My life has been a chaotic mess lately. Last weekend saw the passing of the mother of my dearest best friend, roommate, soul sister, and the Blue Beetle to my Booster Gold. So much of the week was tied up in funeral and funeral reception planning.
Now planting is in full swing, and my Dad has decided he completely feels up to putting the corn in as long as someone else is loading the planter for him. So those lower on the farmer pecking order than him are getting really up close and personal with 50 pound bags of seed corn a half a dozen times a day.
Still, didn’t want the day to go unremarked upon. So a little snapshot of a momentous time in the story of the most complex, fraught, and toxic relationship in the Funkyverse. Jeff’s relationship with Rose. Someday, when the world calms down a bit, the crazy old bat is due for a deep dive!
Son of Stuck Funky 
5/11: And we’re back to the Funkyvasion as Crazy Harry and Dead Skunk Head bore us with a lead in to a Sideways Sunday.
Also Holy Damnit Mommy Issues, Batman.
“That’s too bad. I feel great, because I could tell the Montoni’s delivery gal yesterday was so into me! It was the Batman lounge pants that did it!”
“I was going to ask my wife Becky if she could lend a hand with these boxes, but, well, you know…”
It seems to me that someone is blissfully unaware that he was a disrespectful spoiled brat who was too bull headed to get out of his own way.
Thanks CBH for taking time from your busy schedule to create this post. It is much appreciated!
Yeah, I haven’t been much help lately. Thanks to Harriet for stepping up and finding something to write about this dreck. At least today we got a good old-fashioned, Act III-style trip to the comic book store!
CBH:
I am so sorry for your loss. Blue Beetles are hard to come by and to be treasured when you have them.
In the “bwah-ha-ha” era of the Justice League, Booster and Beetle formed a little league of their own along with Mister Miracle, and I hope you have a Scott Free of your own in your life, along with a Big Beautiful Barda.
As a “Columbo” fan, I suspect that Milo Janus would approve of an exercise in exercise. It’s the next best thing to one in fatality, and much more preferable to one in futility!
(Unless it’s Morgan Robertson’s *Futility,* which told about a ship called the Titan, which struck an iceberg.)
“Feeling flat? Tired and fat?
Milo Janus is where it’s at.
Keeping trim, healthy and slim,
With Milo Janus, you’re in the swim.
Yoo-ooour new life is waiting to begin at Milo Janus,
Gee-eet in shape, we’ll see you through thick and thin – everybody…
Start your day, shed pounds away,
You’ll start to feel calm and well!
The only thing you have to gain is your health”.
Thanks Anon, and everyone else.
My Blue Beetle is doing okay. Her mom was declining for a while, so it wasn’t completely unexpected. But she is an only child, so I’m stepping in as surrogate sister.
We do have an entire Justice League International of zany, wacky, great friends. But (Thankfully) no Guy Gardner being a narcissistic jerk until you’re just looking for something to drop on his head!
Judging by the “baggage” strip, Jeff was neither a math nor a psychology major.
I can relate to having china thrust upon me when I got married, at least. It was new china in my case. I hate it. It resides in a bathroom linen closet…
Is it funny or sad that Mindy was indignant at receiving hand-me-down china as a possible wedding present back in July of 2008, and here it is nearly 18 years later, and she’s seemingly no closer to walking down the aisle (engagement stuffed animal notwithstanding)?
It can be both things.
5/12: It’s funny because a man born in the nineteenth fifties doesn’t know a term that’s been current for thirty years.
I was surprised to learn last week that Classics Illustrated had devoted an issue to the life of Joan of Arc.
This puts her in the same company as Benjamin Franklin and Benvenuto Cellini.
Karl Marx would be a bit harder, if you accept the Tom Stoppard line from his play The Real Thing:
“It’s half as long as Das Kapital, and only twice as funny.”
*National Lampoon* did a parody of Classics Illustrated with Socrates (March 1974, with script from Sean Kelly and artwork from Joe Orlando and Alan Kupperberg), and the mock-indicia assured us that such adaptations took nothing away from literature except the literature and nothing away from comics except the fun.
Come to think of it, Classics Illustrated adapted both The Iliad and The Odyssey…
(Wouldn’t Crazy Harry, who did some digital work on the Lisa tapes, recognize a mousepad? Mine features Supernatural Lawyers Alanna Wolff and Jeff Byrd.)
Yesterday’s Crankfuckery
Out of all the Funky Winkerbean characters this week had to focus upon
WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE PEDOSKUNK JOHNATHAN HOWARD
Today’s Crankfuckery
Crazy Harry: Whatever.
Now that’s actually funny.
5.13: And of COURSE we get Batton Thomas being Smirky McFistMagnet.
So, who had May 13 for question A1 in the “Batton Thomas Predictions” Contest?
I believe the betting was for the continuance of Skip’s interview with Batton. This isn’t that. (Yet.)
It isn’t… until the big reveal in the very last Crankshaft strip that the entire run of Crankshaft was just Batton relaying his inspiration for The Wrinkles to Skip.
The book Skip publishes about it (Batton’s Story: The True Story Of A Guy Who Wrote A Story That Was Very Much Like Lisa’s Story) will be widely regarded as the second-best book ever written. It will survive The Roasting, and have future readers reaching the conclusion that humanity is their zip code.
Oh God no, he’s back. Like some recurring chronic disease, that insufferable ego is back, and this time he’s brought along some self-deprecating false modesty that he doesn’t believe for one minute.
And poor Skip hasn’t tagged along to capture this fascinating moment.
Nice to get confirmation (through his completely identical-in-every-way avatar) that Tom Batiuk usually sells and signs zero copies of his books at his numerous book signings.
I mean, we all knew this already, of course. We just weren’t sure if Batiuk really knew.
He knows. We can now officially surmise that he goes and does these appearances anyway because it makes him feel like a real grown-up author when he can tell people that he does book signings.
All this week needs are Mopey and Dopey stopping by and maybe Masone Jarre dropping in to talk about the newest Starbuck Jones movie (and no whether or not his unaging wife has given birth to her mutant spawn).
Today’s Crankfuckery
JUST WHEN I THOUGHT THIS WEEK OF CRANKSHAFT COULDN’T GET ANY WORSE, BATTON THOMAS SHOWS UP
5/14: How about ‘only’, Smirky McFistmagnet? Ah, well. At least this self-own reminds us that the only person Batiuk fooled is Batiuk.