In the Star Wars fandom, Glup Shitto is a general term for any small character with its own goofy name, home planet, job, species, and way too much backstory for the minor role it plays.
Think of some of the minor characters from the original 1977 movie, like the weirdos in the cantina. Thanks to the sequels, prequels, spinoff movies, TV series, animated series, novels, comic books, and the Star Wars Holiday Special, you can learn way more about them than you ever wanted to know.
You can understand why Glup Shittos exist. There was an insatiable demand for more Star Wars content, but the movies were very expensive and time-consuming to make. There was also a need to explain continuity problems, like “making the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs” when a parsec is a measure of distance, not time. Now there are all kinds of explanations about how the challenge was to get from Point A to Point B via the most hazardous route possible. I think the movie Solo also expanded on this, but I might have fallen asleep during that scene.
The Funkyverse is full of Glup Shittos. But Tom Batiuk misses the point of them.
Harry Dinkle has become a Glup Shitto, especially recently. In the original trilogy — Acts 1, 2, and 3 of Funky Winkerbean — Dinkle was an important character with an important role to play. When the main cast graduated from Westview High School at the end of Act 1, Dinkle could no longer be an effective antagonist. His power to bully the main cast ended when they were no longer his students anymore.
But of course, Tom Batiuk doesn’t realize this. So he started inventing more and more convoluted ways to write Dinkle stories. In Act 2, these were pretty reasonable. They centered on his interactions with his wife, later high school students, their parents, the targets of his door-to-door selling, the increasingly strange products he sold, and the Claude Barlow gags.
By Act 3, Dinkle was going deaf (but not really), anointing a successor in Becky (but not really), retiring (but not really), leading a nursing home band on a recording contract and a tour (yes, really) and weaseling his way into being a choir director (really). This was all a blatant attempt to keep writing Dinkle gags. Because, as we all know, Tom Batiuk is a serious artist and not a gag writer. Nope. He’s definitely not that.
Those were all bad stories, but at least they were stories. Which is more than you could say about Glup Shitto in Act 4 (post-2022 Crankshaft).
The recent In The Name Of The Father series explored Harry Dinkle’s upbringing, then never did anything with that information. We learned that his father Larry was a selfish, insufferable bandleader, so obsessed with music and fame that he was indifferent to his performers, and to his own family. It’s obvious that Harry Dinkle is a chip off the old block, but this was never acknowledged. Not even by his current performers, who are frequent recipients of his abusive behavior. One of whom is Ed Crankshaft, who’s supposed to be the guy who speaks his mind at all times.
It added additional information to Harry Dinkle’s life, like Glup Shitto stories do. But it never did anything with that information. It didn’t tell a new story, or even give us any new insight into the character. And there were a lot of tacked-on, irrelevant details, like the fact that Larry Dinkle loved noir movies, and died when he crashed his bus due to a heart attack and/or alcoholism. Batiuk couldn’t even be bothered to clarify which it was.
So we have the hallmarks of a Glup Shitto story — additional backstory for a minor character in the major story — but none of the benefits of it. Least of all, fun. Which is another reason stories get written about these minor characters. Often by unsanctioned writers:
Last week, we had a Glup Shitto experience with Pete and Mindy. Their stories in Funky Winkerbean were bad enough, but they were more or less stories, like “awkward nerd hooks up with out-of-his-league attractive girl.” You can do this kind of story, but Batiuk botched the details.
Pete ran out of money at the county fair despite being a highly-paid, world class writer in this world. He also treats Mindy like garbage, a topic my friend Narshe will be exploring on Wednesday. And the fact that Pete and Mindy are both in their 50s by now, and it’s way too late for the “young kids just starting out” shtick.
Pete and Mindy have become relevant characters in Crankshaft, all to tack on a bunch of unnecessary backstory that goes nowhere. They revived Montoni’s! And the whole town brought all the decorations back! And they teamed up with the Pizza Box Monster! And they have a robot waiter! And… that’s it. Nothing was ever done with any of this. Montoni’s itself hasn’t even been the town hangout it used to be, which was at least a narrative purpose.
Act 4 has been running on Glup Shitto stories for a while, without those stories ever serving the unifying or narrative purposes they should. And we don’t see stories about minor characters that might be interesting to explore. Whatever happened to Chien? Why weren’t Cory, Rocky, Wally, Rachel, and Adeela rehired when Montoni’s re-opened? What are they doing instead? What effect did the short-lived strip club era have on Centerville? What happened to Cindy’s pregnancy? The sheer number of loose ends Tom Batiuk has left over his career should be a gold mine of material to explore. But it isn’t being used that way.
Tomorrow, we’re probably getting another deep dive into a character nobody cares about, and which serves no storytelling purpose. And that character is way overdue for an appearance.
Son of Stuck Funky 
The man doesn’t realize that he can dispense with a Glup Shitto. Lynn Johnston drops them with glee.
That too. But there are ways to explore the backgrounds that these minor characters that are least interesting or useful. Batiuk is just running week after week of pointless exposition that doesn’t tell you anything or serve any purpose.
He doesn’t know what other people want to see.
Either doesn’t know, or doesn’t care. It’s hard to tell sometimes.
I hate to repeat myself ( well that’s a lie ) but I think he experiences having to care about the opinion of other people as being bullied or something.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Jeff Kinney did this joke much better
To clarify: in The Third Wheel (the seventh book of the Diary of A Wimpy Kid series), Greg Heffley states there was this one time he was in the middle of a dream when his dad woke him up shovel the sidewalk, Greg does so and resumes back to his dream without missing a beat
31 August: More sassy robot garbage. I keep expecting that he’s got a pinup of Rosie from the Jetsons.
week 2 of robo waiter. Nooooo!
I actually like their cute design but this is going nowhere story wise and also not really funny
Just keep telling yourself: Every day of this “Robbie’s Ancestor” dreck is a day in which we don’t have to see Batton holding forth about self-important minutiae while Skip smirks approvingly.
I increasingly see little difference between Batton Thomas and other Crankshaft “content.”
If anything, the robot might be worse than Batton Thomas. Because it feels like an exercise in “No, look, I really can write comic books! See? See? SEEEEEEEEEE???!!!! I wrote about it on my blog and everything!”
The Batiuk Paradox:
Every new Batiuk plot arc is the worst plot arc that has ever been or could ever be, except for previous arcs, which were somehow worse, and future ones, which will also be worse.
My favorite Glup Shitto is probably Fred Fairgood’s daughter Kerry, who went from the subject of a throwaway punchline in Act I to attempted pathos accelerator during the Act III story arc about Fred’s stroke.
You’d have thought that would have come up at some point. Way to be stupid and useless, Fred!
It reminds me of the old anime Space Battleship Yamato which a lot of people of a certain age will know as Star Blazers. The alien villains in the show were originally colored the same as the humans before eventually being recolored blue. Back in the early 2010s a remake/reimagining of the show was made and took this otherwise minor coloring error and worked it into the show’s lore. The normal-colored aliens and blue aliens were technically different races from neighboring planets. The blue aliens had conquered and subjugated the other ones. The blue aliens were basically Space Nazis so the subjugated aliens were treated as second-class citizens, cannon fodder and such because the racially pure blue aliens saw them as trash. This leads to one early antagonist having a lot more depth because he’s one of the non-blue aliens so he’s hoping that through his actions he’s able to better the standing of his people and his family in their society which lends him a degree of sympathy. So taking a coloring error, something easy to write off, the creators were able to rework it into fleshing out the culture and society of the villains, creating more complexity and making the show feel richer because of it.
Kerry is something similar; an off-handed joke from the wacky Act I days that probably creates a continuity error but most people will just write off as Early Installment Weirdness and not think much more of it. But she was brought back and once made into a real character there was plenty to explore with her, the complicated feelings she might have towards her father and his family, the complicated nature of Fred as a man rebounding from a previous marriage, the way that her and Darin can connect due to their messy family situations. A competent writer would have been able to mine this, soap operatic as it may be, for stories that could have done a lot for all the characters involved and maybe give Darin some more characterization beyond “dull” and “boring.” But of course that’s not what happens at all. She shows up for the surprise, gets a few more token appearances, and then disappears having really affected or changed nothing.
Since he probably never experienced that, I don’t think he could ever have written it.
Is that the one where they had a year to escape Earth, or something like that? And every episode had a countdown of how many days were left? I remember that randomly turning up in my childhood cartoons around 1979. I found it compelling, but I never did figure out what the name of the show was. And I never got into anime as I grew up, though I did enjoy Cowboy Bebop.
That’s probably the same show you’re thinking of, yes. It was actually that Earth was bombarded with radiation by the evil Gamilons, and everyone had to live underground, but they received a message from the far-off planet Iscandar offering a way to save the planet. So they found the remains of the WWII battleship Yamato (hence the original title, Space Battleship Yamato, which was changed to Star Blazers for the American version) and converted it into a spaceship (presumably by melting down murder weapons, because how else can you make a spaceship?) to travel to Iscandar, but if they didn’t make it within a year, the effects of the radiation would be irreversible and humanity would be doomed. And, of course, they had to fight the Gamilons along the way, who naturally were trying to prevent them from saving Earth.
(Also in the American version, instead of keeping the Yamato name, the ship was renamed the Argo when it was rebuilt, although it was still the salvaged Yamato. All in all, though, it was still a pretty decent adaptation, especially compared to the way other anime were altered in translation.)
But he can’t. He never could. It’s not a bad thing. He was born to be the writer of a mildly downbeat gag strip.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 7 of Pepper, The Robot Waiter
(Darin Fairgood, Eric “Mooch” Myers and Heather “Chien” Parks walk into Montoni’s)
Pepper: Pete, who the hell are these people?
Pete: Pepper, meet Darin Fairgood, Eric Myers and Heather Parks. Darin worked here when he was in high school and for a while until he moved to California for a while. I don’t know if Mooch or Chien had any work experience in anything similar to this, (Chien: Fraid not.) but I think they’ll be perfect for helping you serve customers and help make the pizzas.
Darin: WHAT THE FUCK, PETE!? WHY ARE YOU DRAGGING US INTO YOUR SHITTY REVIVAL OF MONTONI’S?!
Chien: Peter, you can’t just recruit people who don’t know shit about working here and expect them to gain a lot experience in a short amount of time!
Mooch: Heather’s right, dude.
Pete: Hey! if Papa Louie can do it, then so can I!
Mooch, Chien and Darin: NO YOU FUCKIN’ CAN’T!
1 September: And now, we come to the expected conflict between machine and crotchety old fart who expects to bully people into letting him be a turd. The bear is his sense of shame…..
Mindy speaks of customers yet we never see any. In fact, Ed might be the first customer or customer equivalent we’ve ever seen inside Mopetoni’s. Not even Crazy Harry and DSH John show up at their usual spots glued to the counter nor do any of the other regulars of old Montoni’s.
Now one could either write it off as Davis being a lazy hack who can’t be bothered to draw people into the background or create scenes with any more dynamism than people in either a 3/4 view or directly angling their bodies towards the camera and taking up approximately to 1/3 to 2/3 of any given panel space leaving no room for any other details. And they would probably be right. But one could also interpret it as Pete being such a terrible businessman that not even the Komix Korner losers or his best friend want to eat as his restaurant. And they would also probably be right.
Sorry for the down vote. Cataracts are a pain….
Also, he’s the original Friend No One Likes.
“Not everyone is thrilled about having to deal with AI or robots.” Christ, Batiuk, how milquetoast can you possibly be?
People HATE HATE HATE AI and robots, for the very valid reason that they’re coming to take all our jobs. Which is exactly what’s happening in this dumb sequence, not that Batiuk even noticed. He ignored his own subtext to make an Open Mic Night joke from 2009. “Don’t you hate it when you go to McDonald’s, and there’s computers taking your order?”
The obvious next step is for Crankshaft to ask what happened to the humans that once worked there. Especially when they included three members of the Winkerbean family, and a woman who had been cruelly rounded up by ICE. They were apparently shown the door and never rehired, even though we saw Pete and Mindy gleefully collect all of the kitschy junk the town brought back to them. Note also that Pete and Mindy did not refund any of the money they paid for it. Nice folks.
Which is the Dollar General Anthony Caine should be named Glup ShitBIRD.
And today, we’re right back on a children’s joke book-level gag. No exploration of the concept from yesterday. No resolution of what happened to the dismissed human employees. Nothing interesting or fun. Not a plot point in sight. And yet, this man is still auditioning for that comic book job he still thinks he deserves.
He really doesn’t have what it takes. He never did. He won’t admit it! End result: stuff that the Archie Joke Generating Laugh Unit 3000 would call lame.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 8 of Pepper, The Robot Waiter
Ed: THAT DOES IT, I’M NEVER COMING BACK TO MONTONI’S EVER AGAIN!
Pepper: Good, cause Mr. Reynolds over here hasn’t been getting much customers at all.
That was certainly a bland denouement in Rex Morgan. The way I saw it going was the larcenous twins, Jean and Jane, would kidnap Sarah and hole up in a cheap apartment. The cops would surround the place and engage in a shootout with the twins, who would use Sarah as a human shield. That’s as far as I got.
I think Ed is in the Teamsters as a bus driver and is very pro-labor. He also swears. A lot.
Which means he’d find himself in the awkward position of agreeing with meddling kids that robots have no place running amusement parks.
The only question in my mind is whether Pepper the robot will break down and be taken out of service by the end of this week, or later this month. I do not expect the robot to be in the strip for the long term.
She can hang out with Bender in Homer Simpson’s basement.
I don’t know about that. Sure, a normal person would recognize the robot as a weak one-shot gag, but Batiuk? “Pepper Oni” has got everything a Batiuk character needs — a one dimensional personality, an inability to escape Montoni’s, and a stupid gag name. Pepper may be the apex of Batiuk’s character creation ability circa 2026 … I think it’s entirely possible she’ll be a recurring player.
2 September: It would seem the robot is female.
Yawn. It’s been done before. Should I feel flattered?