How Many Things Can We Find Wrong With This Story?

After Pizza Box Monster week ended with this atrocity, let’s keep this discussion simple.

Let’s see how many things we can find wrong with this story. I’ll use this post to compile them into a list. GoComics and other such providers allow you to view comic strips for the past week without any login or account. So until Monday, anyone can view the entire week. Here are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

Let’s begin. The only rules are:

  • Be brief. Have you ever read the nmop-əpisdn answers in Hocus Focus? They’re very short, like “beard is missing” or “arms have moved.” Explain as much as you need to, but be terse. Keep it to a sentence if you can.
  • Stick to the actual content of this week’s strips. No meta-errors, or comments about Tom Batiuk’s production process.
  • Things that are wrong in the long-term context of the comic strip, such as Pete and Mindy’s marital status and their business relationship with PBM, are permitted.

Here we go!

  1. Monday’s strip shows PBM leaving after helping decorate the restaurant. The pizza box costume would make any physical movement very difficult. (BJ6K)
  2. The PBM costume has no visible eyeholes. (Y. Knott)
  3. On Monday, PBM says he’ll “come back for lunch when things aren’t busy.” At almost any restaurant, lunch is expected to be busy. (BJ6K)
    • Gleeb points out that this could mean “the time we restaurant workers take lunch”, not “when lunch is served.”
  4. On Tuesday, Pete calls PBM “one of their silent partners” in Montoni’s. No other partner has ever been seen or mentioned. (BJ6K)
  5. Somehow, Pete and Mindy have somehow entered into a business relationship with an unknown person. (BJ6K)
  6. Pete tells Mindy to “stop obsessing” over who the PBM is. Given that business relationship, she is right to want to know who this person is. (BJ6K)
  7. On Tuesday, Pete and Mindy’s hands are visible. Neither is wearing a wedding or engagement ring. (BJ6K)
  8. The spider on the video camera screen on Saturday doesn’t match the one we see in the restaurant on Tuesday. (Green Luthor)
  9. The angle isn’t the same either. (Green Luthor)
  10. Owners of a security camera would not block it with objects. Or if they did accidentally, they would notice and correct it before an incident happens. (Green Luthor)
  11. The pizza that the PBM is served seems to shrink significantly in diameter between Thursday and Saturday. Compare how much counter space the pizza occupied on Thursday, compared to its much smaller depiction on Saturday. (Y. Knott)
  12. Despite wanting to see the PBM, the characters seem to be going out of their way to avoid seeing him. (several)
  13. How does Mindy know PBM was eating alone at the bar … unless she *saw* PBM eating alone at the bar? (Y. Knott)
  14. By dining in the restaurant and removing his headgear, it is possible that the PBM is trying to reveal his identity. Pete, Mindy, and Ed fail to consider this. (BJ6K)
  15. Even if Mindy didn’t see the revealed face *clearly*, it still seems counter-productive to leave the room with the PBM in it, only to essentially announce that “Hey, it sure would be neat to see the PBM’s face while the PBM is eating in the other room where I just was, watching the PBM eating. (Y. Knott)
  16. The story assumes that Mindy and Pete would know who the PBM is. If we’re going to ignore the whole ‘business partners’ problem, then there’s no reason to assume the PBM is someone would be recognized by them. (Green Luthor)
  17. PBM could mistakenly believe that they know who he is. (pj202718nbca)
  18. There was never any obstacle to simply looking at the PBM. Even if there was, Pete and Mindy own the restaurant now, and can easily invent a reason to be wandering the dining area during business hours. Beyond even that, it’s Halloween, and they could hide their own identities in a costume if desired.(BJ6K)

Have at it in the comments. Let me know if you made a suggestion and I didn’t include it (or an equivalent one).

Unknown's avatar

Author: Banana Jr. 6000

Yuck. The fritos are antiquated.

77 thoughts on “How Many Things Can We Find Wrong With This Story?”

  1. Number 10 sets up a delicious irony: PBM could mistakenly believe that Pete and Mindy know who he is. I wish I had thought of it but I was too busy thinking he’s wearing a ski mask.

  2. Today’s Past Batiukverse Storyline: Wally’s Horrific Experience At Band Camp

    These strips made me hate Dinkle significantly more than I already did

    Attila The Line Leader: DO YOU THINK I GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOUR WELFARE!? I DON’T AND NEITHER DOES THE WORLD’S GREATEST BAND DIRECTOR!

    the punchline is that the senior line leaders is a sadist, just like Dinkle The Egomaniacal Asshole

    Wally: Seriously, GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!

    this storyline (alongside most of the band camp storylines in Act I) proves that Dinkle is a monster with absolutely zero regard for the well being of anyone except for himself

    1. I think the definitive proof of that is the Act I storyline where the band parents terroristically took over a Monday Night Football broadcast to show his precious band, including one going to jail for hijacking the Goodyear blimp. He’s not simply an overbearing and pompous band director but an honest to god cult leader. I’m surprised he actually did step down from his position as opposed to forcing his his band members to sell (and drink) Band Flavor Aid.

      1. I’m surprised he actually did step down from his position as opposed to forcing his his band members to sell (and drink) Band Flavor Aid.

        I think Dinkle telling Becky that he willingly resigned from his band director job was complete bullshit, as I think that Fred fired him after realizing on what a fuck-up Dinkle is both as a band directer and a person

        1. Fred tries to fire Dinkle but he doesn’t accept so Fred is forced to call in Senator Noah Vale to intercede. Sen. Vale’s talk with Dinkle is inconclusive but at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, he’s gunned down by a few overenthusiastic Marching Scapegoats. By this time, Roberta, Becky and the rest of the band parents, alumni and members have, at flutophone point, forced the entirety of Westview into the town square where Dinkle gives a rambling speech about how they need to protect themselves from the U.S. government who will be sure to take them away.

          “I’ll be damned if theu haul my brass to prison!” he bellows as everyone is forced to drink up, Sousa marches blaring from the gazebo. Dinkle looks out over the crowd, grim deteremination on his face, before calling for one last Battle of the Bands to wash away the town’s sins.

          Kara Milstrom is brought onto TV and true crime podcasts to talk of her experiences with Dinkle. She decides to parlay this into the greatest achievement a Batiukverse resident can have when she writes a tell-all book, Marching Into Hell: Big Time Terror in Small-Town Ohio. Les, away in Hollywood at the time of the mass suicide, can only seethe as Kara’s success as an author eclipses his own with award-winning documentaries are made out of her work and the film adaptation is both a critical and commercial success with Kara herself winning the Oscar for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay).

          1. If he ended it that way, people would at least know that FW wasn’t pulled out of Conan O’Brien’s bottom.

          2. The principal Fred tried to fire Dinkle but he “doesn’t accept”? How does that work exactly? You tell him he’s fired, you take his keys away, you tell him to leave, and if he doesn’t leave you call the police.

            Remember when Bull Bushka died, and the police covered up his death because they played football for him in high school? By the same principle, I imagine there would be no shortage of Westview police officers that would take tremendous pleasure in forcibly removing Harry Dinkle from the premises.

          1. Fox, at least, did manage to create characters and concepts that have embedded themselves in the public consciousness, something Batiuk largely failed to do given that the most notable reference to his work (that isn’t snark blogs) is a one-off Simpsons joke taking a swipe at his life’s work for being lame. And even then, a not insignificant amount of people thought that Funky Winkerbean was something the writers of that episode made up.

            Quality of the actual work aside, Fox was at least a creative enough person. Batiuk’s beloved “Flash of Two Worlds” started out as pretty much Infantino pranking him by giving him a cover with both Flashes and basically going “try writing a story that makes sense of this, smart guy” and hey, he did and managed to make sense of it. Could Batty? Well, we see how he does with simplistic stories he himself creates so if challenged by someone else I don’t see things working out in his favor.

            FWIW the one Gardner Fox story I actually remember is last issue of Marvel Premiere he did, which was part of the Doctor Strange storyline that introduced Shuma-Gorath. But it stands out for me not so much for his writing but because it was some of Jim Starlin’s earliest work and had some cool, trippy and cosmic artwork. Plus the fact that the next issue is when Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner take over and that subsequent run on Doctor Strange is easily one of my favorite cape comics.

          2. Follow being a cutaway joke about how beige and boring Marge is with people mocking Tuxedo Mask, Psychopomp. If he weren’t such a smarmy and unlikeable person, I’d almost feel sorry.

          3. And yes, his being quick on his feet is why people who aren’t J K Simmons know what a multiverse is and expect a hero to have to contend with a weird trade union of costumed crooks with destroyer rays. All Batiuk accomplished was gazpacho pizza and cancer cancer cancer.

    2. To me, the fact that his eyes were always hidden was visual shorthand for his being blind to the damage his pettiness caused. If he can’t see the suffering he causes being all things to no people, he’s not an insane tin god with delusions of competence.

    3. Say all you want about the Act 1 flavor over-the-top shenanigans Batiuk had no problem continuing in his new era, i’m moreso befuddled Wally is seen as high school aged by the time Act 2 is in the first year. Didn’t we first meet him as a baby in the 80s? Was he around the same age as Boy Lisa? Did they both get Timemopped hard because Batiuk wanted to use them in HS stories and cornered himself with only a four-year time skip?

      Also damn he was trumpeting the first time skip hard back in the 90s to use that header for entire arcs however long after the change itself happened, and that was after giving a grand “tribute” Sunday strip to mark the change. The Act 3 skip’s “ten years later” headers only lasted a week by contrast, and the transition scene was very abrupt in an attempt to be cinematographic. Contrast that with all the other confusing stuff that the changeover there introduced and it’s very amusing he felt one needed to be more clear than the other.

    4. That old Act I sensibility, where high school was a war zone, a daily battlefield full of sadists, bullies, and general malevolence at every corner. Marching band? More like forced labor boot camp. Nothing but sheer drudgery. IMO, it’s why Act III Dinkle was so violently annoying, as we were suddenly supped to “like” him and his daffy antics, even though he was a complete madman, whom everyone in Westview would remember with sheer dread.

      1. <i>It’ll take a year for him to kill off Tony, won’t it?</i>

        …And he’ll make it all about Les. “WHY is my PIZZA LATE?! Oh…Sorry…His funeral was today?…That’s still no excuse! COMP ME!”

        Okay, that’s just mean. But you know that if he does mention it, it’ll be about him, not Tony.

        Did Tony’s display Funky strips? I was within walking distance of Tasty Chick, a takeout place for some truly amazing fried chicken. It ended when the owner retired and sold it, and it went downhill overnight.

        They had a Zippy the Pinhead strip on the wall. I apologize in advance if I screw this up.

        https://th.bing.com/th/id/R.72709c868ed27da9dc14a508a2634348?rik=ZhCdVTMsdjtUjQ&riu=http%3a%2f%2fwww.thoughtviper.com%2fimages%2fnew%2fzippychick.jpg&ehk=gSndCdvr0s%2bGfp0Ie47t9YUjbemwfFPRliERvQ7w5wI%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw&r=0

  5. And on a Canadian football related tangent, the Bombers bombed out as crossover teams always do. Crossover teams rarely make the conference final and they never play for the Grey Cup.

  6. Continuing a fifty year tradition of writing characters who do literally fuck all to remedy their problems, this week’s Crankshaft ends with three people who cannot resolve a question by literally walking into another god damned room.

    But no, it’s the trolls who are in the wrong.

    1. That’s what we could call the zeroth thing wrong with the arc: the whiny, defeatist attitude of the characters. The idea seems to be that standing up for themselves will get them killed or yelled at or something. People with self-respect would ask him to take off the mask.

    2. This is a man who doesn’t understand when people are joking. He’s not going to understand that PBM might want to reveal himself.

    4. I think it’s even worse than that; they go out of their way to avoid even accidentally solving their problem.

  7. Not to criticize your criticism, but

    On Monday, PBM says he’ll “come back for lunch when things aren’t busy.” At almost any restaurant, lunch is expected to be busy.

    Is, I think, incorrect on two points:

    1. You conflate “lunch” as a meal with “lunch” as a time of day. The PBM will have his lunch(1) after the lunch(2) crowd thins out.
    2. This is Mopetoni’s. There was never a crowd in the first place.
    • PBM is able to help decorate the restaurant, navigate through a doorway, and comment on the looks of a pizza … despite having no visible eye-holes with which to see.

      – How would Mindy know PBM was eating alone at the bar … unless she *saw* PBM eating alone at the bar? And if she saw PBM eating alone at the bar, she must have also seen the face underneath the boxes, as the boxes would have to be removed in order for PBM to actually be eating…

      – Even if Mindy didn’t see the revealed face *clearly*, it still seems counter-productive to leave the room with the PBM in it, only to essentially announce that “Hey, it sure would be neat to see the PBM’s face while the PBM is eating in the other room where I just was, watching the PBM eating. Gosh, it only there were a way to actually watch the PBM eating without leaving this room, because for some reason I don’t really feel like going back to the other room where I just was, where I saw the PBM eating.”

      – The pizza that the PBM is served seems to shrink significantly in diameter between Thursday and Saturday. Compare how much counter space the pizza occupied on Thursday, compared to its much smaller depiction on Saturday.

    1. Of course, even if Mopey and Blandy did see the Pizza Monster without his mask… is there any reason for them to think they would even know who he is? Sure, it’s possible it’s someone they know, but… honestly, what are the odds of that? I mean, if it’s someone from Westview, is there any reason Blandy would recognize him? If they’re from Centerville, would Mopey? And if PM’s not from either town, would either one know him? And if it is someone they know, shouldn’t the voice be at least somewhat familiar, even despite being muffled by pizza boxes? (When he was terrorizing Funky, he used the Popsicle Pete font, so he might have been doing a voice, but he’s been using the same font as everyone else in Crankshaft, so… presumably, he’s using his real voice there?)

      (As for the pizza getting smaller… I’m just going to assume Mopey serves Shrinky-Dinks as pizza. I doubt anyone notices the difference.)

      2. I am reminded of the “Justice League Unlimited” episode where Lex Luthor and the Flash swapped minds. Lex/Flash pauses in front of a mirror and muses he can at least learn the Scarlet Speedster’s civilian identity. Upon taking off the mask and seeing Wally West’s face, Lex says “I have no idea who this is.”

  9. 11/02: And just like that, we get a sight gag that work better if someone named Keane did it on a weekday.😑

  10. Having finished reading through 2017 now and boy is it really rough going now. It’s blatantly obvious that Batty has dropped all pretenses of caring about the strip by this point which makes me wonder why he, to this day, keeps up the pretense of being a comic writer. Lynn, at least, had the good sense to retire when she was clearly running out of ideas and a desire to keep working on Foob. Hell, she supposedly intended on stopping earlier than she actually did and it was the laziness of syndicates/papers in not wanting to find a replacement for FBoFW that kept her going an extra year or two. Says a lot about how Funky is viewed, then, when nobody was seeming in a rush to stop it from ending (or likely forcing it to end) despite how willing syndicates are to keep zombie strips going.

    The only reason I can think of for Batty to have kept going as long as he did (or continuing to keep going) is just stubbornness and perhaps trying to stave off the reality of what will happen to the memory of him and his work once he retires for good. He doesn’t really give a shit about what he’s putting out and seemingly hasn’t for a long time; if he did he wouldn’t allow Dan Davis to “draw” Crankshaft (as what I see on here is… jeez). If he cared about the integrity of his work he wouldn’t so flippantly change dates, names, basic plot points, characterizations and anything else. For a guy who’s willing to keep doing callbacks such as bringing back a forgotten character like Rita Wrighton 30 years after she last appeared (and hadn’t been a relevant character in 40) for an appearance, he seems to care little about the past. Batiuk is simultaneously reverential and destructive of the history of his own strip. It makes me wonder if the only reason he does Act I callbacks or brings back an old character is simply because he’s going “See? Fifty years! I have a legacy, dammit!”

    But yeah, this mid-2010s period is not good at all. Westview and its characters have basically take a backseat to… well, everyone else. Mason and Cindy and Darin and Pete and all of these other losers I couldn’t care less about have effectively become the core characters. Funky only exists to be a depressed sadsack over getting older and seemingly realizing his legacy will be nothing (a bit of Batty’s own insecurities leaking through?). Les, of all characters, only appears when it’s time for TB to shill a book collection or Lisa’s Legacy and is otherwise functionally irrelevant. Everyone else is even worse off. It’s just a problem that started in 2013 having accelerated. Why do Pm and Jff and other Centerville doofuses keep showing up to get the focus in arcs? Why am I reading about Cliff Anger? Why is a week spent dedicated to a John Darling character getting forced into retirement?

    I do not know and/or don’t care about a single one of these characters. If I wanted to read about Crankshaft characters, I’d read Crankshaft. If I wanted to read about John Darling characters I’d read… oh, well, I guess I can’t do that. If I wanted to read about a buch of dipshits allegedly making movies in Los Angeles, I’d read the non-existant Mason Jarre, Movie Actor spinoff. Yeah, Funky isn’t particularly good but there’s at least a modicum of investment from having decades of strips following these characters so those would be the ones I’d want to read about, not characters from other strips or ones introduced in only the last few years who have only the thinnest of conection to the core cast.

    The one real positive I’d give is to Rick Burchett’s art. Some times the faces are off, though I have to wonder if maybe Batiuk’s inking and corrections are mangling the pencils at points (much like Rob Ro’s coloring destroys the art on Sunday strips), but overall his art is more dynamic with characters actually emoting more, doing more, moving around, etc. than they had in a long time. Ayers’ art after the Byrne interlude had gotten incredibly lazy and static so Burchett’s is honestly just more pleasant for me to look at it because it feels like there’s more actually happening in each panel. Is it the greatest art ever? No, but it’s better than the stiff dreck it had turned into in the preceding 14 years.

    1. He’d stopped caring but it’s his critic’s fault. At least with Lynn, we snarker troll fungus people in basements broke her heart by not liking the dishonest, thoughtless and dishonorable way she bailed out her first marriage.

    2. Burchett wasn’t great at staying on model (or wasn’t paid enough to care), but man his artwork had some life to it. Would have served TB well if he was willing to write gags that leaned on the artwork, which he of course never did (though Burchett punched up more than a couple panels anyways to try and get a laugh).

      1. The whole art situation has always seemed weird to me. Like Ayers had been drawing the strip since 1994 but he was never credited on it and it was always just credited to Batiuk until Burchett takes over and then suddenly it starts being co-credited. I guess because Burchett, actually being a pro with a long career and not just Tom’s buddy, wasn’t going to accept being uncredited for work he was doing.

        I might have said all of this previously (so apologies if I did) but the whole story about Byrne’s guest stint as artist also makes no sense when I think about it since Batty hadn’t been drawing the strip for a decade by then and was inking Ayers’ pencils. And he says when talking about it that he was inking Byrne’s pencils too meaning nothing had changed and the surgery wasn’t preventing him from doing what he’d been doing since 1994. Byrne’s stint lasts exactly as long as the big and dramatic Wally’s return story and then Ayers is back with his style completely changed to a less cartoony one (keeping with Batiuk’s early ’90s style) and somethng closer to what Byrne had done.

        Either Batty thought having Byrne draw the story of the military hero returning home after a dramatic ordeal would earn him attention, then thought better of it and combined two separate things (surgery he’d had and Byrne drawing the strip) to make it more palatable. Or he wanted to do an artstyle change to something less cartoonish for the more serious and dramatic tone the stirp had taken and the bleak tone it was going to take and having Byrne do art was a good way to introduce it. Either way, the story as he tells it doesn’t really add up.

  12. I didn’t realize that the spider was a Halloween decoration. I thought the gag was that the big spider that lived in the bandbox crawled out and blocked the camera, as sometimes happens to a traffic or weather cam on the evening news. I even made a parody strip thinking the spider was alive.

    1. In fairness, it’s not like Dan “Copy and Paste” Davis could be bothered to make sure the spider looked the same in consecutive panels, so it’s easy to see why one might miss it being a decoration.

      1. it’s not like Dan “Copy and Paste” Davis could be bothered to make sure the spider looked the same in consecutive panels.

        This sentence is low-key hilarious. How can you cut-and-paste an image and have it NOT have it be the same? This is a level of incompetence on par with Homer Simpson somehow setting his cereal bowl on fire.

  13. Are you excited? It’s a Batton Thomas week AND a book signing week! Maybe some of our other favourite authors will be there! Maybe we’ll get more witty, pithy comebacks! Maybe somebody will get to explain to the unwashed heathen masses how comics are a legitimate art form totally worthy of being considered literature!

    1. I’d be more excited if he weren’t an insufferable and patronizing jerk. That’s a lot of his problem: he’s not grateful for what he has.

    2. Why didn’t this strip occur this right after Batton mocked Crankshaft for wanting to see more of the old guy in his comic strip? Batiuk undermined his own point.

      1. Since he does this so often and gets all smug when denying it, it’s easy to see what his major malfunction is.

      2. While I don’t disagree, actually seeing The Wrinkles depicted as the sort of Fearless Fosdick style gag that TB had previously hinted at but never seemed willing to commit to is nice. Sunday’s is one of the better Batton strips, I’d argue, low a bar as that is.

  15. A con crowd always looks like an opportunity to work some real people into cameos, but i who knows if beardo and batman were references to one of his many fans.

    Weird how TB hasn’t had his good friend Tony Isabella, famous comic book writer who is his close friend and fellow comic writer, on panel in quite a while! Wonder what ol’ Tony’s been up to lately?

    *quick search later*

    Umm, well, that one’s going to be hard to work into the strip organically

    1. I can think of several phrases that would apply. Train wreck. Diaper fire. Dog’s breakfast. A dog’s breakfast followed by a train wreck made of diaper fires.

    2. I’ve said the sentiment before that Tom actually willing to even try and do a “transitioning at 60” story in Funky’s final year would’ve been a very topical strip that fit into his modern “screw the Funky kids this is boomer problems the strip” philosophy and actually would bring some serious buzz around the comic again, for better or worse. Plus he had something he could finally do for Ronalda after sidelining her for decades because the counterculture gimmick she was envisioned for burned out by the 2nd year could be reinvented in a unique way. But no, it’s just a throwaway/trendy “wow people change over the years you lose touch” moment that only got a Sunday strip’s touch that most readers wouldn’t get, lumped into the lamest final reunion story he could do of “man we all hated high school and felt like outcasts, even the popular girl with the eternal youth”.

      If he’s ever thinking of trying it again with a shoutout to Jenny Isabella it’s not going to be half as effective when it’d still mainly just a shoutout to his comic industry buddies. Though if he did want to earnestly try it here it could be mildly amusing to imagine who from the Crankshaft-origin cast could be thought to fit the role of a “hatched egg”, as they say. Like the mailbox guy or something.

  16. Tues. 11/4’s Batton at the Con:

    Good to see that Batiuk thinks comic book fans are at heart idiots worthy only of snarky contempt.

    1. All in the service of not wanting to understand what Spidey is asking: “Are you the original artist?”

      1. And, in the service of forcing a joke where there isn’t one. Yes, it was a dumb thing to say, but people make this kind of mistake all the time. Every time “Batton” has a choice between answering a fan’s question and insulting a fan, he will always pick the latter.

        1. Which brings me to the problem that I have: he acts like a sneering jerk but doesn’t understand why people don’t like him.

    2. TB has done this gag multiple times now with Batton, so I’m guessing someone actually has asked him this at some book signing somewhere. I’m also guessing it happened to him exactly one time…

      It’s not really an unreasonable question from a casual comic strip fan either, a majority of long-running comics page staples have been out of the hands of their creators for decades.

  19. Something that’s hitting me at this point is just how complicated the family tree in Westview/Centerville is at this point. Someone tell me if I’m missing anything because there are probably Crankshaft characters involved who I don’t know of.

    Ed Crankshaft is the father of Pm and Jff Murdoch. Pm and Jff have two children, Max and Mindy Murdoch. Mindy is currently engaged to Pete Roberts and/or Reynolds whose sister is Ally Roberts and/or Reynolds; their father is former John Darling producer Reed Roberts (possibly Reynolds). Jff’s sister is Jan Darling who was married to John Darling, the murdered father of Jessica Darling. Jessica is married to Darin Fairgood whose mother Lisa Moore was retcon raped by Frankie Pierce. He was subsequently adopted by Fred and Ann Fairgood and has an adopted half-sister named Kerry. Darin’s biological half-sister is Summer Moore, his pseudo-stepfather is Les Moore, his pseudo-stepmother is Cayla Williams-Moore and his step-half-sister is Keisha Williams. Jess and Darin’s son is Skyler Fairgood.

    Did I miss anything? Are there yet more obscure connections to, through blood or marriage, tie Clan Crankshaft to the Winkerbeans or Klinghorns or any other prominent Funkyverse families in one being, ugly, Hapsburgian mess? Is everyone in Westview-Centerville metro area interrelated? And how does Big Walnut Tech factor into this? Are they a crosstown rival to Westview High or are they in yet another city like, oh I don’t know, Walnutsburg?

    1. There are other connections, although not necessarily familial ones. Like… Ed Crankshaft’s nemesis during his baseball-playing days was a player named “Beanball” Bushka, who was the grandfather of “Bull” Bushka, the bully who tormented Les during their high school years. (Bull later became the football coach at Westview High and attempted to make peace with his now-coworker Les, but Les decided to crap all over the guy at his funeral anyway, because Les is a dick.)

      We also have Funky’s nephew/cousin (Batiuk has said both at different times) Wally. Wally was married to Becky “Lefty” Blackburn, but was declared dead after his helicopter was shot down in the Middle East and he was taken prisoner (no, not that time, the other time), and Lefty married Dead Skunkhead John Howard. Lefty and Skunky are raising Wally and Lefty’s biological son, Wally Jr., and their adopted daughter, Rana. Wally remarried Rachel (did Rachel have a last name?), and is thus stepfather to her son (biological father unrevealed at present, I believe), whose name is Billy or Bobby or whatever Batiuk decides to call him this week. They also have Buddy, The World’s Worst-Trained Service Dog, to help Wally with his PTSD. (And Skunky runs the Komix Korner, which has employed, at various times, Mopey, Rachel, and Crazy Harry.)

      And lest we forget, there’s always Zanzibar The Talking Murder Chimp. He doesn’t really relate to anyone else, but it’s always fun to say “Zanzibar The Talking Murder Chimp”.

      1. Yeah, I was meaning more direct connections. But no, I don’t think Rachel had a last name prior to marrying Wally so maybe she’s a distant Crankshaft or Murdoch or something.

        And I swear, it’s like every appearance Mindy has is her looking like she ever regrets getting with Pete and wondering why she’s with this dumb loser. I’d say she could do better but when she was around at the end of Act II, she decided it was a good idea to date a guy who tried setting his school on fire so maybe she’s just a poor judge of character. Which leads into another bit of stupidity in Mooch ever even being allowed to keep attending Westview. My brother and a friend of his back in the mid-2000s got expelled from high school over being caught with weed and had to jump through hoops, including doing a year at an alternative school, to be allowed back. I’m fairly certain trying to set your school on fire would mean that Mooch never would have been allowed to set foot on campus again but I guess they do things differently in Westview.

  20. Not content to remind the seniors that San Diego Comic Con is a thing, this week we get a whole advertisement for the local Akron Comic Con being a thing that the IRL Batton is coming. I’m probably one of the few that could feel specially targeted given that I live in the area, though so far I haven’t been tempted enough to go, despite the chance of getting authentic Funky pencil art or the presence of other guests like a guy from Breaking Bad, a voice actress for Peppermint Patty or a YouTuber I used to watch (now that was a surprise to see). Also semi-relevant to what I mentioned above but Jenny Isabelle is there too, could be a nonzero chance she shows up here, stay tuned.

    I swear I had something to say about the Komix Thoughts blag for a while but I keep forgetting to comment so it’s slipped my mind already. From reviewing things, seems like he’s skipped a few Flash Fridays and at least one numbering in the Cover Mes (apparently Francesco Francavilla’s artwork on a cover left on a pool table is an instant buy. Also a spread-wings Batman rope leap needs no elaboration and an extreme close-up of Doctor Doom’s face is the “best cover ever”)… wait, maybe it was week/”Take” 490 of John Darling where Keaton is apparently shirtless while wearing his coat and gloves? That’s pretty dang wacky for this era of Funkyverse. Also i guess the literal Joker is just watching, maybe that ties into the “same universe as Dick Tracy/possibly the same universe as DC” continuity snarl I’ve mentioned before.

    1. Well, it’s a little over 400 miles from where I live, but I did just go to Chiller Theater to get James Widdoes (Hoover) to sign my “Animal House” one-sheet, so I’ll pass, too.

      I do love the fact that local hero Batiuk didn’t make the con’s homepage guest roster, but horror hosts “Mummy and the Monkey” did. “I told them once, I told them a hundred times: put ‘Spinal Tap’ first and ‘Puppet Show’ last!”

      1. Pretty sure that for any Comic-Con within 150 miles of Medina, it’s only front-page news if Tom ISN’T planning to be there. (“At last! You won’t have to slink by his unpopulated table, desperately trying to avoid eye contact!”)

        1. “Tom Batiuk came back?”

          “Tom Batiuk never left. And I fear that his mind may no longer be in mint condition.”

  23. 11/05: Being accused of ripping off Archie has dogged him his whole career….and rightly so.

  24. Today’s Crankshaft

    Day 3 of Batton Week

    (suddenly, a 7ft muscular man arrives at the expo)

    Bane: We meet again, Mr. Wayne.

    Batton: Is he supposed to be that huge, Batman? I think he’s amplifying his Venom usage-

    Bane: Oh, Mr. Thomas. I’m not using it at the moment. Do you want to see what it does?

    (Bane then transforms into a gigantic behemoth version of himself, revealing him to be the Absolute Universe version of Bane (nicknamed by fans as Absolute Bane), causing Batman and Batton to shit themselves and sprint out of the area)

  25. No one has ever, ever, ever confused Archie with Funky Winkerbean. In terms of cultural impact, influence on the medium, and iconic status, Archie is to FW as the collective output of Universal Studios is to a church basement puppet show. Even in its basic joke-telling ability, Archie outpaces FW. The art in these two strips doesn’t look remotely similar, ether.

    IF this ever happened, Batiuk was being pranked … and still hasn’t caught on.

    1. Because it makes him feel good. The guy in the costume is a plant from Archie Comics trolling the delusional wannabe.

  26. 11/06: If you’re going to clap back at people who call you out for relying on Copy And Paste Guy, don’t rely on Copy And Paste Guy.

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