Over in Crankshaft, Batty is taking a trip into the distant past of the Funkyverse as three old farts stand around in a storage unit while one of them regales his enraptured pals and unenraptured readers about how his daddy played the trumpet and wore a suit. Larry Dinkle went all around the Great Lakes region but was never around the one place where — *sniff* — it mattered most.
But while Batty is looking back to reveal the Funkyverse’s past, we shall be looking back in order to reveal its future. So nestle in, dear reader, for this tale truly told…
It is late 2022 and Tom Batiuk has just dropped his bombshell via crotchety Golden Age relic Ruby Lith that it’s over. After fifty long years Funky Winkerbean would be coming to an end in but a few short weeks. A half-century of characters mugging at the fourth wall, life or death school levy votes, old men geeking out over even older comic books, Les Moore’s undeservedly smug face, cancer, alcoholism, band candy and murderous gun-wielding chimpanzees would finally draw to a close.
However there were still things to learn about Westview, OH and it was the job of one person to learn them. They had to, after all, for as it turns out only they alone could do this. Only they had the ability to sift through the information and see the patterns and find the clues that would allow us to become a better, more united people. And someone else was there to make sure that they did it.
Summer Moore had a destiny. She would write the book that would bring about utopia. The book that would help us realize that humanity was our nation. The greatest work of philosophy by the greatest one book author of all time. But how would she get to this point? What could have caused an otherwise innocuous young woman from a middling Rust Belt town to eventually become the Pattern-Finder?
In order to answer these oh-so-pressing questions, I’ll be starting a new series examining the twists and turns of Summer’s life. Because surely this will be a sensible and logical development and not just Tom Batiuk pulling something out of his ass at the last minute, won’t it?
But while the cat’s in the cradle over in Crankshaft, we’ll be starting with a different cradle entirely as examining Summer’s life means that we must first examine her pre-life which means going all the way back into the wilds of 2001. It was a year of great tragedy as Funky started it drukenly passed out on the sidewalk, his marriage rapidly crumbling around him. In these dark times though there was a bright spot as Lisa, cancer free and better than you, was working on her law degree and decided to let slip that there was something else she wanted.
The Moores decide to talk about Lisa’s sudden desire for a child with Les expressing his worries in his usual whiny and self-absorbed manner.
Being the insufferable turd that he is, Les decides to take this time to bust out his new character that he’s been working on — Armchair Freud — and begin psychoanalyizing his wife’s desire to have a child.
Of course Lisa did not decide on a whim that she wanted a baby. As we all know, Batty loves his meaningful anniversaries and in November 2001 it had been 15 years since the story that forever changed the trajectory of Funky Winkerbean and Tom Batiuk’s career. And what better way to call back to it than to get Lisa’s biological clock a-tickin’ and have her come down with a case of baby fever? For the next month then, the reader is treated to a complete retelling of the Pregnant Lisa Saga from 1986 and I suppose it’s a minor miracle that Batty got Ayers to actually draw the whole thing as opposed to taking the exceedingly lazy way out and just reprinting it.
Tangenting here, and there may be more tangents as this series goes, but we see here some of Batty’s patented ability to completely disregard his own timeline. Lisa states that “Dopey” Darin Fairgood is a junior in high school which would mean, given that this is set around the time of his birthday, he’s just about to turn 17 years old. You’d think that wanting to call back to his most important story, Batty would just say “he’s a freshman in high school” to line up with the story’s anniversary.
Yet for some reason Batty is basically acting as if the last few years have been happening in real time even though time in this strip has always been a fluid thing — For Better or For Worse this ain’t. I mean it won’t be until 2007 when Darin’s generation, having entered high school in 1998, graduates. So for Darin to be a junior in 2001, his birth would have had to happen in 1984 which I guess lines up with when he started school but would then mean that, if we kept the original 1988 graduation date that Act II establishes, then Lisa would have been a freshman herself when she was pregnant which okay, fine. But in 2002, for the strip’s 30th anniversary, Funky will also celebrate his 30th birthday. With the Act I crew graduating college at 22, that would mean that Act II would have had to have started in 1994 and Funky’s group graduated in 1990 not 1988 which means Lisa would have had to have given birth, at the earliest, in 1986 which means Darin should be a freshman and not a junior which means…
God dammit, why do I put more thought into this than him?
Okay, back to the actual important stuff. After the flashback to Lisa’s nebulously dated pregnancy, she’s feeling frisky and decides it’s time to get to babymakin’ with the most sensual of come ons.
Wooed by those romantic words, in February 2002 we learn that Les was successful at implanting his miracle seed within his ovulating she-bride and that she now carries Ohio’s most divine child inside her cancer womb.
With the divine child now growing within her, life continues as normal for Lisa and Les over the next few months. Les does… uh, something — Les-type things I suppose — while Lisa graduates law school. At the same time both Funky and Crazy Harry are going through their own significant life changes as Funky’s in the process of getting divorced while Crazy has gotten engaged to Donna who, you’ll be surprised to learn, was actually the Eliminator the whole time! Betcha didn’t expect that, did you? Because of all these changes going on in their lives, the guys decide to go on a camping trip as this may be their last chance to do so, while at the same time Lisa is in Columbus taking the bar exam.
Everything’s going pretty well which of course means it’s time for drama to rear it’s head. Which it does when Lisa arrives back at Montoni’s and to her surprise ends up in a confrontation with an old friend.
Yes, while carrying the holy child within her Lisa is met with the appearance of Ohio Satan who, while not all powerful in his devilry, is able to draw upon his hellish powers to engage in minor annoyance. This annoyance comes in the form of Frankie demanding Lisa take him to his son — who ironically is right there unbeknownst to any of them — and he won’t take no for an answer. Because he’s evil, you see. So evil that he manhandles Lisa a little bit with dire consequences.
The stress of the situation causes Lisa to go into labor… I guess? I would assume that’s the reason anyway but who can really know? Godtiuk works in mysterious ways after all. Frankie takes the opportunity to skedaddle on out of the comic for the time being. With Darin and Lisa being the only two in Montoni’s it’s suggested that an ambulance is called but like a true Batiukian Hero, Darin decides he can get her to the hospital faster than the crummy professionals whose jobs it is to do this and who are basically their own traffic laws.
I mean how else was TomBa going to give us some hilarious dramatic irony and Teen Pregnant Lisa callbacks if the characters just left things up to the professionals like reasonable people? Don’t they know that there’s awards to be won? And oh man was Tommy Boy really in love with the dramatic irony for this story because he was practically ODing on it.
Okay, what the hell? Darin was canonically born in 1986 so he, if this took place in real time, cannot possibly be in the 11th grade. Unless I’m discounting the possibility that TB doesn’t actually know the difference between freshman, sophomore, junior and senior which maybe I shouldn’t be.
Anyway, the whole situation means that that the Annointed One was born a little earlier than normal and so she’s put on a ventilator to help her survive.
While talking with the doctor, the Moores realize that with all the craziness going on this summer they forgot to decide on a name for their little girl. Lisa decides that craziness means that Summer is the name that they’ll be going with which means I can finally start calling her by her actual name too. With the newborn Summer now clinging to life in Doctor Depresso’s Breatheinator 5000, Lisa fills in Les — who’d zipped back from the camping trip because he somehow felt that “something was wrong back home” — on the events that led to their kid’s premature birth. Les comically threatens to kick Frankie’s ass if he ever shows up again.
While you’re thinking of people more qualified and able than Les to beat up Frankie — the newborn Summer for instance — our hero decides to start making a list.
Batty, of course, is milking the apparent touch and go nature of Summer’s situation for everything it’s worth.
But fret not for this is but a fake out and these are happy tears! It turns out that Summer has gained a pound and Les is overcome with joy, huzzah! Things are going well and Summer’s about ready to leave the hospital, so Les goes out to buy a fancy new digital camera so he can get Boy Genius to explain to him and Lisa how uploading a picture works.
By the way, giving me vibes similar to this gem.
But even back in 2002 uploading pictures of your kids onto the internet for the whole world to see could lead to some suspicious characters coming across them. Characters you might not want.
Who could this be? Frankie? Or someone even more sinister?
Why it’s just another fake out as Lisa’s dad and/or mom were sinisterly and dramatically narrating their every action for our benefit simply to fool us. Perhaps they’re aware they’re characters in a comic strip and understand dramatic tension. Who can say? Regardless of any potential medium awareness, they’ve decided to move back to Westview to be closer to their family and so Lisa can have a convenient babysitter. Summer soon after has her first Christmas and Les decides to end it with the type of uplifting positivity that only he can provide.
With that I’ll close things off here for the time being. The future Messiah has been born and all is right with the world for now. There will be plenty of time for Batty to screw up his handling of this most important of all Westviewians later but next time we may possibly rocket through a good chunk of the remaining years of Act II. Or we may not. But there will be a next time because we’ve got a long way to go.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Yesterday’s Crankfuckery
Day 16 of In The Name of The Father
ha ha it’s funny because Dinkle wasn’t very close to his father Larry when he grew up (i think)
Day 17 of In The Name of The Father
Dinkle: He and his band came into the studio black out drunk and SOMEHOW THE MUSIC HE RECORDED ON THAT DAY WAS FAR BETTER THAN THE HIGH SCHOOL BANDS THAT DIRECTED BY A FUCKIN’ MILE! IT’S NOT FAIR!
Oh look, Dinkle found his dad’s diary, because of course he did. Nothing screams “prestige arc” like finding another batch of meaningless messages from dead people!
This is the sort of thing Dinkle should have discovered when his father died, if he had any affection for his father at all. After my dad died in 2006, my mom, brother, and I went through some of his old things. I learned some stuff about my dad I never knew. I never knew he got a pilot’s license! My mom showed me the document. I learned that I techically had a stillborn half-sister. (From my father’s first wife; this was a major reason that marriage failed. And by, extension, a major reason why I exist.)
I have no idea why but when I first saw that “J-Peg” I thought it had been edited to read “This stinks!” and now I’m being Mandela’d.
You’re right about the journal-he should have seen it when he was boxing it up. Maybe he had so much disdain for his dad that he just threw everything in boxes and didn’t look at it. After all, he put a musical instrument in a storage locker for years, and as life-long band director he should known better.
It’s amazing what you discover after loved ones pass, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s documents and sometimes it’s simply oral information. I’ve gotten so many tidbits from my parents since my grandparents have passed-new details on family stories I’ve always known and on occasion, stories I’ve never heard. And I love when that happens because it helps me better understand my own parents and their upbringing.
Yeah, it’s a shame that we never learn that kind of thing until too late.
You’re suggesting “TB doesn’t actually know the difference between freshman, sophomore, junior and senior”? Oh, please. What are the odds that a man who spent five decades writing a syndicated comic strip which was (increasingly less) centered around a high school wouldn’t know that? That would be like him constantly changing the graduation date of his Act I student body and…oh. Never mind.
6/18: This deep dive into the terrible writing of the past is well timed as the ass pull diary bids fair to set up another clinker story arc.
Nah, Monday the 22nd we’re going right back to Batton Thomas. That’s my prediction. Putting myself down for one bet.
I’m thinking that there will be a week of actual Crankshaft-focused strips first. Batton and Skip grace us with their presence on or after the 29th.
is that an official bet pn 6/29?
Let’s make it official. I’m betting that 6/29 is the start date.
If so, he’ll be cursing being made to name someone Groovy Blinkersteen.
pj2027,
I apologize. My fat fingers accidentally gave you a downvote. I have tried every trick I know to change it into an upvote. I failed. 😞
It can’t be done because reasons so don’t worry about it.
pj2027,
After threatening rubber band snaps (ouch!), all is again right within the world of my fat fingers. .
Also a man who used to be an actual high school teacher himself. But, really, why would he need to know what terms are used for different grades, right?
Thanks for that deep dive, Narshe! You really had me chuckling.
Was anyone else reminded of this?
There’s another strip begging to be rewritten.
But she does have to pay for the sins of another, Les: YOURS!
His self-absorption, stupidity and refusal to understand that other people are real mess her up.
Also, Larry’s diary will lead Harry to the Ryman Auditorium because reasons.
Maybe Lillian will deliver a letter from Larry to there. It could theoretically be done by Saturday.
But they would need all next week to open it.
Another thing I never got is this: during Lisa’s Death, we’re expected to believe that Lisa and her father had been estranged since the 80s. Yet HERE HE IS, clearly cool with everyone!
Did we ever get an explanation for that? Or a retcon, at least?
Oh, looks like in today’s Crankshaft we learn that Lisa was Dinkle’s father!
If there is one thing I will give TB credit for, it’s that he/Ayers drew new artwork for pretty much every flashback in Act II and for most of Act III (and there were A LOT of them). I suspect that TB was so insistent on this because his artwork had evolved considerably by the end of Act I and continued to do so during Act II (surely due to Ayers more talented pencils) and he wanted it to match the then-current artwork and (probably) to look more “adult”. It also allowed him to retcon with abandon… but he probably would have done that anyways.
I had forgotten about the “check out funeral homes” strip. Haha, holy cow, that’s maudlin on the level with Masky McDeath! Great pull!
And curse Durwood for making me nostalgic for the Sony Digital Mavica…
And, his refusal to believe that real people cease being real when they die.
that was in response to PJ’s comment
The idea that the consumer durable called Tom Batiuk ceases to exist in ant form is a scary thing bullies say. Ah, well. At least he’s not the cement-headed front man of Barenaked Ladies shouting “You don’t exist and I hate you!” at the heavens. Atheists can be colds too.
Believing that there’s something afterwards is the only thing that keeps him going. He’s not a serious man because he can’t understand what a horror immortality would actually be.
Is it, though? Les doesn’t exhibit thar kind of “we’ll be together again someday” Christian thinking. He certainly isn’t devout in any way. I think his real interest – other than cynically leveraging Lisa’s death into his own writing career – is controlling the narrative of Lisa’s life. Because if he doesn’t, somebody might point out that Les has some ‘splaining to do.
Yes. He does need to explain why he stood there like an idiot terrified of doing anything that might actually help.
Sidney Spritzer: Hey, Batiuk, do you believe in there hereafter?
Tom Batiuk: I do.
Sidney Spritzer: Well hereafter let’s get some better jokes, huh.
…..
But I agree with this, and it is not just with Les but with pretty much every character who encounters death in the Batiukverse. By nearly all indication of his work (except maybe Crankshaft’s visit to purgatory or whatever that was supposed to be), TB doesn’t seem to put much stock in existence beyond life in this world. Not an uncommon worldview, of course, but it does become an increasingly odd view to hold when he/his characters simultaneously insist on making every memory of those gone into a monument.
I get the impulse, I believe in the hereafter and yet still have kept completely unnecessary items that belonged to my deceased loved one. But good grief I have neither the energy nor the arrogance to try and make other people care about those things, or about people they’ll never meet. Why nothing and no one can simply be important only to a single character in TB’s work is a baffling thing.
To me, it’s probably his reaction to being that weird kid getting roasted for age inappropriate interests. If something is only important to one person, the sportos win.
I would say it’s rather odd for someone who apparently doesn’t put much faith into the existence of an afterlife to ALSO show characters as ghosts (whether or not they actually died), to the point of having one make phone calls to stop a plane crash… but, really, that’s just the level of consistency we’ve come to expect from Batiuk, isn’t it?
Wanting things both ways is the sign of an incompetent.
I really wonder what Tom Batiuk’s adolescence was like, considering how he refused to give up his childhood comic books, and commited his life to dying on that hill. I grew up in the 1980s, and kids were brutal enough with me about holding on to some childhood loves a little later than I should have. But the late 1960s? Over comic books, something that had less cultural value than Bazooka Joe wrappers? Good Lord.
What I see is a stupid fool who won’t admit he’s sabotaging himself.
Hi Narshe,
I absolutely enjoyed this! Thank you so much for putting together such a fantastic, deep-dive retrospective. Your breakdowns of the early strip logic and the signature “Batiuk fake-outs” are spot-on and incredibly entertaining to read. Tom Batiuk’s continual disregard for his own comic’s continuity just to serve a single, immediate story arc is honestly baffling. I suppose if anyone called him out on it, he would just shrug and say, “I’m a storyteller.”
I am really looking forward to the next installment tracking the history and destiny of the Pattern-Finder herself, Summer Moore! Keep up the amazing work!
It’s called writing™!
Pretty sure I’ve never heard any human being use “j-peg” as a verb. “You can j-peg it to someone”? Another one for the Batiuktionary, I guess.
Anyhoo, I think I’ve spotted a hidden message in the November 6 2001 strip.
Clever, Tom. You hid that one pretty well.
Skimming the economics of being on the Road
Reading this Larry Dinkle arc made me wonder how a band as barely known as Larry Dinkle could survive on the road? As with everything Batiuk, there is no
definite timeframe for the band. H Dinkle is the World’s Greatest Band Director by 1972. I figure he is roughly 40 years old. That puts his birth at @1932, right smack in the middle of the Great Depression.. Larry Dinkle could even be possibly performing during the late 1920’s. How would that fit economically?
After WW1, Germany had hyperinflation and few jobs. Not enough supplies with reichsmarks inflating daily. United States had a different depression. USA had
huge unemployment (too many soldier boys flooding the market), but enormous deflation. Too many goods and little purchasing power. That was because the USA suffered sharp drops in consumer demand as wartime spending ended.
Comparison:
1920…a single can of Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup cost between $0.10 and $0.12. But in a diner, a full meal including soup cost $0.65 to $0.85.
By 1924 in the midst of the Roaring 20’s…a single can cost the same for a home meal, but at the restaurant, one could get a bowl for $0.05 and often in diners, as low as a penny.
1932 four years into the Great Depression…a single can could be bought for @$0.07. At the lunch counter, $0.10 to $0.15.
I chose soup for a reason. My uncle was born in 1920. In 1932 at age 12, he was downtown and passed a diner that priced soup at $0.20. He did not have 20¢. He talked the manager into hiring his Mom! She gave him a free bowl of soup every day.
So food was cheap. So was gasoline. In my experience in Gladstone, Mo from 1966 through October 1972 gas went back and forth between $0.19 to $0.27 with lots of stations having gas wars between them. So if Dinkle had 5 bandmates, he
was set for food and gas. Any car repairs were affordable: certainly, if any one of the 5 had any mechanical experience.
I will close with a story of musical choice. I have no idea what an unknown Swing band could charge for a night or weekend. But I can tell you about Rock
Music vs Country Western. During the mid to late 1960’s, Faron Young appeared
at the outdoor Starlight Theater in KC. He was being interviewed and he was asked how he became a Country Western singer. He said he started out in Rock. At one place he would be paid $5 a night, but if he could play CW music, he would be paid $50 a night. He made an immediate career change.
In Peanuts, Frieda’s cat Faron was named after Faron Young.
Hm, now I have to wonder if John Allison (intentionally or unintentionally) named his character “Fallon Young” after them as well. (One of his main characters was named “Shelley”, and he thought “Winters” sounded like a good last name for her. It was only later that it dawned on him that the name sounded so natural because of the actress. So it’s entirely plausible the same thing happened with Fallon. Or it’s just a coincidence.)
SP:
This is to thank you for the Faron Young story. It reminded me of how Jerry Lee Lewis remade himself as a county and western recording artist (he’d still rock out live, but his records would be pure country) in 1968), proving that the Killer knew what he was doing.
On Monday I was at the Bitter End and a sign outside listed artists who’d performed there. One was “the Everley Brothers.”
Now, that should be “Everly,” but in thinking of what happened to Don and Phil after their last Top Ten Hit (“That’s Old-Fashioned” from 1962) and the British Invasion sent them into limbo, I recalled a critic’s lament that they went to Las Vegas and became Golden Oldies when they might have explored becoming full-fledged C & W stars, making a new career out of performing “songs our daddy taught us.”
Poor Jenny had nothing on Poor Phil and Don. Take a message to Mary on that!
(Current music comes from Kurt Weill, who had lyrics written for him from Bertolt Brecht, Sherwood Anderson, Ira Gershwin and Langston Hughes, among others. I imagine that Larry Dinkle and his orchestra could have played “Speak Low” or “My Ship” in their prime.)
Dear Anonymous Sparrow,
If we pay attention, you and I have an advantage. We remember things, such the price of gas in the 1960’s, or our first job’s hourly wage. My first job was as a soda jerk. (I have since dropped the “soda” part!) I made a $1 an hour. Then it went up to $1.10. I was swimming in money. Shoot, by October of 1972, I joined the USAF, and made $289 a month. I could now afford a Dodge Dart, my Dad’s favorite car. Romance was not far behind. I met the future Mrs. SP in June 1974. Went on our first date in September, then asked her to marry me in October, and got married in March 1975. Good times. Good times.
Music played a big part in my life. Loved the Beatles. Then Christian Music and Classical. Now I am very eclectic. My phone has 79 playlists. Several have the Righteous Brothers “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling” and “Unchained Melody”. I will improve my music today and add some Everly Bothers to my playlists.
Thank you. You are much appreciated.
SP:
Check out the version of “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin'” from Long John Baldry and Kathi McDonald sometime.
The song takes on a different meaning with a man and a woman singing.
Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield both turn up on “Cheers” to serenade Rebecca Howe. Rebecca’s “the other Righteous Brother!” could have fitted neatly into Tom Stoppard’s *Travesties.* (“The other one?” “No, the other one!”)
Anonymous Sparrow,
Visiting with you is like taking a college course. You expand my world.
1. I now have 80 playlists: a new one focussed on the Everly Brothers.
2. I had some difficulty finding “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling” by Baldry and McDonald. Both artists are on Apple Music, but not that song. I did find the video of them singing it together on FaceBook. I was unfamiliar with both performers. I discovered Long John led 2 different bands. One included Rod Stewart. The other had Elton John under his own personal name. He creates his stage name using 2 other men in the band. Tragically, both Baldry and McDonald die at age 64.
3. I watched both members of the Righteous Brothers on clips of Cheers. Kirstie Alley overwhelms me.
4. I found a trailer for Travesties on YouTube, but not the actual play. Tom Stoppard fits into my last category:
—-I know what I know
—-I know what I don’t know
—-I don’t know what I don’t know
That’s where I was with Tom Stoppard. Then I found out I had been in his orbit with “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead”, and “Shakespeare in Love”.
That proves I am not a total barbarian.
So not finding Travesties, I did find a 1992 interview of Mr. Stoppard by Charlie Rose. The interviewer brings up Stoppard’s friendship with Václav Havel. Stoppard said 2 things about communist Czechoslovakia: when it stopped, the people lost a standard of living. Secondly, he describes the subsidies the Arts enjoyed under censorship. That put the creators of the Arts in a special category. They conspired to get as much past the censors as humanly possible, such as personal freedoms. But when The Communists fell, the freedom to say whatever and whenever caused the play writer’s power to evaporate. (Personal note: I was at a Christian conference and visited with a Christian just recently come from Poland. He said security was more important than freedom. He missed the security under Communism. If you are in New York City, you may see some of that play out under Mr. Zohran Mamdani.)
So again, sir. You thrill me and I appreciate you.
SP:
While I would never think of you as a barbarian, you may enjoy this observation from Robert E. Howard in “The Tower of the Elephant,” the third Conan story (earliest in continuity):
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
In one of his most accessible plays, The Real Thing, Tom Stoppard makes good use of pop music, and in the production I saw “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin'” helped ground the action. Henry, the play’s protagonist, gets a good laugh from claiming that Bach plagiarized “A Whiter Shade of Pale” for his “Air on a G String.”
Stoppard left us in November 2025, leaving me to feel that he’d never quite written a masterpiece. He came close several times — perhaps closest in his final work, Leopoldstadt — but something never totally clicked in his works, as if he were too fond of the tricks and traits of the theatrical form to abandon them.
At his weakest, he reminds me of William Butler Yeats’s verdict on Henrik Ibsen: “a playwright for clever journalists.”
Still, if he hadn’t written the screenplay for “Parade’s End,” my father would never have read Ford Madox Ford’s Tietjens Tetralogy.
It was a frequent talking point for Doctor Doom in his capacity as King of Latveria that he gave his subjects security and safety and all he asked in return was total blind obedience. Yet the other side of that coin is having a robot army prepared to strike down discontent whenever it arises…and Doom says both these things in the same story.*
Clearly, Victor Von is larger than Walt Whitman and contains more multitudes!
*
This is Fantastic Four #84, the opening installment of a four-part arc which owes a lot to the British “Prisoner” TV series. You don’t need to know that, though, to enjoy it.
Historically, I think it marks the start of the last great Lee/Kirby sequence, which lasts until #93 (Threatening to turn me into a toad if I don’t extend that to your introduction in #94, Miss Harkness, doesn’t frighten me. Nor do the size of Ebony’s hackles.)
Anonymous Sparrow,
I wish you a Happy Father’s Day whether that include children or pets.
💝💜💖🫂🌺💐🌹
SP:
Thank you. Best wishes to you as well.
Did you know Kirstie Alley was a contestant on Match Game before she got famous? The raunchy 70s Gene Rayburn Match Game. She won a couple games and got to stick around for 2 or 3 episodes. It’s probably floating around on YouTube.
BJR6K:
I had no idea! I hope I’ll have better luck finding Kirstie Alley’s appearances than I do in finding June Tabor’s appearance on “University Challenge.”
Tabor captained the St. Hugh’s, Oxford team in 1968 (yes, SP, the year Jerry Lee Lewis went country on record and revived his career), and you’d think the episode would be on YouTube, but, alas, it isn’t.
If I were feeling kindly disposed towards Harry Dinkle, I would play her collection of standards (*Some Other Time*), but as I’m not (and as I feel the album is a good idea in theory that is disappointing in practice), I’ll more likely listen to her sing “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” after sending this instead.
Here ya go:
Match Game Synd. (Episode 17) (Meet Contestant: Kirstie Alley) (Part 1)
Match Game Synd. (Episode 18) (Meet Contestant: Kirstie Alley) (Part 2)
Match Game Synd. (Episode 19) (Meet Contestant: Kirstie Alley) (Part 3) (BLANK Paw for $5000)
Another notable Match Game contestant was Brian Billick, who later became an NFL coach. He didn’t do very well, and Richard Dawson kinda made fun of him on the way out. But he later won Super Bowl XXXV, so I guess he got the last laugh.
RE: Friday 6/19’s C’Shaft:
Hey, Arcamax was early today…and the black “ink” was included.
Sure was helpful for the record company to put “MUSIC” on the album cover for would-be buyers. The small print says “Features the hit songs ‘I Wish I Were Single Again,’ ‘Home Life Is Suffocating Me,’ ‘Can’t Wait to Go on Tour Once More,’ and ‘My Son the Disappointment.'”
Speaking of detached dads, why does Larry Dinkle resemble Howard Stark from the MCU movies? Or is he actually Mandrake the Magician? is this the great comic strip crossover where we learn that Lothar raised baby Harry?
6/29: There are also clues as to who your dad was in that journal, you krutacking idiot! Batiuk is doing a speed run to get to Batton Thomas being a boring megalomaniac.
Larry Dinkle looks like Dad from The Brak Show.
Judging from today’s album cover, Larry Dinkle looks Hispanic to me. That album cover looks exactly like how 1930s media would show a talented but non-white performer. That looks like the leader of the Jose Maldonado Orchestra. And “Larry Dinkle” is exactly the kind of lame-ass whitebread name they’d make Jose Maldonado use. Ever seen the movie La Bamba? Ritchie Valens was actually Ricardo Valenzuela.
Which would make Dinkle’s backstory a hell of a lot more interesting, but Lord knows we’re not going there.
Considering the utter hash he’d make of such an arc, it’s a good thing we’re not dealing with one.
Which explains why I want to kick Les Moore’s ass until his head falls off.
I’ve enjoyed both CBH and Narshe’s history posts this week! I knew little about Chippewa Lake so thank you for the lesson and photos! I am familiar with the former Coney Island and Moonlite Gardens , which TB also mentioned. Coney Island had an old fashioned Tumble Bug, which was moved along with Coney’s other flat rides to Kings Island when it opened in 1972. The Tumble Bug lasted there until 1985. It was a fun ride in its time and the Kennywood Turtle is good too. I’m glad it’s still around!
And Narshe, I always enjoy any deep dive that gets the Les snark going. The “still in base camp” strip is just, well, wow. I get that he was concerned about Lisa’s health if she pregnant, but he’s so nervous he doesn’t even want to have sex with his own wife? Does Les possess no male urges at all? Maybe he’s realizing that if there’s a baby he won’t be the center of attention anymore.
When my daughter was born, I don’t recall any warnings about sending baby pictures online but we were cautioned in one of our childbirth classes about putting a giant sign in our yard announcing “It’s a Girl”. That was the big trend in the early 2000s. We were warned that a sign announced that there was a baby in the house and that someone might come in and steal it. As if we didn’t have enough to worry with on becoming new parents!
And I really dislike anytime Frankie shows up in the strip because there’s no good reason for him to be there. But maybe that’s a rant for another day.
The penultimate Flash Fridays is here!
A time traveler from the future sent to the present to ensure events transpire the way their history recorded them? That sounds almost familiar. I’m sure it was a very Elegant Solution™ for Cary Bates…
Yesterday’s Crankfuckery (day 18 of In The Name of The Father)
Dinkle: LILLIAN! EDWARD! GET YOUR OCTOGENERIAN ASSES OVER HERE! I WANNA SHOW YOU SOMETHING!!!
Today’s Crankfuckery (day 19 of In The Name of The Father)
(both Garfield and Odie show up and throws an entire piano onto Dinkle)
Garfield: That’s for being a psychopathic band director
Octogenerians? Don’t sell Ed and Lillian short. They’re centenarians at least. They call octogenerians “young whippersnappers.”
6/20: Now he remembers that Ralzph used to be part of Larry’s band.
So this ISN’T going to end on Father’s Day? This is going to drag into Week 4, violating Batiuk’s own rules about long arcs? Or will he interrupt it with a week of Batton Thomas? Hope so, that’s what I bet on.
Clearly, rules don’t apply to a super-duper important arc that was heralded by a narration text box and an actual title!
It’s a bad thing that he’s an improvement, isn’t it?
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 20 of In The Name of The Father
(Ed puts his phone on speaker, and Dinkle walks up to Ed)
Ed: Hey, Ralph, do you have a copy of the Larry L. Dinkle orchestra record?
Ralph: I did, but-
Dinkle: THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU DID?
Ralph: I gave it to Crazy Harry, who accidentally put it in the microwave, thinking it was a pizza.
Dinkle: (at the top of his lungs) FUCK! (grabs the phone and throws it on the ground with so much force that it explodes)
And to think, Crazy used to be the guy who put pizzas on turntables… How did age change Crazy for the worse but Les for the same?
Crazy used to have a personality that wasn’t gawking over comic books so there was nowhere to go but down for him. Les was always a loser so there was nowhere to go but nowhere.
He’s done long arcs before. He spent a month proving that one hit off a joint would get Max a ticket to Lobotomy City.
Another great trip down memory lane in progress, Narshe.
Revisiting ummer’s birth reminds me from our mutual snarkers from across the web. Webcomic artist David M Willis has been keeping an eye on the strip since the 2000s, having drawn the famous “Funky Cancercancer” parody as part of Shortpacked! during Lisa’s Story’s run, and he’s had a lot of interesting ancedotes since on the Website Formerly Known as Twitter. One of them was how one of his children was born in a traumatic pregnancy, and during his time in the hospital NICU (one in Ohio, even), he found that some doctor had found Summer’s beginnings moving enough that they framed strips from it (including Les’s To-Do list) as part of a display about premature births… and apparently right next to one of 9 Chickweed Lane’s “unique” takes on the subject as well?!
Can only find so much context with how hard it’s become to search Twitter under its current annoying algorithms, but at the least it’s a remarkable anecdote of how this story resonates with some medical professionals.
6/21: You don’t actually need the black layer to realize that we’re in for morose bleating about Ralph knowing Larry better than his own son ever did.
6/21: I don’t even need correct artwork to tell me that this is Dinkle whining that daddy was closer to his stooge than he was to him.
There’s a new biography out about Garry Trudeau, who the authors call “The Cartoonist Who Turned The News Into Art.”
TB must be seething with jealousy.
Thanks Narshe for this interesting retrospective. Great work!
Today’s Crankfuckery (Happy Father’s Day)
Day 21 of In The Name Of The Father
WHERE DID ALL THE TEXT GO
This is hilarious. The big payoff of three weeks is… something we can’t read, because the black ink is missing! And it’s not like this hasn’t happened before. I’ll be interested to see if Batiuk addresses it on his blog.
Remember how, at the start of “ITNOTF,” TB told us that “like all tales truly told,” it would begin softly? Well, apparently it’s finishing that way, too. So softly, in fact, that no one can discern what’s being said.