Tree is finally trimmed with all the baubles and boops.
Just a short trip down Funky Archive Lane this post.
In August 1984 President Ronald Reagan announced the NASA Teacher in Space Project. 11,000 interested teachers sent in applications.
In November 1984, Batiuk launched this arc, which ran through the end of December.
In 1985 Christina McAuliffe, (who looked eerily like the female astronaut from Batiuk’s plotline,) was chosen to be the first participant.
On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart 1 minute 13 seconds after launch killing all 7 crewmembers onboard, including McAuliffe.
Happy Holidays!
(Cheerier Christmas Post Coming Soon)
Son of Stuck Funky 
I think that the storyline where Dinkle somehow ended up on the Space Shuttle Discovery is incredibly fucking stupid in many ways
I hate to belabor the obvious, but these strips are from the era when Batiuk was not promoting his strips as being an accurate reflection of real life. This story is just being played for comedy, not for an accurate reflection of the space shuttle program.
In reality, Dinkle would never have been selected for the Teacher in Space program at all. They didn’t have a computer select the teacher to go to space; the candidates went through extensive interviews and evaluations. And it would have become clear during the selection process that nobody would want to be cooped up with him for six days in a space shuttle.
I gotta disagree with you on this. These strips were totally in line with silliness and satire that characterized the strip before Batty started chasing awards via misery porn.
Agreed. The gag with Ronald Reagan telling Dinkle not to worry about an audit even made me laugh out loud.
While not the strongest of TB’s shockingly large number of inadvertent disaster predictions, it’s still pretty wild and weird to read these strips.
This story shares a lot of DNA with the Simpsons episode why they made Homer, of all people, an astronaut. “The American people see astronauts as talented go-getters. They hate people like that.” That story was also overly concerned with TV ratings, as this one is. At one point they joked that all the computers at NASA just measured TV ratings. Both stories explore some valid questions, like what was the value of shooting a civilian into space. It’s a perfectly good Act I story.
I also remember January 28, 1986 very well. I was in middle school at the time. I didn’t see it happen, but a lot of people did. My science teacher was particularly shaken when she had to tell us all what happened. My hometown wasn’t far from Cape Canaveral or Christa McAuliffe’s hometown. There’s a Christa McAuliffe Elementary School now.
I remember 1/28/86 only too well. I was coming into work when one of my co-workers mentioned that the shuttle launch–which I, despite having been one of those space-program geeks who got up at five in the morning for launches back in the Sixties, had not even bothered to watch–had ended in disaster.
I also remember feeling seriously cheated because the disaster came all of two days after the Chicago Bears won their first (and so far only) Super Bowl championship and everybody in town was in a mood to celebrate. We didn’t even get our victory parade before the flags were at half-mast and the nation was in mourning. Sigh…
One of the strange things about the aftermath of the tragedy was the way TV always showed the seconds before the explosion from the camera that didn’t show the huge plume of flame coming out of the failed solid booster. The footage did exist, and as a matter of fact frames from it were blown up within a few hours and hanging in conference rooms at the Cape, but it seems NASA and the media cooperated to keep the public from seeing how the impending disaster had been obvious for the better part of a minute before the shuttle disintegrated.
Sorry, cs, I gotta agree with everyone else. This is what we miss about Act I. Pure, goofy comic strip. A quarter million inches from reality!
“Gorilla My Dreams” is a hilarious Bugs Bunny cartoon. I laughed when Bugs smashed the evil gorilla on the head with a shovel. I did not ask where the shovel came from. It did not make the joke funnier when Les’ machine gun was retconned into a cardboard cutout. It made it no longer a joke.
Now, today’s CS…*sigh*. My reaction was “Who TF are these people? Why is this supposed to have HEAVY EMOTIONAL RELEVANCE to me? Why are we expected to know every crumb of ancient FW lore, but also we get ‘My father John…’ and ‘Butter Brinkle, 3 times in ONE sentence’, in a sentence about Brinkle?”
Anybody else think this is going to turn into another Prestige Arc? And…TOM, you said that NO arc should begin except on Mondays, and then HAD to end on the weekend? This began on Thursday! “THOMAS BATSHIT, thou hath broken thy OWN inviolable commandant! Throw him in the volcano!” “Uh, Great Leader, the last time we did that, the volcano just puked him out.”
If he wrote this today, one could complain. Then someone on GC would say “It’s just a comic strip!” Yeah, and it’s unrealistic that a beagle can fly a doghouse in WWI. Note: I think the emotions shown in Peanuts are more believable than any that have been shown in Tom’s Prize-Pimping years.
Peanuts was definitely more authentic and honest than anything P Batty has ever done. Batty thinks his work upped the game and surpassed Peanuts. Well this week’s strips prove otherwise.
Batty is like the musician who thinks he can make music by stringing together some cool riffs he copied from others, and that this will win him a Grammy Award.
I don’t think that one strip is depicting Dinkle landing the shuttle. I think it’s two astronauts talking to each other with the, “What’s next?” and “Aim towards Earth”, and then Dinkle pipes in with the, “Are you sure you’ve done this before?”
So that only leaves 37 other things to complain about.
The Big Dink went to space?! How did I miss that gold mine?! 😮
All that’s missing here is a final strip in which Dinkle awakes and its revealed the entire story line was a bad dream brought on by his eating tainted band turkey.
A few years back, I saw Shatner only three days after his trip to space. I stayed several yards away, of course. I watched “The Andromeda Strain” as a kid and was in no hurry to be exposed to whatever killer space cooties he might have brought back. I also saw “Star Trek IV” and was even more afraid of catching whatever was responsible for that. Talk about a tainted turkey….
CORRECTION: “Star Trek V!” “Star Trek IV,” the one with the whales, is one of the GOOD ones! “Star Trek V” is the evil Mirror Universe variant of “Star Trek IV.” My apologies to Nicholas Meyer and Leonard Nimoy. I’m very tired and have been under a lot of stress at work lately….
The “what does God need with a spaceship” conversation was allright, though.
@erdmann Your mention of Star Trek movies made me think of something. The Funkyverse doesn’t really have a Wrath of Khan moment, does it? It doesn’t have that single high point, the moment of genuine greatness that a lot of long-running, mediocre properties hit. (SEE ALSO: “In The Air Tonight.”)
Batiuk probably thinks Lisa’s death or pregnancy was that moment, but he’s very wrong. For Better Or For Worse was… well, better at the heavy drama. Aldo Kelrast’s death is much more fondly remembered than Lisa’s. Both stories also suffered from Batiuk’s inability to let them stand on their own merits.
Today’s Crankshaft
VHS was developed in the mid-1970’s, and Timmy Meckler died in the early 1970’s
csroberto2854.exe has run into a error and needs to be rebooted
Beyond that… unless Crankshaft has Andre the Giant’s hands all the sudden, that videocassette is closer in size to a Hi-8 tape than a VHS tape.
Well, maybe we’ll at least learn that Crazy converted this tape from Super 8 for him back in the 90s.
VHS was developed in the mid-1970’s, and Timmy Meckler died in the early 1970’s
Maybe it’s a video tape of Timmy’s parents pretending Timmy was still alive in 1985. That would be very on-brand for this sick world. And after Ed finds it, they can enjoy watching it again! They can relive their own maladaptive coping. This would also explain why the tape is labelled so pretentiously. “Christmas with the only three people in the family, including OUR DEAD CHILD who wasn’t dead yet.”
Christ, Batiuk loves this shit. He’s currently pimping this story on his stupid blog. He’s explaining the backstory, which was the last time somebody found a message from Dead Timmy.
It includes this:
“We don’t use the fireplace on Christmas Eve anymore BECAUSE SOMEONE DIED.” The story assumes you already know how this could possibly make any sense. We also learn that someone stuffed the dead kid’s letter back into the fireplace. Presumably so they can find it again, and enjoy the tragedy again! The annual town Easter Egg Hunt must be a laugh riot. “I found eggs, Peeps, and grandma’s suicide note!”
Why in God’s green earth is there a picture of a 75-year-old woman attached to one of a dead soldier? AND WHY IS SHE MAKING THAT FACE? She looks like she accidentally farted during her driver’s license photo. And Timmy’s holding her severed head as a war trophy.
Absolutely bizarre.
The old woman is Helen, Ralph’s wife, who died early on in the Crankshaft universe. She suffered from Alzheimer’s years before Lucy made it cool.
Okay, but why keep your wife’s picture that way? And why that facial expression?
So Ralph didn’t have any framed pictures of HIS WIFE? He just stuffed a wallet-sized photo into the frame of their dead son?
I mean, I don’t want to say Ralph should be more like Les in terms of honoring a dead spouse, but there has to be a happy medium SOMEWHERE…
If I’m gonna put on my devils advocate hat for shits and giggles, I’d say that Ralph does have nicer framed pictures of his dead wife, (I’ve seen them in the backgrounds in a few places, but am too lazy to pull the refs.) By tucking a wallet picture of his wife about the time she died into the framed much older picture of their son about the time he died, he is reuniting them as they have been reunited in the afterlife.
She looks kinda derpy because this is in Davis copy pasta era, (though when he was trying a widdle bit harder.) And the picture of Helen is pulled from when Ayers was drawing Cranky characters a little differently.
CBH, when did Helen Meckler die in the strip?
Green Luthor said it much better, and much more concisely, than I did: Ralph’s grieving looks half-assed. This image in Panel 3 isn’t a good way for him to honor either of his deceased loved ones. The military photo would be great by itself. But not with this cheap, K-Mart Photo Studio thing sloppily wedged into it. Sheesh, doesn’t he have a picture of the two of them together? Or at least full-sized, equally dignified pictures of both of them? Harriet says Ralph does have good-quality photos of his wife. But the story chose not to show this, at a moment where it really should.
It belies the seriousness Tom Batiuk is trying to inject into this moment. Ralph says he doesn’t use the fireplace on Christmas Eve anymore, implying that lighting a fire on that day would be too painful a memory of his lost family. And this crappy little thing is how he remembers them? The photo of Timmy would be discolored by now, because keeping a smaller photo in front of it would inadvertently protect that part of the image from fading.
In response to the “happy medium” comment: what Ralph is doing here is identical to what Les Moore does. Everything in Les’ life is Lisa Lisa Lisa, long after she died, long after he remarried (with Lisa’s hands-on involvement), and a couple years after he was handed an Oscar trophy because Lisa existed. All of this, combined with the passage of time (even if you ignore the time skip), should be enough for any mentally healthy human being to move past the death of a loved one. It isn’t. Not for Les Moore. Not for Ralph Meckler. Not for Jessica Darling The Daughter Of John Darling Who Was Murdered And Did I Mention My Dad Died. My 2025 prediction is that Cindy will join this club after her pregnancy fails.
This official military photo, with a high-school looking photo of his dead wife inserted into the frame, isn’t a symbol of Ralph Meckler’s lost loved ones. It’s a symbol of his intention to spend the rest of his life grieving them. He’s just not as pushy about it as Les is. Ralph is a quiet devotee to the official Funkyverse religion of worshipping the dead. Les is a door-to-door proselytizer.
Stories like this are exactly why I the Funkyverse so disgusting. It’s how I justify the time I spend bashing it. I feel a need to go on the record and say “Pardon me, but this comic strip everyone ignores is actually very sick.”
The Funkyverse is obsessed with death and loss, but at the same time has an unhealthy attitude about death and loss. It also fails to treat the deceased with basic levels of dignity. Or it flat-out mocks the dead, such as by turning their murder weapon into a family toy. or by turning their death into a stupid joke (Pop Clutch in Crankshaft).
All of this in the pursuit of awards and recognition. Which Tom Batiuk has no clue why he doesn’t receive. Because he has no clue why the death of a loved one hurts the living. He’s just mimicking things he’s seen in other stories where characters died. The same is true of his understanding of friendship, love, adult relationships, gender roles, sexual talk, and societal matters like “climate damage.” And, Tom Batiuk’s reading habits being what they are, 99% of the stories he draws from were originally written for children’s comic books.
Whatever you may think of Aldo Kelrast, Mary Worth and its characters treated him as a human being whose life had dignity, despite him being loathsome. Funky Winkerbean simply does not treat anything with dignity, or realize that it should. Not even the characters it makes a big tacky show out of mourning. But it also doesn’t go far enough in the other direction to make a joke of it all.
For further discussion, see Lisa, You’re No Jack Kennedy and Bad Parenting From Beyond The Grave.
Batiuk is running the Little Timmy Santa Letter story on his blog.
The entire story is stupid, and badly done. He wants it to be thoughtful and sentimental, but it’s mawkish and stupid. So, little Timmy’s letter was not found, and he thus didn’t get a bicycle. Were there no more Christmases after that? Did he come down to the tree that year, see no bicycle, and burning with fury declare that Christmas was a fraud, and so were bicycles, and his disappointment was great and his day ruined? Because Batiuk seems to imply that not getting that bicycle was the tragic element that defined his life to the end.
Also, how old is Timmy supposed to be? If he’s eight or nine, he has stunningly accomplished handwriting. If he’s older than that, he should know the truth about Santa Claus. Believing in Santa Claus can be seen as a charming trait in someone older:
But in older children it seems off. Oh, and read his letter again. It sums up to “Mom and dad are poor. Bring me a new bicycle.” That’s not the letter of a child who understands that wants sometimes have to take a backseat to needs, which is I’m sure what Batiuk was aiming at. That’s the letter of someone asking for a bicycle.
@csroberto
Im not 100% sure as the Cranky GC records only go back to the early aughts. But I believe prior to that.
Banana Jr. 6000: You are right.
You know how you can tell in comic strips when the creator’s in therapy, because there are jokes about the strip’s characters being in therapy? I don’t know for sure–I’m not one of you accomplished archivists here (I have no idea how you guys even find that stuff! I’m just the local absurdist). But when has this strip ever featured anyone GETTING HELP? Maybe a Drunky Stumblebean arc, or a Wally one? Remember the New Year’s Eve dance, when Les’ TWO hot younger woman who yearned Oh So Much for His Very Touch watched him…dance with imaginary Alive Lisa? They looked at each other in a way that IRL would mean “…Um, thanks, YOU can have him.”
Ladies, she’s been dead for over a decade. He’s having a psychotic break from reality. In public. Don’t call a therapist, call 911 and have the paramedics take him to the Behavioral Health Ward. Or, I dunno, just let Les the Powderkeg continue to teach high school classes, because what could go wrong?!
30 years ago he had characters. Now he has multiple Toms, multiple Tom enablers, and I guess Ed. His arcs are devoid of any conflict. Look at the Burnings. Just nothing, instantly forgotten.
Very insightful. We never see FW characters seeking help, because Tom Batiuk knows he has no ability to write such an interaction. It’s the kind of thing he edits around.
Furthermore, no FW character can ever genuinely admit they were in the wrong. Unless they’re a (1), straw villain whose job it is to be wrong, (2) the person who most recently broke one of Les Moore’s many unspoken rules and wishes to pay penance to him, or (3) it’s a shallow admission that will never have any consequences, like in “Bad Parenting From Beyond The Grave” above.
The Funkyverse also has strong overtones of “I don’t need help”, even though these people are obviously very broken. And they overlook each other’s problems, because Westview is a mutual enabling society. They all enable each other’s smugness, laziness, childish obsessions, maladaptive coping, egos, Dunning-Kruger syndrome, their need to blame their failures on everybody but themselves, and more specific things like Funky’s alcoholism.
Even Wally’s PTSD was talked about as if it were some kind of shameful condition he needed to overcome, and not a very understandable outcome of the horrible things that happened to him. So when people are going through the motions to help each other, there isn’t a drop of empathy in it. Because, once again, Tom doesn’t know what empathy is, and is just mimicking what he’s seen in children’s comic books.
In Crankshaft, Jeff was in therapy for a while, mostly as an opportunity for TB to lambast Evil Comics-Discarding Wimmen (Jfff’s mother, in that iteration).
Today’s Past Batiukverse Strip: April 28th, 2004 of Funky Winkerbean (the start of a storyline where Cindy speaks at a high school graduation)
To me, Cindy’s expression in panel 2 is less “I just agreed to be the speaker at a high school graduation” and more “I just killed a man for no reason and now the police are after me”
This reminds me of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it joke in Blazing Saddles, where the schoolmarm says she wasn’t accustomed to public speaking. (The scene where she loudly calls Mel Brooks’ governor character “the leading asshole in the state” for appointing the black sheriff.)
“TothehonorableWilliamJ.LePetomane,Governor…”
I was today days old when I learned that was Dom DeLuise’s wife.
“Oh no!” yips Cindy like a blond chihuahua. “Speak–IN PUBLIC?! Oh, what if I embarrass myself in front of my colleagues, here at ABC where I’m a national news anchor?! GOLLY!”
Maybe it was setting up years in advance the admission at the last reunion that Cindy (uneasy lies the Queen Bee head that wears a crown) never felt comfortable in High School and could have sung all of the lyrics to the Kinks’s “I’m Not Like Everybody Else.”
Instead of, say, “Days” or “Waterloo Sunset.”
What do you say, Mason Jarr?
“Still I’m glad that I know how to dance the lindy/and so is Sadie Summers’s sister Cindy…”
(Sorry, Ray Davies, I know “Lola” deserves a better parody, but I never claimed to be Frank Jacobs.)
The tape could be a video transfer. My parents were married in the mid-1950s, and a relative filmed a home movie at the ceremony. For my parents’ 50th anniversary, my older brother took the film to a video transfer service, where the film was copied to VHS. He wanted them to have something to view. The video is in color (kind of), but there’s no sound. It’s only about eight minutes long.
It’s pretty much everyone just standing around outside the church after the ceremony. It’s nice to see Mom and Dad when they were young and looking their best. It’s also nice to see the relatives. Some of whom I remember fondly and others I never got a chance to meet. A lot of unidentified family friends.
Later on, my other brother copied the VHS to DVD for everyone in the family.
Goddammit WordPress. This comment was supposed to be a reply to csroberto2854’s comment about the VHS tape. I did not refresh the webpage. I quit.
Or is it right? I can’t tell anymore. The replies don’t seem to be indented as much as they used to be. I miss where the original posts alternated between a white or gray background on the PC. Alternated between a black and slightly less black background on my phone’s web browser. It was a sad day when WordPress retired the old layout.
I hate you WordPress. You f*cked up my whole commenting experience.😆
Retiring the keyboard and shutting up for the night.
I think it’s in the right place, but as you said, the indenting is less clear.
Thanks for backing me up. It’s not just me. I was beginning to feel like the unofficial SoSF dotard.👵
Look, we’ve got a dotard (me) at the helm half the time. Whose worse, the fool or the fool who follows her on WordPress?
ComicBookHarriet:
Nah, you’re too young to be a dotard. You’re doing just fine. I’m too easily flustered and like to rage at inanimate objects (shakes fist at toaster that overtoasted my English muffin).
I saw an article that WordPress .org was ceasing operations. This is WordPress .com, right?🥺🙏
I did a deep dive, based on some personal experience (I’m old), and it is just barely possible that the image shown on the Christmas Day strip’s TV screen was actually shot with a B&W video camera. The Sony U-matic video recorder, which I think was the first one available, came out in late 1971 and was targeted at home users; it even included an over-the-air tuner (though few were sold to home users because of the cost; most were bought by corporations and educational institutions). So it is just barely possible that if Ralph & Ed’s district had a U-matic recorder in time for Christmas of 1971 or 72, they might have let Ralph take it home for the holiday (or Ed might have “borrowed” it without permission). Of course the U-matic video (200 lines of resolution) would have to be copied to VHS, and then cropped by the wide-screen flat TV in Ralph’s house, so the image on the screen wouldn’t be all that sharp (unless there is a whole lotta digital signal processing going on in Ralph’s TV).
My own personal experience with U-matic: in the spring of ’72, I got to see the original version of what would become the movie “Groove Tube” a couple years later. It went around the college circuit on B&W U-matic video tape.
Now. You. Know. (cue echo chamber effect)
Most of the viable explanations for the VHS tape fall apart at the point where Ralph couldn’t afford to buy his child a bicycle.
That’s why I suggested Ed “borrowed” a recorder and camera belonging to the school district. Probably broke it in the process of returning it, too.
Ah, looks like we missed a BattyBlog™ entry for the next Funky volume.
https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/hey-kids-comics/
Wow, that’s a tough one. I mean, the initial thought is that it HAS to be his imagination, but it’s not like he shows that much imagination when actually writing his comics. On the other hand, unless he’s talking about the physical printing process, the books certainly aren’t getting better, so… I dunno, man.
Again, Batiuk just mimics things he’s read, without understanding them. “Culture lovers” sounds how Stan Lee would playfully address his reader base of 9-year-olds, before imploring them not to miss the next issue.
Reminds me of a comment i see on YouTube vids of an … nsfw nature: “Greetings fellow men of culture”
WHO IS BUYING THESE THINGS? SERIOUSLY?
AND HOW DO WE MAKE THEM STOP?
Judging from the Amazon sales numbers, almost no one.
Today’s Crankshaft
(Ralph inserts the VHS tape, and the TV screen shows a broadcast from Station Square in the year of 2001)
Dr. Eggman: I’ve come to make an announcement, Shadow the Hedgehog is a bitch-ass motherfucker.
(Ralph shuts the VHS off)
Ralph: DAMN YOU ED CRANKSHAFT!
Today’s Past Batiukverse Strip: February 3rd, 2004 of Funky Winkerbean
You know what’s NOT wonderful? LISA’S FACE IN PANEL 1 HOLY SHIT IT LOOKS HORRIFYING
Oh, don’t worry, Les. You’re so self-absorbed that a ninja could slice you in half, and no blood would get on the carpet.
Crimeny. If their eyebrows get any higher, they’ll count as back hair.
It’s like everyone had a face lift. Everything being lifted to the crowns of their heads.
Character #1: That’s an unusual looking chin cleft.
Character #2: That’s my belly button.
Those drawings are wonderfully exaggerated. The emotions are way too intense for the dialog, almost as if the artist is being sarcastic about the subject matter.
I’ve said in the past that I wish Jules Rivera would be the new artist for Funky Winkerbean instead of Mark Trail. This strip is close to what I think would come from that.
In today’s Crankshaft, I’m starting to think that parroting things without understanding them is Tom Batiuk’s entire approach to writing. He knows about five things that it’s acceptable to end a strip with, and one of them is “Oh, I sure do like my old things, yuk yuk!” All he has to do is land on one of those five notes and he’s done. And he doesn’t care how he gets there.
What’s worse is that the idea of Ralph hoarding old moving picture technology SHOULD work here. This is an informed callback, but neither TB nor Davis is willing or able to finish the job.
Ralph was once depicted as a serious cinephile. He used to own The Valentine theater, he ran ancient film projectors for so long that the community had to come together to buy him a digital projector when he could no longer get films on film, heck… he even had a big deal story around the turn of the century where he took his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife away from her living facility (without telling anyone) so she could come to New York with him and witness the auctioning of his classic movie poster collection.
The most effective way to make this callback would be with artwork, Ralph saying “are you kidding?” as he opens the door to a room full of old movies and video formats and memorabilia from his time owning the Valentine. But even simply mentioning his interest in movies and ownership of the Valentine would have strengthened the point because it isn’t immediately clear why Ralph, now a decade or so removed from relinquishing the Valentine, would own an old projector. “My father, John Darling, who was murdered” would have never become a punch line if it was only mentioned twice a decade.
Or, it could be a flashback, with images of the younger Ralph tending to the Valentine Theater and its various projectors over the years, before he opens his room of old movie hardware.
Ralph took his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife away from her living facility (without telling anyone) so she could come to New York with him and witness the auctioning of his classic movie poster collection.
My God. That may be one of the sickest things I’ve ever heard.
Well, they met and honeymooned in New York, so it was… sweet?
Maybe it was. But yanking an Alzheimer’s sufferer out of their environment is very much not sweet.
If Helen was in bad enough shape to need assisted living, she probably doesn’t even remember their NYC history, much less Ralph’s emotional attachment to cinema.
And I’m pretty sure that abducting someone from a full-time medical care facility is at least a state-level offense.
And for what? To watch Ralph auction his classic movie poster collection? When she barely remembers who Ralph is? This is sick. Sick. Sick. Sick. Sick. SICK.
Though this is apparently a state where the residents of an assisted-living facility can, all on their own, check out the home’s van without a chaperone and without telling anyone at said home where they’re going, so… yeah.
(Plus, have we ever seen a police officer other than Dick Tracy? There certainly weren’t any present for The Burnings™…)
Today’s Crankshaft
Day Four of Ralph’s Lost VHS Storyline, and I have no interest of following this
Today’s Past Batiukverse Strip: February 4th, 2014 of Crankshaft
Ha ha it’s funny because Max Axelrod wants Crankshaft’s team to lose and sent this dreary-looking blond waitress to feed the other team liquor
I recently retired from 45 years in retail management. She doesn’t look “dreary,” she looks “weary.” For 20+ years her scummy bowling alley boss has insisted she wear a push-up bra while serving garbage people. She smiles and jokes with the customers who tip. If she does that with this group of penny-pinching, vehicular-homiciding bus “drivers,” her tip is going to be a zucchini that Ed got from the rotting pile in his garage. She’ll down what’s left in their shotglasses, smoke a pack of unfiltered Luckies, find out she has inoperable lung cancer from her malpracticing doctor, then do nothing about any of it. When she dies, all alone–WAIT! Her attic’s got a whole longbox of slabbed, near-mint ACTION COMICS #1!! Les will somehow get them, become a billionaire, and whine at her funeral how there was that one time she didn’t ask him how his food was.
MERRY BATUIKMAS EVERYONE!
Today’s Crankshaft
Day Five of The Ralph VHS storyline:
(Ralph puts in another VHS, this time it shows a video of a twisted parody of Sonic the hedgehog killing Tails, Knuckles, Eggman and then some dude named Tom, Ralph scrambles to shut the VHS off but the Sonic-like figure breaks through the TV and snaps his spine(
Today’s Past Batiukverse Strip: September 19th, 1999 of Funky Winkerbean
ha ha it’s funny because Matt has CTE (QUICK DONT LET LES MOORE COME OVER)
Tom Batiuk is so close to having a point here. The competitive pressure of football forces people, as young as high school, into competition when they have serious neurological problems that require rest. (SEE ALSO: Tagovailoa, Tua). But it shallowly glosses over the problem it thinks it’s shining a light on.
The important thing, though, is that the whole football team shaved their heads in solidarity with Lisa…
Is that Matt Miller (#10) getting sacked in the first strip? And is he wearing #12 in the second strip? Love that attention to detail.
Once, when I played club lacrosse, we had to order (and pay for) our own jerseys. Mine initially came back with #29 on the back (my request) and #26 on the front. Maybe something similar happened here!
i think #10 is a different player, since Coach Bull wants to get Matt “back into the game.”
And you could have used your misnumbered jersey to your advantage. “Dammit, who’s supposed ro be covering #29?”
Ah, that makes sense. I thought the first strip showed Miller getting hurt — instead, it was meant to show his backup not playing well.
Remembering back… I think the guy that was #26 ended up with that jersey, at least for one game. I temporarily used someone else’s old one until a new #29 could be made.
The silhouette of Mooch’s mushroom head chatting up a girl in the background of panel 4 is a nice touch. I suppose it could be Durwood, but… nah. Mooch demonstrably had some game in Act II, Durwood has never had any.
Today’s Crankshaft:
(Ralph puts in ANOTHER VHS tape in, and it shows a video of Crankshaft blowing up multiple grills at once)
Today’s Past Batiukverse Strip: December 27th, 1998 of Funky Winkerbean
The Daily Bleak
Local Drunken Asshole Beats The Living Fuck Out of Fat Old Bastard Who Drives A Bus And Destroys Mailboxes
Ed Crankshaft: can’t read, but can figure out the movie jumbles quicker than the college graduate.
I’m just going to go ahead and assume this humiliation is what caused Funky to turn to alcohol. I don’t care if the continuity doesn’t line up, it’s my headcanon now. (It’s not like Batiuk cares about the continuity, either.)
And after SEVEN YEARS, Ralph STILL only has the framed picture of his son with his wife’s wallet-sized picture crammed into the frame. SEVEN. YEARS. (Not counting however long it was before then that he might have set up this “memorial”.)
JFC, Ralph, that’s just pathetic. Seriously. Les sticks a friggin’ SHRINE to Dead Saint Lisa right in his living room where his second wife has to see if every damn day, and you can’t even get your wife’s picture its own frame? I mean, you’re still not as loathsome as Les is, but you’re not doing yourself any favors here, bud.
I’m glad to be able to be here and say Merry Christmas to you all. Hope it’s good.
Quick question:I was reading the Funky article on Wikipedia on Wayback Machine edited pre-Lisa’s death,and it mentioned a storyline on Les trying or thinking about doing bad steroids to climb the gym rope. When it was edited,the thing about it was deleted. Do any of you know of that storyline? Even pre-timeskip,steroids don’t seem like something Les would try. Is it a made up storyline?
I have no idea if the “Les Takes Steroids” storyline actually happened
Yeah,it sounds fabricated. And Tom would’ve likely mentioned it.
Hi Alexa!
The ‘Les Does Steroids’ arc I think was a late Act I arc that was a mental fantasy on Les’ part. As in he didn’t actually take steroids, but imagined that he did.
MERRY CHRISTMAS ALL: Hope to get a Post Christmas But Still Festive post out before the weekend! Overdosed on cookies!
Just popping in to wish my fellow SoSFers a very merry Christmas and/or Holiday of Your Choice, and a mighty happy New Year. Long may our gracious hosts and snarkers continue their valiant efforts! They are appreciated. ❤️🎄
Today’s Crankshaft
(Ralph puts in another VHS, and it’s a recording of Crankshaft and Ralph talking about something while their children (Pam, Christine and Tim) and wives (Mary and Helen overhear)
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM SON OF STUCK FUNKY!
Today’s Past Batiukverse Strips: It’s A Wonderful Life….Kinda, Sorta (week of December 21st, 2015 of Crankshaft)
Ed: What did I die of?
Clarence Odbody: You were beaten to death by a mob of angry people, including Emily and Ameila’s mother, Grandma Johnson, and The Roughriders
I think that Ed being alive is the reason why Lena’s baking is so shit
If he died, then her baking would improve dramatically
Keesterman should sell most of those mailboxes for money
d
Ed: That’s it! No more going to the theaters after eating mushrooms!
Merry Christmas, everyone!!!
A widescreen VHS recorded in the 1950s, sepia-toned (ok, black-and-white, but close enough), three dead characters (two by Batiukcident), even a bit of that famous Funkyverse fuzzy circle fabric.
A Christmas treat indeed! No notes.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays you all!
Wait… Didn’t Ed flood the attic a while back? How did that VHS tape survive intact?
Merry Belated Christmas, everybody!
Timemop!
Or perhaps just a regular mop.
Either way, janitorial work was involved.
Happy Boxing Day, everyone!
Today’s Crankshaft
And so we’re back to Ed and Jeff watching football
Today’s Past Batiukverse Strips: Week of October 4th, 2004 of Funky Winkerbean
Les: It’s probably nothing, Bull. Besides, what’s the worse they can do?
Bull: Yah don’t understand, the people here have killed others for reasons far more stupid than THIS.
Hannibal Lecter: How ’bout we roast him alive and eat his corpse?
Proto-Cody: THAT’S A WONDERFUL IDEA!
Bill Miller (Matt Miller’s Father): HOW ABOUT WE PUT MATT IN THERE AND BURN HIM ALIVE INSTEAD OF MR. BUSHKA!?
Mister No-Neck: Let’s cut his head open and make him eat his own brain, like Hannibal did to Paul Krendler!
(Bull wakes up screaming)
Bull: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Re: Crankshaft, December 26 2024.
The next bowl game will be sponsored by Atomik Komix, called The Bowles of the Earth.
(See, it wasn’t a typo after all! Tom MEANT to spell it that way!)
Today’s Crankshaft
Pam: Dad, how are the Browns doing?
Ed: They’re getting fucked up by the Big Walnut Tech High football team, and Walnut Tech is ahead by 160 points and the Browns haven’t got any points. If you ask me, Walnut Tech are taking unholy amounts of steroids.
The old strips in the comments are fun but they certainly do jump around a bit. Are any of them anniversary strips? Or are we just going Feb 2004 to Feb 2014 to Sept 1999 to December 2015 to Oct 2004 for some reason?