Banana Jr. 6000

Whatever Happened To The Industrial Arts Teacher?

Oh goody. That wacky Dinkle is overworking high school students again. I would roll my eyes, but in the Funkyverse that’s interpreted as a gesture of approval. I would yawn, except that Dinkle’s behavior towards his performers makes me want to call the police instead.

The punchline of the December 2 strip was that Centerview High School’s band was being conducted by the industrial arts teacher. Dinkle reacts snidely to this, because he’s a complete jackass, but also because this is Not Doing Things Correctly. And if there’s one thing the Funkyverse will not stand for, it’s people Not Doing Things Correctly.

When I heard about the industrial arts teacher conducting a band, I immediately thought of this:

I imagined this industrial arts teacher was a secret John Cage fan, and started to put together a performance of holiday music played entirely on tools from shop class. He worked all night on it, and was all ready to present it to the principal, when he was told “Uh, yeah… about that…. Harry Dinkle waltzed through the front door and demanded to be put in charge, so now he’s conducting the holiday concert. Sorry.”

For a comic strip that runs on mundane tragedies, it sure does ignore mundane tragedies. Because they’re not important unless they’re happening to Les, Dinkle, Lillian, Funky, Skip, Batton Thomas, or a comic book.

All of Dinkle’s failings as as a character have been pretty thoroughly documented here by now. My main beef with this week’s travesty is something else that’s been pretty thoroughly documented too; Tom Batiuk’s inability to get to the point. It took six days to get Dinkle waving his little stick again. It could have been done in two panels:

Dinkle conducting a high school band is Tom Batiuk’s idea of fan service. He thinks everybody loves it when Dinkle or Ed Crankshaft gives children PTSD. So why does it him so long to get on with it? Dinkle had to learn about the opening, be bribed into pursuing it (huh ??!!), show up at the school office, walk into the band room, and announce his rules before the first note is played. Which was terrible of course, and was met with his usual response.

You know what we didn’t see, though? Dinkle convincing this school to give him the job. Say what you will about Dinkle; he’s persuasive. He can sell the stupidest things door-to-door, and talk people into giving him jobs when his reputation should make him radioactive. This is the part of the Dinkle story I’d actually want to see: the snake oil salesman making his pitch.

Think of John Candy in Plains Trains and Automobiles. He talked strangers into helping him, sold shower curtain rings to raise money, and made Steve Martin see the value of keeping him around. He was a genuinely good salesman. He pulled his weight in getting them home, despite being extremely annoying.

But that’s not what gets emphasized in the Funkyverse. What does get emphasized in the Funkyverse? The main character being catered to. It’s always the same template. Character shows up, announces how talented they are, gets everything they want handed to them, and the world fawns over them. Even people who would have way more power, like Les Moore’s Hollywood overseers. Automobiles would been way less charming if John Candy just showed up everywhere and said “Hi, I’m the world’s greatest salesman, and I demand your only hotel room.” Then it cuts to the “two pillows” scene. (Actually, that scene would never happen in Funky Winkerbean, because it was legit funny.)

This is why Tom Batiuk can’t get to the point. He thinks “The talent is here, kiss my ring now” is the point. And if you know Tom Batiuk’s real-life frustrations with Hollywood, and with never getting hired by DC or Marvel, you can see why he thinks that. It’s the reaction he thinks he should get.

Testimony Of Police Investigator

(My retelling of The Burnings resumes. All episodes of the retelling appear under the “Burnings” tag.)

PROSECUTOR: Please state your name and position.

HARSHMAN: I am Detective Leo Harshman of the county police. My jurisdiction includes both Westview and Centerville.

PROSECUTOR: And you were the lead detective for the Village Booksmith fire, correct?

HARSHMAN: Yes, I was.

PROSECUTOR: In your own words, can you describe the events of the night of September 16?

HARSHMAN: I got a routine call to investigate a code 11-71C.

PROSECUTOR: 11-71C? Can you explain to the court what that means?

HARSHMAN: 11-71 is a standard police code for fire. We add the letter C to mean the fire is known or suspected to be caused by Ed Crankshaft.

SPECTATOR: Hey! I re-assemble that remark!

THE JUDGE: (bangs gavel) The spectators will remain quiet at all times. Please continue, Detective Harshman.

HARSHMAN: The dispatcher gave an address, which means it didn’t happen at Crankshaft’s house, which is a little unusual. But I knew the address was right next door.

PROSECUTOR: You were familiar with the address?

HARSHMAN: Yes, local first responders know Mr. Crankshaft personally.

PROSECUTOR: What happened when you responded to the call?

HARSHMAN: Well, 11-71C has a reputation for being, well, a waste of the officer’s time. We usually give them to rookies.

THE JUDGE: Detective Harshman, we’ve had a talk about you maintaining a professional tone when you’re giving testimony. It is common for people involved in the case to be spectators in the courtroom, which is clearly happening right now.

HARSHMAN: I’m sorry, Your Honor. Anyway, when I got the scene, it was obvious this was something different. There was creosote oil poured all over the place, and the victim Lillian McKenzie was unusually distressed. I called the state arson investigator to come out, and secured the crime scene.

PROSECUTOR: What did securing the crime scene entail?

HARSHMAN: I marked off the area with tape, told Lillian not to use or let anyone use the burned stairs, and that she had to close the bookstore until further notice.

PROSECUTOR: What was her response to that?

HARSHMAN: She – said she would not comply with this lawful order. Her exact words were, “My neighborhood isn’t zoned business, the town can’t tell me what to do.”

PROSECUTOR: What happened after that?

HARSHMAN: I added her comment to my report in case somebody got hurt and tried to sue the town, and made a mental note to report her to the state Attorney General. Again.

PROSECUTOR: Let me rephrase that. What happened later in the evening?

HARSHMAN: There was a call for a 10-100, Civil Disturbance, at the same address, about 2:30 in the morning.

PROSECUTOR: What did you think was happening?

HARSHMAN: I had no idea. The whole thing made no sense. It was an obvious arson, and the last thing an arsonist would do is go back to the scene later that night. Whoever committed this arson obviously didn’t know what they were doing.

PROSECUTOR: You responded to the second call?

HARSHMAN: Yes.

PROSECUTOR: Please describe what happened.

HARSHMAN: When I pulled up to the house the second time, people started running off in all directions. It looked like a high school party was breaking up because the cops arrived. That’s honestly what I thought it was, but about half the people stayed.

PROSECUTOR: Who were those people?

HARSHMAN: Mostly neighbors, and friends of Lillian and the bookstore. I recognized Harry Dinkle, The World’s Greatest Band Director.

THE JUDGE: Mr. Harshman, please do not give your opinion unless you are asked for it.

HARSHMAN: No, Your Honor, I wasn’t. That’s actually his legal name. He changed it to that.

THE JUDGE: I apologize, Officer.

HARSHMAN: Shall I continue?

THE JUDGE: Please do.

HARSHMAN: The people at the scene were counter-protestors, and told us they were supporting Lillian McKenzie against some protestors. Something about some book, “Fahrenheit” something. I called in a 10-101 for assistance with the public disturbance, and asked officers to pull over anyone who appeared to be running from the scene, or was out driving in the middle of the night. There was a good chance one of these people was our arsonist. I also made one arrest at the scene.

PROSECUTOR: Who did you arrest at the scene and why?

HARSHMAN: Pete Roberts-Reynolds, the owner of Montoni’s Pizza. He was charged with a 5th degree felony under section 2921.31, for interfering with a police investigation.

PROSECUTOR: What did he do?

HARSHMAN: I said earlier that I secured the crime scene with tape. Roberts-Reynolds had removed some of the tape, and was wearing it as some kind of costume.

PROSECUTOR: What did you do next?

HARSHMAN: I brought Roberts-Reynolds back to the station for questioning, formally charged him, and released him on his own recognizance about 5 AM. He seemed very tired, he had these bags under his eyes. But we determined he was not a suspect in the arson, just a mo– misguided person.

PROSECUTOR: Were there any other arrests?

HARSHMAN: No arrests, but several people were caught by other officers, and many of them were charged with misdemeanors.

PROSECUTOR: What were they charged with?

HARSHMAN: Most of them were under 18, so mostly curfew violations.

PROSECUTOR: Lillian McKenzie testified that the protestors dispersed when she pointed out her surveillance camera. Did you review the video?

HARSHMAN: There was no video to review.

PROSECUTOR: Why not?

HARSHMAN: Because that’s not a camera, that’s a floodlight. That doesn’t even look like a camera. If that was a camera, it was pointed the same place as where the fire started, and I would have had to do a lot less police work to do.

I Stand Corrected

In my last post, I said comic book week could have been a charming little throw back to Act I, and that Tom Batiuk should do this kind of thing more often.

I take it back.

Last week’s “bus driver shortage” arc in Crankshaft was a perfect example of why Tom Batiuk shouldn’t try doing Act I-style stories anymore. They miss everything that made Act I arcs good.

The best way to see this is to look at the Act I stories Harriet has recently dived into, such as the literary magazine arc, the video games/censorship arc, and The Eliminator’s hacking arc.

What did those stories have that last week didn’t have?

There were actual stakes. Les was facing criticism, and possible termination of employment, for what his magazine published. Westview faced threats remove to popular video games. The Eliminator was tampering with Crazy’s grade, War Games-style.

A bus driver shortage should have serious effects on a high-school centric world, even if it’s just “hey, none of us have to worry about getting fired for awhile.” That should push Ed and the crew into even more extreme behavior, which is a staple of the strip. Here, of course, there are no stakes, no implications, and nothing that even escalates existing stories. Speaking of which:

There was an actual story. In all three examples, any gags were part of a larger story which the strip took time to unravel. For example:

The two strips are jokes, but they’re good ones, and they flow naturally from the story. The strip had spent a good week talking how the literary magazine had offended the community, which drove the easily-upset Les to having nightmares, and the feckless Fred Fairgood into making an actual decision. Then the story moves forward.

Bloom County was good at this:

This is silly as hell, but it was actually a small part of a long, complex story about Oliver Wendell Jones’ hacking misadventures. Which itself was also a longrunning theme in Bloom County. The story supported the joke, and the joke supported the story. Berke Breathed had a talent for writing insane stories, but also making them make sense in context. Which is exactly what’s not happening here:

The bus driver shortage isn’t a story, but just a premise to be restated at you over and over and over. It’s another form of “What are you doing, Dad?” Which as it turns out, Pam doesn’t actually say that much. It’s the Funkyverse’s answer to “beam me up, Scotty” or “play it again, Sam”. But you know what I mean: it’s the stand-in phrase for an overused trope. Even if Pam doesn’t say those exact words, she might as well be.

Those stories weren’t contrary to the reality of the world. The literary magazine arc in particular was very consistent with Les’ established personality, Roberta Blackburn’s personality, and the general spinelessness of school leadership in the face of obnoxious citizen critics.

Here, we were treated to a joke about how the school board was so desperate it was forced to hire a Hell’s Angel as an elementary school bus driver. A Hell’s Angel would probably be a way better bus driver than Ed Crankshaft is! They do Toys for Tots, so they must have some degree of altruism, and ability to interact with children. Ed Crankshaft and the other drivers certainly don’t, considering how they routinely blow off children at bus stops, and cause traffic jams to amuse themselves.

The jokes were aimed at the right targets. Les’s worry, Fred’s spinelessness, Roberta’s Karen-ness, and the public’s excessive squeamishness about the tiniest hint of sexual content were all on the receiving end of the barbs.

Here the victim is – to the extent there even is one – this Hell’s Angel who did nothing more than show up and apply for a job. Ed gets no guff for being an awful bus driver. Lena gets no guff for making bad hiring decisions. The school system gets no guff for managing its resources so poorly that it gets into this state. The “Tucker Twins”, who’ve never been mentioned before and probably never will be again, get no guff for bullying a grown man out of a job. (Can they please be assigned to Crankshaft’s bus?)

This is more evidence that the “good” characters can never, ever, ever be in the wrong, not even in the tiniest way. Even unseen “main “good” characters.

There isn’t much to say about this week’s “If Amazon drove your kids to school” arc, even though it progresses naturally from a “bus driver shortage” arc. Yeah, the jokes are lame, but a week of formulaic jokes isn’t worth talking about. It’s well above the level of awful that makes the Funkyverse fascinating.

What is worth talking about? The Burnings! And I haven’t forgotten that I owe you all the next installment of the reimagined Burnings story, so that is coming soon!

The Comic Book Cover That Never Came

After the Burnings piddled out, Tom Batiuk spent two full weeks on comic book covers. Pointless, derivative, unimaginative, actionless, talky, over-expositioned, self-indulgent, still-auditioning-for-Marvel-and-DC-at-age-76 comic book covers. It was so bad I struggled to write anything about it. Then on Sunday, I asked myself a question I never thought I would: why’d he stop?

The November 3 Crankshaft strip is perfectly suited to be a comic book cover. It’s already turned sideways. It’s already framed like a comic book cover; there’s empty space at the top where the Atomik Komix livery and price tag would go. There’s more action in this drawing than anything we saw during Pizza Box Monster week. So why isn’t it one?

It could have been a nice little self-callback. It’s hard to remember now, but comic book covers and comic book art in Funky Winkerbean used to be a way of framing the actual story arc. Not-Yet-Dead Lisa would imagine herself as a cancer-fighting superhero. The obstacles in a character’s world would manifest themselves as comic book-style villains, and so on. It had its charms.

Or at least, it had a point. It complemented the narrative instead of replacing the narrative with something that wasn’t narrative. Sometimes it was just in service of a “collecting comic books” story, but that was still in-bounds. It wasn’t just to flesh out Batiuk’s imaginary comic book continuity he never does anything with. Or indulge his fantasy of what he wishes he’d been doing for the last 50 years.

This Crankshaft strip is perfect for that treatment. It’s about urging people to vote, a common theme when an election is imminent. But it could have been so much better, if Batiuk had just leaned into what he’s been forcing onto us for the last two weeks. Put Ed in a America-themed costume. Call him Super-Citizen or something. With the power to change mighty governments in a single vote! Instead of Meckler lamely saying “we’re trying to encourage younger voters”, Ed could have compelled them to join his superhero team! This would have made a garden-variety voting story a little bit fun.

Which is what’s missing from all this. For all the time Tom Batiuk spends in Comic Book Cover Land, it’s just. Not. Fun. Not even to him! The comic book covers aren’t funny. Or interesting. Or skillfully drawn. or passionate. Or frame the story a different way. Or set up anything that gets explored later. Or serve as a entertaining spectacle in themselves. They feel obligatory.

This is like the song “She Keeps Me Up”. It’s an overproduced disco rock song from the humorless band Nickelback, played with complete earnestness. This should be hilarious, but it’s not. And it’s not because the song is bad. It’s fine for what it is. But watch the 70s-style music videos for “Are You Gonna Go My Way” or “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” or “Ooh La La” by Goldfrapp, and you’ll see the problem. Those people are enjoying themselves! They clearly love this type of music, and know how to create it. They have a sense of a humor. They put some thought into merging the disco sound into their usual songwriting.

As much as Tom Batiuk professes to love comic book covers, he draws them like it’s a contractual obligation.

Weekday Comic Book Covers!

Yep, they’re a thing now. How long until Crankshaft is nothing but comic book covers? And how many years will that go on before the strip is cancelled?

Last week was the final full week of October, which means it was the Pizza Box Monster’s time to shine! He showed up on cue and… existed. Pete, Mindy, Darrin, and the PBM talked about decorating and telling ghost stories, but didn’t do either of those things. They also didn’t deal with the power outage, which seems like a serious problem for Montoni’s. Spoiled product cuts into a restaurant’s “thin crust profit margins.” But they sat in the dark and played make-believe like the overgrown nine-year-olds they are. It’s been a year since Pete and Mindy bought the restaurant, and they’ve done nothing but decorate it for holidays (and that’s if you count last week). What was the point of closing Montoni’s or re-opening it?

Then on Sunday, the Burnings story… well, I don’t want to say it “ended”, but I guess it’s done smirking at itself. What is Lillian so pleased about? She did absolutely nothing. Telling people they’re on camera is of no value if you’re not going to do anything with the evidence. Such as, give it to the police so they can identify and arrest the arsonist. The arson footage must exist, because there’s no way someone mounted that camera after the fire but before the protestors, which were implied to happen on the same night. Or, investigate them yourself, something an award-winning mystery writer should know a thing or two about.

Unlike what Tom Batiuk thinks, there’s nothing courageous about reading a book to people you know will never attack you. This is what happens when a story starts with “let my preferred character be the hero of a controversial issue so I can win an award” and then tries to back-form a narrative that leads up to that. The whole story makes zero sense. All the “protestors” had to was report the book to the school board, or maybe just to principal Nate (who was depicted as wanting to obey the school board). All Lillian or Booksmellers had to do was call the police, because nothing about this justifies an arson attack. Again, why is this treated so casually?

At the peak of the stupidity, there were almost 20 people total on Lillian’s lawn, protesting for something that already exists, or counter-protesting for… something, I guess. You sure wouldn’t know what the counter-protestors wanted from their signs. Ban bans! Ban gensor! Words have power! It’s like they were all told to assemble and make signs but weren’t told why. Look at their faces. They all say “I don’t know why I’m here, but I’m really, really angry at you!”

And finally, there’s the small matter of “The Burnings” somehow being a major phenomenon that shut down literacy for two generations. The Village Booksmith “survived the Burnings” by virtue of the fire being too small to cook marshmallows.