Banana Jr. 6000

How Do You Break A Leg Playing High School Girls’ Soccer?

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.

What A Drag It Is Getting Old

We’re back on a Crankshaft staple: old people moaning about how difficult their life is.

But do you ever think Crankshaft comes off a little …. humble-braggy? “Oh, look how old I am, I have it soooooooo rough.” And his eternal look of smug condescension doesn’t help.

Come on Ed, you should know that’s not how a “happy ending” works.
Did you never visit the Valentine Theater during the brief time it was a strip club?

Back pain, muscle soreness, medication, Ben-Gay, and deep tissue massages are a 56-year-old man’s problem – not a 106-year-old man’s problem. Crankshaft and all his buddies should all be on their arthritic knees, thanking God for how healthy and active they all still are. They can live independently in their own homes, work, travel, and have full range of motion. And not a drop of dementia or cancer in any of them! (Ed probably has dementia, but it’s considered “quirky.” SEE ALSO: Weston, Wilbur.)

Ed reminds me of Dinkle in this regard. He’s always whining about how hard he has it, but we never see him experience any actual difficulty. Have you noticed that Dinkle’s much-maligned bands have never delivered a bad live performance? Same thing with Crankshaft. Those pain lines will disappear the second Batiuk wants to do another wacky gardening mishap. Or if he wants to give Ed a third sports award this year.

He also reminds me of kids I knew in middle and high school who were always saying “oh, I failed that test!” Despite talking up their status in the valedictorian race the rest of the time. Oh, shut up, Julie. We all know you didn’t fail. You got an A, or maybe a B if you did really bad. One of the great things about moving past high school was that I no longer had to indulge people like this.

In a world defined by pointless, inescapable tragedy, I often wonder if Crankshaft causes any lingering bitterness in others. Ralph Meckler, Les Moore, and Eugene are all characters I suspect wouldn’t appreciate Ed’s constant keening about his amazingly superior health. “Timmy/Lisa/Lucy died decades ago, and I’m supposed to listen to health complaints from this guy who’s harder to kill than The Terminator?”

This has gone on long enough. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Ed Crankshaft needs to die. Cut the cord, Tom. You want to stop writing gags? Prove it, by getting rid of the character you most need to write gags for. And please spare us the ten years of vegetative state you think Ed still has in front of him. You’re getting into Gasoline Alley territory.

Finally, We Know What Happened To Lisa’s Test Results!

Remember when Lisa was told she was cancer-free when she wasn’t?

Today, we learned where Lisa’s radiology scans went!

Mom Of 3 Has Part of Lung Removed After Cancer Diagnosis. 2 Weeks Later, She Was Told She Didn’t Have Cancer

A British woman had part of her lung removed following a suspected cancer diagnosis, only to be told two weeks later that she didn’t actually have the disease.

The mother of three recalled to the BBC, “I had to go home and tell my children and parents that I had cancer. I tried to be strong for them, but I just fell to pieces,” adding, “You hear the word cancer and you automatically think you’re going to die.”

Erica Hay ended up having an operation in September 2020 to remove the lower lobe of her right lung. However, two weeks after the surgery, she was told that she didn’t have cancer, and the mass in her lung had been caused by pneumonia.

She claimed that the operation has left her with breathing difficulties, saying: “I’ve had asthma since I was 17, but my respiratory problems have increased unbelievably since the surgery. It’s completely floored me. Just talking or walking into the kitchen can set my symptoms off.”

“I am so very, very grateful that it wasn’t cancer, but I had to go through all of that and know this is probably never going to get any better now. It affects my work, my daily living, and at times it makes me feel inadequate as a [mother] and a wife.”

Hay has since pursued a clinical negligence claim. The case was resolved with a settlement. The hospital trusts involved haven’t admitted liability or causation.

You’re probably wondering how Lisa’s test results were given to someone who lives in Doncaster, England, thirteen years after Lisa died. And was diagnosed with a completely different kind of cancer than Lisa had. But we all know the answer to that!

Great Moments In Book Signing History

Some selected final panels of book signing-related strips, from as far back as 2010:

Notice how similar these all are, even though they’re different characters. Because they’re all here to indulge Tom Batiuk’s fantasy: that he’s an elite writer who attracts long lines at his far too many book signings. Then he laughs at his own unfunny/incoherent joke. And then he belittles you, because he’s a writer and you’re not. Next, please.

All of these were responses to perfectly reasonable questions or to harmless banter, from genuine fans. And they all got Bitter Les Face in response. Though it was kind of nice to see Les on the receiving end from Dinkle that one time. Look at his shocked, unhappy expression. You can almost see him thinking “wow, is this how I come off to people?” Of course, Les’ heel realization is never explored, because the Funkyverse can’t have that.

I get why an author might find book signings annoying, and mine a few jokes from the experience. But we’ve had several book signing weeks over the years, and it’s always this same collection of conceits: annoyance, self-aggrandizement, intellectual superiority, and the author’s rude dismissal of people who are fawning over him. And as is standard for the Funkyverse, not one of these fans ever responds to being insulted by someone they admire. If anything, they’re too dumb to even notice.

Which makes me wonder what Tom Batiuk’s book signings are really like for him. From the book signing pictures we see on his blog, I infer that he doesn’t get many takers. Which can also lend itself to comedy. But he never subjects his stable of writers to this treatment. “No one came to my book signing” stories tend to be discussions of things that happened off-panel, like in fall 2017.

Batiuk loves to control the narrative about his work. But he can’t make real-life convention visitors be interested in him. Especially when he appears at the same handful of local venues every year without fail; those venues are awkward fits for his audience; and he never sets foot anywhere else. He’s setting himself up to fail.

So what we get instead is a different kind of fantasy. “Batton” gets plenty of visitors, but they’re all mind-bogglingly stupid. Even though they’re flattering him to an absurd degree, like someone mistaking his work for Archie. And we’re the snarkers? It seems to me that Batiuk is venting at his fans for being idiots, when his real complaint is that there aren’t nearly enough of them.

If these stories are an accurate description how Tom Batiuk treats his fans, it’s no wonder he doesn’t have very many.

How Many Things Can We Find Wrong With This Story?

After Pizza Box Monster week ended with this atrocity, let’s keep this discussion simple.

Let’s see how many things we can find wrong with this story. I’ll use this post to compile them into a list. GoComics and other such providers allow you to view comic strips for the past week without any login or account. So until Monday, anyone can view the entire week. Here are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

Let’s begin. The only rules are:

Be brief. Have you ever read the nmop-əpisdn answers in Hocus Focus? They’re very short, like “beard is missing” or “arms have moved.” Explain as much as you need to, but be terse. Keep it to a sentence if you can.
Stick to the actual content of this week’s strips. No meta-errors, or comments about Tom Batiuk’s production process.
Things that are wrong in the long-term context of the comic strip, such as Pete and Mindy’s marital status and their business relationship with PBM, are permitted.

Here we go!

Monday’s strip shows PBM leaving after helping decorate the restaurant. The pizza box costume would make any physical movement very difficult. (BJ6K)
The PBM costume has no visible eyeholes. (Y. Knott)
On Monday, PBM says he’ll “come back for lunch when things aren’t busy.” At almost any restaurant, lunch is expected to be busy. (BJ6K)
- Gleeb points out that this could mean “the time we restaurant workers take lunch”, not “when lunch is served.”
On Tuesday, Pete calls PBM “one of their silent partners” in Montoni’s. No other partner has ever been seen or mentioned. (BJ6K)
Somehow, Pete and Mindy have somehow entered into a business relationship with an unknown person. (BJ6K)
Pete tells Mindy to “stop obsessing” over who the PBM is. Given that business relationship, she is right to want to know who this person is. (BJ6K)
On Tuesday, Pete and Mindy’s hands are visible. Neither is wearing a wedding or engagement ring. (BJ6K)
The spider on the video camera screen on Saturday doesn’t match the one we see in the restaurant on Tuesday. (Green Luthor)
The angle isn’t the same either. (Green Luthor)
Owners of a security camera would not block it with objects. Or if they did accidentally, they would notice and correct it before an incident happens. (Green Luthor)
The pizza that the PBM is served seems to shrink significantly in diameter between Thursday and Saturday. Compare how much counter space the pizza occupied on Thursday, compared to its much smaller depiction on Saturday. (Y. Knott)
Despite wanting to see the PBM, the characters seem to be going out of their way to avoid seeing him. (several)
How does Mindy know PBM was eating alone at the bar … unless she *saw* PBM eating alone at the bar? (Y. Knott)
By dining in the restaurant and removing his headgear, it is possible that the PBM is trying to reveal his identity. Pete, Mindy, and Ed fail to consider this. (BJ6K)
Even if Mindy didn’t see the revealed face *clearly*, it still seems counter-productive to leave the room with the PBM in it, only to essentially announce that “Hey, it sure would be neat to see the PBM’s face while the PBM is eating in the other room where I just was, watching the PBM eating. (Y. Knott)
The story assumes that Mindy and Pete would know who the PBM is. If we’re going to ignore the whole ‘business partners’ problem, then there’s no reason to assume the PBM is someone would be recognized by them. (Green Luthor)
PBM could mistakenly believe that they know who he is. (pj202718nbca)
There was never any obstacle to simply looking at the PBM. Even if there was, Pete and Mindy own the restaurant now, and can easily invent a reason to be wandering the dining area during business hours. Beyond even that, it’s Halloween, and they could hide their own identities in a costume if desired.(BJ6K)

Have at it in the comments. Let me know if you made a suggestion and I didn’t include it (or an equivalent one).