Act III began with so much promise for Summer Moore. As the daughter of what had become the strip’s ostensible lead character and his holy bride — the focal points of the Most Important Stories Ever — most would assume that Summer would naturally fall into the role of being the focus of the new generation. In a sense that is indeed what happened as of all of the so-called Funky Kids she’s clearly the one who up to this point had gotten the most attention… but that’s mostly because of how little Tom Batiuk seemed to care about them. She got her place as the centerpiece of the high school stuff almost by default and even then, by this point she had begun fighting for that position with Owen and Cody, characters that clearly resonated more with Batty as they were the requisite Funky/Les duo.
Outside of basketball stories taking place in the winter, Summer’s presence is mostly just that; present. A character who hangs around but doesn’t do much of anything. For her final year of high school that’s really not going to be changing all that much. Her knee having exploded earlier in the year, by the summer it looks to be mostly healed as she’s back to shooting hoops with Keisha in a set up for a week of already tired “Les meets weirdos at a book signing” strips.
She does at least make fun of him upon his arrival home, however.
She also gets to be a sounding board for Les’ complaints about how Hollywood is mucking up the Lisa’s Story adaptation.
With the ghastly gold digger exiled from both Westview and the strip, there’s nothing standing between Cayla and the man of every woman’s nightmares. Les decides that it’s time to do the most important thing he’ll need to do in his post-Lisa life which means a fancy dinner at Montoni’s and sitting Cayla down on Lisa’s bench to tell ask her if she’d be willing to be his favorite runner-up. Cayla, of course, gleefully accepts and they arrive back at Les’ wondering how to spring the news on their kids. But of course the “rents” don’t realize that Summer and Keisha are eavesdropping on them like 8-year-olds.
In celebration of his new engagement, Les gets invited to the cookout and spends labor day with Cayla’s family. Summer gets half-assedly drawn in the background of a couple of panels but the main event is getting to see Les hit in the face with a softball.
Summer also gets to show up kicking off the requisite Lisa’s Legacy week which by now is beginning to feel like something Batty includes more out of obligation than interest.
Fall and the start of the new school year also brings with it one of Batty’s favorite stories: school levies! And surprise surprise, the ignorant clods once again voted it down so now the raises of Linda Bushka, Jim Kablichnick and the other two teachers at WHS are in jeopardy. But not just that, funding for athletics have been gutted too. Bull had earlier tried getting around this by implementing a “pay to play” scheme for the teams but that’s not enough and with the failure of the levy, it’s announced that the sports programs are being shuttered.
To add insult to injury, Les and Cayla decide to “cheer up” their kids by feeding them some Montoni’s slop.
But while everyone else mopes, Funky decides to do what characters in this series very rarely do and take some initiative. It turns out that he’s the head of the local Chamber of Commerce and he’s not about to take this problem lying down.
His genius idea is to hold a raffle and go around to local businesses so that they’ll offer prizes for it. I’m not really up on how all of this stuff works so I’m not sure if a raffle would actually be enough to subsidize an entire school’s athletic programs for the year which I assume would be in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollarydoos. But I suppose that’s why Batiuk is the somehow reasonably successful cartoonist while I’m snarking on his comic strip for free.
Funky gets to work and by “gets to work” I mean we get a couple of days of a travel agent pawning off onto him a trip to climb Kilimanjaro that they weren’t able to get rid of in something that is totally not foreshadowing.
Come the day of the big raffle, Les is naturally there to buy a ticket and Bull is there to, in a roundabout way, call him a loser. That’s how I’m interpreting it at least.
But TB is the master of dramatic irony so of course Les does in fact win a prize and what prize does he win? Why that Kilimanjaro trip! Beacuse like a master bowler, Batty sets ’em up and knocks ’em down. Les being who he is, he’s not exactly thrilled but Summer, being who she is, is excited.
But good news, Funky’s raffle scheme somehow worked and the season is saved. Summer gets her final season after all!
TB, being the master storyteller that he is, decides to wrap up this year of tribulation for Summer with some levity by having Bull rile her up a bit about her rehab.
It’s also Dopey’s birthday so Summer decides to rile him up by giving him AARP membership; LMAO. And of course St. Lisa has a tape for just this moment as well. Why she’d have a tape for a random birthday instead of a milestone one is beyond me but Lisa’s going to do what she’s going to do and inserting her desiccated visage at inopportune times seems to be her final act of revenge on the world and the people in it.
But with all the rehab, all the effort to save the sports programs, the Lady Goats begin the season with a losing streak potentially flushing everything down the crapper.
But Summer realizes there may be a solution and tells Bull of a mythical figure: someone who, prior to his arrival, managed to actually bring a championship to Westview. None other than Ann Fairgood, her half-brother’s adoptive mother.
Why Bull wouldn’t know this considering he was a student at Westview while Ann was a teacher and coach is beyond me but by this point we know that continuity for Batty basically only exists when the immediate story calls for it to. Whatever, he goes to the Fairgoods’ home to talk to Ann and brings her in to give a motivational speech about her own history.
But when she suggests some plays he decides to go one step further and name her the new assistant coach. This winds up paying off, unsurprisingly, and the Goats snap their losing streak.
With this, the Westview girls proceed to turn things around and tear up the (regional? conference?) tournament.
By knocking off Big Walnut Tech they’ve made it to the state championship game in a rematch from two seasons prior against Our Lady of the Cedars.
But alas, TB throws in a swerve when on the way to the game it turns out that Summer has become ill.
Yes indeed, in deciding to pull from reality Batty decides to reach 15 years into the past and equate Summer with the greatest basketball player ever by recreating the famous “Flu Game” from the 1997 NBA Finals where a violently ill Michael Jordan dominated and hit a legendary shot in the closing moments.
In the closing seconds, Summer takes a hard foul and it’s up to her to sink the free throws.
She takes the shot. Tension builds…
But of course, she did it! The Lady Goats are your new state champions!
One teeny-tiny problem though: this is not how basketball works. There’s no such thing as a “walk off free throw” as there would still be some time on the clock and the other team would have been able to either inbound or rebound (assuming Summer misses the second shot) and try to heave it for a miracle if there was enough time to do that. The game isn’t going to end then and there just because Summer hit a free throw even if it was effectively over. And the worst part? Batty knows this because there’s a strip prior to this where Les admonishes Bull about how there are no walk off free throws. So Batty is disregarding a basic rule of the sport that he himself acknowledged some weeks prior just for nonsensical drama.
If this is what he wanted to do, why do the free throws in the first place? Why not just have Summer hit a buzzer beater? This is not hard and yet he makes it more difficult than it needs to be by not taking five seconds to think about if what he’s writing actually makes any sense.
Anyway, having coached Summer to a championship and rehabbed her knee, Bull does one more solid and presents her with a highlight reel of her high school play that she can send off to colleges. A nice enough gesture although with Summer being such a highly regarded player wouldn’t she have been scouted and approached by recruiters long before this point anyway?
In April, the two tracks of high school that Batty has been working with finally come together when Summer shows up to save Cody from getting pounded by Wedgeman. Much like every high school generation has its loser male geek duo and its vapid popular girl so too must it have its loutish bully and Wedgeman is the current one in the line that goes back to Bull and Stoneironmarblehead Morton. And just like the vapid popular girl, it’s diminishing returns in terms of his characterization i.e. it’s nonexistant beyond “is a bully.”
Cody, of course, falls in love with her and can’t help but see Summer as Wonder Woman who I assume is also Tom Batiuk’s own waifu.
Thus starts a rather nonsensical storyline for the next few weeks where Cody decides to send an anonymous text to Summer declaring his love for her and, can you believe it, she sends an anonymous text back! How Cody would have her number to even do this I have no idea. Owen, though, spends the whole thing acting dismissive and when she fails to show up for a promised date at Montoni’s (of course) the ruse is revealed. See, it was actually Owen sending those texts to Cody the entire time because he was also in love with Summer and he wanted to I guess disappoint Cody so he’d have her all to himself? I don’t know, none of it makes sense.
But Cody is undeterred and decides he’s just going to tell Summer how he feels in person. However, he sees her talking to Chad and decides to slink away in disappointment even though she’d turned down Chad’s request for a date.
Of course there’s one final twist as someone sends Cody an anonymous text declaring how much they like him. Because of Owen’s stunt Cody dismisses it oh ho it turns out it was a real girl who really does like him. This is of course just an ending stinger and is never again followed up on.
Truthfully, that’s really about it for Summer’s importance during the waning days of her time in high school. The next big storyline is Roberta’s protest over a gay couple being allowed to attend the prom and Summer does seem to be the instigator in starting a counter demonstration against it.
But aside from that she otherwise has nothing to do with the story which is mostly about Nate giving a big speech about how there will be no discrimination at his school. Then Becky’s father tells his wife to shut up and that’s effectively the end of Roberta Blackburn’s time as an antagonist in the strip. The most notable thing about the storyline — besides the milquetoast way that Batty presents his stance — is the biggest unsolved mystery in Funky Winkerbean — who was behind the castle?
During the prom there’s a couple of strips where a person — of who only an arm can be seen — thanks Nate for what he did for “me and students like me” while declaring that they’re not ready to come out just yet. All while Nate looks like he couldn’t care less. Seriously, why does he look so bored?
So who is Nate talking to? We can really only use process of elimination to narrow it down to a few options. Given that the character is hidden that would obviously imply it’s a known character, otherwise why hide their identity? Of the seniors, the only notable male from this generation is Cory who for reasons of “marries and later has kids with a woman” doesn’t fit; also the person looks shorter which implies it’s probably a girl.
Given the light skin that also rules out Keisha. It probably can’t be Rana given later developments that would make her being gay, although not impossible, very unlikely. So you’re left with three options: Summer, Maddie and Jinx.
Summer did very briefly date a boy early in Act III but at this point that seems like an abberation. But on the other hand, the sporty short-haired tomboy also being a lesbian seems to be such a trite stereotype that it might even give Batty second thoughts. Maddie is (supposed to be) the eccentric girl who marches to her own beat but she’s also effectively a non-character.
Jinx was there for the start of this story and is the one who announced that Nate and his wife were voted prom king and queen. Based on that I’d say there’s a reasonable chance it could be her, you know clumsy hinting from Batty and all. But who knows?
Maybe later strips can be read in a way to make you look back on this and think it was Summer or Maddie. Maybe they’re all gay. Or maybe that hand poking out from the castle wasn’t a real character and was just the representation of gay teenagers which seems like the kind of cop out Batty would do. But unless someone ever asks him directly or he does another Untold Tales (fat chance) we’ll never know.
We can speculate until we’re blue in the face but seeing as we’re likely never getting an answer we may as well just move on. In the final few weeks of school Summer and Keisha receive invitations get evaluated by, where else, Kent State. Things go well and they both receive athletic scholarships thus putting a bow on the last lingering bit of their high school storylines.
And with that done it’s now time for them to die graduate.
Which is immediately followed up by yet another cancer tape.
Just where will Summer’s heart take her? That’s for next time in what will be, for a long time, Summer’s last hurrah.
Because by the middle of next year Summer’s appearances are going to dwindle drastically. She will continue to pop up for the odd appearance or week once or twice a year post-2012 but once Batty shipped her off to Kent State he was also effectively putting her into semi-exile as his interest shifts more and more to comic books, Hollywood and characters like Darin, Pete and the yet-to-be-introduced Mason Jarr(e) and in the exciting world of elderly geekery, there’s neither time nor place for a jock who doesn’t fawn over the latest MCU flicks and Star Wars movies.
What bothers me most is how little Daddy seemed to notice her absence.
15 October: What escapes Lizard Woman is that the tin god who runs the HOA is the guy really driving Ed.
This sort of drivel is why I was convinced that the last big arc was going to feature Big Walnut absorbing Westview High.
Oh man, I forgot about sad background anonymous text message girl. Maudlin, but effective. Perhaps the last piece of effective cartooning in Act III?
The Ann Fairgood basketball story arc produced one of my favorite SOSF-specific nicknames, “Fishstick Annie”
On one hand a decent writer would have followed up on that. I don’t think it’s unbelievable that some girl might have a crush on Cody or really anyone who isn’t Les after all. But given who we’re talking about maybe it’s better that it was never followed up given how he tends to write romances.
It says a lot that the best actual relationship — or at least something that could easily be interpreted as one — he ever wrote was Owen and Alex and that’s entirely because he didn’t write it so they just seemed like two characters who had a nice low key thing going.
Geez, there’s so much wrong with these stories. Where do I even begin?
First, Les “winning” the most valuable prize in the raffle would have pissed off the entire community. They would have called it a fix. Especially since Les was already jetting off to Hollywood, and immediately turned the prize into yet another Dead Lisa tribute. (In fact, rigging a raffle was an episode of Father Ted. Craggy Isle should have been infuriated too.)
Second, teams like Westview tend to get crushed early in the state playoffs. Yeah, a small school with two good basketball players can steamroll their district of other small schools. But when you reach the state level, your opponents are all well-funded and otherwise elite programs. The movie Hoosiers was based on a true story, but that true story happened in 1954, and the Indiana state playoffs are practically designed to create situations like that. And the talent gap in girls’ basketball is much greater because some schools put effort into it, while most schools half-ass it like Westview clearly did.
Third, Narshe is correct that even a bad Division I college like Kent State would have been recruiting Summer and/or Keisha much earlier. Scholarships would have been filled long before Coach Bushka compiled a highlight tape – and he should know that. Also, Summer’s alleged dunk in practice would have gotten her on the radar of much bigger schools.
Fourth: to be fair, there isn’t a “walk off free throw” but there might be a free throw with so little time left on the clock that it effectively is one. So I’ll gave Batiuk a pass on that one. But I don’t give him a pass on his attempt to recreate the “Flu Game.” Is her vision supposed to be blurry? There’s barely any difference.
As for the rest of it, it’s the same tropes Batiuk has leaned on his whole career. The girl someone could have gotten if they just asked. The attempted stand for gay rights, and then undermining it by hiding the human impact of it. Les getting everything he wants handed to him, while people stand around and listen to his ludicrous complaints. And the endless library of tiresome Dead Lisa tapes. Remember when Summer wanted to throw those tapes out, because she’d moved on from a long-dead mother who barely acknowledged her existence in the first place? Les wouldn’t have that, no sir. I can only infer that Les took Summer into Room 101, and she loves Big Brother now.
With the the trip I think the implication is that going to Africa and climbing Kilimanjaro isn’t going to be something most people are going to want to do so in effect Les is getting saddled with the worst option, especially for someone like him. This is Westview so the “best” prize would have been considered something like a dozen 10% off Montoni’s coupons.
Because only having to eat 90% of a Montoni’s pizza is way better than having to eat the whole damned thing!
I agree about giving a pass on the “walk off free throw”. It would dilute the climax of the story to spend one or two panels (especially when the strip only has three a day) establishing that the other team didn’t do anything with their possession. I grant I’m normally an easy touch but I’m willing to take that as assumed.
Agreed. Even Hoosiers has a walk-off free throw*. “One more, Ollie! One more and we’re going all the way!”
*OK, yeah, the opposing team gets a desperation 3/4 court heave (kid almost makes it too), and after Coach Dale screams about getting back on defense both in the huddle and on the sideline too… but Ollie’s foul shots are clearly written to be game deciding, there is no suspense in the framing of the half second of play that occurs after the second made free throw.
In Ohio, the girls’ basketball tournament has been divided into divisions (based on size of the student body) since they started having a state tournament in the mid-1970s. The boys’ basketball tournament also has been divided into divisions similarly since they started in the 1920s.
I believe that Indiana was the last state where schools of all sizes competed in a single state tournament (which is where the 1954 true story came from). But even Indiana switched to having four divisions based on school size in 1997.
So Westview would have been playing schools of similar size when they played in the championship in 2012. There were four divisions in Ohio girls’ basketball at the time.
Batiuk doesn’t know this.
Does it matter to the story whether Westview is competing in a particular division’s tournament as opposed to a tournament of all schools regardless of size? It’s still a state championship.
It matters because not keeping up with things like this takes people clean out of the story.
No, and I never meant to imply it did. Even the small school level has its powerhouses that would quickly expose Westview. You’re right that Indiana didn’t formerly have these divisions, but I didn’t know they had abandoned the practice.
We’d get the same “I missed my ONLY shot and I can never get another” bleating no matter what year Batiuk thinks it is so, yeah, the point is made.
I remember the uproar when Indiana went to multi-class basketball. On one hand you had the traditionalists who believed that having four winners diluted the meaning of “championship”. On the other side you had people arguing that small schools like Milan would never have a chance in present day to beat a powerhouse large high school; hence the need for multiple classes.
If he moves on from anything, it somehow magically makes the bad things okay. Remember…..creepy little boy acting as if a funny book being late is an occasion to waste away from despair.
Today’s Crankfuckery
I don’t think that’s gonna do the trick, Edward Crankshaft
Speaking as someone who’s dealing with dementia in his family and in a close friend, let me just say that today’s strip is not funny. Ed Crankshaft should have had his access to fire and power tools taken away decades ago.
It’s going to be even less funny when the person passes.
There’s a reason why memory care facilities don’t allow hot plates, microwaves, or coffee makers. They’re fire hazards. A resident could forget they left the stove on and burn themselves.
When I lived in Ohio, it was illegal for residents to burn their leaves outside. In his mind, I guess, burning them inside is Ed’s “loophole”. In real life, it wouldn’t take much of a spark to ignite the leaves he hasn’t raked into the fireplace yet. Don’t try this at home, kids.
Batiuk thinks old man burning himself to deal = comedy gold.
16 October: At no point does Ed realize that he’s expected to bag up the leaves.
Today’s Crankfuckery
The Daily Bleak
Local Asshole Sets His House On Fire While Trying To Burn Leaves
The Onion:
Area Asshole Sets His House On Fire While Trying To Burn Leaves.
The Funkyverse’s “one-eighth inch from reality” more often than not seems to like snipping that ever-so-annoying presence of actual business and industry behavior, and there’s probably a whole blog or two that can be written up around that. No one bothers to hound Summer and recruit her for a college team, she has to prep her own tapes and earn her way in like a normal girl who isn’t actually that certain about her career. No agent or Academy reps inform the actress that she’s nominated for an award, she has to learn from a friend who hears it on the news because the media gives her enough space that they don’t even follow her to Ohio for a prolific gifting of her trophy. No one in paparazi or comic nerddom’s all that focused on a successful writer like Pete whose worked on big comics across companies and blockbuster movies, he can slink away to leave writing behind to flip pizzas all day and he’s just a regular joe again. Yep, in this world being famous doesn’t come with any attention unless its needed, no siree (plus Dick Tracy is real so there’s that)
Also, for someone proud to trumpet his alma mater that maintains his post-newspaper archive, it’s remarkable that Kent State’s plugs are left so indirect that we never get to see glimpses of daily Stater life for Summer or anyone else. Hell, the closest Batiuk and Ayers ever came to that was their murals for one of the university lounges (and they didn’t even keep those up!) We’re missing out on comedy gold with a recreation of the author’s incensed reaction to Adam West’s Batman, only here it’s Keisha getting mad that the Arrowverse got so much wrong.
One last thing: it’s interesting looking back at Cody’s missed shot with the text; Batiuk was basically repeating a “greatest hit” with how Les had an unknown unrequited crush back in Act 1, as Banana Jr ranted on a while back. Really pushing for the notion of tragic irony and how there’s people out there who could be thinking of you more than you realize that could lead to relationships you never know you miss.
Everything points directly to the fake tragedy of what happened to Siegel and Shuster. They were made to live in obscurity so it’s what’s destined to happen.
His absurd need to see people struggle and fail is almost as annoying as Lynn Johnston and her need to drop bags of money on people. Les is a gloomy Sisyphus. Mike goes from one absurd and unearned victory to the next. Both are crap writers who tune out their kids. The difference is who created them.
17 October: And just like that, we’re dealing with Batiuk and his baffling fixation with the Bombers. Who are they playing? What are the stakes? Don’t bully Batiuk by asking, it’s Jeff wearing his flipping binky!
It makes me wonder if I shouldn’t just make a zero effort D-tier dad joke daily comic strip that picks some random professional team for one of the characters to be a fan, and then eventually I too will get recognition and press for it.
“And now joining the field for the pre-game celebration is the author of the beloved comic strip Steve Stooge, and we all know how much Steve is a fan of your Denver Outlaws!” Smiles about as I raise my hand in a humble salute to the rousing cheer of … uh, hundreds? … of fans. I get a commemorative jersey, the Denver Post gets a line from me and a team office worker about it, and everyone comes away richer. So now, how do I get Andrews McMeel to hire me to write the strip…
It wouldn’t be the worst idea
IIRC he’s said before that he randomly caught a CFL game on TV and liked it so started following it and because the Blue Bombers were playing they became his team. Seeing as his NFL time would likely be the Browns I probably couldn’t fault him too much in that case.
Yeah. It’s probably a good change to back a winning team.
18 October: That’s actually a good line.
A completely random Act I callback in Noah Vale, a character who I don’t believe has been seen since the 1980s? Another piece of evidence to me that Crankshaft is on the way out. He’s really started checking off all the same late Act III boxes at this point.
I wonder if Summer will do another ‘pilgrimage’ past places which mean nothing to her.
Yesterday’s Crankfuckery
(Ed and Jeff are immediately tackled by security)
Today’s Crankfuckery
Ed: I thought Mr. Vale had long since died.
Looks like Kilroy paid a visit to Noah Vale’s face.
19 October: At least a Beans End arc isn’t the interview from Hell.
I’d make a small wager that tomorrow’s gonna be another random joke that has nothing to do with Bean’s End. Nor will it follow up today’s decent political joke.
Sadly, we’re doing his overdoing things.
So the Winnipeg football thing was just a one-off? And an utterly pointless one at that?
Man, Batty is plumbing new depths IDGAF.
Hahaha, tariffs! Only many states imposed their own tariffs both before and after the Revolutionary War, and in 1789, the year Washington took office and the Constitution took effect, the new government immediately established tariffs.
Tariffs! Oh ho ho ho! Crankshaft, you’ve done it again, you clever dog!
I must say, I’m enjoying… no, that’s not the right word… being not-enraged by the boilerplate Crankshaft-centric strips Batty’s been producing lately. “Where’s Crankshaft” was the question on the trufans’ mind, and here he is. I don’t know whether TB just finally heard the pleas of actual nonironic fans or whether this is just an extra-long hiatus between Batton Thomas bloviations, but I can’t complain too much. Better boring than infuriating.
Perhaps I’m a bit biased but I can at least make fun of the bad stories or Batty’s ego stroking with the Batton stuff. There’s absolutely nothing to say about going on two weeks of “jokes” that make Family Circus look like the height of comedy.
I can say something: he does all this crap to prove his manhood.
Oh, in total agreement there. That’s why I haven’t been commenting much. This run has been as bland as boiled tofu. There’s nothing to snark on. It’s not even bad, it’s just… there. The Unsnarkables™️.
BTW, I’ve been loving your retrospectives. It’s certain that you know and care more about the past of the strips, and the characters, than Puff Batty himself does. You’re also a 100x better writer. I hope you keep ’em coming.
20 October: “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.”
Both Yesterday and Today’s Crankfuckery
Days 1 and 2 of Bean’s End Week
(YAWN)
Guess it’s gonna be a week o’nuthin’
Nuthin’ but Ed and his Bean’s End bullshit
21 October: I wonder if she realizes that he sees brown spots and stray leaves as somehow a threat to his masculine prowess.
Do we need to do a well check on Terry Beatty? He’s recycling yet another Funky Winkerbean story arc in Rex Morgan…
22 October: Tomorrow, Bugs Bunny kills him while complaining about stealing his bit.