Back when I owned a Sega Genesis (and the Sega Genesis was still current), there was an obscure but riotous game called Mutant League Football.
It was an over-the-top, super-violent version of American football. It was even more extreme than the later NFL Blitz. It was also a pretty good football game. It was so good, it was easy to forget how silly it was.
MLF was arguably better than the Madden series, which was primitive at that time. MLF was certainly more fun to play. Except that you had to play head-to-head; the vs. computer mode wasn’t much fun. My college roommate, friends, and I played Mutant League Football against each other like people play Madden nowadays, and like we played NHLPA Hockey ’93 at the time. We took it seriously.
MLF had a feature where you could bribe the referee, and he would call a stupid penalty on your opponent. This only worked once per game, so the secret was saving this for when you needed it. There is nothing more infuriating than getting a critical defensive stop on a 3rd-and-3, and then getting a 5-yard penalty for flicking boogers. The term “rage quit” didn’t exist yet, but I caused one or two. I hope the 2017 remake kept that feature.
I tell this story because of today’s strip:
What post-apocalyptic mutant soccer league does this man’s daughter play in that gave her a broken leg? Not a sprain, not a foot fracture, a full broken leg. Soccer is not a violent sport! Especially not at the level of competition that exists in Westview/Centerville, which is Class A high school at best. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but that would be a pretty severe injury.
When characters under-react to something that is blatantly strange or unusual, TVTropes calls it an Unusually Uninteresting Sight. There are ways to justify this reaction, but none of them exist here, or anywhere in the Funkyverse. If anything, the Funkyverse runs on Unusually Uninteresting Sight. Characters don’t react at all when they’re being blatantly abused, attacked, exploited, manipulated, shown bizarre things, and left to die from untreated cancer.
Or, as we’ll see in the second panel, insulted.
In the unedited strip, Pam says “I’m sorry to hear that! How is she?” to which the man responds as seen above. I can appreciate that some people struggle to pick up social cues, but how oblivious can you be? Pam clearly meant “how is your daughter’s recovery going?” even if she didn’t say those exact words.
Pam showed empathy (in what’s basically a phatic conversation anyway), and the man throws it back in her face with a pedantic, unfunny response. It would be much more effective – and, dare I say, fewer inches away from reality – if Pam recognized this insult, and responded accodringly. The man was so eager to make a joke that he deliberately ignored the obvious subtext.
I often talk about the Comedy Disconnect, which is when the writer sacrifices reality in a desperate attempt to get laughs at all costs. I’ve further noticed that Tom Batiuk loves to do this when it’s completely unnecessary.
We don’t know who this man is, or who Lizzy is. (Unless he’s some Act I bit player Batiuk expects us to remember.) His opening line could have been “my son broke his leg playing high school football”, which is a far more plausible scenario. The rest of the strip could have played out the same way. Which still isn’t a joke, but let’s solve one problem at a time here.
Pam recognizing and responding to this insult is a perfectly workable second panel. In fact, my edited version of strip has two jokes in it – which is two more than the unedited strip has.
And this is a common problem in Act III/Act IV. Last week’s “Crankshaft juggles choir practice and the bowling championship” arc had multiple Comedy Disconnects that didn’t need to exist at all.
November 11: Crankshaft says “my father taught me how to play the ukelele when I was little.” This would have been about 1925-1930, when the ukelele was barely known in the United States. This could have been any musical instrument. Keep in mind that Crankshaft could not read yet.
November 15: Dinkle is annoyed that Crankshaft put a bowling team logo on the back of his choir robe. This ignores the fact that we’ve seen Dinkle raising money for choir robes on multiple occasions. The punchline could have been Dinkle handing Crankshaft a bill for the replacement cost. Which also would have kept Dinkle in character.
I came up with my own name for this more specific version of Comedy Disconnect:
Toxic Filler: When filler text inadvertently undermines the story.
Son of Stuck Funky 
The thing is that it’s 100% possible to keep laughs in a story that’s otherwise more serious or dramatic; shows like the Simpsons, Futurama or King of the Hill were able to do it all the time. Hell, I’ll argue that Batty could, at one point, do it and I’ll use a specific story to show this.
In 1982 Batty decided to do a story arc where Coach Stropp has a heart attack. It’s probably the first story arc in the series that’s more serious in tone: Stropp has a heart attack, he ends up in the hospital and has to undergo a coronary bypass. It’s a real scare for him and there’s a real chance, or at least worry on his part, that he could die which leads to him wondering if he could have done things differently and praying to God to get him through it and in the end, obviously, he does come out of it just fine.
But while the content of what’s happening is serious—Stropp was at risk of dying after all—there’s still jokes. The very first strip is with Les and what happens when Coach has his heart attack? Les, appropriately, actually calls for help and for someone to call for an ambulance… then yells out to boil some water. Because Les, of course, is a panicking idiot and mixing up heart attacks and pregnancy which is fine because that’s what he was back then. The next strip, Al says that luckily there was an ambulance there already to Fred’s surprise which Al replies with “It’s a precaution I always observer on the days the serve pickled fishsticks in the cafeteria.”
These work. Les, of course, is kind of an idiot in Act I and a common joke is how disgusting and probably hazardous the cafeteria food is. There’s some cracks taken like when Al starts to say that it’s understandable because coaching can be stressful due the pressure to stay on top but then stops himself and says “no, that can’t be it…” which is definitely a dickish thing but in the context of Act I being a fairly cynically comedic strip and the fact Al is consistently shown to be bitter and disillusioned, again it’s fine and it works. Nothing about the jokes undermines the seriousness of what happens and the seriousness doesn’t cause the comedy to grind to a halt to accomodate it. They work very much in concert to make for what I’ll say is unironically a pretty good story.
Compare that to the teen pregnancy arc. The comedy just comes to a dead stop because we’re supposed to be taking everything seriously. It’s a big shift in tone for the series where the jokes are almost superfluous and in fact usually undermine the seriousness of the situation. Thus they wind up not being funny and yet the story itself never seems as realized as it should be because it’s stopping constantly to do a forced joke so it winds up being the worst of both worlds. If BatTick had managed to take the style of that Stropp story, work on it some more and refine it and use that as the basis of the strip going forward, then I think things might have turned out much better because it was telling something with more seriousness in a style that played to his actual strengths.
Unfortunately, he instead used Lisa’s pregnancy as the template for what he would do going forward because that got him attention for being (superficially) daring which played into his need to be seen as a real writer because he seemingly never got over Marvel and DC rejecting him and the end result was developing and refining a style that instead of playing to his strengths did nothing but amplify and refine his weaknesses as he continued to chase the validation dragon and the end result was a series of more and more eyerolling attempts at relevancy and praise bait with “jokes” jammed in (even though comics don’t have have to be funny, as Batty will always tell you) until eventually he seemed to realize the praise wasn’t coming and so he gave up and gave us gun-toting chimpanzees and time traveling janitors.
He would have to admit that critics are trying to help him. He’s too squishy inside to do that.
10/10 no notes.
Act I “lovable loser” Les: “Call an ambulance! Boil some water!”
Post-Act I Loathsome Les: “I CAN GET HIM THERE QUICKER MYSELF!!!”
Both induce laughter in the reader, but only one was intended to be funny…
That’s the problem: trying to make a hero of him ruined him. If he were the same clueless and panicky shlub he was in the seventies, he’d be easier to take.
That was one of the more infuriating things. Like yes, you have to wait for the ambulance but the thing about ambulances is that they have big lights and loud sirens and everyone has to get out their way and they can go through reds and whatever other things. What if he’d gotten caught at a long red light?
I understand that you allow for creative or dramatic liberty but the number of times this specific thing crops up leads me to believe that Batty thought it was an effective thing to do (since it was pulled straight from the Lisa pregnancy story) or he had something against ambulances. Possibly both.
Les’ passenger also wouldn’t get life-saving treatment during the ride. Nor would his vehicle have the right to access the emergency entrance. But Les thinks he can do it, which is the important thing.
Someone should have intervened, and by “intervened” I mean “punched Les in the face.” He was committing a felony (obstruction with risk of physical harm) and risking Susan’s life, for no reason other than his own ego. And, to obscure his own role in Susan’s suicide attempt. As with Lisa, Les must be in 100% control of the narrative at all times. And the town gets out of his way to let him.
Les has a toxic case of Main Character Syndrome. Which is a weird thing to say about a fictional character who is the main character, but here we are.
Re: the Teen Pregnancy Arc aka The One That Started It All, And Nothing. IMO, the most infuriating thing about that arc was how it was glaringly obvious how it would play out, literally from the second Lisa revealed she was pregnant. There was only one way it could possibly end, as there was no way BatHam would have had the stones to either have Lisa keep the child, or terminate the pregnancy. In 1982 (or whenever it was), the Syndicate would never have allowed that anyway.
So as soon as it began, all suspense was gone instantly. And on top of that, he used every single moronic TV sitcom pregnancy trope/gag he could. Les is in shock thinking it’s his. Les agrees to help Lisa. Les goes to Lamaze classes. Les is squeamish. Les panics when Lisa goes into labor. Tired, shopworn gags, for months and months on end, followed by Lisa surrendering the baby for adoption (to a couple named Fairgood, of all things). My cat could stroll across my keyboard and barf out a better story than that piece of tripe, but to hear him tell it, BatYarn more or less reinvented FW, and the entire comic strip art form, with his bold new direction.
I remember thinking at the time “FW is ruined”, and you know the rest of THAT story. Of course, I had no idea he’d continue ruining FW for another five hundred years, but who could have possibly seen that coming?
And, of course, as has been pointed out before… all the sitcom tropes listed start with “Les”. Lisa’s pregnant, but it’s all about Les. As the entire comic would be soon after.
Which is what really makes the Act III time skip all the more galling. Batiuk sets up a situation which REALLY IS about Les… and decides to not bother. As much as Les took over Lisa’s story, the aftermath SHOULD HAVE BEEN about Les. How he deals with losing his wife, how he deals with having to raise Summer on his own… there were TONS of stories to mine there, which would have NEEDED to center on Les. Sure, how Lisa’s friends reacted to her passing would be important, but he had a story that truly was about Les. And all he could think to do was skip right over it. And then make Les the center of attention again and still obsessed with Lisa’s death. Only because of the time skip, instead of being a genuine tale of loss and grief, it became an annoying tale of a self-centered jackass.
It’s like someone told him there’s a Pulitzer category for “Biggest Missed Opportunity”.
Exactly. He always takes the easiest possible path, and apparently, turning Act III Lisa into The Great Gazoo was way easier than actually writing stories involving the aftermath of the biggest prestige arc he’d ever done. “Oh, it’s been eleven years since Lisa died, and this woman at work likes me. Perhaps I’ll go to the park bench and summon Ghost Lisa, and see what she thinks”. It was totally absurd.
As I see it, his problem is that he never seems to ask “What does the other person want?”; Lizzy’s dad doesn’t know what Pam wants to say and telling him she’s inquiring as to how Lizzy is reacting would lead to him revealing he doesn’t know.
Neither Tom Batiuk nor any of his characters has Theory of Mind. Batiuk is incapable of perceiving anything from any point of view other than his own.
I know. It shows when they have to meet the world halfway. When they steamroll over people, we get a smirk that should be punched off or insolence. When they lose, we get a sour look or whining about injustice. At no point do they ask “Am I the asshole?”
Also, someone like that has no damn business being a teacher. Les is proof.
11/23: We spend a day with a callback to all the times Ed is left dangling from a gutter.
I’m honestly surprised that Bats didn’t run with “bowling team logo on choir robe” and turn it into Dinkhole’s new money-raising schtick: Selling sponsorships on the back of choir robes. Because we’re overdue for a Dinkhole fundraising arc. I’m surprised we weren’t treated to another thigh-slapping installment of “hapless Dinkhole acolytes flog ‘Sam ‘n’ Ella’s’ turkeys door to door” this Thanksgiving. “Sam ‘n’ Ella”! Oh GOD, it’s so funny! HAHAHAHA, salmonella sickens over a million Americans every year and leads to thousands of hospitalizations and hundreds of deaths, HAHAHAHA oh HO HO HO HO *wheeze*!
There’s another device that’s worn out its welcome: Dinkle forcing his victims into selling wildly inappropriate things to raise funds for whatever vanity project he’s working on.
Just wait until Dinkle commits blasphemy and changes the eucharist to include sacramental band candy.
The link regarding ukuleles doesn’t conform to what is written here.
The Wikipedia article says, “Like guitar, basic ukulele skills can be learned fairly easily, and this highly portable, relatively inexpensive instrument was popular with amateur players throughout the 1920s ….”
This post says, “This would have been about 1925-1930, when the ukelele was barely known in the United States,” but actually that period would have been near the height of the ukulele’s popularity in the U.S.
I was intentionally being vague there. Because the article also says “the ukelele became popular during the Jazz Age.” Crankshaft’s implied background being what it is (rural, illiterate, poor), I don’t think his father would have embraced the instrument.
Today’s Crankfuckery
(Ed then falls onto the ground after trying to clean the gutters, and then explodes 2 seconds later)
11/24: It’s a tradition as stupid as a megalomaniac forcing people to sell dodgy turkeys: Crankshaft doing something that over the top, stupid and destructive to resolve a non-issue.
This week’s Crankshaft is still better than the stupidity over on Mary Worth. Parrots are good seems to be the message there.
At least Mary Worth finally got rid of that insufferable Olive. Parrot stories I can ignore.
So Toby having an escaped smuggled amazon parrot as her new best friend isn’t exactly warming your heart, is it? I’m waiting to see if she accidentally ends up in the middle of some sort of evil bird theft crime syndicate.
And I wonder if the whole story is some kind of political statement, underplayed to the point of sarcasm. “People from Mexico are bringing… illegal parrots into this country!”
heh, heh, heh, now there we go! Much better.
I hear you. Boring. The last good arc in MW was when Wilburs psycho girlfriend came by. Gotta admit that was a good one, albeit an unhappy ending, because she didn’t end up actually offing Wilburp.
Right now though, Rex Morgan is a little interesting with the whole author/real story arc.
Today’s Crankfuckery
WHY DOES TODAY’S STRIP HAVE TO BE A SIDEWAYS ONE
Because Batiuk doesn’t get that people don’t need to be spoonfed. If he looked at one lear on a branch and said that, most people would understand what he meant. This is lost on Batiuk.
11/25: I can understand with drives him but if you’re being realistic, the chairman of the HOA would have said “Don’t worry Crankshaft’s head onto the pike. Let gravity be your friend!” long ago.
It’s almost certain at this point that more readers read newspaper comics online than in physical newspapers. Why does he insist on doing these neck-craning horizontal strips?
To punish us for enjoying them the “wrong” way.
How else are you supposed to know the strip is important? It’s basically his version of a splash page.
I wonder if this is going to be a whole week of sideways panels.
At this point, I’d say it’s a safe assumption.
I’m reasonably certain Tom doesn’t realize that people don’t actually read print newspapers anymore. (It’s the only way to explain the continued existence of Skip.)
He does but he will also venerate the dead tree format as the only true form of journalism that matters* and something that must be preserved. Maybe it’ll make a comeback like vinyl and dumbphones, you never know!
*Nothing to do with his actual peak as a creator and Funky’s reach in pop culture being the 1980s long before anyone was ever “in cyberspace surfing the information superhighway” and able to give real time and more widely visible feedback of his work that he could more easily see.
Features editors stood between him and bullying words like “this is implausible” and “your characters are impossible to like.”
Drake,
I noticed that Tuesday’s Mutts.com was also a sideways comic. I am guessing there must be an insurmountable (😉) difficulty in displaying a vertical strip for mass consumption. If Mr. McDonnell can’t solve it, what chance does Mr. Batiuk have?
I enjoy you!
As someone who has broken his leg on two separate occasions in much less intense sporting endeavors than girls high school soccer, I found that scenario to be the least objectionable and most plausible aspect of that otherwise appalling Crankshaft strip.
The first of these two broken legs occurred when playing in unsuitable field conditions, which seems like a very plausible situation in the Batiukverse, where fields are frequently trampled upon by marching bands and soaked by monsoon rains anytime those bands have competitions. Would have been a much more interesting angle to take on that broken leg strip (“we’re suing the school district and Lefty’s band for making Lizzy play on that divot-laden pitch”) than what we got (“screw you for expressing concern”).
Now that would be something worth reading.
“We mixed up your medical chart. Sorry about that. Your leg isn’t fine, it’s a triple compound fracture, and gas gangrene has set in. We’re going to need to lop it off. The other one too, or you’ll be all unbalanced.”
“I’ve decided to let the gangrene run its course. Now go fetch me my camera, I have videos to film.”
Batiuk doesn’t write stories anymore. All he can write now is strips that look like they’re setting up a story that never arrives.
I do wonder how long Batiuk intends to go for. I mean, he’s almost 80 and has been doing this for 50+ years while being checked out for at least the last 10-12 years. I assume he doesn’t even ink anymore on Crankshaft and just leaves it all up to Davis to copy/paste. Is he just going until he croaks or is he going to wait until he hits Crankshaft’s 40th or what?
I actually didn’t mind the “she still has a broken leg” comment. We don’t know how good of friends they are (I mean why would we, as far as I know we’ve never met this dude before), but it’s a smart ass comment that I could see me or one of my close friends responding deadpan to each other. Which would be followed by a hearty laugh while calling him a dick.
I’ll give Bathack the tiniest of leeway here, because if that was what he was going for, it probably is hard to convey that in 3 cartoon panels. But, that being said, he’s dropped the ball so many times for so long, he probably was just being an insipid douche canoe.
The man’s facial expression screams “insipid douche canoe.” He’s throwing Pam’s comment back in her face, as Pam’s expression of concern were a stupid thing to say.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 2 of Stupid Sideways Strips
If the Darwin Award was a person, I think it’d be Ed Crankshaft
I think the discussion of the sideways strips is missing an important point: it’s also a pain in the ass to turn your whole newspaper sideways. Try it sometime.
This is lost on the Delicate Genius. Most practical concerns are.
Uh, to win a Darwin Award, you have to actually die. Also, doing stupid things and living through them isn’t much of an obstacle in life anymore.
11/26: Well, it’s not sideways but something refusing to be steamrolled will make things go sideways.
I am going out on a limb🤪 and say today’s Crankshaft 11/26, is my candidate for TB’s best strip of the year! Tally my vote, ComicBookHarriet.
Oh! To pj202718nbca and everyone else at SOSF, yes, Be Ware of Eve Hill, especially you!
Happy Wonderful Thanksgiving! 🦃 All of you are so special! 💝🩵💖🫂🌺💐🌹
I second this, SP. A rare return to form for one day only. The earlier two strips were copies of the same 2016 arc I’ve talked about before. But today was a new one. Credit where it’s due.
It shows us just who this man is: someone driven bonkers because he can’t control something.
My Thanksgiving was last month but you’re welcome anyway.
Agreed. Good execution of a running gag with artwork that sells the joke.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Today’s Crankfuckery
(Crankshaft takes a better look outside his window and to his horror, he sees Sonic.exe, who breaks inside the house and tears his soul out from his throat)
11/27: At this point, I half expect him to hide under the bed because the leaf is bullying him.
Well, I just wasted over four hours watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from start to finish. 34 balloons, from Bluey and Spongebob to Buzz Lightyear and someone named Monkey D. Luffy…but no Funky Winkerbean balloon! What a rip-off!
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 4 of Leaf Holding On Tree For Dear Life Week
The Leaf which refuses to fall off the tree has been living in Crankshaft’s mind rent free since almost a decade ago
Happy Thanksgiving
11/28: She really should have seen this coming.
12/2: Maybe PBM is Lena?