It’s hard to believe it’s been a year without Funky Winkerbean. Then again, has it really been a year without Funky Winkerbean? Those “new original Funky stories at from time to time” Tom Batiuk promised on his website never arrived. Because all the “new Funky stories” are going straight into Crankshaft. Why have web-exclusive content when you can just submit it as your day job?
Speaking of day jobs: my day job is working with financial data. Sports handicapping is a side interest. So I love making half-assed guesses from non-specific data. The great Comic Book Harriet has inspired me to apply these skills to the Funkyverse.
We just saw her third annual breakdown of character appearances in the Funkyverse. She also did this for the 2022 and 2021 years of Funky Winkerbean. I will to try and predict what the character appearances in Crankshaft in 2024 will be. I’m only interested in Funky Winkerbean characters, though. Characters like Lena and Keesterman belong in Crankshaft, so I don’t think they’re worth talking about here.
The count of FW characters in Crankshaft is a good data point to view how far Tom Batiuk is going to convert Crankshaft into The New Funky Winkerbean. For example: Pete Roberts/Reynolds was the sixth-most popular character in Crankshaft last year, behind only Ed, Lillian, and the Murdoch family. And all he did was go to Comic-Con, write Lillian’s author blurb, and re-open Montoni’s. In light of what we know about Montoni’s and Pete, that story arc only makes sense in ways that can be divided by zero. But Batiuk wanted Montoni’s back, so it’s back. I’ll speculate why in a moment.
Here are my predictions for the most prominent Funky Winkerbean characters in Crankshaft in 2024. I won’t guess exact counts, but a ranked order, and the probability each character will appear at all.
I humbly withdraw my earlier criticism that the landmarking of the sign was an “informed attribute.” I see that the whole process and the rationale thereof was shown, albeit nearly 30 years ago.
You’re both right. What happened with this Montoni’s sign is a common Tom Batiuk writing practice I’ve been meaning to elevate to a TBTrope.
Undue Weight is a Wikipedia concept. It means something is being paid too much or too little emphasis, relative to its importance to the overall topic. It’s not even about storytelling; it’s a form of bias. It’s something you want to avoid when contributing to an objective, non-fiction encyclopedia article.
So how does it figure into the Funkyverse? TVTropes’ Law of Conservation of Detail says:
There is a fine line between having good, rich Worldbuilding and rambling on about pointless details. Conservation of detail is all about filtering out irrelevant information to highlight the actual plot points or interesting aspects of the setting or character.
Happy Turkey Day! I hope your Thanksgiving Day is full of loved ones, great food, and thankfulness for all the blessings you’ve received. If you’re capable of reading this message via the Internet, and have time to spend on this dead newspaper comic, you have a pretty good life compared to most people on this planet. So let’s all be thankful today. I’m thankful to have all of you in my life.
We have some Funkyverse news, from an odd place. In an offhand comment in my last post, I mentioned the YouTube channel Mainly Facts, which is one of many channels that read and discuss Reddit posts. A recent episode has some themes that will be very familiar to observers of Funky Winkerbean. It’s the first story of this YouTube video, and is about 8 minutes long. (Embedding is disabled so I can’t directly post it here.)
You really should listen to the whole thing, but here are the key details:
The male letter-writer was married to a woman named “Laura” (a pseudonym) who died of an aggressive form of cancer when they were 28.
He and Laura had a 10-year-old son.
He met a new woman named Kayla (implied not to be a pseudonym) at a “work event,” and began dating her.
Kayla admits she feels neglected, and that the letter-writer is using her as “a replacement for his dead wife.” Letter-writer is shocked to hear this.
Kayla begins wearing Laura’s jewelry, dies her hair like Laura did, gets clothes/piercings/tattoos matching what Laura had, and wants letter-writer’s son to start calling her “Mama.” Letter-writer finds this unnerving.
Kayla confesses she “felt she had to live up to the memory of a ghost.”
Kayla attempted suicide, later saying “maybe if I was dead too, (letter-writer) would love her even a fraction of how much he loves Laura.”
Letter-writer’s family tells him he should have been more attentive to Kayla.
Letter-writer wonders if he’s the asshole of the story, and if his family is right.
This is almost exactly Les Moore’s life story after Lisa died. He married a woman named Cayla, and then his dead wife became the centerpiece of their relationship. But in Funky Winkerbean, this was driven by Les, not Cayla. I think this story gives us some helpful insights about the Funkyverse:
It’s a great example of why Tom Batiuk’s approach to storytelling simply doesn’t work. Unlike stories in the Funkyverse, characters react to events in the story. Kayla perceives herself as being less important than the dead wife, and tries to rectify that. Funkyverse Cayla never does this. She’s perfectly happy to play second banana to Lisa, and indulge all of Les’ ridiculous demands. Even after Les’ Oscar “win”, which should have been the end of it.
This is unrealistic. Married people operate from the reasonable expectation that they are their spouse’s primary focus. Being a widower complicates things, but Les never made any effort to move past Lisa’s death. He wanted all the benefits of being married to Cayla, without any of the emotional commitment it requires. Which would ultimately cause problems in their marriage.
The real-life letter-writer’s story shows what a selfish craphead Les Moore is by comparison. If Les was a good person, this real-life story is what he would have done.
Unlike Les, the letter-writer comes off as pretty reasonable. He seems to have a healthy balance between honoring his deceased wife, and moving forward with someone else. The letter-writer’s story mentions going to therapy, and bringing his 10-year-old child as well, to deal with the shock of losing “Laura.” It’s not clear whether Kayla is overreacting, or if the letter-writer is inadvertently assigning too much importance to his dead wife. But you get the feeling there’s room for discussion, and that an otherwise good relationship can be saved.
The letter-writer is also genuinely concerned about people other than himself. He’s concerned about Kayla’s feelings. His child wasn’t comfortable calling Kayla “mama”, and he honored that. In the Funkyverse, Les did things like make his daughter read her mother’s rape journal, and forbade her from throwing out Lisa’s pointless VHS recordings. Ten years of not being allowed to move on from a parent’s death, and having no other adults in her life, would have damaged Summer. Not the “Lisa would be proud of the woman you’ve become” nonsense we got, as Tom Batiuk skipped ten years to avoid dealing with the situation he created.
CBH CUTTING IN HERE!
I second everything Banana Jr 6000k said about thankfulness. I’m so thankful for HIM. For his hard work while I’ve been busy with real life. And I’m thankful for this site. I’m so thankful for all of you commenters who have kept this place going. And I’m thankful for all your patience as harvest has pulled away my attention over the last couple months.
Also wanted to note that this year Cranky feels the need to name-drop Sam’N Ella’s Turkey Farm. Batty has spent the last year making a point of constantly name dropping old Funky Winkerbean references into dialogue with all the finesse of a bowling ball onto a egg carton. Like poor old Les constantly moping over Lisa and mulling over their past…he is tainting the living with memories of the dead.
ALSO also, the polymelic turkey joke is a rehash from 2016.
I leave it up to you guys if eight years is past the statute of limitations for self-plagiarism.
Hello again! I’ve commented in the past about something I call the Comedy Disconnect. The concept is from The Comedy Bible by Judy Carter. I want to promote this to a TBTrope. The book defines this as “trying to be funny rather than communicate ideas. Reality is sacrificed in a desperate attempt to get laughs at all costs… never sacrifice a character’s reality for the sake of a laugh.”
It’s time for another installment in the TBTropes series, where we come up with TVTropes-style descriptions of the writing techniques used in the Funkyverse and nowhere else. So far we’ve seen:
Story Asserting: The tendency of Tom Batiuk to advance every story where he wants it to go, with no regard to logic, realistic human behavior, the characters having motivations of their own, or making any sense.
Schrodinger’s Continuity: Continuity exists in a perpetually unknown state, its outcome influenced by events we cannot comprehend. Like Schrodinger’s Cat, Tony Montoni can be both dead and alive, until the story reveals which he is.
Tonelessness: The tendency of a work to convey no exposition at all, or any information about the author’s intent.
Son of Stuck Funky 