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.
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.
