Hope you all had an awesome Christmas and a beautiful Boxing Day. I had originally hoped this post would go up Christmas Day. But I let that dream die, as on a foggy Christmas Eve I sat alone at my kitchen table, building a massive wall of unfrosted cookies like I was running on a platform of Make Baking Great Again.
I spent Christmas Day being hostess, and the days following recovering from the insulin shock resulting from the three pounds of assorted baked goods I’d consumed all at once.
But, finally, a Funky Winkerbean Christmas post I’ve been baking up for a while.
WARNING: LES MOORE ARCHIVE APPEARANCES EN ROUTE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. THOSE WITH SENSITIVE STOMACHS AND WEAK CONSTITUTIONS ARE ADVISED FOR THEIR OWN SAFETY TO USE DISCRETION.
The very first Christmas after the time skip, we get a bit of, what my research indicates is, Batiuk-typical retroactive continuity.
Digging around as best I could in Act II, I saw no reference to this flat, flesh colored, giraffe of an angel ornament. I can only surmise that, after killing Lisa off, Batiuk realized that he’d failed to give Les and Lisa an easily inserted physical memento of their Christmases together.
Unless he wanted to dig out the soap snowman carved by a condemned man executed on Christmas Eve.
The angel ornament showed a couple more times early on in Act III, before Batiuk either forgot about it or lost interest.
I didn’t think too much of the weird, paper doll-esqe design of this ornament until flipping through my Volume 4 tome of TCFW, and this detailed closeup of an angel ornament caught my eye.
That is an awfully detailed bit of Christmas tat for Batiuk to be laboring over, back in the era when he was still drawing the strip himself. And in 1983, Fred and Ann were very clearly stand-ins for Batiuk and his wife. He’d go on to give them the same homes, same hair, same number and gender of children.
Taken together Les and Lisa’s and Fred and Ann’s similar ornaments were a big blazing sign to me that Batiuk was, once again, inserting objects from his real life into the strip. And, sure enough, a little internet searching, a few Ebay bids, and I’m now the cringing owner of these wafer thin, gold plastic, beauties.
Odds are, these were the first Christmas ornaments Tom Batiuk and his wife bought back in 1971. So of course he put them into the strip.
Banana Jr has spoken at length about Batiuk’s ‘fetish objects’. And when my partner in snark brings up ‘fetish objects’ I have always assumed (correct me if I’m wrong pal,) that he meant the old school anthropological definition. “material object regarded with awe as having mysterious powers or being the representative of a deity that may be worshipped through it,” or more generally “something irrationally revered, object of blind devotion.” I hope he isn’t imagining that The Phantom Empire has the same effect on Batiuk that bare feet on a hardwood floor have on Tarantino.
In one sense, I completely agree with him. Batiuk is obsessed with objects, with bringing things from his life into his comic strip, and imbuing those things with significance. But I differ from dearest Banana in another regard: I don’t see this as one of his flaws.
By populating the his strip with physical objects that come back again and again, with possessions that people prize, and community touch stones, and specific childhood memories, Batiuk gives his strip a sense of reality and tangibility a lot of comics lack. I mean, can you pick out the significance of any background object in Dagwood’s home? Sketch the layout of Irma’s restaurant? Imagine the voluptuous hermaphroditic masses of thighs and sneers in 9 Chickweed Lane existing in anything but a gradient void?
But all the background details copied from his own life are no replacement for good characters, strong storytelling, compelling conflicts. It is not that his world is too cluttered with ‘fetish objects’, it’s the way he tends to substitute these objects for real interactions and relationships between his insanely large yet incredibly bland cast.
But I’m not going to throw shade on Batiuk’s Christmas ornaments, any more than I’d throw shade on Sam Rami for putting The Classic and Bruce Campbell (The Other Classic,) in everything he directs.
And whereas the endless stream of Dead St. Lisa mementos got as old as the endless stream of plain old Dead St. Lisa, I’m never ever going to call out ‘material objects regarded with awe’ around Christmas time.
Christmas is the time where nostaliga isn’t only acceptable, it’s intregal. Christmas is the season where the distant echoes of the childhoods of generations past become your own memories. Where your own childhood reaches back through time and touches your parents’, touches your grandparents’, and they reach forward to touch the newest generation. Centuries of innocent wonder all reawakened at once. A story so often told in objects.
This goosefeather Christmas tree was a gift from an aunt to my grandpa when he was six years old. I saw it every Christmas Eve I spent at my grandpa’s from the time I was in diapers up to the year he died. I remember him telling me the story of receiving it. His childhood touching mine.
I found this Santa in a box in my grandma’s attic last year. Cupped hand still curled around a long lost Coca-Cola.
And I found this photo in a photo album, circa 1962.
This year I hosted Christmas in the house my mom grew up in. I spent hours unpacking endless boxes of Christmas tat and greeting pipe cleaner Santas from the 70’s and broken electronic reindeer of the 80’s as old friends. Revered items, given special significance because of what and who they represent. Reawakening a feeling of two thousand years of childhood wonder alive all at once, forever young and impossibly ancient.
I hope you all took joy in Christmas this year. That a song, or a movie, an object or a picture, made someone a child again in your heart.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I have a Santa Claus that hangs suspended in a hot air balloon, and you wind it up and it plays a Silent Night. I’ve had it since I was a small child. (I’m 58 now), and every year I look forward to digging it out of the box of Christmas stuff. Nice article CBH
A lovely reminiscence, CBH. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmastime, recalling good memories and making more.
Retcon or not, those strips with Les and Lisa’s first ornament work! They work because TB actually gave a relatable meaning to that particular fetish object. I agree that the issue is not really the objects themselves, but that he generally thinks just mentioning them is enough. It’s not. Neither TB’s life nor his work is the Marvel Cinematic Universe… we are largely incapable of having the context to understand his Easter eggs. We don’t need that context if he grafts meaning onto a fetish object (as with the Les-Lisa ornament), but he usually doesn’t do that. See the frequent references to Flash #123 for a major example. That comic book clearly means a lot to TB but he is never able to articulate that meaning into something the reader would care about.
He never quite got that objects don’t speak for themselves. That band box toy sort of does because I can see it appealing to someone but the rest? PFFFFFFFT>
Oddly enough, a novelty toy in For Better Or For Worse made the grade. People knew why Mike and his college roomie saw a grinning rubber homunculus as their futility idol.
I’ve always pictured Batty as a secular humanist/atheist type of person—and maybe this is a bad assumption on my part—and so I always found it strange that Batty did so many Christmas strips. Ok, he focuses on the materialistic aspects of it, but this is even more puzzling as he has such an axe to grind with respect to big business/ capitalism.
Thanks CBH for another great post. I have that same stuffed Santa out and sitting by my mother’s old menorah and my wife’s modern winter themed decorations. I suppose that makes as inconsistent as Batty and so I will give him a pass on his Christmas strips.
Happy 2025 everyone! What happened to 2024?
PS: Is everyone enjoying the current Mary Worth storyline?
“I’ve always pictured Batty as a secular humanist/atheist”
The only thing worse than letting politics on here would be letting religion in. I *am* a secular humanist/atheist, and I don’t identify with Tom at all. I picture him, like many Ohioans, as a bland Protestant. The “goes to church when the choir is playing at Xmas” type.
Why do you think he’s not? He not only clearly believes in an afterlife, but one where Phil Holt was literally resurrected from the dead. Just curious about the logic here.
(Don’t worry, I’m not one of those atheists who are like college students who just went Vegan. I’m fine with never talking about it)
I also lean secular humanist and in fact my wife and I were married by a secular humanist minister. I do hope I did not offend you or anyone else. That was not my intention. I would agree that talking religion can be worse than talking politics. To the admins: I inadvertently broke a rule with my original post. I will not be offended if it is removed and I will be more mindful in the future.
Nah, Rusty, You all good.
The Funkyverse deals with subjects of religion and politics at times, so discussing these things in the abstract is just fine. As is, as far as I’m concerned, people indicating what window they’re looking at things through. We just don’t want political or religious debates where people are trying to convert others to their worldview.
We’re a diverse bunch here. I wanna keep it that way.
To weigh in, I see Tom as nominally Christian, but almost resentfully so. Like he really wishes he could drop it.
He’s touched on subjects of belief before, giving Wade and Funky a big ol’ existential debate under the stars back in Act II, and has most of his characters pay lip service to a higher power, though you could argue it’s like Garrison Keillor in his Lake Wobegon stories, writing believable religious people, because it’s realistic to the location he’s writing for, while not being religious himself.
You summed him up better than I did. When Peanuts featured religious Christmas themes, they were believable and seemed much more genuine because Schultz would also call out all the commercialism.
Oh, I wasn’t offended. Just curious as to why you thought that.
To me, Tom’s opinions seem to be anodyne lip service, just trying to seem open-minded without offending anyone. Like the Gay Prom, that couldn’t even give the characters names.
If anyone should apologize, it should be me. In my post I invoked the Church Choir, and now we’re stuck with a week’s minimum of DinkeLilian.
”just trying to seem open-minded without offending anyone”, yeah that sums it up.
I just think Tom thinks he is too evolved for religion. And as for opinions, he just parrots whatever his KSU buddies think.
Yeah you jinxed us with the church choir. Recycling jokes is bad enough, but this whole church choir bit is ridiculous.
If anyone should apologize, it should be me. In my post I invoked the Church Choir, and now we’re stuck with a week’s minimum of DinkeLilian.
Apparently your repentance worked, because today we’ve got a lame strip starring Ed Crankshaft.
Yes! Dawn: “These are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others.”
JJ O’Malley wrote something along the lines of: The men who write this strip really hate women….oh wait.
Oh yes, Dawn’s principles will be whatever Dirk says they are.
I think Batiuk is what I call “nominally Christian.” He goes to church and takes his faith seriously, but it’s not a major part of his identity. He’s not obsessive about his faith, he’s tolerant of other religions, and he would never try to convert anyone. He may not even have a denomination beyond “Protestant.”
I think religion in the Funkyverse works exactly like this. Except for the weird obsessions with death fetish objects that introduce a sort of shamanism to it all.
As for Mary Worth, I’m saving my venom for Wilbur’s adventures in Florida. Yeah, the Dawn story is a dumb rehash of Wilbur’s South American romance scam adventures, and she deserves whatever mildly uncomfortable fate awaits her.
But I’m a Florida Man by birth. The idea of some smarmy L.A. advice columnist showing up and asking us to discuss our feelings about a hurricane that hit months ago seriously pisses me off. Anybody would tell that guy to go pound sand. Fat, balding, middle-aged men with mediocre rented convertibles and Stage 4 Dunning-Kruger Disease are a dime a dozen in Florida.
Today’s Crankshaft
Jeff: Isn’t his name Otto Graham?
Today’s Past Batiukverse Strips: week of June 26th, 2002 of Funky Winkerbean (strips 2, 5 and 6 are from the Toledo Blade) (Crazy proposes to Donna in a weird way)
Crazy: It’s for Donna, YOU DRUKEN, HOMOPHOBIC ASSHOLE!
Les: Just listen to him, Funky. Stop being such a dick.
Every time I see Rachel as blond in the strip, it hurts my soul
Funky: (laughing hysterically) THAT’S WHAT YOU FUCKING GET WHEN YOU GOAD FUNKY INTO PUTTING THE RING INTO THE PIZZA!!
Crazy: If you excuse me, Donna, I’m gonna have to beat the shit out of Funky AGAIN.
“Oh, Donna! What a lovely ring. Why is the diamond that color?”
“I pooped it after eating Montoni’s.” (holds hand with ring out; deranged look) “SHAKE ON IT?!”
“That thing was covered in Montoni’s? Gross!”
We might think that the objects are cheesy but they do tend to humanize him: he’s evangelistic in his desire to show us the stuff that appeals to him.
Thank you for the piece and for sharing those personal memories with us.
Regarding the fetishzation of objects, I think that there does need to be a distinction drawn between specific “unique” items which he owns or are particular to his own life in some way (another seasonal example would be the Firestone Christmas albums which have popped in either of his strips in years past), versus general items which are not individually unique but he hyper-fixates upon regardless (i.e., spinner racks, comic book omnibuses in general). This is necessary to illustrate why the latter’s type of reference and deference is less suitable.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
NO GOD PLEASE NO
NO
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
(that’s my reaction upon seeing Dinkle in today’s strip)
Today’s Past Batiukverse Strip: September 1st, 2002 of Funky Winkerbean
All I wanna know is HOW DID THEY MANAGE TO GET THE ENGAGEMENT RING OUT OF DONNA
Harry: The good news is that these three doctors named Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard immediately performed surgery on her and managed to get the ring of her stomach. The bad news is that they managed to put all of the surgeon tools inside of her for some reason and now she sets off the metal detector every time she sets foot near one.
Paging Doctor Howard, Doctor Fine, Doctor Howard. Spinning Three Plates. Boogly Woogly. Azarka Flash. And as always, James Bisonette.
(Fans of a certain YouTube channel will get the reference.)
CBH, I simply adore your photos and family stories. They’re certainly far more interesting and heartwarming than any of the glurge TB’s dished up in the last couple decades.
In addition to being in awe of your sweet stories of fingernail-thin Christmas ornaments and memories of beloved elders, I am also in awe of your (dare I say it?) Mitchell Knox-like dedication to FW memorabilia. Those ornaments — what a find! And speaking as someone who remembers 1971, though only somewhat vaguely: They’re hideous, perfectly exemplifying a certain faux-folk style of the early 70s. But it’s that very hideousity that makes them so striking.
I agree with you re: the fetish objects. And I agree that the strips about the ornaments actually do work. That’s because they have a universality. Pretty much everyone in the world has some beloved holiday tradition attached to some object. It’s very easy to identify with the emotions someone has around a treasured Christmas ornament that reminds them of holidays past.
The problem occurs when the fetish object doesn’t have a universality. Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts are both brilliantly written, of course, but they also have an emotional head start because they feature objects that anyone can identify with: A stuffed animal and a beloved blankie. FW has… a spinner rack.
Unlike a beloved Christmas ornament, a stuffed “best friend,” or a security blanket, a spinner rack evokes no deep emotional response in 99.999% of people. Now, a better writer could bridge that gap. A better writer could make that spinner rack take on a huge significance. A better writer could make your heart ache and break for that spinner rack and the men who love her. But TB is not a better writer, and so we are bored and baffled by the fetishization of what, to us, is a rusty and useless old store fixture. Especially when other significant store fixtures — the entire interior of Montoni’s, for example — are disposed of without a thought.
Keep these stories coming, CBH. You’re great at tying them in with FW lore — but honestly, they stand on their own as lovely blog posts.
Good news on the Crankshaft front! The dreaded Slough of Unsnarkability is behind us now. Welcome back, Dinkle, you loathesome prick! And there’s plenty to snark on already, viz.,
What are the old biddies doing in these choir robes that makes them need replacing every couple years? There are probably choirs out there still using robes from 1983, but St Spires has to replace them bi-annually.
I assume they’re conducting Black Masses on solstices and equinoxes, and assorted significant holidays. Last Samhain was quite rainy, so the robes got muddy, and some of them got singed by the bonfire and candles on the points of the pentagram. Plus, there was quite a bit of blood from the goat that got sacrificed. OxyClean can only do so much.
And on a related note, who is Batty writing for here? People who are active in churches or choirs probably know that poker games would be frowned on as a fundraising technique, if not downright illegal, since they constitute gambling. Some church folk might even find the very suggestion offensive. School band people can hardly identify with this milieu of aged folk, all vocalists.
Who identifies with anyone in this strip? Published authors with lots of book signings for their adoring public?
I was a record store manager in the 90s, so the last character I identified with was Chien. In fact, change her height to 5 feet and make her passion animal rights, I worked with her. And…it shames me to say…at first I identified with Les.
The bullied nerd, sure. But that was Les 1.0, not Les4S (Smug, Smirky, Smarmy, Self-obsessed). Who can identify with a strip filled with Toms, Tom worshipers, and I guess Ed? Maybe that’s why he’s phasing out Ed. He is NOT of the tribe!
But I’m sure we all can relate to having the world handed to you, and all your actions never having consequences. Those are his characters now. Might be easier if 90% of them had personalities beyond “WATCHA DOING DAD” but Tom doesn’t have that much imagination, or even empathy, to write them anymore. It’s Toms, all the way down.
What are the old biddies doing in these choir robes that makes them need replacing every couple years?
What, has everyone forgotten the Dinkle porn movie parody arc?
Oh, the choir doesn’t need new robes. It’s just that Harry firmly believes Churches Are For Choir Fund-Raisers, which is the title of the new book he’ll be signing at Lizard Lil’s bookstore next weekend.
Speaking of objects, I never noticed the worried look on the face of that Santa cookie in Funky as clutches until tonight. I can almost hear him wail, “He’s eating Frosty and next he’s gonna eat me! Oh my god!”
I can’t believe I’m typing this, but: Where’s Dinkle? I guess Sunday was just a one-off. Back to the Unsnarkables (aka Grade D Crankshaft gags).
I suppose I should just be grateful that we won’t see Les dancing with Ghost Lisa on New Year’s Eve.
Back to the Unsnarkables (aka Grade D Crankshaft gags).
Oh, today’s Crankshaft strip is eminently snarkable. It embodies two of Batty’s most endearing traits:
First, the third panel takes “tell don’t show” to a new height. All he had to do was show the mailbox dangling at an angle, held up by only one screw, to show us that Ed screwed up. But no, we had to have no change to the mailbox art, and a word cloud telling us he stripped the screw. This is true dedication.
Second, Batiuk doesn’t do jokes; he de-constructs the entire structure of a joke. The second panel’s line about giving it one more turn “for luck” is a classic setup for a third panel punch line like “I didn’t say it brought good luck.” But Batty doesn’t do jokes, so the third panel is a damp squib.
When Crankshaft was Crankshaft (vs FW Act IV), setups were followed by punch lines, and visual jokes were drawn. Not anymore. The metamorphosis continues.
His “punchlines” are turning into “statements of fact”. What’s funny about “Shoot! I stripped it!” or yesterday’s “I took that as a yes!”
Today I read an article about Netflix leaning into “casual viewing.” You have the TV on while you do chores, paying half-attention to the show. So, instead of characters smashing something to show they’re angry, they yell “I’M ANGRY!” The actors are basically all narrators, so you don’t have to watch the actual show. If you’re a woman in the Funkyverse, just play Netflix and keep hand-washing those dishes!
Yes, they’ve embraced “Tell, Don’t Show”! Tom should get a show! Who wouldn’t watch “Funky: The Dead Lisa Show”?
(Everybody. Everybody wouldn’t watch it. Well, except us)
I read Puff Batty’s blog posts detailing Timmy’s Christmas Wish, Parts 1-9. It’s still on the front page of the BattyBlog, in case anyone missed it. In it, Ralph Meckler reminisces about the bike his long-dead son Timmy once wanted for Christmas. He buys the bike and puts it under his tree, where he beams at it, accompanied by the ghosts of Child Timmy and the late Mrs Meckler.
This came so close to being a glurgy, but effective arc. As many have mentioned, Christmas memories are a powerful emotional pull already, and this arc plays well off them.
But… what happens to the bike after this? Why didn’t he give the bike to some Timmy-like kid who’s still alive, whose family can’t afford a bike? Why not give it to St Spires and ask them to anonymously donate it to a needy family in the parish? Maybe, for extra glurge points, even say, “Donated by (or ‘in memory of’) Timmy Meckler”?
Does anyone remember if we ever saw this bike again? Or was seeing the bike under the tree the end of the arc?
I think the bike eventually wound up in the basement of the Alamo.
Thanks for notifying us about these Batty blogs, Drake. I often forget TB writes blogs like Timmy’s Christmas Wish. It’s not all John Darling (Who was murdered) reprints and comic book covers.
———————————————
I kind of feel bad for TB sometimes. He writes these blog posts for the alleged benefit of his new Crankshaft readers yet fails to mention his website. There’s no mention of the website in the panel margins of the comic strip, and TB fails to provide any “elsewhere on the web” links on the GoComics Crankshaft “About” tab. How are his Crankshaft readers on GoComics supposed to learn about these blogs? Cosmic awareness? Word of mouth? Has anyone here ever read a comment in the GoComics discussion where somebody posts, “Hey, everybody. Tom Batiuk wrote a blog about this story arc on TomBatiuk.com”?
Check out any GoComics title. Almost every active title has at least one “elsewhere on the web” link.
He’s a nowhere blogger, writing his nowhere blogs for nobody. I don’t know why this bugs me, but it does.
Off-topic: I found the real-life Keesterman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzuf8UpC4Tg
And when (Banana Jr. 6000) brings up ‘fetish objects’ I have always assumed that he meant the old school anthropological definition. “material object regarded with awe as having mysterious powers or being the representative of a deity that may be worshipped through it,” or more generally “something irrationally revered, object of blind devotion.”
Yes, that was exactly what I meant. I probably should have clarified it more, since the word “fetish” is rarely used in the non-sexual sense nowadays. I was imagining a primitive religious token that purports to put the living in contact with their deceased forebears. Like a little wooden artifact you’d find in Uruk.
All those Uruk statues look so shocked all the time like, “MFW: Ea-Nasir sells me some really shitty copper.”
Today’s Crankshaft
Aaaaaand we’re back to Crankshaft (Fuck you Dinkle, I never wanted Crankshaft to end 2024 on a Dinkle strip anyways)
Today’s Past Batiukverse Strip: April 25th, 2004 of Funky Winkerbean (from the Toledo Blade)
The Daily Bleak
Eighteen Year Old High School Student Punches School Computer In A Fit Of Rage after Being Relentlessly Tortured By It
It is not that his world is too cluttered with ‘fetish objects’, it’s the way he tends to substitute these objects for real interactions and relationships between his insanely large yet incredibly bland cast.
This is precisely my real problem with the fetish objects. They don’t enhance the story; they replace the story.
Yes, sometimes they are used correctly, as in the “our first Christmas ornament” example. Or they help establish the metro Cleveland setting, like with the 60s kiddie TV hosts we saw in the Mitchell Knox arc. And if Batiuk wants to use his real-life starter home as a stand-in for Pam and Jeff’s, fine.
But Batiuk abuses the privilege. He spends way too much time making his characters obsess over objects only he cares about (spinner racks, The Phantom Empire), and invents new fetish objects when he needs them (Lisa’s bird feeder, the Montoni’s sign).
I recently heard something about “nice guys” that made a lot of sense. They’re modeling the real world as if it were a video game. Dating sims, or any kind of video game where you have to build relationships with NPCs like Fallout, basically make you do this. You improve your relationship status by giving gifts and doing tasks, which makes them like you more, and new paths open up to you. This is basically what Batiuk is doing with the fetish objects. If Les wants to mope about Dead Lisa for a week, he invents a new object to center it on, and does the ritual with that object. Batiuk doesn’t know the difference between the object and the emotion it represents. He also doesn’t realize people will evenually see through this.
And the ultimate fetish object was Lisa herself. I don’t think she and Les even liked each other that much. It was a marriage of convenience. Other than his obsessing over objects, when do you never get any sense that he even misses her? He sure doesn’t listen to her when she manifests himself into reality.
That’s a really good question re: Lisa. None of the iterations of Lisa ever seemed “real,” other than maybe the first, high-strung, bossy, insecure one. A cardboard cutout of a character that embodied whatever traits Bats wanted her to, based on his whims of the week, was never gonna be part of a realistic relationship.
Lisa was sort of a half-assed Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a character who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.”
Only, of course, Manic Pixie Dream Girls are usually fun and cute. Was Lisa ever either? And what did she ever do for Les, other than confirm his sexual (🤢) desirability (🤮)? He seemed like an uptight nerd before Lisa, and a prissy jerk after Lisa.
Well, she certainly wasn’t consistent.
I’ve said before that Batiuk completely missed Lisa’s best story; explaining how she went from the ugly, neglected, hyper-anxious abuse victim of Act I to the smooth, urbane lawyer of Act II. That’s one hell of a reinvention. Law isn’t a field for shrinking violets, she was shown to be a poor student, and how the hell did she pay for law school anyway. On Planet Batiuk, all character development magically happens off-panel. Just take his word for it.
I also like your Manic Pixie Dream Girl comparison. Epecially in light of how this archetype is basically just a new type of romantic target for men.
Yep, that really should have been an amazing transformation story that would put David Goggins to shame. But, hey, “it’s called writing.”
Despite this miraculous blossoming that changed her face, her body, and her entire personality, Lisa still shares one trait with the classic Manic Pixie Dream Girls — she has no inner life, no plausible motivation that would drive her to glom onto the gormless dork. She has all the well-rounded personality of a girl in a pøʀnó, and exists for the same reason: shallow wish-fulfillment.
And look, I don’t personally care when writers write their shallow fantasies. Women do this too, with ridiculous bodice-rippers in which a spirited wench tames the wild pirate king into domesticity. That’s fine, only pøʀnós and bodice-rippers don’t expect to take bows for their sensitivity and feminist bona fides, and they certainly don’t feel salty that they were unfairly deprived of Pulitzers.
It started really early, I think. He acted like he was undergoing withdrawal pain when his funny books were late.
I hope everyone had a marvelous Christmas.
What a lovely blog, CBH! I especially enjoy you sharing your family history with us — it certainly brings back fond memories. I particularly recall the times when I helped my mom make Christmas cookies. It was an annual tradition. She would make sugar cookies from scratch and top them with a confection sugar frosting. We had a half-dozen Christmas-themed cookie cutters to choose from. After baking, the cookies would be stored in a Tupperware container on top of the breadbox. Throughout the holiday season, I would sneak a couple of cookies now and then. Just like Funky, I could never take only one.
This Christmas was quite lonely for my husband and me, as our son’s family chose to celebrate with his wife’s parents this year. Living far from relatives makes the holidays especially tough. Unfortunately, no family members or friends accepted our invitation to spend Christmas with us, and we didn’t receive any invitations ourselves. While we did share Christmas Day with some friends, the overall feeling was rather lonely.
For some reason, this year, I feel especially melancholic about the artificial Christmas tree my family used when I was growing up. Our tree, which dated back to the 1960s, consisted of a two-piece wooden pole inserted into a tree stand, along with branches of various sizes that had metal ends painted in different colors. The tree came with instructions on the box, detailing where each color row of branches should go. There was also an evergreen garland to place around the pole as we finished each row of branches. We’d drape the tree with lights, a tinsel garland and dozens of ornaments. Some of the ornaments were hand-made. Others were antiques handed down through a couple of generations. Some were gifts from friends and family.
As my brothers and I grew older, our enthusiasm for putting up and decorating the tree dwindled (typical teenagers, right?) and Mom didn’t want to do it by herself. Eventually, no one wanted to put the tree up, and we decided to do without it. Mom and Dad gave it to the church bazaar before they sold the house. As an adult, I really wish I had that tree now, along with the decorations and lights that went with it.
My husband and I bought our own Christmas tree, along with lights and ornaments, but it’s just not the same. The tree is collapsible and can be set up in just a couple of minutes. The lights are already attached, so we only need to wrap the tinsel garland and hang the ornaments. Most of the ornaments are identical. It’s a nice tree, but there’s a lack of nostalgia. Where are the ornaments we made in school and Sunday school? Remember those God’s-Eye ornaments made with yarn and popsicle sticks? It’s strange that our son never made anything for our Christmas tree.
I’m kind of tearing up over that stupid old tree right now. I hope some nice family is still using it.
i had a similar experience this year. I moved away from my hometown, and I lack any childhood Christmas objects to have a connection with. It got a little melancholy.
I have been off work since December 23rd. My husband and I discussed a few activities we could do during our break, such as going on a road trip, visiting downtown, watching a movie in a theater, or exploring a museum. However, we’ve been feeling a bit apathetic about it all. We even made plans to tackle some projects around the house, like painting my husband’s study. After six years of living here, the walls are still pink because it used to be a little girl’s bedroom.
We’re attending a New Year’s Eve party this evening, but neither one of us is really looking forward to it. Aging-couple holiday ennui bites.
Christmas can be melancholy, here’s hoping your next is merrier.
Some of my favorite things to do around Christmas don’t involve tons of people. I love looking up old Christmas shorts on YouTube that I watched as a kid. Driving through Christmas lights displays with a pal. Watching RedLetterMedia complain about the Star Wars Holiday Special again. Listening to A Christmas Carol read by Patrick Stewart.
One thing I highly recommend if you’re spending Christmas Eve alone, and if you’re at all nominally religious, is finding a late night Christmas Mass. I’m not Catholic, but I love sneaking in for a Midnight Christmas Mass at a big old church. The music is usually great, the sermons short, and Catholic Churches kind of expect that sort of drop-in rando traffic, so you don’t get too many stares.
At one point, my family changed the Christmas celebrations to both the Eve (not Hill) and the Day. (Not Daniel Day-Lewis)
Since I worked retail management, for me the Eve was out. Just as well! By the end of that shift, all I wanted was to have my cats in my lap.
The rest of my (nominally) Catholic family would go to midnight mass. They’d gather around 6 for alcohol. The main meal wouldn’t be served until 9. By midnight…Eh, maybe all that booze on an empty stomach was poor planning? They did this until 1 Xmas day, and half the crew of 16-18 was hungover from the night before. They spent the morning sleeping in my sister’s house–Just stay home, why even GO? My sis & BIL were not happy about all the time and money they’d spent on a brunch that was just wasted.
But that wasn’t why our celebrations then became just on the Eve. They had loudly laughed and joked and GOTTEN THROWN OUT OF MASS. Mass has bouncers?! Even my atheist ass never got itself booted from the Lord’s House.
“Oh Lord, forgive me, for I’m gonna HUUUURL” (hoo-WALP)
I’m not saying to not go to Midnight Mass. Just Mass responsibly.
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
I can almost smell the cookies baking.
We had real trees into the 1960’s. Then we got the aluminum tree with rotating ground light. It was glorious. I had 3 brothers and 2 sisters. We took turns rubbing our feet on the carpet, and touching the aluminum tinsel. Arcs! Arcs of ferocious static electricity. Marvelous. Over and over we shocked ourselves. But then my oldest brother got a wild hair to shock us! Why is that more painful? Yet it was! But he moved on. It seems rubbing your feet on the carpet, and then touching the TV rabbit ear antenna provided even better shocks.
My true joy was watching the rotating light changing the tree’s colors. I was hooked. To me it was better than watching TV. We had a nice picture window, so inside or outside, I loved my aluminum tree.
Happy New Year. From now on you have a standing, faux invitation to spend Christmas in Missouri that you may enjoy and refuse at your leisure.
Carry on Wayward Son!
My grandmother had an aluminum tree with a color wheel, too. Those must be worth some major bucks nowadays. There was no tinsel, and the only ornaments on the tree were a couple dozen identical raspberry-colored, nylon-covered, spherical ones. We used to just stare at the tree and color wheel, instead of the TV, too*. It never occurred to us to try electrocuting one another.😂
* Grammie hogged the TV, watching the news, her soaps, and Lawrence Welk. At least in New Hampshire, there was usually a lot of snow to play in at Christmastime.
Thank you for the standing, faux Christmas invitation. Some Christmas, we may faux show up on your porch unannounced.
You know why aluminum Christmas trees suddenly disappeared in 1966, right?
I do not know
A Charlie Brown Christmas.
That TV special turned aluminum Christmas trees into a symbol of tackiness and commercialism. Once that show aired in 1965, nobody wanted them anymore. Only now, 50+ years later, have they become a bit acceptable (especially for people who can’t easily acquire a genuine tree every year).
Which is interesting to me because I imagine Tom Batiuk fantasizes about his work having this kind of impact. I’m sure he’d like to take down reality tv and incorrect comic books all the other things he hates. Charles Schulz slaughtered an entire product line without even trying.
Thank you. That does surprise me!
I can’t resist a comment on the first FW strip you posted, and the pure, white-hot, unadulterated hate in Funky’s eyes in P3. The whole strip gives me a Pluggers vibe.
Once upon a time, I was introduced to Pluggers by Josh at the Comics Curmudgeon, who snarked on it often. Back then, it was drawn by the very capable Gary Brookins, and hadn’t quite run out of material yet. Yes, I know the material is purportedly user-submitted, but it’s gotten excessively repetitious, to the point where there are only a few main topics:
Those topics are all really one topic: Pluggers have unhealthy eating habits, are obese, and suffer the expected problems.
Someone being enraged because another person questions his cookie eating habits is very on-brand for Pluggers. In fact, my Unifying Theory of Legacy Comics is that almost all comic strips that endure for a sufficient amount of time will eventually come to resemble Pluggers.
#6 could have been “Return to #1, repeat.”
Blondie has been around since the Roosevelt administration (the FIRST one), and has like 6 jokes as well.
1: Dagwood has a tapeworm!
2: Dagwood runs into the mailman!
3: Dagwood’s neighbor has his tool!
4: Dagwood’s boss is Hitler, except ANGRIER
5: BLONDIE BE SHOPPIN’!!
6: Oh, the tapeworms? They give Dagwood the narcolepsy. The dreams–the horrible nightmares! Some horrific little demon child haunts him! It is…ELMO. You don’t wanna be tickled by this lawn gnome.
And, okay there’s others, like Car Pool in a TinyTykes Coupe, Blondie’s deli…bakery place thing, and…Okay, there weren’t 6, it was 8.
Rating: *****! “I mightily guffawed upon perusing Blondie’s gay antics! BULLY!” –T. Roosevelt
The ‘irony’ is as old as time: Pluggers want to be heard but they have nothing to say.
Today’s Crankshaft
Pam: Dad, what are your resolutions?
Ed: To destroy more mailboxes than I have for the past two years and kill that Harry L. Dinkle bastard.
I’d like to know what this is all about. I noticed a new webpage for Funky Winkerbean “merch” on TomBatiuk .com. The search for Funky Winkerbean merchandise on the the CafePress website shows no results.
Did CafePress dump several boxes of Funky Winkerbean merchandise on TB’s driveway?
Lisa logo merch? Helmet haired Les? Thin Funky? How old is this stuff?
From Batiuk’s blog:
Over the years, I’ve had a lot of requests for t-shirts and other merchandise. I was always hesitant but in 2023 I finally relented and introduced some Crankshaft merch — I was thrilled with how well those t-shirts and aprons went over.
Oh, blow it your ass, Tom. You didn’t resist merchandising your strip for decades like some fount of moral purity, and then yield to crass ommercialism at the last minute. Those t-shirts on this blog date back to Act II, and we saw them on this blog before 2023. On top of that, Funky Winkerbean was pushing band room posters and “Dinkles” shoes in the 1980s, and Crankshaft merch has been around for awhile.
This is a great example of Tom saying what he thinks people want him to say, as opposed to how he actually feels. I’m sure he’s aware of Bill Watterson’s legendary aversion to merchandising Calvin & Hobbes, and wants to be seen as of the same artistic caliber. But, like I said, FW had been commercial for decades. Nobody would be offended about TB hawking a few t-shirts — especially as much as he hawks his FW books.
Man, hard to believe it’s already been two years since Funky ended.
(Probably because Batiuk hasn’t gotten the memo that the strip got canned and keeps sending in Funky strips instead of Crankshaft. Or whatever it is he’s doing.)
But much thanks to all the SoSFers (especially CBH and BJr6000) for keeping this place alive. We stand in line!
HAPPY 2025, EVERYBODY!
Today’s Crankshaft
ha ha it’s funny because the Cleveland Browns suck (in the Batiukverse)
A happy and healthy 2025 to all!
I think I dropped a turd of a Christmas post, but maybe I forgot to press send. No great loss.
I love your photo essay, Harriet. I love the family photos. I love that you purchased those ornaments. I first thought of Akron’s favorite artist, Don Drumm, when I saw the illustration. I like the fact that the plastic ones go perfectly with my harvest gold kitchen appliances and orange and yellow linoleum.
https://www.dondrummstudios.com/search?q=angel*&type=product