Voting for the 2025 Crankshaft Award is Still Open!
The Funkyverse has a new corporate sponsor: Yondr!
I previously called this kind of product placement “egola.” It’s like plugola or payola, except that you get paid in self-actualization instead of money. Usually, these are about Tom Batiuk’s weird fandoms (The Phantom Empire, Chad & Jeremy); events that met his ludicrous standards for treating him like a big shot (Ohioana Book Fair, Comic-Con); or both (Winnipeg Blue Bombers, “Montoni’s” pizza).
Yondr doesn’t appear to be any of those things.
Interestingly, Batiuk describes the product correctly. You define a phone-free zone, and instruct visitors to put their phones in the special pouches. The pouches can’t be unlocked until you leave the area, or use the “unlocking base.” You can still hold the phone, hear it, and see it well enough to know if the screen lights up. You can understand why certain institutions, like schools, would use such a thing.
But why would the famously anti-technology Tom Batiuk, fresh off a week of trashing the long-established standard of online payments, portray a technology product in a positive light? Especially one that hasn’t stroked his ego, as far as we know?
I think this image from Wednesday’s strip is the key:
I hid the text, because it’s not important. Look at the child’s face. Compared to the usual faces in the Funkyverse, that child is very upset. This isn’t the devil-may-care smirk or the resigned acceptance we usually see. That is the face of someone in mourning. Even Ed Crankshaft is going above and beyond in this shot. He looks genuinely irritated at this behavior. And unless I’m way off base (which I often am), these are both new drawings.
Why would Tom Batiuk be excited about a product that lets parents take cell phones away from children? Does it maybe… relate to his life experience, somehow? Oh, yes, it does. And we all know how.
This is Tom Batiuk telling the world he’s still upset that his mother tried to take away his comic books. It practically screams “See? See what it’s like when mean grownups take your precious thing away? Let’s see how you enjoy living without your precious phones!” He gets to make that point again, and slam something that didn’t exist before 1991!
And another thing: Ed is totally the wrong character build a Yondr arc around. What Funkyverse character (1) has a job where it’s reasonable to ask children to put their phones away, and (2) demands to be the center of attention at all times? Come on, you know who it is!
The star of Yondr Week should have been Les Moore.
Batiuk pulled Les out of mothballs to make him the star of The Burnings, even though Les almost single-handedly caused the entire problem. So there’s no real obstacle to using him here. Having Les – or at least, a teacher – be the ringleader of the Yondr Enforcement Team makes much more sense than having bus drivers do it.
Using Les in this role would (1) fit his long-running characterization, and (2) poke a little fun at the character, something the Funkyverse desperately needs.
The Funkyverse is full of unsympathetic comedy protagonists, but it doesn’t use them properly. Characters like Les Moore and Ed Crankshaft need to get pushback every once in a while. A week about Yondr is a perfect opportunity to take Les down a peg. Not in an overly mean way, but in a way that tells readers “okay, I get it, this character is a little overbearing sometimes.” And other characters get to acknowledge it too.
But Tom Batiuk is so enamored with his interpretation of Lisa and Les as The Greatest Tragedy In Human History and Her Long-Suffering Heroic Disciple that he’s blind to things like this. But here’s what I’d do:
Monday Panel 1: Principal Nate: “The school board is mandating we use Yondr, which requires students to put their phones in these special pouches during class. We need volunteers to help us with the roll out.” Panel 2: Les, in a group of bored-looking teachers sitting in meeting room chairs, enthusiastically raises his hand. Panel 3: “Okay, I think we all saw that coming. Anybody else?”
Imagine if Les got to deliver the “we have our ways of finding out” line.
It’s not hard to imagine a situation where Les is a little too overzealous about enforcing the rules, or enforces them in selfish ways. And the kids call him out on it. Here’s what I would do with the above panel:
Now that’s a quarter inch from reality.
Son of Stuck Funky 
You’ve just called for more Les Moore. I hope you know what you’re doing.
You’ve drawn the pentagram, and invoked the ritualistic ceremonial words….
Yes, Les would be a more logical character to drive this plot. And yes, there are way more actually amusing directions for this plotline to go if Les is trying to enforce the Yondr rules. But Batiuk being Batiuk? He would find a way to highlight the least amusing, most pointless direction, and also somehow discover a potentially interesting wrinkle which he would mention obliquely in passing then totally fail to explore.
All of which I think he’s gonna do with Crankshaft there anyway. The only difference in summoning Les is that now Les would be there. That is NOT, at least in my view, an improvement….
What’s more, he’d be perplexed by a focus on the more obvious jokes. If he can’t see something everyone else can, people bully him by pretending they do.
Everything Tom Batiuk does seems driven by the idea that he has to avoid the straightforward at all times. He’s like an angsty 15-year-old who’s so hung up on “originality” that he can’t give a straight answer to anything. Look at his goofy blog posts. He can’t simply say “this happened”, even in an environment that eschews formality. Everything is so full of parenthetical asides and random stream-of-consciousness thoughts that it practically needs to be translated. Batiuk treats writing like it’s some kind of performance art.
This explains the build up an event – don’t actually show it – watch people smirk as they deliver a summation that doesn’t explain things industrial complex. Our Little Man thinks actually showing things is boring.
That is such an accurate description. Build up to something, cut around the money shot, smirk while delivering a wordy but ill-fitting explanation, avoid conflict or pushback at all costs, rinse, repeat.
He thinks it saves him from criticism about the event not being impressive enough. He is wrong again.
I think Yondr itself is the potentially interesting wrinkle. There are so many ways this real product could be used in a high school environment, and so much material you could write about it. But Mr. I’m Too Good To Be A Gag Writer gives us this lazy dreck.
Hell, Dinkle forcing Yondr on his choir singers would be better than this. At least that would be consistent with Dinkle’s character, and with real-world usage of the product. You could use it to take Dinkle down a peg, much like I suggested with Les.
i lnow, I’m meddling in the dark arts. But i honestly don’t think it matters much. I’ve called for Ed Crankshaft to die of old age, but that’s not happening either.
As vile as Les Moore is, there are still ways Batiuk could make him work as a character. And this week is an example of where he could fit in, and how.
That’s what you get when you paint yourself into a corner like a dolt. Les is the right overzealous nitwit but The Delicate Genius cannot see it.
She flew too close to the sun and needed to be shut down.
Little Lisa Sampson — Centerville’s answer to a question no one asked!
I’m guessing choir girl is singing Bob Dylan because that’s who TB knows, and because of the “release” part of the lyrics… but man it would have been a MUCH stronger gag had the girl been singing the better-known (especially as a protest anthem) “We Shall Overcome”. So… did this not occur to TB, or is he too chicken to wade in those waters?
Batiuk works on the “first thought, best thought” principle, as it plays into both his laziness and his narcissism. So once he thought of the Dylan tune, it would literally never occur to him to spend five additional seconds contemplating if there’s a better, funnier or more appropriate song he could use instead.
(And you’re right … “We Shall Overcome” is a much funnier AND more universally known choice!)
“MR. MOORE! MR.MOORE! THE POST OFFICE JUST EXPLODED, AND YOUR WIFE WAS INSIDE!”
“EGADS! Did someone call 911?”
“WE CAN’T! OUR PHONES ARE LOCKED IN SECURE YONDR BAGS!”
“DAMN THIS MODERNITY! I CAN GET HER TO THE HOSPITAL FASTER MYSELF!”
“YAY MR. MOORE! USA! USA! USA!”
As always, Tom is more than welcome to steal and use my idea as he sees fit. And, as usual, I’ll be here to mercilessly mock and scorn that idea. No one needs to know the hows or whys.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 4 of Bus Driver Bullshit Week
(snore)
2/13: And of couurse, it’s the children who are wrong.
And by “wrong” you mean “looking like Davis traced their faces from adults who had previously appeared in the strip”, yes?
He’s getting a John Byrne award for today’s panels for sure.
Knowing how to draw children was never his deal.
Byrne or Davis?
Nevermind, the answer is yes…
Drawing a child means contact with one.
But hIs need to mock children gets in the way of the boring, obvious thing
Can someone explain today’s strip? The boy says he’s going to put an old brick phone into the Yondr pouch, and the phone he’s holding is very small, and a girl says, “I didn’t know they made phones that small!”
Aren’t old brick phones larger than contemporary smartphones?
If anything, they’re thicker.
I think he’s confused “brick phones” (the big old ones) with “bricked phones” (ones rendered useless by breakdown or wiped clean of all info and apps.) The latter would actually make sense in this context so obviously we go with the former.
I don’t even know what would be accomplished either way. Putting a dummy phone in the pouch to get away with smuggling the real phone in another pocket? Not sure what that accomplishes unless all suspicion is waved once a phone is seen in the pouch by a teacher.
I mean, wouldn’t ANY phone work? Even a broken one?
“Brick phone” has become something of a “floppy disk”-like term, shifting in usage to slightly-less antiquated antiquated technology among younger folks. For many Gen Z and younger folks, “brick phone” is often used to refer to Nokia’s compact cellular phones from the late 90s and early 2000s rather than the large brick-shaped cellular phones of the 80s and early 90s. The Nokia 3310, in particular, has been the subject of widespread internet memes about its durability as the “Nokia Brick”, to the point that Nokia created a similar-looking smartphone model with the same name in 2017.
So TB and Davis get a pass here. Maybe not Davis with the artwork…
Today’s strip is Exhibit #1477 in the ongoing saga of “The Syndicate Doesn’t Bother To Even Read, Let Alone Edit, Batiuk’s Work”.
(Presumably Dan Davis HAS to read it in order to do the lettering, but then doesn’t offer any notes.)
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 5 of Bus Driver Bullshit Week
Blond Girl: Mr. Crankshaft’s not that stupid, y’know.
2/14: Is funny because child’s parents have to buy new phone.
It’s funny because it was in Good Morning, Vietnam!
For the hell of it, I’m looking back through those storytimes I over the previous few months that was the impetus for me going on my Funky journey and given the last few weeks of Crankshaft have been dedicated to Old Man Makes Comics About Technology, here’s a somewhat relevant comment from the final thread that I ran across while re-reading them. From an exchange regarding the strip where Mason does an Instagram stream with Les during Lisa’s Story wrap party.
It made me think and then made me realize something.
Before Batty shuffles off into retirement or whatever post-life existence one may or may not believe in, I want to see him do a VTuber arc. It would be the absolute worst, most cringe inducingly bad “How do you do fellow kids?” story he could do. He could have Mindy do it and throw in some kind of ham-fisted commentary on male geeks forming parasocial relationships, there can be some customary shots at Beady-Eyed Nitpickers. We may be able to look in horror at words such as “waifu” appearing in a Funkyverse comic strip.
I won’t say the world needs this. In fact the world probably would be better off without it. But I certainly do.
There already is a viral star in the Funkyverse: Bingo the Cat! There was a whole “fundraising for choir robes” week where they pointed the camera at Bingo, and it immediately got 8,000,000,000,000,000,000 views. Like always happens.
There was also a week where Lillian’s underage “employees” were trying to push her into, or maybe helping her set up, some kind of YouTube presence. We never heard anything more about it, though. Which is probably for the best. A 107-year-old woman trying to promote her crappy NaNoWriMo novel wouldn’t get five views, total.
I think Batiuk knows, on some level, that he’s in *way* over his head with this topic. So he does cheap, easy jokes that don’t require any actual knowledge. (Which I think explains a lot of the Funkyverse.)
That it does. It’s also the reason why we never see big events.
Jeez, today we not only have Google/Bing, et al, we have LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, etc. If I wanted to write some jokes about, say, My Little Pony and Bronies, which is a topic I know nothing about (so why would I want to write jokes about it? But I digress…), I’d simply ask an AI,
What are some controversies and issues in My Little Pony fandom? What are some cliché traits of Bronies?
Takes 5 seconds, but then again, that’s 4 seconds more than Puff Batty’s willing to spend on research.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 6 of Bus Driver Bullshit Week
Kid: Goddamnit! Guess my parents are gonna have to homeschool me for your actions.
Ed: TH’ FUCK DID I DO?!
Kid: First of all, you try to make us extremely late for school by intentionally passing our houses…
Still Today’s Crankfuckery
I wonder if next week is gonna be either Interview from HFIL or Dinkle Week
Happy Valentines Day
2/15: Well, at least last year’s ice storm prevents this year’s act of clueless destruction.
More plugola in today’s strip. An Ice Festival? Hmm, let’s check the schedule for Batty’s home town of Medina, Ohio. Ah yes, next week is the annual ice festival. Well this is still better than what is happening over at Mary Worth.