On A Tuesday, In September…

Has it really been 25 years? Damn.

So strange for me to think about how there are bonafide adults with jobs, and mortgages, and college degrees, and marriages, and children, for whom that day in September is only history, not memory.

Those people will never really understand how all it took was one day to create an entire new culture overnight. Art, music, tv, movies, public events, everything became red, white, blue, and ashes and fire and heroic deaths. Twisted girders, plumes of smoke, big patriotic eagles. Sappy memorials everyone was stunned enough to accept without a hint of irony.

Or, as the comic artist would say,

“On a Tuesday in September, 2001, everything changed for everyone. On that day the entire nation was faced with the harsh form of reality to which I had become all too accustomed. And to show them we were all on the same page I published this strip…”

Oh. Wait. That’s not the September 11, 2001 Funky Winkerbean strip! That’s Skunky Funkybuns! An that’s not a Tom Batiuk quote, that’s Tim Negoda as played by the late, great, Dan Ronan.

THIS is Funky Winkerbean’s 9/11/01 strip:

And THIS is a quote from Tom Batiuk.

“And then the darkness flew in like the Nazgûl of Sauron on 9/11. When the attack on the Twin Towers happened, like so many others, I wanted to speak to what had happened. My way of speaking was through my comic strips, so I wrote a week that expressed my thoughts and concerns, Chuck and I turned it around on a dime, and Jay Kennedy, the editor in chief at King Features, had our backs as he marshaled the forces at King to get the piece in the papers in record time. I’ll always be grateful for his support of those strips. “

Like Batiuk indicates, it took about three weeks to get the turn around on shoving 9/11 into the Funkyverse, displacing already written strips to put Cindy at ground Zero by October.

For the month of September 2001, Funky Winkerbean offered readers a reprieve from reality, even if worldwide context may have rendered some strips suddenly sinister.

By October 1 Cindy is ready for primetime.

Ugh. What a load of dreck, eh? Batiuk is at his WORST spitting poorly worded platitudes. They’re always so empty and at the same time full of logical stumbling blocks.

A word of the wise to all writers. Only one in a hundred writers can pen a rousing speech, ala Independence Day 1994. The easier play is always, always to just show people doing things. Imagine a week of small kindnesses and experiences set in New York in the wake of 9/11, witnessed by Cindy, rather than a week of Cindy’s preaching.

But, sermon delivered, Batiuk had the rest of the year play out as he had earlier planned. The tragedy in New York took a backseat to other concerns. In the month and a half it took Les and Lisa to relive her entire teen pregnancy arc, there was a one panel mention of the attacks. I wonder if this strip was a rewrite?

In January, Batiuk introduced the biggest knock-on effect that 9/11 and its fallout would have on the strip. The beginning of the tragedy of Wally Winkerbean.

Batiuk had already sent Wally off to the military in 1998. Was he going to let an opportunity like trying to murder him in the middle east pass him by? No. You bet your ass he wasn’t!

And so, much like America, the fallout of 9/11 would have Wally stuck in a seemingly endless Middle Eastern quagmire. A heroic effort, suffering and sacrificing much, with only ephemeral accomplishments.

We did return to New York in January of 2002 so we could watch the news profit off of a hopelessly destitute woman.

It’s all these dumb little morality stories that came out all across the US in the next couple years: the artless tributes by the well meaning, the slop peddled by grifters tugging on heartstrings to make a buck– all these planted the cringe seeds that would bloom into 9/11 being the go-to punchline to any absurdist humor.