ComicBookHarriet

Well Exercised Futility.

Since Crankshaft is still languishing in a Dinkle tinged purgatory, and since tornado watches had me part homebound today, (my neck of the woods was spared,) I spent some time with my Complete Funky Winkerbean volumes this afternoon. Because if Batiuk is gonna drag out the taxidermized horse of Claude Barlow, World’s Worst Composer, and whip the desiccated carcass around for a week, I’m gonna hide in my archives and soothe myself with digging through the dumb running gag’s origins.

Last month, I did a post on Dinkle’s history as an author where I touched on Claude for a bit. But at that time I still didn’t have the volume where I could definitively point to a strip as the first mention of the composer. On April 28, 1976 we get the first mention of a book on greatest band directors, which quickly turns, classic Dinkle style, into egocentric self-aggrandizement. There were only a handful of strips of Great Band Directors.

Twisted Twist

Happy Mother’s Day!

Here’s the last Mother’s Day adjacent strip that ever appeared in Funky Winkerbean!

I spent time with my mom and siblings today, and it turned into an impassioned debate on what would make the greatest Mother’s Day movie. I argued that the James Cameron double feature of Aliens and Terminator 2 would make a great afternoon for an action movie loving mom.

Friday the 13th (the first one) was considered but my mother said, “That doesn’t sound like a very nice movie about a mom at all.”

Longer posts coming soon! Happy Mother’s Day everyone!

Just Dinking Around

You know, in 2023, Dinkle showed up in only six Crankshaft strips. Just six out of the whole year. And this year we cannot escape him. Like Lillian in Monday’s strip, I’m almost feeling stalked. I’m guessing that when I pull up the tallies for 2024, Dinkle will have outpaced the appearances of everyone except Cranky, Lil, Pam and Jeff.

Since I’ve been on such an intensive Act I dive these past couple weeks, I thought I’d continue the trend and pull up some of Dinkle’s first appearances. Some of these have been posted before, but having them all to consume at once, like big ol’ wad of waxy sweet band candy, lets us truly absorb the full flavor of a fresh Dinkle.

As I posted back in March, the first strip with any band director at all was March 18, 1973.

In this strip, the band director is unseen and unnamed, though the personality is completely in line with what Dinkle would be.

Revenge of the Tshi

Happy May The Fourth to all of you!

What once was a cute inside joke among Star Wars fans has now turned into a legitimate and corporatized holiday that I’m guessing more people notice than Martin Luther King Jr. Day. To be fair, Disney can’t use MLK as an excuse to sell branded enamel pins, or goose viewership numbers on their streaming service. At least, not yet.

Still, allow me to mark the occasion. After all, I’m a child of the 90’s who loved Star Wars back when it was still charmingly commercial and not an omnipresent soulless mega brand selling tiny Benjamin Button frogman plushies to soccer moms who’ve never even heard of KOTOR. I have the action figures, the t-shirts, the comics, the beat up old paperbacks novels now punted by the UberMaus into the abyss of ‘LEGENDS’ canon. I have a VHS player so I can watch the series PROPERLY, without all the Special, Specialer, and Specialist edition bantha crap.

But, no matter what some of you in the comments section might think, I do not, NOR HAVE I EVER HAD, any sort of risque Slave Leia getup.

I do have a custom Boba Fett swimsuit. A tasteful one piece, as befits an elder maiden shaped like a handful of cookie dough.

ANYWAY! Here are some Star Wars/Funky Winkerbean crossover strips, from Act I. When both Star Wars and Funky Winkerbean were better.