In my tedious dissection research currently ongoing of the stupid Skip and Batton interview, I nearly let an important anniversary pass us by! So thanks to CSRoberto for reminding me that this week we are celebrating 54!
No, not that one.
No, not that one either.
Instead, the 54th Anniversary of the first Funky Winkerbean Strip!
And, since things have been so unbearable on the Crankshaft front, I thought I’d throw up some choice 1972 material.
I MEAN CHOICE 1972 FUNKY WINKERBEAN MATERIAL!!!
Covering a wide range of topics Batiuk would never touch now! Like…
Cannibalism.
Cultural Appropriation.
Body Shaming.
Trad Wives.
Or Livinia in general.
And who can forget that there was once a time Batiuk dared to pretend he didn’t deeply revere Baseball and Comic Books.
But of course…some things never change.
54 years later and he still won’t shut up about climate change.
And the levy will NEVER pass.
And Tom will always find a way to insert himself into his comic.
And Les Moore is an unbearable human tumor no one wants to see. At least we can be greatful we’ve had more than a year of his absence!
Funny to think about how the ‘Kid’s These Days’ this strip was originally about are now all pushing 70. World leaders, congresspeople, CEO’s, generals and admirals.
“I mean, this is surely the generation that will figure out that whole Middle East thing, right?”
But at least you can look back and see where old Funky Winkerbean predicted the future.
Yeah, that is pretty far fetched and ridiculous.
Funky Winkerbean, if only we knew what we had when we had it.
Son of Stuck Funky 
The sad thing is that Lavinia got killed off and just faxed into obscurity.
Stupid Autocorrect ……
When I was doing the read-along a few months ago, the Act I characters that people really seemed to like Livinia and I’m not really sure why she disappeared so quickly. I feel like at the very least she could have been replaced by Mary Ellen if the idea was that she didn’t have enough of a hook as a character and hell, Mary Ellen would have been a great Act II addition as coach for women’s sports at Westview to play off of Bull. Which might have kept Ginny aroud and saved us from Linda.
Actually, why didn’t Mickey become a coach at Westview after graduating the way Becky and Susan also took up jobs there? Jeez, every time I think of all the wasted female characters who had spots lined up for them but it never happened because they weren’t interested enough in comic books.
Batiuk’s lack of imagination and curiosity is more to blame.
It really is maybe his most annoying trait that isn’t unwarrented hubris. Like take Roland.
On the one hand I can see why he might have thought it was best to drop the character because Roland was a pastiche of a specific type of person (the young radical) that, I assume, he thought was going out of fashion. By the time he was dropped the anti-Vietnam movement and war were winding down and Weatherman was a shell of itself so he might have thought the radical leftist movements were on the downswing so there wasn’t a place for Roland. He had Crazy Harry as the counter culture guy and who was more safely cartoonish so what need was there for Roland?
Except of course Roland’s type never went away and his shallow know-it-all radical who wants to fight the power but is kind of a dope and a hypocrite will always be eternally relevant. All you have to do is update him with the times and when he’s an adult he becomes the type of square he was railing against because oh ho isn’t that ironic? Instead he disappears for nearly half a century only to come back out of nowhere as Rolanda. And even then, even then, I’m willing to cut Batty some slack because Tony Isabella came out as transgender last year and given how close Isabella and Batty are, I could assume he would have known about it long prior to that so the Rolanda thing could very easily be a way of acknowledging that.
But that goes back to his lack of imagination because if you want to exploe something like that because you have a friend who’s transgender, then there’s obviously a story to tell about Roland coming to that realization but Batty, in his infinite laziness, just drops it on the readers in the last few months using a character who had been gone for so long that unless you were reading the strip in the ’70s you’d have no idea who that was and why it was supposed to be a big deal since there’s no other context.
The worst part is that I don’t think Batty has the self-awareness to realize why his writing faults are actually faults. His storytelling is so arrested and zeroed in on a specific type (1950s and 1960s DC comic books) that he just figues that’s the way it is and should be. If that style was good enough for John Broome and Gardner Fox writing Flash and Green Lantern comics in 1961, then it was obviously good enough for Tom Batiuk writing comics in decades long after 1961.
It’s telling that he doesn’t understand that they wished the medium didn’t limit them. His big bugaboo Stan Lee viewed comics as a means of paying the bills until he could go legit but he never figured that out.
Now this is my favorite FW act! Decent jokes, few comic books, little preaching. With these strips you can see how Batty got his gig, with these strips later strips you wonder how he kept it.
Today’s Crankfuckery
(Ed then charges onto Jeff, leading to Thomas Shelby to jump out the TV and beats Ed to death)
Thomas Shelby: NO FUCKING FIGHTING!
Hey, did you think Mulch To Lame #232 was one of Tom Batiuk’s finest works? Evidently, he did — because it’s also now Mulch To Lame #234. (Except he cut the final sentence, which I assume will be given its own special place of honour as Mulch To Lame #235.) So now you can revel once more in Tom’s brave admission that he trusts his own instincts as a writer! You can thrill to him tossing aside advice from professionals! And marvel as he explains how he actually prefers tell-don’t-show, and eschews actual humour in favor of burying jokes in the middle of dialogue!
As for the early FW strips … they aren’t bad! Certainly miles ahead of 98% of Batiuk’s recent material. (Once in a long while the sprockets still catch, and he manages a decent strip. Happens maybe once every month or two.)
Regarding the “What did the winner get?” strip, I’m reminded of when the hostages were released from Iran in 1981. Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn announced that the hostages would be given lifetime passes to all major league and minor league baseball games.
Football commentator Beano Cook said, “Haven’t they suffered enough?”
I love baseball, and couldn’t stand Beano Cook. But that was pretty funny.
3/29: This one reminds me of the Britcom Last Of The Summer Wine because this is something Norman Clegg would ask.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Keesterman: Ed, you’re as bulky as a upright bass.
(Ed slaps Keesterman in the face)
Ralph: He’s right, y’know.
I’ll be surprised if Batton Thomas isn’t back tomorrow, or at least next Monday. It’s the only thing Batiuk has left to write about: himself. He can’t even finish a week “Ed does malaprops” without filler.
If so, it’ll be in the middle of the week.
3/30: These are the days of miracle and wonder, these are the days of old people complaining about their health.