Happy Anniversary, Funky Winkerbean!

102 thoughts on “Happy Anniversary, Funky Winkerbean!”

1. Happy early (by a hour) 53rd anniversary, Funky Winkerbean!

2. Well put, my co-captain in critique!

   Say what you want about Funky Winkerbean, (and we’ve pretty much said it all over the years and then some,) there is nothing quite like it.

   Happy Anniversary, Tom!

3. “For its first 20 years, Funky Winkerbean was a snarky lampooning of life in high school and beyond, long before the word “snarky” was even invented.”

   In fact, the word “snarky”, in its adjectival form with present meaning intact, dates from 1901. “Snark” (to find fault with) can be traced back to 1882.

   I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be snarky about the word snarky!

   1. I posted a correction. Fortunately, Pardon The Interruption has a mechanism for that kind of mistake.

   2. Didn’t Lewis Carroll go hunting for one a few years earlier?

      1. Yup. The Hunting of the Snark dates from 1876. But the Snark isn’t defined in the poem as anything other than a nebulous monster — some have feathers and bite, and some have whiskers and scratch. Other characteristics of Snarks are their flavour (“meager and hollow, but crisp”); their nocturnal habits (waking near five in the afternoon), and their ambition. The Snark dislikes jokes, especially puns, and likes bathing-machines, carrying one wherever it goes. The particular Snark being hunted in the poem turns out to be a deadly “Boojum”.

         Though attempts have been made to link them. Carroll’s “Snark” appears to be etymologically unrelated to the development of the words ‘snark’ and ‘snarky’ in their modern contexts. Carroll’s “snark” is a portmanteau of “snake” and “shark”. The modern usage of “snark”, meanwhile, appears to derive from the word having originally been used as a near-synonym for “snort”; the word “snark” evolved to take in the source of the contemptuous sound, or the type of remark that was its equivalent.

4. As I see it, he succumbed to a bullshit mentor.

5. Tumbleweeds “detritus”? Heresy! I held it in high regard as a 12 year-old. I had an order to reading the comic strips by those I liked best. Peanuts was always first, then Funky Winkerbean, then Tumbleweeds. Tumbleweeds was my Bronze Medal winner. Then again, we subscribed to the second-string newspaper in town, so it only had half the comic strip offerings.

   1. Yeah, there were probably better candidates for the label ‘detritus.’ Crock and Momma come to mind. But it had to be a strip from the 1972-1991 window, and those were the best/worst two I could think of. I didn’t want to hit an easy target, like Mary Worth. Drabble was another candidate, even though I liked Drabble and also Kudzu at the time.

      But you’ve got to admit: in an age where “Cleveland Indians” doesn’t fly anymore, the Poohawk Tribe realllllllly doesn’t fly.

      1. >But you’ve got to admit: in an age where “Cleveland Indians” doesn’t fly anymore, >the Poohawk Tribe realllllllly doesn’t fly.
         Yeah, they went the way of the Hekawi tribe from F-Troop.

   2. Much like Crankshaft, Tumbleweeds also spent many years being penciled by a guy named Davis. Not sure if he was tracing the previous guy’s artwork…

      Speaking of, who the heck did Davis trace to put this face on poor Rocky? Dean Acheson?

      

      1. Billy:

         After Dean Acheson left the State Department, he wrote a memoir called Present at the Creation.

         It won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for History.

         Make of that what you will.

6. Today’s Crankshaft

   And now we shifted to Crankshaft and his bus buddies

   (Meanwhile, Les comes across a pod, which contains a redhead robot that used to be Gevo, before being converted into an android by his father after Gevo died during Goku’s rampage against the Red Army during the events of Dragon Ball (classic))

   Future Trunks: If he sets that android free it’ll be the end of all of ussssss!! (transforms into his Super Saiyan Rage form) NOOOOOOOOOOO!!! (blasts a ki blast at Les)

7. A new “Match To Damp Squib” is up!

   Thrill to the riveting saga of Dan, the mountain climber who will not shut up about his ideas for Funky Winkerbean! Dan sees his ideas come to fruition … and proves that all you need to do to get Tom Batiuk to write whatever you want is to trap him on a mountain and then harp on about your ideas for 14 days straight.

   1. That story shows how easily manipulated Tom Batiuk is. Batiuk was right in the first place, when he said the Kilimanjaro story simply didn’t work with his characters. Having them win a contest was a trite contrivance. Especially when Les Moore has more contest wins than I’ve had hot meals. And the prize was way too expensive to be available in a small-town, save-the-high-school-sports-program raffle. And a teacher at that school winning that prize would be highly suspect. But the real genius? He gave Batiuk an excuse to draw a comic book cover!

      1. Tom had his revenge on Dan, though, by making him the designated doofus. Uh, “thanks”?

         I love the quote though: “Who was the original guy who did that strip?”

         Someone with a sense of humor, Dan. Wonder what happened to him anyway?

         1. Someone with a sense of humor, Dan. Wonder what happened to him anyway?

            Details are sketchy, but he fell off Kilimanjaro on Day 15. The only witness said a Yeti gave Dan cancer because he didn’t like komix.

      2. Turns out he can’t tell stories about the genesis of stories either. So Dan inspired him to use two of his main characters in a story arc? Wow, how revelatory. Too bad Dan didn’t suggest writing jokes, or coherent stories with actual beginnings, middles, and ends.

         I had to go back and review 2012 after this, and wow, that sure was a busy year by FW standards. Kilimanjaro, Les re-marrying, the gay prom, the basketball championship, Cory enlisting, Crazy losing his job and ending up at Komix Korner…that’s more than happened in the next ten years combined. I mean, what happened between 2013-2022? Bull died, Les won an Oscar, Morty used nicotine to cure Alzheimer’s, Mason married Cindy, and that was pretty much it.

         At the time, I hoped that maybe Les leaving Lisa’s annoying picture on the mountain would pretty much lay Lisa’s Story to rest, after his downright heroic five-year victory lap. Like, you know, he’d stop with the Ghost Lisa stuff, and do more arcs about life with Cayla, and coping with Summer going to college, and so forth. Ha. It was just another Batiuk juke, as he had plenty more Lisa in the tank. VHS tapes, diaries, TWO Lisa movies, and Lisa’s Story successfully detecting a young actresses’ breast cancer and literally saving her life, as she simultaneously portrayed Lisa in a movie AND developed “feelings” for Les. So Lisa wasn’t finished at all, not by a stretch. I was wrong about Batiuk so many times, and it still frustrates me to this day. It’s just impossible to totally fathom that thought process.

         Like that new blog post. It’s words, presented in a readable manner, yet it’s almost like a foreign language. It’s a breathtaking display of jibber-jabber, and I feel like I know LESS about this Dan guy and Batiuk after reading it. His writing erases thoughts you already had. I really don’t know how he does it, or why he squandered this gift on nonsense like comic books or that horrible bus driver. He should be in politics or shilling crypto or something.

         1. His writing erases thoughts you already had.

            Epicus, that is the best description of Puff Batty’s writing that I’ve ever read, and I say that as someone who’s spilled thousands of words trying to explain exactly what is wrong with his blather. His writing is like a blender for thoughts. A few coherent ideas go in, you press “Batiukize,” and ten seconds later, it’s a chunky slurry with only tiny, mangled bits of meaning left peeking out here and there.

            1. In my opinion, the best way to read one of TB’s blogs is translated from Batiuk to English by AI.

               My prompt is simply “Please translate the following into a more easily readable dialog:” along with a copy and paste of TB’s blog between double quotes. Works for me. No headaches, no mind wandering, and I can stay awake.

         2. Everything he writes is in the format “and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened,” like a third-grader’s book report. He has no concept of how events in a story can have themes, impact characters, or embody literary techniques like foreshadowing, allegory, or irony.

            Batiuk wouldn’t be any better at shilling cryptocurrency, because he also has no concept of style. Even his blog posts and newsletters (which I subscribe to, because I’m a glutton for punishment) are like this. It tries to make a narrative out of everything, even though these things should be brief, terse statements. This failing shows up in his work, in things like news stories. He can’t even imitate the style of a news story. Not even for his “Hicks Nix Sex Pic” jokes, where imitating the style of a news story is central to making the joke work.

            Batiuk trying to shill crypto would be “You should buy crypto like I did! First, I went to coinbase.com, and logged in with my password, which is an obscure reference to the 19th comic book I ever read (but I’ll never tell!) Then, I reviewed prices, and clicked on Purchase. I checked my balance, to make sure it was enough, just when my wife walked in with tasty watercress sandwiches, which were made with some leftover sourdough….”

            Everything is a string of irrelevant anecdotes, with the extremely important anecdotes surgically removed. Such as, what crypto coin he’s buying, and why.

            1. The crazy thing is, BJr6K, that your anecdote, while suitably rambling and full of irrelevancies, doesn’t come close to the Full Batiuk. I’m quite sure he’s not schizophrenic, but his prose reminds me of the word salad you sometimes get from people with schizophrenia. A sentence will start promisingly, and then you realize you’re listening to a lot of English words that almost make a sentence, but the syntax is frayed and un-cohesive. I’m convinced it’s virtually impossible to imitate — and I’ve tried. I can get the tone, and the ramblingness, and the constant touching on the obsessions with Comix, Lisa, etc — but I can never nail down the syntax that feels like a swaying footbridge that’s falling apart even as you desperately try to run to the other side.

            2. P.S. It’s called writing.

            3. @Drake If I may paraphrase Dilbert: “His problem isn’t that he doesn’t write clearly. It’s that he doesn’t even think clearly.”

               I can imitate Batiuk’s pretentiousness, “and then this happened” style, constant parenthetical asides, and his need to make everything about his pet subjects. But I can’t think like he does. (Which is honestly reassuring.) He writes with a purpose; it’s just impossible to comprehend what that purpose is. It’s like he’s running on a different operating system.

            4. Perhaps you’re right, and his baffling, psychotic prose simply doesn’t translate into any other sphere, at all. It’s just remarkable how he can write so much, and still have it mean less than nothing. I mean, like his fifty-two word word balloons that don’t advance the story he’s telling in any way whatsoever. Or multiple paragraphs about some guy who convinced him to use characters in his own comic strip, that he’d been writing for forty years at that point. No one else writes like BatHam writes, and I don’t think anyone could, no matter how hard they tried.

8. I’ve referred to us snarkers on the GC comments as “bitter exes.” “Yeah, we were in love. Then they became this narcissistic, praise-obsessed monomaniac, spending our grocery money on omnibuses. They changed. For the worse.”

   This might be outside of our rules, but my schaden is freudeing pretty good:

   “chief tommy  about 3 hours ago

   OK all you misanthropic complainers (JJ, Where’s , Bill etc ) you win. I am so disgusted with your constant sniveling whining cajoling criticisms that I am no longer going to follow Crankshaft on GoComics. Enjoy your hate filled rants for the rest of your lives. Oh, and wait until Trump crashes and burns as a coup de gras to your pathetic lives”

   Bill being Thompson, I assume. They always accuse us of being the angry, hate-filled people that they reveal themselves as. Dude: Just Don’t Read The Comments. I’m not sure where this new “And you LOVE TRUMP!” thing came from, maybe like DonkeyKong1, they’re Canadians, a group famous for their…highly…volatile tempers? “Eh?” Just weird. Blue Bombers fans after 1 Molson Golden too many?

   All the unprovoked bile that’s spilled in the GC comments comes from the pro-Cranks. They never say what they like about Tom’s latest slice of stale pumpernickel. Just vent about “How DARE you not like something I do! You should not exist!” like a 15 year old boy who freaks out when you say “Nah, I really don’t see the majesty of Great White’s music.”

   Like all “I’ll NEVER shop in this store again!” types, he’ll come back. In the meantime, all one can say is

   “Clever LOL drink cyanide”

   1. To paraphrase Groucho Marx’s reply to an ad campaign for Chill Wills during the 1961 Academy Awards, “Dear Mr. Chief Tommy: I am delighted to be at least partially responsible for your GC exodus but I voted for Kamala Harris.”

      1. For those curious, it is a funny story:

         https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-jan-06-la-en-archives6-2010jan06-story.html

         If Chilly Willy had won, it would’ve been Tom’s first donated Oscar! Tom, or Frances the Talking Mule.

         Let’s keep politics out of this, but I don’t think anyone of either party voted for ketamine-addicted chainsaw Nazis flouncing around in belly shirts. And I really like Canadians! PROOF: “The woodchuck is a terrestrial, day-active animal, and a denizen of snowy climes.”

         1. There’s a rainbow in Toronto

            Where the Maritimers are bold

            They always get a pot-full

            But they never get a pot of gold.

            1. Yonge Street! Woooo!

            2. “Sure, h-I’m a nuke-lee-arr phys-a-sist. But hi got myself a job settin up the bowling pins at the ‘Azelton Lanes! One hun-dard Canadian smackers a week, my friend! And dat’s cash on the barrel’s head. Strictly hacross the board!”

   2. “Bitter ex” is a great analogy. Specifically, we’re the kind of bitter ex that warns others that our ex is a complete psycho, and to stay away. Tom Batiuk talks a big game about humor, drama, storytelling, and awards, and we once believed it. But we now know what he’s *really* like: selfish, egotistical, self-deluded, and obsessed with unimportant things. He’s basically what Les Moore or Cindy Summers would be like as a romantic partner. The *real* problem is their toxic personality.

      The Funkyverse’s online defenders are more like your psycho ex’s friends, who will blindly defend that person despite their obvious awfulness. As for the common accusation that we’re bitter, angry people: I think the contents of this blog, and its discussion area, belie that. We all get along, we all like each other, we all adhere to the forum’s rules, and we all treat each other (and even the occasional defender) with respect. We all give the comic strip credit when it’s warranted. We’re all smiling, joking, and having fun here. I wouldn’t want to spend so much time here if it was really the toxic hatedom that people accuse it of being.

      I’m probably the nastiest person here, so much so that I sometimes attract non-random downvotes. And I’m capable of stepping back for a moment. I try to be fair to the work, and I’m also making an effort to dial back my vitriol a little. And I do really believe Tom Batiuk deserves the Gold T-Square Award, because, as I said in the OP, he’s almost earned it twice now. I can say that, while also illustrating how much his work sucks.

   3. A “coup de gras”? Is that some kind of bariatric surgery? Maybe it describes the medieval tactic of pouring cauldrons of boiling oil on attackers laying siege to a castle. A new deep-frying technique?

      I must say these GC commenters are quite esoteric with their insults.

9. Lisa killed Funky Winkerbean. The teen pregnancy arc was the beginning of the end. It unfolded gradually, but that one became the template. The worst part was, by panel two of the story, it was painfully obvious how it’d go. And then you had to wait MONTHS for that very thing to happen, which it did. And TomBan was absolutely enamored, and thus began his quest to do it over and over and over again.

   1. I caught more feels from that “Mom takes Holly to the Prom” arc CSR posted last time, and that wrapped within a week. Man, those were the days.

   2. That rings of truth. A friend of mine complianed a few weeks ago about Robin Williams and “Good Will Hunting.” While he thought Williams was good in it, after winning the supporting actors Oscar for it, there was a lot of awful movies where he took himself way too seriously. Man of the Year! What Dreams May Come! Jakob the Liar! Bicentennial Man! At least he bounced back. I suspect something happened with TB once he decided he would write serious stories instead of trying to make us laugh.

      1. Those movies weren’t entirely Robin Williams’ fault, though. Yes, they were roles he probably should have passed on, but I don’t fault him for trying. Mainstream Hollywood movies, even ones with powerful actors and directors, have a lot of people making decisions. (Which is reason #73 why Les Moore’s Oscar was so much horseshit.) Sometimes they just don’t work out.

         1. LOL Les’ Oscar. Les befriends a troubled ingénue who’s playing his dead wife in a movie, and she’s so grateful for the opportunity to know him that she gives Les the highest honor an actress can receive, just as a show of gratitude. AND he accepts it, keeps it, and actually displays it in his home. No one else could have written such a thing. No one.

            1. “73 Reasons Moore’s Oscar Was Horseshit” may become an SoSF post someday, if only to prove that I can list 73 different reasons for it.

            2. “73 Reasons Moore’s Oscar Was Horseshit”…I’d be mildly surprised if you ONLY came up with 73. The weird combination of unsubtle wish-fulfillment and outright idiocy made that one pretty tough to swallow. Les keeping the Oscar, AND displaying it, remains unfathomable to me. I mean, if I helped Eric Crouch change a tire, and he came by and gave me his Heisman Trophy, I’d be more embarrassed for him than anything else. And I certainly wouldn’t display it. The trophy, I mean. The embarrassment would be tough to hide.

               And on top of that, Les was well aware she was kind of a naive, over-sensitive dolt who clung to older male figures to compensate for the paternal support she lacked. He also knew she was a cancer and wildfire survivor too, and likely wracked by PTSD. And he let this kid…his daughter’s age for crying out loud…just give him her Academy Award. It’s almost predatory.

            3. And Les gives perhaps the MOST punchably smug Les face (and that’s saying A LOT) when he accepts it, as if he did anything at all to earn it.

               (Of course, there’s the fact that Academy rules specifically state that a recipient CANNOT give away or sell their award without first giving the Academy the opportunity to buy it for $1, yet Marianne announced DURING HER ACCEPTANCE SPEECH that she’s going to give it to Les, and no one stops her as soon as she steps off the stage to point out that little clause in the contract. But quarter-inch blah blah blah.)

      2. KMD,
         I always read your comments. I am going to politely disagree with the evaluation of
         *What Dreams May Come*. I like the actors in the movie. I enjoyed the plot. (Some backdrop: just before this movie came out, one of my dear coworkers died. We had spent many hours discussing philosophy and life’s choices. So the movie hit hard. It also didn’t help that my friend looked almost exactly like the actress playing the wife, Annabella Sciorra.
         I especially liked the artwork in the movie throughout the film. Bright. Vibrant. Flowing. But then. Dark. Moody. Judgment. Lifeless. Hope!
         Finally, the double D caught me offguard.
         I guess to be fair to you, my friend KMD,
         Movies are like spouses, to each their own.
         I enjoy you.

         1. Very kind of you, and I have always enjoyed and learn from your comments. Admittedly, I saw the film on a bad date many years ago, so I might be a bit harsh on it. I’ll have to rewatch it when I have a chance.

      3. Comic actors tend to want to Be Taken Seriously. Comedies don’t win Oscars! Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters followed up The Jerk with Pennies from Heaven. It was set during the Great Depression, which is apropos as the depression you feel while watching it is great. And yet the studio promoted it as The Jerk: The Sequel. It had the most customers demanding refunds of any film that year.

         1. It’s been the same with everyone. “Wait? I’m to be known as the guy who ‘makes people laugh’? No. NO. I want to be known as the guy who ‘makes people THINK’!” Laughter wins no awards. Tears win them all.

10. Just curious about the header graphic:

    ESPN interviewed Tom? I know little about sports, but I’m going out on a limb and guessing viewers were more interested in “UCONN/’NOVA.” And…Beck? The “I’m a loser” Beck? What was this weird show?

    1. My post was in the style of an ESPN show called Pardon The Interruption. It is noteworthy for inventing, or at least perfecting, the “obnoxious sports columnists yell at each other” format that is now central to all televised sports. (SEE ALSO: Smith, Stephen A.)

       This was not a real segment of the show. The presence of Funky Winkerbean in the image was a Photoshop edit by me, of an image depicting the show’s visual layout. However, the show does acknowledge random pop culture events sometimes, so the premise is plausible.

       If anything, I want to punch the whole thing up a little. I don’t like editing blog posts for that reason, but there are a couple of glaring improvements I could make.

11. Yes, happy anniversary indeed. I’ve had so much fun here for so long — and on CK before I came here — that I can only thank Tom for all the years of snark fodder.

    AND I legitimately, totally unironically enjoy the “Classic Funky Winkerbean” strips every morning on GoComics. They’re fun, and often quite clever. If they’d run in the papers I read when I was a kid, I would have been an eager daily reader.

    It’s clear, though, that the requirements for a Gold T-Square go beyond just having spent 50 years as a pro cartoonist. I don’t know what they are, but per the National Cartoonists Society’s own website:

    “The Gold T-Square is awarded for 50 years as a professional cartoonist. So far, four have been presented: to Rube Goldberg in 1955, Mort Walker in 1999, to Arnold Roth in 2018 and to Garry Trudeau in 2020.”

    I know there are more than 4 people who have been professional cartoonists for 50 years. My wild guess would be that the recipients have to be both well-liked and considered important contributors to the field. “But Mort Walker!” you say. “What was his contribution?” Perhaps he helped others get established in the cartooning biz, or made some other contribution beyond just his strips. Has TB ever schmoozed with other newspaper comics folks? I suspect not, and I suspect that he will always hold newspaper comics in contempt as a poor cousin of COMIX, and that attitude is probably noted by the National Cartoonists Society.

    1. You’re probably right that Tom Batiuk isn’t good at winning friends and influencing people, which is always a factor in these things. But the Gold T-Square is exactly the kind of award you give to the less talented, less beloved members of your society. It has a clear, objective requirement, and isn’t a real endorsement of the artist or their work. Awards like this are useful organizationally, for combating accusations of cronyism.

       The Gold T-Square Award is so perfect for Tom Batiuk, that I wonder if my lobbying for it on his behalf is a backhanded compliment. I don’t mean it that way. Whatever the unwritten requirements are, I think Batiuk has done more than enough to earn it. Like I said in the OP, he’s actually going on *100* years of cartooning, if you sum the number of years in each individual strip he’s had. And Comic-Con liked him enough to give him an Inkpot Award, so I don’t think giving him a Gold T-Square is giving him any undue credit. Producing a comic strip for a lot of years is the one thing the man excels at.

    2. It’s remarkable to me how little interaction TB apparently has with other folks involved in newspaper comics, even dating back decades. He did not participate in the big 1997 April Fools Day comic strip swap, for example, and nearly all of the forewords to his Complete Funky Winkerbean volumes have been written by comic book industry players rather than comic strip peers.

       I don’t know if this is because he is disliked by other comic strip folks or because he doesn’t really make an effort to interact with them, but TB is clearly something of an outsider among comic strip creators and I’ve long thought that to be an odd thing.

       1. He seems to look down on comic strips, thinking I guess that the art form isn’t worth of his talents. He rarely talks about any other strips, and when he does it’s usually with a bit of disparagement. (There was one strip he liked that he kept posting tiny un-readable reprints of in his blog–“Ripples”? But that seemed to be more because he had discovered it when everyone else had forgotten it.)

          Comic books, on the other hand, are what human civilization has been building toward since the first caveman scrawled a piece of charcoal against the cave wall.

          1. Ripples was a proto-Funky Winkerbean, complete with three acts. It was good for awhile, then it stopped being good, then it got absurdly self-absorbed. There were a bunch of stories about an artist and his friends, who would snub people if they didn’t show him the proper respect (even though these were usually reasonable reactions to the artist’s obnoxious behavior). It’s not hard to see why Batiuk loves it.

    3. For Mort Walker, there are the strips, of course — strips that were enormously popular and influential in their time. But he also founded the National Cartoon Museum, wrote the (humorous) reference work The Lexicon of Comicana, which codified several comics terms and tropes, and wrote Backstage at the Strips, a history of cartoonists. So there’s a fair bit of service to the industry as well.

       1. Slight correction–“Backstage at the Strips” is more of a memoir of Walker’s own career than a general history. It’s a very good book–I have a copy of it somewhere.

    4. Also, it’s up to five now: Bill Hinds of Tank McNamara was given the award in 2024.

       1. I thought that strip ended about 1982.

          1. To me, Hinds winning the award boosts Batiuk’s case. I mean, sure, there’s simply no way Batiuk is in a class with Rube Goldberg, Garry Trudeau or Mort Walker in terms of popularity, societal impact, importance to the medium, etc. No way at all. If they won the T-Square and Batiuk didn’t, it’s only fair to assume there’s more to the award than simply length of service.

             But Hinds’ Tank McNamara probably had roughly the same level of impact and popularity as FW. It’s a sort of low-level impact … neither strip was ever a cultural phenomenon (or even a brief fad). But both properties had decent-sized readerships of non-ironic followers, and both strips were generally regarded, at their respective peaks, as good at what they did.

             For Hinds to have gotten the T-Square award the very first year he was eligible — and for Batiuk not to have gotten it three years (and counting) after his eligibility? We’re looking at one of two things here: either it’s a deliberate snub … or Batiuk hasn’t paid his society membership dues.

             1. Batiuk is absolutely being snubbed. The Gold T-Square is basically a Lifetime Achievement Award. By its nature, it won’t have rigid requirements. And there isn’t any limit on how many can be given. They also tend to be given out hastily, because the recipients tend to be quite old.

    5. The one thing that might be keeping Batiuk from the Golden Square is that from about 1994 on he hasn’t done the pencils on any of his strips. I don’t know how they’re measuring ‘cartoonist’, but in some senses he hasn’t done any cartooning except doodling Funky’s face during book-signings for 30 years.

12. Today’s Crankshaft

    Day 2 of the Bus Driver Levy Or Something

    This week has been boring

    1. Unusually, this “random jokes” week appear to be moslty be taken from actual story arcs. We’ve had the police going to Crankshaft’s house, Crankshaft at the doctor’s office, Komix Korner, and two “school levy” jokes. What’s tomorrow going to be, a witty remark about Lisa’s bird feeder? An excerpt from the interminable Batton Thomas interview?

       1. Like “Poker in the Church”? That had no punchline, clearly seemed like set-up for a week, then stopped after a single strip.

          It’s like he’s cleaning out his junk drawer. Part of the reason I thought the strip would end in 2024 was “Dinkle and Mason Score a Movie.” It had a strip with 3 Barlow puns. Wouldn’t he normally use those for 3 separate strips? Why’s he cleaning house?

          I know we’re getting a wedding and a Blue Bombers game this year. Will the arcs be 4.5 months each?

13. Good afternoon everybody! Thanks to the Daily Cartoonist, here’s a sneak peek at the new look GoComics website.

    I’ll be glad if GoComics reopens the comment section of the political cartoons. Hopefully, the people who need to constantly bring up political issues in the comment section of comic strips I read will do so elsewhere. Even better would be a Disqus-like tool to block certain commenters.

    GoComics is raising the annual subscription price. That makes me wonder what the free subscribers will be giving up. The pessimist in me refuses to believe that it’s nothing.

    1. I’m a free subscriber. I guess I will find out on the 1st.

       1. I have been both a free subscriber and a premium subscriber. I canceled my GoComics Premium Member subscription because I didn’t believe the difference was worth $19.99.

          According to a premium subscriber I know, a premium subscription will soon be $34.99.😬

    2. Be Ware of Eve Hill,
       You have at least 2 major gifts:
       1. You are a supreme networker.
       2. That flows into your strengths as a researcher.
       I was dreading the coming change on GC. I thought I would be kicked off as a free reader.
       Now to be honest, I only read 4 comics daily:
       😀Crankshaft
       😃Pearls before Swine
       😄Alley Oop
       😁Pooch Café
       Then occasionally I follow Luanne when MSN gives a 2 week catch up.
       But that’s it for GC. You have reassured my mind that any changes do not seem to have me in their crosshairs.
       But I may have to give up CK completely. *Mary Worth* is graphically showing Wilbur’s lovemaking. I wish I was joking. I can’t do nausea 🤢and vomiting 🤮 every day. A man can only take so much.
       Blessings to you. Keep up that Research.

       1. Thank you, SP. Reading comic strips is one of my primary sources of entertainment. I read scores of GoComics titles every day. I though some people here might like to know what to expect from the upgrade.

          As stated in my OP, I’m really concerned about discovering what the free subscribers will lose. The ability to save favorites; i.e., no more daily feed, so I have to read the titles one-by-one, like on ArcaMax? Will the free subscribers lose complete access to the archive? Limited to only two weeks or a month? No more emails featuring comic strips sharing a similar theme from GoComics? No access to the GoComics blogs?

          I’m also fairly concerned about this “modernized commenting platform.” I really hope it’s not OpenWeb. There’s no better way to ruin a forum. Ask any Comics Kingdom reader.

          I read three of the four titles you listed. What? No Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, or Wallace the Brave?

          No Crankshaft or Funky Winkerbean?😱 Turn in your snarkers badge at the SoSF front desk.

          Luann? Ew.

          Mary Worth? You’re a lot braver than me, McGee. The only serial comic strip I read is Mark Trail, and that’s only because of The Daily Trail blog.

    3. If the new GC update makes the website like CK (paying to look at the strips), then I’m leaving the website

    4. PLEASE bring the political comments back! I only ever looked at them hoping to answer “What’s this guy on about? Why does the cartoonist want me mad?” But Crank had a character called “the Mayor,” and instantly the screaming started. PRO-Trump, that time.

       So, if I “hate” CS, I’m pro-Trump? If I “love” CS, I’m…pro-Trump? (shrugs) Let these people scream at each other in private.

    5. Hopefully, the people who need to constantly bring up political issues in the comment section of comic strips I read will do so elsewhere. 

       I doubt they will. The people who feel the need to state their political opinions in a comment on “The Wizard of Id” do so not because they lack forums elsewhere, but because they believe their opinions are of such value that everyone, everywhere must be made aware of them, and made to value them as they do.

       1. Plus, let’s not forget that there are some somewhat unbalanced commenters who like to bring up politics to “punish” or rile up the people they don’t like.

          We’ve had experience with that on this very site.

       2. I agree somewhat, but I’m not referring to these random stray commenters on Crankshaft. There are communities of frustrated political commenters who used to almost comment exclusively on political cartoons. These people know one another from years of confrontation and have developed an adversarial relationship. So much so, that if they see their hated rival commenting on an innocuous comic strip like Phoebe and Her Unicorn, they’ll start an argument that sometimes lasts dozens of comments. Does a political argument really belong in comic strips like Phoebe and Her Unicorn or Fred Basset?

          The political commenter seems to be a migratory species. For example, at one time, there were over 200 comments daily in the comment section of Mallard Fillmore on the Comics Kingdom. However, a few years ago, the Comics Kingdom decided to create a kinder, gentler, and “less toxic” environment by implementing a new commenting platform with much stricter moderation. As a result, many of these commenters left Comics Kingdom for a new home on Mallard Fillmore at ArcaMax. Today, the comments on Mallard Fillmore at ArcaMax number 385, while the comments on Comics Kingdom have dwindled to just 23.

          FYI, I read Mallard Fillmore on the CK when I was a premium subscriber. Mainly in an attempt to pad the number of titles I read to make me feel I was getting my money’s worth. The discussion there rarely had anything to do with that day’s cartoon.

          If GoComics reopens the discussions on the political cartoons, perhaps these people will take their garbage elsewhere and leave my titles alone.

          1. I was fascinated for a brief time a decade or more ago reading the CK comments to Mallard Fillmore, a curious artifact of its time if there ever was one. There were clearly two warring groups of commenters, pro- and anti- duck groups if you can imagine such a thing. And they had only the most tangential interest in the day’s strips (such as they were). They would mostly post links or headlines from recent ‘news’ to try to ‘get’ the other side, then go back and forth yelling at each other in replies.

             I suspected it was a vaguely generational thing but it could have been two groups of warring Boomers; or perhaps some young anti-Duck activists sticking it to ‘the man’–the pro-Duck contingent definitely being aging boomers. (Of course how young could readers of daily comic strips be?) The old saw “Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small” comes to mind.

             Anyway it was relentlessly mean-spirited from both sides and for a while i couldn’t look away. I had hoped they all migrated off to the big leagues of twitter eventually but I guess not.

14. I think we all have our favorite “bad” movies. Not “The Room” bad, but just something you enjoyed that most of the world didn’t.

    Mine are: Quiz Show, which think was very underrated and got lost in a sea of great movies that summer. Michael Caine movie The Swarm, which is closer to so-bad-it’s-good but I found it oddly compelling. Starship Troopers is a brilliant stealth parody that gets better every day. And the John Lithgow spacewalk scene in the otherwise forgettable 2010 is one of the best movie scenes ever made. Great sci-fi, great special effects, and pants-shittingly terrifying

    1. That was supposed to be a response to sorialpremise. Hello, SP!

       1. Banana Jr. 6000,
          Hi! Back my friend.
          I don’t know if I am sophisticated enough to have films I like, to be so bad they are good. I guess my guilty pleasure film would be *Rat Race* 2001. It actually had actors such as Rowan Atkinson and Whoopi Goldberg whom I normally avoid, but were hilarious in this film. It gave my family a catchphrase: “That can’t be good.”
          My second choice is *Dude! Where’s My Car?*
          Another brain dead movie that trips my trigger.
          I enjoy you, BJ.
          We gotta quit meeting like this.
          Let’s do CBH and steaks🥩!

          1. I enjoyed Rat Race, though I wouldn’t call it a bad movie at all. It had John Cleese in it, which pretty much forgoes any accusations of badness. (Note that the thankfully abbreviated fifth season of Monty Python did not have him.) Which reminds me of Mouse Hunt, with Nathan Lane and Lee Evans, which I thought was genuinely enjoyable. Meatballs is a dumb but underrated early Bill Murray movie; you can see that he’s cracking up the rest of the cast.

             And yes, there is a whole class of movies that are dumb as hell, but we love them anyway. My favorite dumb movie is Strange Brew, which my younger brother and I watched continually on our fancy new VCR in the early-mid 1980s when we were kids. One year, decades later, he gave me a copy of it as a Christmas gift. I played it, and I thought: “we used to like this? This movie’s dumb as hell.” Charming, but dumb, despite its roots in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. So take off, you hoser.

             UHF is another movie that aimed at dumb and hit the bullseye, though it stands out nowadays because of how good-natured it is. And for giving us early peeks at Michael Richards and Fran Drescher.

             I’m also a fan of The Fifth Element, just because I love how self-aware it is. That movie shows up and says “Hi audience, I’m goofy as hell, but if you’re okay with that I’m actually a lot of fun.” It also has Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Milla Jovovich, Deebo from Friday as the president (which is hilarious by itself), and the aforementioned Lee Evans. Whose best role was in There’s Something About Mary, of course.

             Americathon and Stay Tuned are dumb early 1980s movies that ended up being a lot smarter than they looked. Death Race 2000 and Network too, though nobody ever thought Network was dumb. Holy cow, did those two movies predict the future.

             I suppose Beavis And Butt-Head Do America also qualifies as dumb, though dumb is pretty much their medium. That also had Bruce Willis in it, plus Demi Moore and Robert Stack. If it’s possible to be self-aware by not being self-aware, Robert Stack pulled it off here as well as he did in Airplane! Which is a whole other category of dumb movies: the brilliantly dumb ones, like the Naked Gun series.

             Don’t you live around Kansas City? If so, I’m not that far from you. It’s always great to hear from you. Cheers.

             1. Banana Jr. 6000,
                Yes. I am in the Kansas City Metropolitan area. That’s why I mentioned ComicBookHarriet. She’s just north and west about 4 hours. She can grill steaks, and I hear her Ma taught her to make pies! All we have to bring is our appetites. 💝

             2. Next time I’m in Kansas City for a Royals game I’ll have to let y’all know. Don’t know how we’ll do steaks. 😀

             3. ComicBookHarriet, Banana Jr. 6000,
                There is a Longhorn Restaurant just north of the stadium in Liberty Mo. on 152 hwy. They can satisfy even an Iowan appetite.

             4. Another bad movie I should mention is Burn Hollywood Burn: An Alan Smithee Film. The entertainment value is in how hard it tries to be funny, and how badly it fails, despite the involvement of many funny people. The movie looks like it was shot in one weekend, while the entire cast was huffing a drug that destroyed their ability to give a shit. Except for Ryan O’Neal, who appears to be trying to win an Academy Award. It’s a serious challenger to the The Wiz, in terms of “how did this many talented people make something this bad?”

             5. Banana Jr. 6000
                billthesplut
                Be Ware of Eve Hill
                Anonymous Sparrow

                BJ 6000 •Nothing But Trouble•. Starring Demi Moore, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, John Candy, Shock-G, Tupac, Money B, Fuze. Brian Doyle Murray. Directed by Dan Aykroyd. This is my candidate for my worst movie of all time. So bad it gets worse. It should have been a comedy masterpiece, but it is not. Gross, disgusting makeup. You can almost visualize the drains sucking the comedy right out of the film. It is racist. White criminals are disposed, but a black rap group acting much worse are rewarded. To be fair, Digital Underground is the best part of the film. One of the few times Tupac is recorded on film. But why for this movie? The film saved its worst bit for the last scene. Dan Aykroid’s nose turns into a penis. I might have said “Spoilers”, but better I issued a warning. So bad. Not good. Yet…as Anonymous Sparrow would tell me, it’s somebody’s favorite film. Be Ware of Eve Hill, please tell me that is not you! billthesplut, you would succeed marvelously as a film critic.

             6. I remember Nothing But Trouble because of the Digital Underground, one of the few rap/hiphop groups I ever got into. Mostly because they’re hilariously filthy. I think I saw Aykroyd defending this movie recently, but… yeah, it’s bad.

    2. The Swarm is one of a tiny amount of “movies so bad, they’re good.” Meaning, unintentional comedies that don’t know they’re comedies. And you do not want to get me started on it!

       Here I am, starting: The greatest line in film history came after a big scene fighting the Africans. (Killer bees, but the movie insists on calling them that. Even if it meant someone yelling “Soon, all the Africans in Houston will be DEAD!”) The bees are coming for Houston, and General Richard Widmark’s plan is…wait for it…To open all the windows on the skyscrapers, let the bees fly in, then shoot them with flamethrowers!

       Mayhap you can see the slight flaw in this plan. It’s “using flamethrowers indoors.” This goes on for a solid 5 minutes, then some Flamethrower Einstein yells “THE BUILDING’S ON FIRE!” Wow. Law of very intended consequences there.

       But that is not the Great Line. Looking at the flaming nightmare that was once a city, the general intones “HOUSTON–on fire! Will history blame me–OR THE BEES?!”

       Did the bees come up with the flamethrower plan, fathead?

       1. I found The Swarm more silly than funny. The movie was so chock full of bad ideas, in the plot and in its own creation, that I genuinely wanted to know how things would turn out. There was this tedious sub-plot of a love triangle between two older men and an older woman. They get on a train for some reason, and the train gets attacked by bees, and all three of them abruptly die. After the movie spent way too much screen time on their story. When the movie’s one scientist decided to test the antivenom on himself, I wondered if he was going to accidentally kill himself, and start the next random crisis. Now THAT would have been funny. There’s a message in the end credits where the movie basically apologizes to bees. And there was a pregnant woman, because there’s always a pregnant woman.

          And the movie is so convinced of itself. If you gave Ed Wood or M. Night Shyamalan a huge budget, a boatload of stars, and Tom Batiuk as lead scriptwriter, The Swarm is what they’d come up with. I’m shocked it was never on MST3K. Maybe the long list of high-paid actors made the rights too expensive.

          1. Maybe the long list of high-paid actors made the rights too expensive.

             I question how much it cost in 1978 to hire Fred MacMurray, Patty Duke Astin and Slim Pickens. Maybe not even Henry Fonda (this was a few years before his comeback in On Golden Pond). Maybe Michael Caine, and if they paid him a roll of quarters they got their money’s worth. There are movies where he acts at the same level as Dan Davis draws. This was a few years before he’d say about Jaws: The Revenge: “I haven’t seen it, but I have seen the house it bought my mother, and it’s marvelous!”

             SILLY, you say?! Yes, the bees derail a train (technically, a bee does, as it scares a man eating an apple who flails around and hits the “Train Go Fast!” switch). But they also wipe out a flower festival, shoot down 2 helicopters, take over a nuclear missile base, invade a nuclear power plant and make it explode in a mushroom cloud, killing 36,422 people as we’re instantly told. That’s not silly, that’s a quarter inch from reality!

             If you want to read my take on it:

             http://www.thoughtviper.com/tricklobster/theswarm.html

             Caveats: It’s long, as I talk about every scene; it was written in 2002, so you’ll get dated references (including one in the 1st sentence); and: If it sounds blatantly ridiculous, I’m exaggerating for effect, or I very much am not. Such as: Technically, the bees do not detonate the atomic plant. That’s done by Richard Chamberlain’s ass. He passed today, and I doubt any obits are going to mention The Swarm.

             1. I’m writing a Chamberlain obit right now for the movie blog I contribute to. You can be darn sure I’m mentioning The Swarm as well as The Towering Inferno.

             2. You can be darn sure I’m mentioning The Swarm as well as The Towering Inferno.

                Then mention that he’s actually good in it! He tries, up until he decides to join Bradford Dillman’s rebellion in clearly making fun of the movie’s weird “Accent Drift” thing. Which is the funniest part of the movie. Well, besides “Indoor Flamethrowers.”

                And, umm, another caveat I should’ve remembered about my review–There’s a Boston phrase that was pretty common in East of the River New England 25 years ago that is now pretty bad. It meant “laughably stupid” then, but it started with “wicked re–” so yeah, that’s as a best a defense of THAT shit that I can manage.

15. I would like to ask that all political opinions be kept out of the comments here. No matter how benign you might think they are, they aren’t. They never are.

    1. When I said “bring the political comments back,” I meant on the political cartoons. Maybe people will leave the regular strips alone. I don’t need to hear them in Crankshaft. (I was trying to respond to Eve’s comment about the upcoming GC changes, but hit the wrong button)

       1. There seem to be a lot of people who are kinda… broken, maybe permanently, and who can’t discuss a damn thing without dragging politics into it. I encounter them IRL too. Talk about their azaleas? Turns to politics. Talk about the new restaurant on the avenue? Turns to politics. The weather? Politics. New haircut? Politics.

          That’s one of the things I come here for. A discussion that (I hope) doesn’t have to turn to politics. And that’s why I don’t bother with GC comments. If I want a political firehose of moronic bumper-sticker “hot takes,” there’s always X (and please let’s not derail into a discussion of X). There are plenty of places to spew hot takes to a willing audience. And I resent being beckoned into a space like GC, hoping to talk about a comic strip, and getting trapped in a hail of furious, spittle-flecked political screeching. It’s a bait-and-switch.

          So yet another space online is on my “fuhgeddaboudit” list. I don’t expect the GC redesign will help any.

          1. There seem to be a lot of people who are kinda… broken, maybe permanently.

             This is my opinion about a lot of things.

       2. Yup, politics is very important. If you have a strong stance about the way you think the world should be I enthusiastically encourage you to go out there and get involved and make your voice heard.

          But not here.

          Here, we can only bring up politics when we’re pointing and laughing at Batiuk’s own milquetoast soapboxes.

16. Today’s Crankshaft

    And now we’ve shifted gears to the Dale Evans diner

17. Today’s Crankshaft (The Last Sunday until the Looming GC Overhaul)

    Not gonna lie, it thought it was Mopey McMopester in the first few panels instead of Crankshaft

    1. Yeah, it took me a couple reads to piece together what was going on. This is apparently Ed Crankshaft dealing with nighttime noises at various stages of life. It would have worked a lot better if the “younger Ed” drawings reflected things we know about him, like his baseball career. Or if every male character didn’t look basically the same.

18. FYI, some slight delays on the next post. I’ve been working on a deep dive on a fan favorite character in Act II, and Banana has gone full Bard of Hilarity on The Burnings. I hope to get the first installment of my series out tomorrow, but if not I may just spam old strips between pictures of newborn calves.

19. Not really related but glad to see this blog is still going! The dismal state of the Funkyverse has been oddly impactful on my life, for better or worse.

20. Today’s Crankshaft (The Last Day Of Classic GoComics)

    Crankshaft: I don’t have any of the crap I ordered….YET.

    Pam: Dad, I don’t feel so good… (disintegrates into dust)

    1. Still Today’s Crankshaft

       Pam: Dad, Where’s Jeff?

       Ed: He’s on the lawn still mourning the “death” of Super Mario All Stars, which happened 4 years ago today.

21. Crankshaft today (shortened):

    Ed: “I’ve just ordered a tool sharpener.”

    Pam: “But you don’t even own half the tools that it’s supposed to sharpen!”

    How is Pam’s objection meaningful? If Ed owns even one of the tools that the sharpener is supposed to sharpen, the sharpener might be useful for him. He doesn’t need to own all or even half of those tools to get some benefit from the sharpener.

    1. Ed also has a bunch of the shit he ordered years ago, but somehow forgot them or Timemop nudged them out of existence

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