I miss the early days of the Internet. It was devoid of toxic social media, and full of goofy creative stuff. If you’re not familiar with the primitive brainrot the title refers to, you can see it here. (WARNING: It will burrow into your brain like those Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan worms. If you do recognize the title, it probably already has. Sorry about that.)
This week’s cardinal arc reminds me of Badger Badger Badger. There’s a cardinal, and… that’s it. It exists as part of a larger work that defies any narrative sense. It’s practically trying to be a meme.
I know I’ve joked about the cardinal being Lisa’s ghost, and that’s still the favorite on the odds board right now (-500). But now, dragging out Lisa’s corpse for the millionth time seems too straightforward for Tom Batiuk. He seems to be veering into the avant-garde. As evidenced by this week’s Ingmar Bergman coloring. (NOTE: I initially missed that this effect was borrowed from Schindler’s List. Thanks to Y. Knott in the comments.)
I say this because I was baffled by the December 13 strip that ended “Pizza Box Monster as Santa” week. He gets paid by Lillian, shakes her hand, and then this:
What on earth was Tom Batiuk aiming at here?
Yes, that’s the building where this week’s proceedings occurred, but what is the point of sticking it at the end of the story? The second panel, PBM saying “Pizza on earth!”, is the kind of thing Batiuk would normally use for a punchline. It’s almost like he drew this panel and forgot to use it, so he stuck it here.
Sometimes you can end a story just by pulling back and putting it into its larger context. Like in A Streetcar Named Desire (the stage version, not the movie) or Cameron Crowe’s Singles. But that’s not what’s happening here. This isn’t a scene of people wandering around, enjoying Christmas, or anything else that would lend weight to the story. Not that there was much of a story to begin with.
I think Tom Batiuk is trying to mimic visual effects, and heartwarming endings, he’s seen in movies and TV shows. But he has absolutely no idea how to execute them, or why. That’s what I think we’re getting at the end of this week: an ornately staged, but confusing, ending.
I didn’t mean for that last post to be a poll, but it’s revealing how many individual Jump The Shark moments posters were able to identify in Funky Winkerbean. Here’s a compiled list, in roughly chronological order (because, as you know, Timemop).
Act I (1972-1992, ends with the original class’ graduation)
John Byrne’s guest stint permanently alters the artwork (2003)
Sadie Summers – not because she was a bad character as Tom Batiuk thinks, but because she was under- and mis-utilized
The post office bombing (USA!)
Lisa’s cancer returns in 2006, because of a hospital error
Lisa’s death (October 4, 2007)
Act III (2007-2022, ends when Funky Winkerbean ends and its characters move to Crankshaft)
Tom Batiuk skips ten years after Lisa’s death, throwing away a gold mine of story ideas. Which also prevents Les Moore (and Batiuk) from ever moving past Lisa’s death, when that was the stated reason for the time jump
Such opinions are highly subjective – I’ve told my story in detail – but I think there’s a new way to identify roughly when this happened in Funky Winkerbean.
Here is the cover blurb for The Complete Funky Winkerbean, Volume 14, 2011-2013, released in January 2025:
[this book] sees the sons and daughters of the original Funky gang starting to make their mark on the world by playing in basketball championships, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, and being deployed to war zones. Along the way there are graduations, weddings, and anniversaries––including the 40th anniversary of Funky Winkerbean.
Now here’s the same blurb for the brand new Volume 15, 2014-2016, released just three weeks ago:
the Funky gang are now in their late forties and raising teenagers of their own. Batiuk continues the Starbuck Jones storyline from the previous volume, as Holly searches for the final five issues of the comic book to send to Cory in Afghanistan. Elsewhere, there is a memorable class reunion, the character of Mason Jarr is introduced, and the cast decamps to Hollywood as Lisa’s Story is about to be adapted into a movie.
Notice the difference? Volume 14 at least sounds like a comic strip someone might want to read. Volume 15 has nothing to sell. Starbuck Jones! Mason Jarr! The Lisa Movie (which wouldn’t even be completed until 2022)! That stupid time travel class reunion, which was basically another Lisa story! Oh, and someone’s in Afghanistan, but don’t worry – his mom is collecting comic books for him!
I submit that 2013-2014 is the time when Act II’s overambitious sloppiness finished transforming into Act III’s lazy self-indulgence. Because Batiuk can’t even polish this turd anymore.
After Act I ended, Tom Batiuk said that he couldn’t use Les for hanging-off-the-gym-rope gags anymore, after his involvement in Lisa’s difficult pregnancy.
So why doesn’t he realize that Pizza Box Monster gags don’t work anymore either?
Many of us have said that we miss Act I’s sense of sarcasm, absurdity and wonder. The PBM’s annual visits to Montoni’s were probably the closest thing we got in Act III. Tom Batiuk wrote himself into a pretzel to avoid solving the easily-solved problem of who the PBM really was. But it was still fun to watch him get Funky’s goat every year.
The story wasn’t at odds with the oh-serious-tone Batiuk adopted when he decided he was the new Sherwood Anderson. Because PBM was an obviously unserious character, who existed only for a recurring joke. Like Family Guy‘s Evil Monkey, and at least a dozen Simpsons characters (Troy McClure, Gil Gunderson, Hans Moleman, the Spucklers, etc.)
But now we’re supposed to take PBM seriously. He’s essentially Pete and Mindy’s boss now. This “young” couple we’re supposed to be rooting for has their life’s savings tied up in a person they can’t be bothered to identify. Even after he tried to reveal himself to them. All they had to do was walk into the dining area with their eyes open!
Montoni’s in Crankshaft feels like the beginning of an identity theft horror story. Except that you wouldn’t have a drop of sympathy for the victims, because they brought it on themselves. And there’s nothing LifeLock can do, if you willingly choose to enter into a financial agreement with a sentient pile of cardboard. To “buy” a restaurant that closed and sold all its equipment months before. Then again, we’ve never seen Pete or Mindy do any actual work, so I have no idea who’s ripping off who here.
PBM butting heads with Ed Crankshaft should be fun, but it isn’t. Instead, it just adds more layers to “why don’t Pete and Mindy know who this person is?”
Back when I owned a Sega Genesis (and the Sega Genesis was still current), there was an obscure but riotous game called Mutant League Football.
It was an over-the-top, super-violent version of American football. It was even more extreme than the later NFL Blitz. It was also a pretty good football game. It was so good, it was easy to forget how silly it was.
MLF was arguably better than the Madden series, which was primitive at that time. MLF was certainly more fun to play. Except that you had to play head-to-head; the vs. computer mode wasn’t much fun. My college roommate, friends, and I played Mutant League Football against each other like people play Madden nowadays, and like we played NHLPA Hockey ’93 at the time. We took it seriously.
MLF had a feature where you could bribe the referee, and he would call a stupid penalty on your opponent. This only worked once per game, so the secret was saving this for when you needed it. There is nothing more infuriating than getting a critical defensive stop on a 3rd-and-3, and then getting a 5-yard penalty for flicking boogers. The term “rage quit” didn’t exist yet, but I caused one or two. I hope the 2017 remake kept that feature.
I tell this story because of today’s strip:
Trinity Rodman is an elite professional women’s soccer player who also plays on the U.S. National Team. And, yes, she’s the daughter of basketball’s Dennis Rodman.
What post-apocalyptic mutant soccer league does this man’s daughter play in that gave her a broken leg? Not a sprain, not a foot fracture, a full broken leg. Soccer is not a violent sport! Especially not at the level of competition that exists in Westview/Centerville, which is Class A high school at best. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but that would be a pretty severe injury.
When characters under-react to something that is blatantly strange or unusual, TVTropes calls it an Unusually Uninteresting Sight. There are ways to justify this reaction, but none of them exist here, or anywhere in the Funkyverse. If anything, the Funkyverse runs on Unusually Uninteresting Sight. Characters don’t react at all when they’re being blatantly abused, attacked, exploited, manipulated, shown bizarre things, and left to die from untreated cancer.
Or, as we’ll see in the second panel, insulted.
In the unedited strip, Pam says “I’m sorry to hear that! How is she?” to which the man responds as seen above. I can appreciate that some people struggle to pick up social cues, but how oblivious can you be? Pam clearly meant “how is your daughter’s recovery going?” even if she didn’t say those exact words.
Pam showed empathy (in what’s basically a phatic conversation anyway), and the man throws it back in her face with a pedantic, unfunny response. It would be much more effective – and, dare I say, fewer inches away from reality – if Pam recognized this insult, and responded accodringly. The man was so eager to make a joke that he deliberately ignored the obvious subtext.
I often talk about the Comedy Disconnect, which is when the writer sacrifices reality in a desperate attempt to get laughs at all costs. I’ve further noticed that Tom Batiuk loves to do this when it’s completely unnecessary.
We don’t know who this man is, or who Lizzy is. (Unless he’s some Act I bit player Batiuk expects us to remember.) His opening line could have been “my son broke his leg playing high school football”, which is a far more plausible scenario. The rest of the strip could have played out the same way. Which still isn’t a joke, but let’s solve one problem at a time here.
Pam recognizing and responding to this insult is a perfectly workable second panel. In fact, my edited version of strip has two jokes in it – which is two more than the unedited strip has.
And this is a common problem in Act III/Act IV. Last week’s “Crankshaft juggles choir practice and the bowling championship” arc had multiple Comedy Disconnects that didn’t need to exist at all.
November 11: Crankshaft says “my father taught me how to play the ukelele when I was little.” This would have been about 1925-1930, when the ukelele was barely known in the United States. This could have been any musical instrument. Keep in mind that Crankshaft could not read yet.
November 15: Dinkle is annoyed that Crankshaft put a bowling team logo on the back of his choir robe. This ignores the fact that we’ve seen Dinkle raising money for choir robes on multiple occasions. The punchline could have been Dinkle handing Crankshaft a bill for the replacement cost. Which also would have kept Dinkle in character.
I came up with my own name for this more specific version of Comedy Disconnect:
Toxic Filler: When filler text inadvertently undermines the story.
Son of Stuck Funky 