this guy. (To be fair, I think Ed is an actual character and not a Mary Sue.)
Batton Thomas is the “Tom Batiuk as the self-effacing nice guy he thinks he is” perspective.
A few questions related to the current banal Crankshaft story arc:
1). Don’t most high schools have an assistant band director? My high school always had one. A recent college music grad who was learning and observing while waiting for a teaching position to open up. Sometimes they were at our school for years. An assistant band director would be more than qualified to step in during a last minute emergency. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than an industrial arts teacher, doesn’t it?
As a matter of fact, a few years after I graduated, the high school band director left for a more prestigious high school. The assistant band director immediately took over.
2.) What about the middle school (junior high) band director? Couldn’t they fill in? When I was in school, the high school band director and the junior high band director were two different people. The high school assistant band director was also the substitute for the junior high band director.
The same band director for high school, middle school and elementary school? Does Centerville have major budget problems like Westview? Can’t pass a levy? What was the cause of the Centerville band director’s emergency sick leave? Exhaustion?
This is just TB hammering square-peg Dinkle into a round hole. TB for some reason felt the need to inflict Dinkle upon a new generation of high school students. In a different town. High school band kids are inept, dur hur hur. The entire scenario is forced.
3.) I hope I don’t ruffle the feathers of any old band members by this next question, but is it really a big deal to cancel a high school concert? This “holiday” concert is almost two weeks before Christmas. The kids are more looking forward to the December break than this concert.
Student: Oh, no! The Holiday Concert is canceled. My Christmas is ruined!😭
A few years ago, students missed their graduation ceremonies during the pandemic. They survived.
I had school basketball and volleyball games canceled due to inclement weather. Sometimes they weren’t rescheduled. I survived.
Why do I know these things when TB, an admitted high school band member, doesn’t? I’m a fifth grade band drop out. (Mom thought it would be a good idea for me to take up the clarinet shortly after getting braces on my teeth. I wanted to play drums. Mom said, “No.”)
this actually happened at my kids middle school a few days ago. winter concert. band leader out for maternity leave (unexpectedly a week earlier than planned). Had a long-term sub come in and covered for things.
The band sounded awful. The kids claimed the sub was keeping time differently and it threw everyone off. So maybe the band sounding bad is actually Dinkle’s fault.
Yeah, it’s amazing how uninsightful Tom Batiuk is about high school band life. Of course, if he was, the first thing he would realize is that nobody would tolerate Harry Dinkle’s behavior.
How was the sub keeping time differently? I’m far from a music expert, but wouldn’t the musical beats remain the same? Was the sub using different terminology, which confused the kids?
As we found out yesterday, the culprit for the band’s alleged underperformance was most likely a lack of enthusiasm for playing Claude Barlow’s craptacular music. Did your kids’ substitute teacher insert his own narrow, unwanted musical tastes into the program, like Dinkle? Any sub who’d change the program like that should be tarred and feathered, then run out of town on a rail.
Just a couple notes: When I was in school, the high school band director also taught the fifth and sixth grade bands. By the time I reached high school, it was a different band director.
My fourth grade teacher had maternity leave after the Christmas break and never returned to the class. She was a great teacher, and I was so happy to get assigned to her class. Her substitute was young, humorless and a bit out of her depth.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
The Principal of Centerville High School: Get off the stadium, fatso. You’re fired.
in other news, happy birthday, Darin Fairgood (he’s 38 if not for Timemop’s fuckery)
The Big Dink is a douche…
The Big Dink is a royal smugtastic douche…
And, after days of bitching that the kids can’t play the program, today we learned that he changed the program to what he wants. Which is course his precious Claude Barlow. Christ, what an asshole.
And, of course, he introduces the piece by basically saying “yeah, this is gonna SUCK”.
(And wasn’t he just saying how “brilliantly” he pulled off directing the band, despite substituting at the last minute? Did Tom forget what he wrote only one strip previously? That never happens!)
If the strip were at least 10% more realistic, Dinkle would be lose all of his jobs
At the bare minimum. The first time Dinkle pulled that “rehearse until 2 am” shit with a church choir of elderly women, he would have been fired on the spot. And probably reported to Adult Protective Services for elder abuse. And sued.
Although this is also a universe where the residents of a nursing home can take out the home’s van without any supervision or telling the home where they’re going, so… I’m thinking Adult Protective Services doesn’t exist in the Lesser Westview/Centerville region.
The Big Dink’s smugtastic jack-o’lantern grin is nothing that a good brick couldn’t cure.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Dinkle: I am Harry L. Dinkle, The World’s Greatest Band Director, and I can do whatever the fuck I want.
Homelander: THAT’S. MY. FUCKING. (yelling at the top his lungs, causing everyone except for his, Billy Butcher’s and Dinkle’s ears to bleed) LIIIIIIIIIIIINE!
Dinkle: Shut the fuck up, you overgrown baby!
Butcher: Both of ya c@$@s are. (smirks and lunges towards Homelander)
I haven’t had much to say about this particular arc, because (for Batiuk) it’s simply garden-variety bad. I mean, sure, Dinkle’s annoying, and Batiuk is simply not capable of writing anything interesting or funny or even marginally competent. But this somehow lacks that special Burnings(TM)-level mix of pointlessly grandiose ambition and first-draft-by-the-dullest-student-at-the-seniors-center execution. I guess what I’m saying is that it fails to fail enough.
This need to fixate on the laughably incompetent Barlow was how we were introduced to the normalization of whining about niche interests.
“Normalization of niche interests” should also have been in my list of common Mary Sue traits. Claude Barlow’s name might as well be Comic Books, for how much Dinkle tries to make everything about him.
What’s truly stupid is his reaction to being told how unhealthy it is to behave as if the Sun will die if he has to wait a day to see how Flash uses running fast to defeat Captain Koala: howling about being bullied.
One of my favorite current comics, Super Fun-Pak Comix, has an occasional feature called “Dinkle, the UNlovable Loser.” I don’t know whether the character’s name was influenced by our UNfavorite band leader, but I have my suspicions.
Anyway, by a happy coincidence, the Dinkle feature is running today.
https://www.gocomics.com/super-fun-pak-comix/2024/12/13?ct=v&cti=1638225
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Day Eleven of Dinkle Being A Smugtastic Asshole While Filling In For The Centerville High School Teacher:
Can this storyline just end? we’ve had enough of Harry L. Dinkle
Today’s random Batiukverse strip: June 6th 2015 strip of Crankshaft (sorry, Epicus)
Ed: I have another question, why do you look similar to the wife of that fat blowhard who runs Montoni’s?
Woman Who Looks Like A Brunette Holly With A Different Hairstyle: Who are you talking about?
forgot I deleted the image so here it is again
Informing readers of a better comic strip from the distant reaches of the Crankshaft archive because the current story arc sucks? That’s a concept that seems vaguely familiar. 🤔
I LIKE IT!
KEEP ‘EM COMING! 😁😀
Related to the Batiukverse:
(to the tune of 12 Days of Christmas) on the first day of CrankMas, Tom Batiuk gave to us: The Burnings That Were So Fucking Boring
Related to the Batiukverse: Some incredibly fucking stupid edits of mine
(Cindy then turns into a person who resembles an slightly aged Tenth Doctor)
Fourteenth Doctor: Give me a second, (walks to a window) WHAT?!
What Les endured
What the Hero of Time/Ocarina of Time Link endured
Oh. Right. Plantman. The idiot who shot John Darling over a stupid misunderstanding. If you ask me, Jessica should have told the refugee from Masked Singer that he did it for nothing to watch him squirm.
I assume that Plantman was lying to Jess just to piss her off
He probably misinterpreted something else the poor fool said.
Also, I’d think better of him if he’d said something about how the John Darlings of this world don’t down a fist full of Ambien and a glass of Jack Daniels when they fail like he did until after they shoot their wives and children.
Well, that certainly answers the question of Cinders never-ending youth. Regeneration.
I wonder how the 72-year-old Cinders is handling her pregnancy, which should be in the final trimester. Let’s ask Tom Batiuk, the Lord of Continuity, for an update.
TB: What? Cindy Summers is pregnant? Where did you get that idea? That’s absurd.
The comic strip from May 18th, 2024.
Hey, I’m getting halfway decent at spotting the copy pasta.
What is up with that nose? It makes me want to hook up a tow chain.
And as Bill pointed out in the removed comment at GC, Dan didn’t even bother to find or edit three panels to make him look the same among them. Three panels, three different nose shapes and three different hairlines.
But don’t you dare point this out.