I have often said that the Funkyverse is very meanspirited, in ways that are hard to quantify. Ed spending two of the last three weeks under his bed is a perfect example of that. While the story appears benign on the surface, it forces us to make a lot of discomforting assumptions about the world these people inhabit.
In art, negative space is the empty space around to the subject of an image. Negative space can be used to give the image balance, or to convey additional meaning. Especially in corporate logos. It also makes a good metaphor for this tendency of the Funkyverse.
I call it Emotional Negative Space: the unpleasant things Tom Batiuk’s writing forces the reader to assume, in order for a scene to make any sense.
The Funkyverse is inoffensive on the surface. Bland characters smirk at each other about the author’s many boring hobbies. But if we look at the negative space around the story – the assumptions that it requires – we can see how nasty it really is. And this is a particularly nasty arc.
A senior citizen suddenly hiding under their bed is a concerning sign. They may be anxious, afraid (perhaps of something that doesn’t exist), trying to regain control of their surroundings, or otherwise coping with dementia. Or it could be something more straightforward, like they’ve begun soiling themselves and are hiding their damaged clothes. Or they’re just ashamed of themselves. Many posters have mentioned seeing their loved ones decline, and lose their independence, as they aged. It’s not a fun thing to see.
In last Monday’s strip, Ed is hiding under the bed and refusing to go to work. We just saw Ed come back from an international trip, so he has no problems with mobility, unless they just started. Ed is also a pretty fearless guy. So this is very out of character.
On Tuesday, Pam is telling Ed (who is her father) that he’s “got to come out from under the bed!” Which is even more out of character. She’s got an angry look on her face, and her arms crossed in a demanding pose she never uses any other time. Especially not when Ed is about to do another $25,000 worth of property damage. Or when Jeff brought her a rock after almost getting himself killed in Bronson Canyon.
In good writing, someone behaving out of character can suggest that this a serious moment. Like when Calvin was heartbroken about the baby raccoon dying, or when the bookish Marcie slugged that sexist prick Thibault. But that’s not the kind of writing we get in this feature. We know the author better than that. This is a week of gag strips! By a man who thinks writing gag strips is beneath him.
By giving one of the characters cancer, (Tom Batiuk) was announcing that comic strips, like comic books, need not be restricted to gag-a-day formats and juvenile subjects. This was even more apparent when the same character’s cancer returned with a vengeance in 2007.
Okay, time to be serious again. Let’s consider the emotional negative space of this moment. Ed is being told he must go to work instead of hiding under the bed. I have just one question:
Why?
Seriously, why does Ed have to go to work? Why can’t he just stay home, or quit his job if he wants to? In a competently written feature, the reason might be “we need the money.” But motivations in the Funkyverse are never as straightforward or realistic as that.
Please note that I’m not being snarky here. I have said nothing about Crankshaft being a jerk who’s intentionally bad at his job; his addiction to online shopping; his propensity for wrecking other people’s stuff; or the male characters’ tendency to be dominated by women in mommy roles. I am trying to engage the feature on its own terms. I’m trying to understand why this scene exists in a “quarter inch from reality” world. It is cruel. It is abusive. It offers no justification for itself. And it is Dude, Not Funny.
I did mention Crankshaft’s age, because it’s relevant to the question of why he needs to go to work. However you want to carbon-date Ed’s life, he is at least three decades into his retirement years. Because his daughter Pam is at least one decade into hers! She and Jeff were traditional-age college students during the 1970 Kent State shootings. Do the math.
And don’t tell me “Timemop.” Timemop has no power here. Ordinary people in realistic worlds can’t live, work, spend unlimited money, get book contracts, and remain absurdly active into their 90s without supernatural involvement becoming obvious. Does anyone remember the movie Cocoon?
Ed seems to be having some kind of panic attack. But nobody ever acknowledges this, or expresses a drop of concern for him. They don’t consider that Ed may be getting too old for day-to-day work. Or that his concerns might be valid. We saw the school children drive an implied Hell’s Angel into quitting during the “bus driver shortage” arc, so he may have good reason to fear them. Which is another justification this story could have used, but didn’t: the community needs him to fill his role during a shortage of qualified bus drivers.
Ed is shown zero compassion, and is browbeaten off-camera into going back to work. And we’re never told why. Did he just cave? If so, to what? To the spineless Pam? Seriously? We don’t know what convinced him to go back to work, or what really drove him under the bed in the first place. He mentions a couple things, but they’re just cheap jokes.
Batiuk is never clear about how his audience is supposed to react to things like this. When Calvin and Marcie broke character, it was serious business, and the tone of the stories reflected that. Batiuk’s tone is all over the place, so we can’t make the inferences we need to.
We have to provide the subtext ourselves, because Batiuk won’t. And the only logical subtext is that Ed’s family is ignoring his distress, and what appears to be some troubling behavior.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Like how no one seemed especially concerned when Morton Winkerbean suddenly became an aggressive sexual predator. Or how no one minded when Phil Holt faked his own death, then just showed up and immediately found a new job. Or when Cliff Anger spent sixty years as a reclusive hobo, then became a suave old movie star again. In the Batiukiverse, ninety-plus year olds regularly go through radical personality overhauls, all the time. Crankshaft is suddenly terrified of doing the job he’s had for a hundred years? Sure, why not? Anything to fill another week.
These are all good examples. Mort and Dinkle being magically cured of their dementia and deafness is another one. Nobody ever seems to notice when unusual, unlikely, or miraculous events happen in the Funkyverse. And they certainly don’t notice when their friends and family are suffering. Even when they’re trained professionals whose job it is, like in today’s strip. The first thing a therapist would tell Pam is that Ed is over 100 years old, he’s obviously in some kind of distress, and that he has every right to retire if he doesn’t want to work anymore.
This is going to be BAD.
So will the blog entry defending it. Prepare for a first draft of smug, defensive twaddle that’s like being hit with a tidal wave of rancid porridge.
There won’t be a blog entry for this. Batiuk only writes blog entries when he thinks he’s taken on some difficult topic, like the Adeela/ICE raids. Crankshaft hiding under his bed is a cheap joke for him. He doesn’t realize that this behavior would be a serious problem for a senior, so he won’t pat himself on the back for it.
All he can do is eventually come up with an idiotic strip that doubles down on just not getting it.
Those are just a few I remembered off the top of my head. I’m not a licensed Batiukian historian like you Crankshaft people are, so I’m probably forgetting about dozens, if not hundreds, of other examples. The Morty one was pretty egregious, given how he pathos-milked the Alzheimer’s angle for all it was worth years before. The guy was totally catatonic for years, then suddenly he’s wailing on the trombone and getting all grabby on the church bus. Pretty disturbing stuff.
Coming next week: Ed’s sudden, pathological fear of school buses forces him into an early (?) retirement. He turns over a new leaf, and spends his day building and installing decorative mailboxes, to atone for all the ones he’s destroyed. No one even bats an eyelash.
Don’t sell yourself short; I never would have remembered Cliff Anger. I think we all have different “windows” of Funkyverse history we know well, and others we don’t. I know I’ve harped on certain things, like Les refusing to read Lisa’s journal and Holly getting seriously hurt in that dumb cheerleader performance.
It was pretty amusing when Cindy did a long form documentary interview about his life, which consisted of exactly three things…tramp steamer, Commie, blacklisted. Then, he spent forty years as a recluse. What’d they talk about, local NYC pharmacies that deliver?
Basically the same problem the Batton Thomas interview has: it’s hours and hours and hours of talking by someone who has absolutely nothing to say.
Tom Batiuk writes his content with the expectation that you know and care about the entire prior history of the story, and simultaneously expects you to disregard any aspect of that prior history at a whim in order to perceive the wit or insightfulness behind the current content.
Last week and this week, “the funny part” is that Ed is an old man who is hiding under a bed. Old men do not typically hide under beds. Ha ha! That is funny! The end!
Sandwiched between this week we had Ed bribing children for good reviews with ice cream. This is also out of character, but Tom wanted to have an old Ohio ice cream stand in his panel that day. The panel could have shown the children longingly staring at Ed while he scowls at them with two hands of ice cream while yelling “… and I told you, no sharing!” That could have been in character. That could have been “humorous” for the standards of the strip. That could have still allowed Tom to draw his Ohio horseshit in the strip. But, no, fuck it. Pay me. Not like you won’t. Not like I can ever been fired. Not like I’ll ever retire.
But when you tell him he can’t have it both ways, he’ll either prove that smugness is stupidity’s calling card by making a hash of someone else’s quote criticizing the error he’s defending or whine about cruel people bullying him.
It’s called writing!
There’s a qualifying adjective that he won’t admit to: inept. See also nut bustingly stupid.
Not only is this horrific mess a clear-cut example of elder abuse, it’s an example of Batiuk not getting other people’s jokes. When Garfield spends a week not moving, Davis is pretending that a fat ginger tomcat who’s active at dawn and dusk has human motivations. When Linus gets hardcore about The Great Pumpkin, Schulz was all about a second grader not realizing he’d gotten Halloween and Christmas mixed up. Here, we have 2025-26’s “bus driver shortage” to catch a dolt’s fancy.
9/11: Another day, another unsympathetic and incompetent idiot.
Therapists make house calls?
Also, Marcie from “Peanuts” is not aging well.
No, she hasn’t.
Okay, I’ll bite. What has aged badly about Marcie? I get that kids can’t punch other kids anymore, and that she was kind of a 70s-style feminist, and the cheap jokes about her and Peppermint Patty being lesbians (SEE ALSO: Shaggy Rogers, marijuana use of).
I was referencing the fact that the therapist with the shag haircut and glasses looks like an adult Marcie, not the “Peanuts” character herself.
The artist went to low-hanging fruit.
Ok, that makes sense. Yes, you’re right that this alleged therapist is a tired old trope. Thank you for explaining
I’m guessing Amicus Breef’s sister Bea Havural isn’t going to get ‘Shaft out from under the bed.
Time to get serious… host Funky’s AA group meeting in ‘Shaft’s bedroom and make sure to give Funky the mic. That’ll smoke anyone out of hiding.
I’ve never wanted to punch a new character this fast before. What kind of therapist immediately pulls out that heavy-lidded, snot-dripping, I’m-too-witty-for-you face? While she shows off her indifference to her clients, her annoyance at having to do her job, and her complete ignorance of how to do it anyway. And for a first meeting with a patient who is literally hiding under the bed? This is SICK.
What kind of awful place must Centerville be that it makes its mental health counselors this fucking cynical? And that’s ME saying that. I’m a sarcastic, snarky dick, but my mind isn’t one tenth as fucked up as the mind that needed a theapist character and came up with *this*.
The so-called joke is that Ed is beyond aid because he is not where Bea Havioral wants him to be. This is beyond the pale! Also, it’s great to be recognized in my own time.
Today’s Crankshaft
Day 10 of Crankfuckery Not Wanting To Go Out Of Bed Storyline
That therapist in today’s strip has gotta be the one of the most depressed characters I have ever seen in the Batiukverse
“I like to keep working,” Miyam thought to herself. “I mean, I knew I was never gonna get a shot like Big Bang Theory again, so if I have to settle for something like Call Me Kat… fine! And I have no regrets about walking out on Jeopardy! — unlike Ken what’s-his-name, I’m no scab. But I never, never thought it would come to this! Dinner theatre in East St. Louis, maybe? Autograph appearances at the mall? Porn? Hey, downward spirals happen! But I was Blossom once, dammit! Surely I can’t possibly have sunk so low as to take a gig playing a minor character on Crankshaft!”
I used to like to check in on comic strips to see if they were commemorating 9/11
Might have gotten a chuckle out of me if Crankshaft yelled “Never forget!” from under his bed
Very few comic strips referenced 9/11 today. I checked all 98 strips on arcamax.com and the only ones that did so were:
Mallard Fillmore
One Big Happy
Reply All
Arcamax doesn’t have all the syndicated strips, but it has a lot of them. If there are other strips that commemorated 9/11 today, I would like to know which ones.
Dick Tracy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8peyDxadxU&ab_channel=TheLateLiveShow
I’d be remiss if I didn’t post this one today.
9/12: Batiuk thinks he’s telling a psychiatrist joke but managed something else: Ed convincing the new character of how horrific the Funkyverse is.
Also, this would be troubling if the child Pam is treating her own dad who stormed Omaha Beach…..or Khe Sanh now, I guess, like did this. She’d be snippy and unsympathetic with an eight year old…..
Today’s Crankshaft
Day 11 of Crankfuckhead Not Wanting To Get Out Of Bed Storyline
The punchline in today’s strip is that Crankshaft convinced the therapist to hide in bed
Given what a shitty, cold-hearted place the Funkyverse is, that’s the sane course of action.
6/13: He turned under his bed into his man cave……or Snoopy’s doghouse……
Does he have a Van Gogh hanging down there?
Well, since he’s ripping off competent people without understanding why they’re funny, maybe.
This plotline is like a sad, withered, degraded redux of the Act I “Crazy’s Locker Contains a Large, Well-Appointed Apartment” trope.
The Act I version of this trope was droll and charming, and it fit perfectly with the character’s personality and canon, and the tone of the strip.
This version… isn’t. And doesn’t.
Talents can fade. People should quit before we get sick of them. Batiuk won’t admit this.
Today’s Crankshaft
Day 12 of Crankfuckhead Not Wanting To Get Out Of Bed Storyline
I don’t get the punchline for today’s strip
Well, you’re one up on me. I don’t even get the setup.
6/14: It’s a trifecta of suck. A dumb setup, Ed blowing shit up and Mindy being stoooooopid.
I’ve been indulgent up to now (in an “i just ignore this” way) but this is where I’m really feeling that “Apartment 3G” Last Days vibe.
He has yet to marry Mindy off to an author insert and induct Dinkleberg into the Grand Ole Opry so there’s at least a year more of this crap.
Today’s Crankshaft
Day 13 of Crankfuckhead Not Wanting To Get Out Of Bed Storyline
The Daily Bleak
Entire Neighborhood Burns Down Because Some Old Fuck Thought It Was A Good Idea To Grill Hotdogs From Under His Bed With 3 Gallons of Kerosene
I just reviewed all the “Flash Fridays” on Tom Batiuk’s blog, one after another. These posts are describing the plot of a number of consecutive issues — nine so far — of “The Flash” that were published in 1984 and 1985.
I understand that the plot involves the Flash being on trial for murder. But, as far as I can tell, Tom has not mentioned (a) who the Flash is accused of killing or (b) how or why he became the suspect.
I’ve said this before, but Tom absolutely can’t understand the difference between premise and story. In fact, he cannot see ANY story in ANY context whatsoever — he can only process the premise. (“Flash is on trial for murder!” “Crankshaft is hiding under the bed!” “Creating comic books sure must be fun!”) Tom Batiuk is so utterly, hopelessly, unalterably story-blind, he genuinely and sincerely believes that stating the premise of a thing IS telling the story.
You know who thinks telling us what the premise is means you’ve told the story? A third grader.
I guess he assumes it was such a well-followed storyline (it really wasn’t) that everyone knows it. If anyone cares, Barry Allen/Flash was charged with killing his arch-enemy Eobard Thawne, aka Reverse Flash aka Professor Zoom, in revenge for Thawne murdering Barry’s wife Iris West in 1979 and later threatening to do the same to new fiancee Fiona Webb in 1983. By the time the whole trial arc and its time-travel aftermath ended in 1985, the Flash was known to fandom to be one of the heroes fated to die in DC’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” mini-series. Who knows how long it will take Batiuk to get to that?
“Eobard Thawne”? What the hell is that an anagram for? I thought it was a backwards name, but that would be Enwaht Draboe. Who knows, maybe it is.
(Possibilities: Bonehead Wart, Rawboned Hate, Beneath A Word, A Thawed Boner, Bet On Warhead, Web Data Honer, How Arena Debt?, No Data Hebrew, Own Bad Heater.)
I think it was just supposed to be a weird, science fictiony name, since Reverse Flash came from the future. Kind of like the real names of some of the Legion of Super-Heroes, like “Querl Dox” aka Brainiac 5. It doesn’t mean anything, it just has to look future-y. (Still better than “Amicus Breef”, though.)
Speaking of the Legion of Super-Heroes….
There was a story featuring Karate Kid (real name Val Armorr, and Tom Bierbaum joked in *Secret Origins* #47 about him being named for a hot dog…I said it was a joke, I didn’t say it was funny…) calling on his sensei.
A reader mentioned that the Kid kept his shoes on during the visit, which wouldn’t have happened in Japanese society.
Whoever handled the letter column suggested that customs could have changed between the 20th and the 30th Century.
A number of Legionnaires come from Earth, and their names mix the present with the future:
Dirk Morgna (Sun Boy);
Lyle Norg (Invisible Kid);
Gim Allon (Colossal Boy)
Then again, Chuck Taine (Bouncing Boy), Andrew Nolan (Ferro Lad) and Drake Burroughs (Wildfire) suggest that some names are eternal.
The Legion met Dawn and Don Allen, descendants of the Flash, in *Adventure Comics* #373.
There will be a Flash Day in the future!
Leave us not forget LSH member Matter-Eater Lad, born Tenzil Kem of the planet Bismoll. All Bismollians have the evolved ability to consume and digest inorganic as well as organic material, along with super-strong teeth and jaw muscles. Perhaps Jerry Siegel’s second-greatest creation after that flying guy in the red-and-blue costume.
Getting to Secret Crisis On Infinite Newsstands is going to break him because he’d finally have to admit why teenage sidekicks really exist: to take over when their mentor is KIA. He thinks they exist to remind him of how little people respect him.
I also think sidekicks exist to give the reader a character they can relate to. Most sidekicks are young, ordinary men with no superpowers. So they’re easy way for 9 year old boys to imagine themselves as part of the story.
Batiuk doesn’t appear to want that as it would make Barry into a regular guy keeping his eye on his girlfriend’s nephew.
9/15: We tag in Lilian Lizard for a more familiar nightmare: Dinkleberg.
Today’s Crankshaft
WHY ARE WE MOVING TO A WEEKLY STORYLINE WHERE WE HAVE TO BE WITH THE WORLD’S BIGGEST ASSHOLE WHY
Because Batiuk’s a filthy sadist?
I must admit, I stole from the Simpsons. Again.
Mr. Burns: I’ll keep it short and sweet. Family, religion, friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business. When opportunity knocks, you don’t want to be driving to a maternity hospital or sitting in some phony-baloney church. Or synagogue.
Crankshaft finally came out from under the bed. I hope the therapist wasn’t injured in the explosion.
Crankshaft came out from under the bed, and immediately gets recruited into Dinkle’s musical group? If there was ever a reason to hide under the bed, Harry Dinkle is it.
What irritates me personally is that at no point has Dinkle ever realized or even entertained the possibility that he has wasted his life on something not at all magnificent by design: an obsession.
True, but you can understand why they don’t. It’s the same reason that nobody in a bar will ever tell you to lay off the sauce. Everyone has the same sickness, in a place that exists to indulge that sickness. Pointing out this behavior in others would be inviting them to point it out in you. Eventually the entire bar would have to face the fact that they’re all alcoholics. And nobody wants that. So they silently tolerate each other’s obnoxiousness.
No one will ever tell Dinkle he has obsessively wasted his life on band directing, because everyone else has obsessively wasted their own lives on something equally stupid. Band directing, comic books, dead wives, The Phantom Empire, football, gardening, writing — they’re all the same. They’re all alcoholics; the only difference is their drink of choice.
I think this is why so many characters silently disappear from the Funkyverse. They realized they had a serious problem, and that the only way to escape it was to get away from this sick community of enablers. Think of some of the ones who did:
Damn, I like this theory.
So do I. If someone isn’t around, it’s because the place has nothing to offer them but aggravation. We even saw Suicide Girl make her escape.
Another good example. Though Susan Smith also had some practical reasons for moving. With only one school in town, a disgraced schoolteacher literally *has* to move if they want to get a new job.
And why did she ruin her life? Les Moore was her alcohol, that’s why! If love is a drug, Dick Facey is huffing solvents.
I believe her name was Logan Church.
9/16: Dinkleberg’s being a sadistic, verbally abusive egomaniac who has always viewed the needs of other people as a personal affront is NOT a selling point.
Today’s Crankshaft
Crank: Fuck off, Lillian. I’d rather get run over by a steamroller than have to be in a room with Harry L. Dinkle The World’s Biggest Asshole.
9/17: She won’t be smiling when Ed does what he does and spreads wreckage and confusion and I won’t mind that at all.
Today’s Crankshaft
Ed: You still can’t convince me to join Dinkle’s shitty choir group.
Batiuk is known for making continuity errors. But this week, I think he’s trying to speed-run:
Can we have Batton Thomas back? At least his “look at me gloat about my fame” act makes sense for that character. Ed was just given a CFL game ball for his elite playcalling skills, and now he’s being recruited as an elite singer? Almost certainly as part of a scheme to give Dinkle (and maybe also Lillian) yet another musical honor.
almost always relevant
Also, on the rate occasions that Ed and Harry met, they both thought that the other person was an obstructive idiot who needed to be locked up. I don’t see that happening now.
Also, given that Ed mangles even the simplest of sentences, there’s really no way he can correctly sing the lyrics of a song. And given that Dinkle is a monomaniacal control freak, there’s no way he’s going to put up with some schmuck mangling the song lyrics, no matter how good their voice is. There’s really no way this doesn’t end up with a physical altercation. (Admittedly, Ed and Dinkle fist fighting could make this the best story Batiuk has given us in years…)
In any other world, it would be fun to see Crankshaft and Dinkle butt heads. But the Funkyverse is so conflict-averse it will completely cut around this conflict. Ed will join the choir (because he was offered donuts, something he has never desired) and immediately be subservient to Dinkle, even though his personality most of the time is the opposite of that.
Ah, more fun on the Batiukblog with “ICE 5”.
Funky looks about as contemptuous of Montoni’s pizza as we do. (Seriously, that’s not a face that says “it’s so good, no one forgets it”, that’s “it’d be like forgetting that time you got clubbed in the knee while passing a kidney stone”.)
Sure, Bill Clinton has the same phone number as when he was President, and saved Montoni’s in his contacts despite not having been there in decades. Makes perfect sense.
Assuming that’s actually Bill Clinton, and not Flash Forgothisname. They both have that “escaped from Easter Island” forehead going on…
And, of course, there’s the utter stupidity of Bill Clinton just calling up the head of ICE and getting someone released. Even in general, it’s kind of questionable for a former President, but… while Trump was President? Nope, not buying it. (Sorry, I know “no politics”, but there’s no way to avoid at least mentioning the guy’s name here. Because there’s no way Clinton had that kind of pull during that administration. This is way past any “quarter inch”.)
Why was Amicus Breef even in this story, anyway? He’s basically the Tuxedo Mask meme. He doesn’t do ANYTHING. Ooh, he threatens to get a subpoena for ICE’s evidence. (Not “gets a subpoena”, threatens to get one.) They would have been better off gathering Dead Saint Lisa’s ashes to be Adeela’s lawyer, and she was pretty terrible at her job, too.
(Also, thanks to Batiuk mucking around with the timeline, Act II would have had to end in 1990, with Act III starting in 2000. In other words, Clinton now wasn’t even President when he visited Montoni’s. Timemop™!)
Still no commentary from Batiuk, but I think we all expected that, right?
Sheesh, he’s still beating that horse?