Saw some sweet and snarkless commenters on GoComics make an attempt to defend ‘Eugene Buys Wisteria’ as perfectly appropriate over Memorial Day.
While I agree that the bare bones heart of the trope is fine enough. Elderly Person Honors Deceased Love is a pretty universal emotion to ply, the arc sucked in execution.
First of all, the strips were boring as fuck. No tension. No conflict. No humor. And no new information or insight on any of the so-called characters.
We don’t learn anything new about Lucy or Eugene.
And Eugene is not a character.
Eugene’s only purpose when he appears is to pine for dead Lucy and reminisce over a summer’s worth of Summit Park dates from 80 years ago. He’s the dead girlfriend equivalent of the cabbages guy from Avatar the Last Airbender.
So I fixed it.
Enjoy.
(Also I laughed out loud at Batiuk keeping Lucy’s birth year 1920. It’s such an easy fix to turn things into amorphous-comic book time, ala Simpsons, by obscuring the year with the flowers. But Batiuk’s gotta Batiuk, and I guess Eugene and Lillian are canonically super spry centenarians.)
Boy, I am telling you I am glued to the edge of my seat watching ol’ Eugene buy flowers to decorate Lucy’s grave with. So absolutely glued that my ass has permanent crease, and my sciatic nerves have been half severed, leaving me as a six legged, part chair, abomination of wood, flesh, and agony hopping around the house on pins and needles.
If any of you notice the florist looks a little off, there’s a good reason. She’s copied from Burchett lines. Hence the tiny flat face on a big round head. Ah, the good old days of 2018.
In the Archive Dive, I’ve got a potential Chien I’d like to put to the jury.
She’s in pink. But that could be a colorist error.
Her hair is just like Chien’s.
But she’s not wearing a choker.
We don’t know of Chien ever taking acting classes, and it doesn’t seem to suit her personality or character.
Vote in the comments now! Chien or Naw.
Now…back to 1999
I am realizing that Act II was truly the high effort era of Funky Winkerbean. Where plot lines on arson mysteries, marital strife, cancer recoveries, and Star Wars could all interweave in the space of a single month.
And where Batiuk and Ayers weren’t afraid to confront their audience with the gruesome sight of a corpse burning for comedy.
Remember when Darin and Pete were originally pitching a serious sci-fi superhero strip to be run in the Scapegoatzette? Well now they’re just turning out gag-a-day three panel strips on whatever strikes their fancy. Kinda reminds you of the artistic trajectory of someone else.
The harm, Ally, is if a student hates the strips so much they’re driven by rage to do something drastic and destructive. Like start a fire.
Or start a blog.
But I would think that even the worst Star Wars adjacent media wouldn’t drive someone to go full Zodiac Killer. Then again, I haven’t watched The Acolyte yet.
Is it stupid that we’re given Pete and Darin as red herrings for this arson mystery? Yeah. Kinda. But, man, at least the Batiuk of 25 years ago trusted his readers enough to show-not tell-Ally’s suspicion. As an older sister myself, immediately suspecting your brother of arson with no evidence is the most real thing Ally has ever done.
Can I say that I am absolutely obsessed with Andy in panel 3 of Wednesday’s Crankshaft?
That is the nervous and determined look of someone trying to beam important information directly into someone else’s brain with the power of eyeline alone. The kind of look you give your best friend when you’re the only one on the crashing airplane who’s noticed there aren’t enough parachutes. Or maybe Andy’s just terrified of Cranky’s flesh colored hair.
CBH here with a short midweek post! Today we close out the remaining strips of Chien’s freshman year. Starting with a moderately amusing and relatable Sunday strip that by modern Funkyverse standards is a frikken masterpiece.
As an insufferable nerd and recovering smug literary elitist, this strip brings back fond memories of my high school clique thinking we were top shelf quirky shittalkers for jokingly calling each other ‘strumpet’ and ‘wench’ rather than ‘bitch’ and ‘hoe’.
Also of note in this early strip is the tension between Chien and Mopey Pete. I get the feeling that Batiuk always had in the back of his mind hooking these two up eventually; but then overstuffed early Act III with too many other plotlines and decided to leave Chien in the memory hole. Despite having Byrnes draw an Act III character sheet for her.
One other minor note of praise for the Funkyverse. (Like praising the crust of stale bread in the garbage that most resembles a crouton.) Darin and Pete’s friendship.
Don’t get me wrong. I hate stupid Mopey Pete. And the only reason I don’t hate Darin is because he’s about as bland as two ply toilet tissue: inoffensive right up to the moment he touches something else truly ass.
But their friendship, from the moment it was introduced, has a remarkable consistency, longevity, and believability. They have shared interests, shared goals, and seem to be happier with each other than alone. We don’t get this from Les and Funky. Or any other so called ‘friends’ in the Funkyverse. (Save maybe Crankshaft and Ralph)
Did Batiuk just crack his inner schoolboy in two and slap a ‘neurotic’ sticker on one, then have both of them act out his fantasies for the next 20 plus years? Yes. But a consistent relationship gives the barest hint from which we can imagine a consistent inner world for these two.
Oh, wait, we were supposed to be talking about Chien, right?
So apparently Chien and Ally not only work on the yearbook but also the school paper. Sure. Why not.
If they can bear Les’ toxic presence, of course he’s going to wrangle them into everything he does.
Here’s the kind of brain melty you can get when you start asking those questions I posed at the beginning of this series.
Is Chien morally/intellectually/philosophically justified in the author’s eyes?
Here we get a ‘grey’ area. Obviously Batiuk loves comics so wouldn’t write them off as ‘testosterone fueled fantasties’. But at the same time, I feel like we’re supposed to understand that Darin and Pete’s comics are a substandard juvenile attempt. So Chien’s perspective here isn’t Batiuk’s, but I don’t think she’s meant to be a straw-woman in black lipstick.
And in January of 1999 we see Darin, Chien, and Ally all working together to gaslight Tony into charitable giving.
That’s it for Chien’s appearances until a new school year rolls around in September of 1999. So it feels like a decent pause point.
Sorry that I’ve been absent in the comments lately. We’re getting into the busiest part of spring, checking fence-lines, moving cows out to pasture, working on machinery, planting crops, and harvesting hay. So for those of you who enjoy the farm stuff, some snapshots from the past couple weeks.
SO SUE ME I DIDN’T HATE PAM AND JEFF DATE NIGHT WEEK. The jokes weren’t funny, but I’m a sucker for old marrieds expressing continued affection.
Thank you guys all for the initial feedback on Chien. Was interesting to see how many of you had generally positive feelings on her.
Because in her first month of appearing I absolutely can’t stand her.
First impressions mean a lot. It makes me wonder if we would view Chien differently if we had been running a snark-a-day blog back in 1998 and had time to fully analyze this behavior one strip at a time for an entire week. Did blogs exist back then? Would we be snarking on a Usenet forum? Would we be snarking via a mailed circulars?
The week starts by reminding us that Bull Bushka was once a violent bully and can never escape his sins against Les Moore, no matter how many selfless and kind acts he commits.
Watch out! The guy I’ll settle for in eight years after you!
And what kind of unreasonable, and probably comically mentally backward demands is Bull going to make on Les?
OH FOR PETE’S SAKE!!! (warning:rant incoming)
No, Les, you insufferable sanctimonious TOAD, leaving a small group of cliquey misanthropic teens with no guidance on how a yearbook is normally put together to document whatever their underdeveloped brains dream up will not teach them ANYTHING. Because you, the teacher running the endeavor, are not TEACHING. You’re just being a lazy smug asshat and pretending it’s enlightenment.
See! See! These two artsy fartsy nerds were going to leave an entire group including dozens of students and their hard work out what is supposed to be the entire student body’s yearbook. And you had NO IDEA.
Yes, they learn they can get away with pasting in lazy copied artwork that they found somewhere rather than being forced to generate new and relevant images!
And notice Chien’s absolute disdain for football and all the football players? She was going to leave out the team because she personally doesn’t like the activity, and thinks it’s stupid and backward. No wonder the football meatheads bully her and wouldn’t have bought a yearbook from her.
Oh, that stupid Neanderthal. Wanting the students and managers on his team to have their pictures and names preserved in the yearbook.
And then Ally, Chien, and Les trap Bull in the cruelest and most infuriating bit of stonewalling I have seen outside of online customer service. Ally tells Bull that any complaints Bull has about the way they’re putting the yearbook together need to be brought to Les. And Les says he’s letting these two put in, or leave out, anything they want.
And then they mock Bull for taking his complaint up the chain of command to make sure his team is represented. How immature!
First of all, I don’t think I need to point out that if the shoe was on the other foot, if a bunch of snobby cheerleader girls were leaving out the chess club, it would be presented as the behavior of cruel, self-absorbed, bullies.
One of the questions I posed last post was, is Chien morally/intellectually/philosophically justified in the author’s eyes?
Some of Chien’s artistic socialbabble in these strips is obviously meant to be silly. But she is never called out on her toxic views toward an entire student group. If she was, then it would be clear that the views of the salty goth do not represent the views of the author, and this bit of characterization would be fine, and the jokes could land.
This sort of mean spirited jocks vs nerds vs preps vs grunge types was a mainstay of early Funky Winkerbean. But early Funky Winkerbean was written as a sardonic gag-a-day strip where every character had a free pass to be awful for the funny.
By 1998 this strip had more than a decade of preachy after-school special storylines. It had made moralizing part of the brand. So if Batiuk didn’t want us to think Chien’s views were acceptable, he needed to call her out.
Worst of all, Les is not being a teacher but is getting applauded for it. Not only is he not providing guidance and guidelines, he is letting so many teachable moments pass him by. Chien makes a cruel generalization and uses it to justify disdaining an entire group of students, and Les lets it slide.
And it’s not like the football team is the pride and joy of Westview. They’re not the club in the position of power and influence crowding out all the other activities. Chien isn’t punching up, she’s punching sideways. Or even down. The football team usually sucks.
And it’s the band that rules the school.
But what do you guys think? Am I being too hard on Chien here?
Son of Stuck Funky 