In all seriousness, today’s Crankshaft floored me. Again, we’re not going to make this a Crankshaft blog, but this is a big enough development to talk about.
Here was my initial reaction:
I absolutely didn’t expect this. What does it say about the Funkyverse that starting a story with a plot point, and then actually resolving that plot point, is a shocking outcome?
And honestly, it’s kind of sweet. I have to give Pete credit for an elegant and well-executed proposal. Sure beats Eugene’s “check yes or no” snail mail proposal to Lucy, John Howard’s awkwardness, and that “in the main” word salad Les spewed at Cayla. Mindy’s “I must be crazy” reaction was also sweet. She is crazy, and not for the reasons she thinks, but she finally got what she wanted. For one day, I’m rooting for this couple. They’ll probably destroy that tomorrow morning, though.
Because I think these are the first shots of the Funky Winkervasion. The annexation of Crankshaft by Funky Winkerbean has been building for awhile, but this arc is the declaration of war. Mason Jarre showing up to buy the Valentine theater, as forced as it was, at least had some connections to long-running events in Centerville. Montoni’s wasn’t even relevant in its own strip; its closure was trivial. But here it is, being brought back to life, presumably so it can become the new social hub of Crankshaft – which is set in a town some distance away. That’s not how small-town social hubs work.
Will tomorrow’s strip be more sweetness and light, or is it straight back to Pete’s nonsense plan to revive a dead restaurant with this dollar-store corporate mascot? Or worse, discussions of how they’re going to merge their comic books?
I want to hear what you all think about this, so I hope you’ll weigh in in the comments.
Three days. Three days separated these two strips. Last Friday, Montoni’s was closed, because a “Crankshaft sets things on fire” joke needed it to be closed. Today, Montoni’s is open, because it’s time for Pete and Mindy to get married. And because Pete is such a cheap, lazy schlub he wouldn’t dare go anywhere else. You’d think the writer of a multi-billion dollar movie franchise might do something a little special for a wedding proposal. Like Carrabba’s, in Westlake. Is he going to give her salad dressing too?
Hey folks, Banana Jr. 6000 here stepping in, with the second entry in my hopefully educational TBTropes series.
One of Tom Batiuk’s crazy blog posts, from a couple years ago, was about his decision not to use fourth wall breaks anymore after Act I ended. He said:
I stopped doing that because, while it’s funny, you lose the investment and involvement of the audience. They know the characters are going to be just fine, and they don’t really care about their fate. By breaking the fourth wall, I inject myself into the story to wink at the reader as we share the joke. Now, however, I began telling stories where my presence was less intrusive and less needed.
Most works that are infamous for being bad – The Room, The Eye of Argon, Big Rigs Over The Road Racing, The Star Wars Holiday Special, Crown Royal – are bad in ways that are easy to explain, and apparent to anyone who consumes them.
Funky Winkerbean was an awful comic strip, but in ways that are difficult to quantify.
My usual go-to resource for this kind of analysis is TVTropes. A trope is a “narrative device or convention used in storytelling or production of a creative work.” TVTropes catalogues them all, and catalogues works in all media by the tropes they use. Most importantly, it gives us a language we can use to talk about what’s good or bad about creative works. It’s one of the best things the hive mind of the Internet has ever come up with. If you’re not already a reader, go check it out, but be warned that TVTropes Will Ruin Your Life.
I view tropes as the atoms of storytelling. Every object in your home, at its most fundamental level, is made up of atoms. Water is two hydrogen atoms, one oxygen atom. Salt is sodium and chlorine. If you look up your favorite book/movie/TV show/record/comic strip/video game/Bible story/anime/whatever on TVTropes, you’ll get a list of the tropes it’s made of. It’s a way of breaking down your favorite story into its most basic elements, and discussing what does well or badly.
Tom Batiuk’s writing is so bad that it defies this model.
Last Sunday’s Crankshaft, the one that ended last week’s divergence, raised discussion in its own right.
Here’s the strip. The scene is Lillian’s bookstore, with a table of books labeled “Banned Books – Get Them Before They’re Burned!” Visible book covers include 1984, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Maus. In the comments, some of you argued that the threat of banned books is overblown; that being banned actually makes them best-sellers; and other thoughtful takes. All while being respectful and honoring the no-politics rule. This is a great crowd.
While the strip’s premise was good, the overall strip was dreadful, for a reason nobody mentioned. And it’s dreadful for reasons that are common to the Funkyverse. To put it in context, I want to respond to a comment by Bill The Splut:
I will give Tom points for putting it in a new way. The Shining Twins don’t even notice. Book bannings mean Back to School now.
In the strip, one of the two twin girls says “Gee, it’s hard to believe it’s almost time for school to start!” Which certainly could be interpreted as Bill suggests; that the sign’s message had no impact on them. The art supports this theory:
But the art also starts to reveal the problem. These girls look like they’re 9 or 10 years old. Are children this young concerned about book censorship? Should they be? “Oh, this reminds me we have to go back to school” is a perfectly reasonable observation for a couple of soon-to-be fifth graders.
But that’s not the worst part of it. It’s this:
What in the hell is this face? What emotion is Lillian trying to convey here? What emotion are Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis trying to convey to the reader? I’d love to show that picture to 100 people and ask them what they think is being expressed here. My guess is “accidentally farted a little and is looking to see if anyone noticed.”
This is a book store Lillian owns. It’s implied that she set up this “banned books” display. So she must feel strongly about the matter. When her own helpers, probably the most book-aware children in town, fail to get the message, she must feel… something other than this! Angry? Disappointed? Sad? Condescending? Socratic, as if this were a great opportunity to educate the next generation?
Instead, we get: smirk.
Smirk is the universal emotion in the Funkyverse. Smirk is the appropriate emotional response to every single stimulus in life, from “I am mildly annoyed by your joke” to “I am painfully dying of cancer.” The champion of the smirk was, of course, Lisa.
The art puts so much effort into showing how gaunt and feeble Lisa is, but her smirk muscles still work! Cancer can’t kill those, apparently. Even though this horribly awkward remark should have cleared the room. If I met my biological mother for the first time and found out she was this fatalistic and self-pitying, it would also be my last visit.
But let’s get back to Lillian. Her expression kills this scene dead, because it sucks all the emotional stakes out of it. It’s another huge failure of If This Is True, What Else Is True. Put it another way: it’s another failure of Batiuk to view a scene from the perspective of his characters. Lillian should have a reaction here, or know not to be too bothered by it. But she doesn’t do either. The strip attempts to raise a serious issue, but Lillian’s wry, bored disinterest in her own cause stops it cold at second base. If she doesn’t care about what’s happening in the strip, why should the reader?
Batiuk has an infamous blog post about breaking the fourth wall, where he says “I would break the fourth wall by having a character do a side-glance to the reader. I stopped doing that because, while it’s funny, you lose the investment and involvement of the audience. They know the characters are going to be just fine, and they don’t really care about their fate. By breaking the fourth wall, I inject myself into the story to wink at the reader as we share the joke.”
But that’s exactly what the smirk does. The character does a side glance to the reader, and kills the investment and involvement of the audience. We know the characters don’t really care about their fate. By breaking the fourth wall, Batiuk injects himself into the story to wink at the reader as we share the joke. Except there’s no joke here either.
Son of Stuck Funky 