Narshe

Fadeaway

2009 saw a decent amount of stuff for Summer, largely with her rivalry-turned-friendship with Big Walnut Tech transfer “Breakfast Cereal” Keisha Williams. It was a story that weaved its way into a larger one involving Les, Keisha’s mother Cayla and the beginnings of the love triangle that involved the both of them and Les’ former student Susan Smith. Lisa continued to haunt the strip both figuratively and literally in the forms of Les beginning to write Lisa’s Story — the Holy Bible of the Batiukverse — and the real ectoplasmic form of Dead Lisa, creepily watching her husband make out with his new gal pal.

The underage Summer also had to deal with getting sexually harassed by the much older and very creepy Pete as the year ended… and we’ve reached the point where things are going to start going downhill for Westview’s Messiah. Not in the sense of bad things happening to her but rather as we enter into 2010 we’re now about halfway through Summer’s time in high school and we’ve about hit the point where Batty is beginning to grow bored of her.

In a broader context, the end of 2009 and start of 2010 revolved around Les traveling to, where else, New York City to meet high-powered literary agent Ann Apple and Batty pulls the oh so hilarious (not really) trope where the reader knows that Ann is really Apple Annie, the homeless woman who’d found the manuscript for Les’ book about John Darling (whose murder would leave Jessica Darling fatherless), but Les is too much of an ignorant buffoon to put 2 and 2 together to make 4.

Summer gets that small cameo there but does get a more important role the next week in a series dedicated to Les and Cayla watching her play, with Les fretting over her driving because he’s worried she’s going to end up like Becky.

I get the intent is to show Les being overly worried as parents tend to do and in a sense I can even see where he’s coming from because I’m also the type of person whose brain goes to absurd worst case scenarios. To this day I’ve never been on a roller coaster because I’m completely convinced I’m going to get the one that gets stuck upside down in a loop for two hours or flies off the track or something. But most people would rightly see that as just ridiculous anxiety and so it is here. Although I suppose the prevelance of conveniently placed cliffs along the equally convenient narrow mountain roads that surround Westview makes this a slightly more understandable concern.

There’s also some ironic comparisons between Les the uber-geek and Summer the uber-jock.

*As the kids say, she got that dawg in her.*

I’ll give Batty some credit in that typically he does a good enough job of showing Summer as being confident, driven to succeed and enjoying finding herself in high pressure situations. She is definitely the type of person who would attempt hero ball stuff. At least her athletic prowess is something we get to see repeatedly so we understand why people would praise her unlike with things like Les’ writing talent or Funky’s ability to make a pizza or Pete’s… everything.

Summer ends up sinking the game winning shot and Les relents on his driving fears.

The next week is some nonsense about Montoni’s and karma that I’m only bringing up as it contains one very important debut.

Anyway, Summer does at least get the Sunday comic that week which is more gushing over her being the greatest white basketball player since Larry Bird.

Apparently the Lady Scapegoats have done well enough this season to make the state tournament or I guess this is to determine the conference champion who would represent the conference in the state tournament? I think Batty is confused about state and conference because Bull gives a pep talk to his team before the game against Big Walnut Tech saying they’d be champions after this but it’s also a tournament game somehow.

And naturally Summer gets to play hero again.

But in reality Summer and her on-court success is secondary to what the actual story of this arc is about which is Wally’s PTSD.

After having twice been shot down and captured, after losing a decade of his life to it the second time, after having his family stolen from him by a skunk-haired comic book shop owner, after having the love of his life cruelly cast him aside, Rana — the only person who seems to remotely care about him — invites him to come out to the game because it may be the last time he can watch her cheer. Why, I have no clue. Summer’s generation isn’t close to graduating yet so Rana isn’t going to stop being a cheerleader any time soon. All the excitement of the game causes Wally to freak out which leads to him getting chased down by Funky and Becky who drive him back to his apartment and find out he sleeps with a gun under his pillow. Funky then gets Wally set up with counseling.

All of this plays out over about a month and a half so Summer and her team’s (conference?) championship is really little more than window dressing.

But hey, they still did win which put them in the state championship game. Les goes back to playing the overly worried parent and acts as if Columbus is like Baltimore or 1980s NYC or something. My impression of Columbus is that it’s basically Blandville, USA based entirely on it being used as the ideal test market for stuff but maybe there’s lots of crime to worry about.

Westview’s opponent is a school called Our Lady of the Cedars which I guess is supposed to be Batty’s way of telling the reader that they’re big and bad and that’s why the She-Goats are so scared of them.

Their fear turns out to be justified because Cedars pretty much stomps them into the dirt. Not even Summer’s main character boost are enough to put a dent in them.

There was, then, no joy in Westview because the Lady Scapegoats got their asses kicked.

But like the savior figure she is, Summer vows to rise from the dead. Figuratively but you never know.

The team in fact are a bunch of masochists as the beating laid down on them has only fired them up. Summer and Keisha are named co-captains in an “unusual move” so the team is ready to go next season.

*Even more unusual, Bull is talking like a sideline reporter.*

Summer subsequently decides to get an early start on training.

And that’s basically it for Summer’s relevance for the rest of the year. What I said earlier about what Summer’s stuff being mostly window dressing for Wally’s story? It’s basically going to be that on overdrive for the rest of 2010 because with Summer’s sporto BS over and done with, Batty can now move forward with what the readers really yearn for: Lisa’s Story and Les’ love life.

Most of the next month and change of strips is dedicated to Les and Funky going to New York to close down Montoni’s. But of course the actual meat of the story is Les meeting with Ann who’s set him up with a deal for Kent State Press to publish Lisa’s Story just like in real life because this is the point where Les has really morphed into Tom Batiuk’s avatar more than he already was. From this point on it’s book signings, shilling collected editions and collared shirts under sweaters for Les.

This actually gets into another irritating problem Batiuk has that I suspect Funky’s expansion of Montoni’s was a victim of. That being that things are only as important as they in service to the immediate plot needs of Les or some other pet character. That’s clunkily worded I’m sure so let me explain.

At the beginning of Act III, Funky has turned Montoni’s into a chain and expanded into New York City. Because Funky is busy all over Ohio and now New York, Les takes a second job at the original Montoni’s to help him out. He’s now a Montoni’s employee in addition to being Funky’s best friend which means that he now has a reason to travel to the NYC location. The first time is when Funky sends him to “put out some fires” there but do we ever actually see him doing any of this? No, he wanders around NYC, reminisces over Lisa, meets with Cindy and then has a revelation about his writing. The needing to constantly go to New York means that Les is able to keep in touch with Cindy who in turn connects him with Ann Apple which then gives Les further reason to go and meet with her. With Les’ book deal for Lisa’s Story secured, he no longer needs a plot excuse to keep going to New York and thus Montoni’s closes down because its only purpose for existing was as a plot device to facilitate Les coming and going from NYC to advance his writing career.

It’s quite sad when you think about it. Funky’s business success is pretty much a giant farce, existing only to prop up the second biggest loser in the entire strip.

With his book deal in hand and NYC Montoni’s consigned to the dust bin, Les finally returns to Westview. He’s met not by Cayla or his daughter or friends but by Susan who’s just over the moon. Summer, arriving back from something to do with softball, doesn’t seem overly happy to see her.

Les continues paying more attention to Susan than Cayla as Susan is, you know, actually helping him do work on his manuscript as opposed to sulking around like Cayla. Summer continues to be nonplussed about the whole thing.

Now you’d think that this would lead to a story where Summer confronts her dad about ignoring his girlfriend by paying attention to this horrible homewrecking harlot. But of course Batty is the master of going nowhere as slowly as possible so nothing ever comes of this aside from Summers’ disapproving looks. Who needs her having a talk with her dad about all of this when there are far more important stories to tell?

The next two months are taken up by the tragicomedy (unintended of course) of Funky having to move his dementia-addled father to a nursing home and then getting into a car wreck. The collision rockets him through time, transporting him back to the days of Act I where he wanders around town and tells his younger self to buy a Starbuck Jones comic because it’ll be worth a lot one day and that’s really it. It’s a story that meanders as aimlessly as the title character does and then eventually ends with Funky waking up in the hospital to discover it was all a dream… or was it!? Because at the start of the story Funky gave DSH a rare Starbuck Jones comic so he’d have the money to cover the Komix Korner’s rent claiming that “some old guy” told him to buy it when he was younger. The implication of course is that the old guy was in fact Funky himself per the events of the “dream” that we had witnessed and the whole thing was some kind of time loop.

Time travel stories and them being dismissed as mere dreams? I’m sure glad that will never come up again in this series.

That’s followed up with more Winkerbean wackiness when perennial scene filler Rachel starts dating the highly traumatized Wally beginning her journey to become what every Batiukian woman aspires to be: a mommy-wife who exists to solve her man’s problems. It’s not until the end of August, a full three months since her last appearance, when Summer pops in to remind the readers she still exists.

Around just long enough to tell her dad that it’s cool to start his literary career inside the sad remains of a once proud pizza empire, Summer disappears as quickly as she’d appeared so ~~Batty~~ Funky can say goodbye to his beloved PT Cruiser and Les can have a sitdown with Cayla and Susan to… help him choose the cover of his book. Because this farce of a story needs to be stretched out in increasingly inane ways. Cayla’s spent the last few months feeling left out in the cold by all the attention Les is paying to that little tramp and decides to do something about it. Does she confront Les and tell him how she feels about all of this directly? Does she maybe get into a catfight with the younger but far less athletic Susan?

No, of course not. She just changes her hair as some kind of weird passive-aggressive power move intended to one-up Susan which works, for now, because of course it does. Cayla: 1, Susan: 0, Readers: -500.

Summer makes her customary monthly appearance to go “WOW CAYLA, COOL HAIR!” and slink back into increasing irrelevancy.

And I do mean monthly because it’s about 1 month on the dot when she next shows up during the book launch to talk about Ann, inadvertantly creating jealousy in both Cayla and Susan.

Unfortunately this does not lead to an absurd story of the two love rivals teaming up to deal with a schizophrenic homeless woman masquerading as a literary agent. Missed opportunities, I say. Again, it’s another month before Summer shows up, throwing it down like she was Shawn Kemp.

Since October, Les has been on a book tour because at this point while he’s still technically a teacher, his appearances actually teaching classes are largely over and done with. His real career of flying around to engage in book signings where he wryly mocks all the people taking time out of their day and money out of their wallets to support him has begun. Why Batty even continues with the charade of Les being a teacher is beyond me, he even calls attention to it by having Nate handwave it away.

*Maybe Nate’s just glad he’s not around.*

Summer gets slightly more to do for once with Les checking in on her…

…and having to deal with the dreaded task of talking someone through using technology over the phone, presumably because she’s considered tech savvy for knowing how to turn on and off a computer.

By the middle of December, the first of an unending parade of book tours is finished and Les is ready to head home but a mysterious voice from beyond the grave pleads with him not to get on the plane.

Les believes he’s being pranked and angrily walks — with anger — onto his seemingly doomed flight. Summer is supposed to pick him up from the airport but has yet to hear from him.

Tension builds as Batty ends the week with a cliffhanger.

But Batty does his best R.L. Stine impression and the cliffhanger turns out to be nothing as Les, unfortunately, shows up at the Taj Moore-hal fine and dandy.

Les explains to Summer and Cayla that it’s “a long story” of which we only catch the tail end of.

But oho! That’s not quite the end of it because TB has one final curveball to throw at us.

Yes, that’s right, Lisa used her ghostly powers to call in a bomb threat and commit (fake) terrorism in order to save the life of her still living husband either out of genuine concern for his wellbeing or simply so he doesn’t bother her for eternity in the afterlife considering he keeps summoning her to Earth for inane crap as is.

With Les’ life saved from another ValuJet incident, the family is able to celebrate Christmas together.

So 2010 turned out to be a pretty down year for Summer on the whole. Aside from the basketball stuff in the earlier part of the year she was mostly relegated to one-off appearances for the majority of the year… when TB could be bothered to actually have her show up at all. Even then, a good chunk of that basketball story is really just there to provide background noise in service to Wally’s PTSD story or to Les’ parental worries. It’s really only when the Scapegoats are getting destroyed in the championship game that it’s kind of about her and the team specifically.

Which really gets into the heart of the problem with Summer’s use while she’s in high school. As I’d mentioned earlier, Batty typically does fine (by his standards) in showing that Summer’s supposed to be a talented athlete as opposed to simply telling us she is and then leaving us to actually believe that it’s true as he does with so many other “talented” characters. The problem though is that’s all that she does. Think about it, since Act III has started how many stories has she had that were about anything other than her playing basketball? I don’t mean her being involved in a story, like where she’s the one who convinces Les to write Lisa’s Story, I mean stories that are about her specifically.

All I can really think of is the 16th birthday at the NICU for premature births, her wanting to drive and her being pissy over not having a date to the winter dance. Everything else is basketball and if she’s not playing basketball she’s playing softball. Otherwise she’s basically just there to hang around Les and encourage him or gush over Cayla, basically acting like a shipper.

For a character who was supposed to be so important to Act III she’s pretty quickly relegated to the sidelines and in a couple of years it’s only going to get worse.

Raising the Dolt

Over the last two weeks, “Terrible” Tom Batiuk and “Dangerous” Dan Davis have decided to bless us with another entry in the current passionate epic that’s been the main romantic focus of the post-Funky Winkerbean Funkyverse; a love that burns hotter than the stairs outside of Lizard Lil’s bookstore. I am of course referring to the love story between comic book writer-turned-screenwriter-turned-pizza shop owner Pete Roberts-Reynolds and Mindy Murdoch, granddaughter of Ed Crankshaft. The tale truly told of these two and Pete’s new pizza-serving robot has really showcased the chemistry they have. Just look at what has basically been Mindy’s default expression in most of the strips focused on the compelling and hilarious antics of them and their new robot pal.

Much like Stu Pickles dealing with his bratty niece, Mindy has spent most of the time — as indeed she spends most of her appearances — looking like a woman who’s lost control of her life. She seemingly regrets every single choice that she’s made that’s brought her to this point and undoubtedly is hoping that her fiance’s pizza serving robot will go berserk, and leave her with a fat insurance payout. BJ6K talked at length about just why Batty’s relationships don’t work and today I’ll be reinforcing the idea that he sucks at writing them by exploring the awful one between a woman who has at least nominally reached adulthood and her idiotic manchild boyfriend.

Mindy’s crossing over from Crankshaft into Funky Winkerbean happened late in Act II when she’d shown up to take the now open waitressing spot vacated by Becky Three Limbs. There she hung around as part of the Montoni’s scenery until she rather inexplicably became interested in sick twisted firestarter Mooch Myers. As ComicBookHarriet wonderfully documented this led to a story where Mooch discovered Lucy McKenzie’s comic book collection that, after some shenanigans, DCH John would use to fund the Komix Korner’s continued existence. That’s about all that’s really done with that relationship and by the time Act III rolls around Mindy and Mooch have broken up. So the relationship seems to have been simply to set up a story to explain how John’s shoddy business is still running after the timeskip in a story that was likely pawned off onto Crankshaft because between Lisa’s cancer and Darin’s search for his bio-mom, Batty had no space for it in Funky Winkerbean.

For the purposes of this entry, it also sets up that Mindy apparently has terrible taste in men. Possibly because her main examples of what a man are happen to be a self-absorbed old bus driver given to wanton acts of destruction and a nebbish Tom Batiuk self-insert.

After hooking up with Mooch, Mindy disappears back into the pages of Crankshaft and since I’m not really as familiar with that strip I’m not going to pretend to know what if anything she got up to over there; instead we’ll fast forward to 2017. Production on the Starbuck Jones film had wrapped and it had been decided to hold the premiere — as well as the Mason Jarre/Cindy Summers and Cliff Anger/Vera Nash double wedding that comes with it — at the Valentine Theater in Centerville because of Jff’s Starbuck Jones fandom. Pete, the film’s writer, is sent to scout out the Valentine for some reason (shouldn’t that be someone in the studio’s marketing department?) and comes across Mindy, showing up in Funky Winkerbean for the first time in a decade.

Pete’s immediately smitten and because for some reason he has tons of unearned confidence he decides to ask her out within seconds of meeting her.

For whatever reason Mindy accepts and unsurprisingly the date is at Montoni’s. Batty also cruelly subjects readers to the second of two vertical strips in a single week.

*Well why don’t you just date Jff then, Pete?*

Already Mindy seems to be regretting agreeing to do anything with this geek that’s not calling the cops on him for harassing her. But alas, she quickly gets over it when she detours from driving Pete to the airport to ~~drown him in Lake Erie~~ take him to Bedside Manor to meet her grandfather who is a quantum entity, simultaneously existing as a rotting husk in a Westview retirement home and a doddering, but still lively, old annoyance in Centerville.

Why does she really like him? Who knows. She only just met the guy, he acted like an ass and made bad jokes and took her to a crummy middling pizza joint that is an objective failure given what happened to it in Act III. None of it really matters of course. Batty loves using the red string to lasso his characters together so what need is there to explain it? Just accept it you terrible nitpickers!

In March 2018, Chester Hagglemore makes his non-anticipated return to the comic in order to announce that he’s reviving the “spirit of Batom Comics” by starting a new company called Atomic Comics — later chaged to Atomik Komix. As part of it he wants to recruit superstar (used very loosely) writer Pete to be his flagship (and seemingly only) writer, as well as Darin to do art. Pete tags along on Darin and Jess’ trip back to Westview and Pete laments the whole long distance relationship thing.

Of course it’s not helped by the fact that Pete basically blows her off for days at a time and she’s apparently just supposed to accept this as an amusing little quirk of his.

*My girlfriend wants me to pay attention to her!? Needy, needy, needy!*

He also claims that they’ve been moving so slow and old-fashioned that they’re still only emailing one another which is immediately shown to be a lie when Mindy texts him.

Now the context is, as said, that they were taking things slow and old-fashioned and given that third panel, the implication that what was sent is anything but. So that to me reads like Mindy is sending him some pretty naughty stuff which means either she’s sending Pete erotic pictures of herself or some pretty spicy texts, like erotic roleplaying. Either way, the heavy implication is that she’s sexting her boyfriend who then shows it off to his own friend for… what? To brag, I guess, because look how goddamn smug Pete is in that third panel.

Seriously, what a rotten little creep.

Since he’s in Ohio, Creepy Pete naturally takes it as an opportunity to see Mindy again taking her out to a show at the Valentine (because they can get everything comped and he’s a cheapskate) and dinner at… well, guess. They’re celebrating their seven-and-a-half month anniversary and Pete is so excited because this is “usually” when he gets banished to the Friend Zone.

*You can see the interest die and regret settle in in real time.*

Mindy, of course, is not amused by this at all since the implication is that Pete is a terrible boyfriend which… yeah, no shit. He’s Pete. But the natural urge to devour his head as if she were a praying mantis passes and Mindy stays with him, apparently cool with the fact that he’s giving up his Hollywood job to move back to Westview and write comic books.

Maybe she just takes pity on him. Perhaps that’s the secret, she looks at morons like Pete and Mooch as if they were the person version of a stray animal and feels compelled to take them in and fix them up. But perhaps the real answer is that she’s a pretty (per the standards of this fictional universe) blonde which means that charmless dorks are deserving, nay entitled, to her. Whatever the reason, she deigns to give him a goodbye kiss before he flies back to California. No doubt she’s also secretly hoping that his plane crashes into a mountain on the way back.

Pete and Darin take the job of course which means that he and Mindy are able to see each other. Pete shows more of his trademark charm and once again Mindy must fight back the understandable urge to toss Pete and his eyebags into Montoni’s pizza oven.

*“Well Min, I’ll tell you that mine is 69420.”*

With Atomik Komix now up and running — taking months to produce nothing but covers — Mindy decides to pay a visit to Pete at the studio. Pete proceeds to respond to her knowledge of comic book minutiae by acting like a patronizing dickhead.

Why is Pete surprised? He’s been talking to Mindy for about a year at this point. Mindy knows he writes comic books and likes comic books. Wouldn’t her knowing and liking comic books too be something that’s brought up early on as an interest both share and a common point of connection between them? Maybe Mindy just decided to hold that back otherwise Pete would have been proposing to her on date #1 ala DCH John and Becky. Or maybe it came up and Pete, being the unaware cretin he is, just ignored it because getting to know his girlfriend isn’t something he actually cares to do. He’s too busy creating bizarre fantasy scenarios in his head where he self-inserts into the lives old comic book creators after all.

Pete had been doing this thiking/fantasizing on the replica Cosmic Treadmill that had been lugged over to the studio and while Mindy waited for him to actually acknowledge her existence she’d also idly decided to color in an unfinished cover which Darin is flabbergasted by and lands her a job as Atomik Komix’s official in-house colorist thus proving that she has slightly more talent than her useless boyfriend.

Doubling down on being more useful than Pete, she comes up with the name Atomic Ape for the publisher’s trademark character after the boys have been tearing their hair out coming up with one. She also casually comes up with a sidekick for the character — Charger Chimp — when Chester suggests “the Lone Ranger needs a Tonto.” Pete responds to this like an absolute baby, throwing a giant bitchfit over her having the temerity to try and create a “cute and cuddly” sidekick for Atomic Ape (even though his boss is the one who suggested it) because he hates sidekicks.

*May as well have added a “You dumb broad!” somehwere in there.*

*“Wow, this guy is a total nitwit,” she thinks; stunned by his complete childishness.*

Mindy once more overcomes her urge to shove the stupid little hobgoblin out of the window and the two continue on as normal. The next big moment in their relationship occurs in the summer of 2019 when Pete takes her to the county fair but fails to win Mindy a prize. Showing that he’s not allowed to suffer any setbacks, the carny (a folk known for their kindness and honesty) gives Pete a giant stuffed tiger out of pity.

*It’s at least better than a ring made out of an I.O.U. paper?*

How the hell did Pete blow through his savings at a stupid carnival game? God, what a dumb putz. Anyway, after the first of their engagements the next year Pete invites Mindy and Jff out to Los Angeles for the premiere of the new Starbucks Jones movie. The urge to drop Pete out of the bucket of one of the helicopters helping to put out the giant fire that Pete has kindly invited her to see likely crops up once more when she has to remind him that instead of visiting caves where they film old B-movie quality pulp serials, they should be spending the day together. Like adults in a relationship tend to do.

*Yeaaaaah. Okaaaaaay. God I really wanted to see those rocks.*

But somehow, like usual, she’s able to push down her disgust at the fact this idiot nearly got her father killed (her idiot father’s own stupidity not withstanding) and continue with the relationship. By this point, Mindy has also become the protege to Golden Age has-been Ruby Lith who’s regaled Mindy with stories about what a sexist hellhole the comic book industry is. Thus when a beady-eyed nitpicker wanders into the Komix Korner and begins to criticize the work of her and Atomik Komix as a whole (in a story that is totally not Batty venting), Mindy is ready to push back while Pete stands around like the useless turd he is.

Jumping ahead to the next major stop on the Pete & Mindy Romance Express, it’s now late 2023. Funky Winkerbean has been done for just about a year but Batty has decided he’s not quite done with one aspect of it. Thus Batty inexplicably has Pete decide to get out of comic books, where he’s paid by an immature man with infinite money to do nothing but come up with characters and ideas for terrible covers, in order to resurrect the Sacred Temple with Pizza Box Monster helping to foot the cost.

*Yes, Batty fills this storyline with muliple “raising the dough” jokes. Of course he does.*

Mindy, naturally, is so thrilled at the prospect of Pete leaving behind his relatively stable career for the notoriously easy business of running a restaurant, a business that is not at all prone to failure. Really, why the hell would she stay with him after this? He quit his job and decided to take his savings, their savings really at this point, and buy into a pizza restaurant that closed due to bad business. All without consulting her about it beforehand. He just does it, then tells her after the fact.

Mindy should have left him then and there but she at least does immediately point out how stupid and poorly thought out the whole thing is.

Pete decides to spring one more surprise on her when he proposes to Mindy. Mindy, of course, accepts (despite already having been engaged for four years at this point) but inwardly she knows she made a mistake. Apparently she’s trapped in her own body, unable to control her own actions and thus is unable to stop herself from marrying the eyebagged munchkin. How terrifying for her.

So terrifying she’s apparently suffering some kind of psychotic break.

With Montoni’s successfully (?) reopened, they do what all young (??) couples living in Westview are expected to do and move into the apartment above Montoni’s. Once more, Mindy realizes that she’s got her work cut out for her with this doofus.

That more or less brings us up to the present. Most of Pete and Mindy’s appearances in Crankshaft basically fall into this category. Some crap happens at Montoni’s, Pete looks like a jackass, Mindy looks as if she’s hoping to come back as something other than a blonde woman surrounded by jackasses in the Greater Akron area in her next life. For a romantic couple they’re not even doing much coupley things as they seemed confined entirely to the space in and around Montoni’s — as if some kind of magic barrier has been erected that prevents them from leaving the immediate area — to engage in whatever wacky BS Pete’s dreamed up this week.

Pete and Mindy’s relationship is just really bad even by the standards of all the other bad relationships Batty’s forced readers to endure over the decades. There’s is nothing to show why she likes him and half their interactions are Pete being an annoying asshole while she contemplates if the negatives of a jail sentence will outweigh the relief of a little “accident” lifting the gun-wielding chimpanzee off of her back. And then in the end she swallows it down and resigns herself to having to play mommy-wife to an idiot manchild who may or may not even be able to tie his shoes without her help. Mindy herself doesn’t even seem to know why she’s going along with all of this half the time, it’s as if she has some vague awareness that her actions are being guided by outside forces and that she’s merely an action figure to be moved around to enact the childish scenarios this god has dreamed up for her.

It’s a truly awful relationship the embodies all of Batty’s worst traits in writing them. No reason for the characters to be together, no actual romance or chemistry or anything. The guy is a man who is broken or deficient in some way who’s essentially taken care of by the woman who somehow puts up with all of his crap. It’s like a whole “women are wiser” thing or the cliche sitcom set up of a schlubby moron and his pretty and smart wife but done in a way that feels even more outdated and lame. As if Mindy’s (or Rachel’s, Cayla’s, Lisa’s, Holly’s, etc.) role is to be a minder more than an actual wife or lover. Pete is just such an unlikable manchild even by the standards of the other manchildren in Batty’s work that it really makes the whole thing even worse than normal.

Really, if it’s possible to feel bad for a fictional character then I feel bad for Mindy. She’s not really all that interesting but she’s also fairly inoffensive which, for the characters occupying the Funkyverse, is usually the most postive thing that you can say about them. She doesn’t deserve to be shackled to such a failure and she herself seems to know it. Pete is not just an annoying twerp, he treats her like garbage by ignoring her, talking down to her and engaging in major life altering decisions that affect both of them without once ever talking to her and making sure she’s actually okay with any of it. Never once does he act like someone who’s actually in a relationship with another person who may have her own thoughts and feelings on things. He’s a selfish bastard who treats Mindy as someone who just kind of hangs around and who he occasionally gets to sleep with (unless she hopefully shuts him out when it comes to that) and for some reason Mindy is forced to go along with all of it, beholden to the whims of an immature moron because Batty has decided that she is to be Pete’s reward.

On the bright side, all of that regret and doubt that she’s forcing down into the deepest recesses of herself will eventually morph into cancer and allow her to ascend to sainthood. But as we’ve seen, not even death will free you from being trapped in Westview.

That about wraps it up for this timely little interlude into current Batiukian events. I’ll be getting back to the main event after this because there’s still so much more of Summer to see.

Rival Fools

It’s been another overly hot summer and where I am, we just got out of a heatwave. I’m sure plenty of readers know how muggy summers in the Southeast tend to be so compound that with even higher temperatures and a poor A/C that’s already not much of anything and the last week or so has been rather brutal.

And yet while summer is entering its end stage (come on, we all know that once the calendar switches over to September, it’s fall no matter what The Man says), Summer continues to roll on. When last we left her, she was spying on dear ol’ dad to see if he was putting the moves on that hot new secretary that replaced boring cat lady Betty. For the start of 2009 we pick up with her hanging out with Jinx in a strip which sets up a story where Rana spends a week freaking out over the fact that guys are going to be added to the cheerleading squad.

Yeah, it’s obvious Batty never had a clue what to actually do with Rana.

The next week starts the story arc that will be Summer’s big focus for the first quarter of the year.

Summer gets Dikembe Mutombo’d and is all out of sorts as she wonders just who could have done that to her. She’s surprised to see that it’s none other than her new teammate Keisha.

Summer seems kind of surprised by this and quite frankly so am I because look at that previous comic; that shot blocker was whiter than the audience of a Dave Matthews Band concert. If I found out that my teammate was a shapeshifter or racebender I would be pretty shocked too. Naturally this whole thing leaves Summer completely out of wack and she complains to Les about how Keisha made her look like a joke.

At the game the next night (?) Les and Cayla talk about how Keisha was the star which presumably has left Summer in a bad mood. Les decides to take Cayla out to eat at Westview’s fanciest restaurant. Not Olive Garden fancy, mind you, but close!

*Rachel then contemplated slugging Les for making her recite such a stupid motto.*

Les, by the way, is still doing this stupid song and dance of “Oh, uh, we’re totally not dating,” even though they went to the Winterfest together and he’s now taking Cayla to the holiest of Westview’s temples. We’ve seen this crap, we know how it goes. By bringing her to Montoni’s Les is practically proposing to her. But no, we’ve still got the world’s stupidest love triangle to deal with.

Back to the main, Keisha’s presence on the team has completely sapped Summer of her confidence and led to the team playing badly. So far, the Williamses are a complete net negative on things both in and out of universe.

At this point, Summer is a complete disaster and winds up being benched while Keisha continues to get all the praise.

Which then leads to this complete nonsequiter.

Now suddenly bringing up Dead St. Lisa could just be a sign of Summer’s depression, like she’s going to off herself over basketball or something. But no, it’s simply an excuse to then transition into yet another example of Les insisting that he and Cayla are NOT DATING SO BACK OFF AND SHUT UP SUMMER, GOOOOOD YOU’RE NOT MY MOM YOU HAVEN’T EVEN THROWN AWAY MY COMIC BOOKS!

Summer’s on-the-court woes continue and even at home she’s bricking shot after shot when she’s greeted with a surprise that’s pleasant to her but not to the readers.

Darin, unfortunately, makes another appearance to dazzle the readers with his sparkling personality and memorable traits like… uh…

Summer takes the opportunity to vent about how things have been going for her since Keisha transferred over and gives us a nice little Batiukism in the process.

Darin naturally does what any loving brother would do in this situation and gives his baby sister some advice on how to fix her shooting woes.

It’s a nice little moment, I guess, except for one tiny little insignificant nitpick: why is Darin giving Summer basketball advice!?

Darin, as established throughout basically all of Act II, is a grade A geek. He was a low-on-the-totem-pole loser and the closest he ever got to any athlete was whenever Jessica would throw herself at him. He was never hinted at having anything in the way of athletic ability so why, WHY, is he telling a basketball star who is light years beyond where he ever was what to do? And why is Summer even listening to him? I mean sure, okay, in real life you don’t necessarily have to play a sport or be an elite athlete to have some knowledge of things but typically those coaches who weren’t athletes were at least around the game all the time in other capacities, that’s why they’re good at what they do. Darin never been any closer to athletic competition than mocking it in his and Pete’s dumb comic strips.

Well whatever, I guess in the end it doesn’t matter because aside from showing up at her next game that’s really about all we see out of Darin. For as important as he was in Act II and as much as he’ll take over the strip in the 2010s, in the first few years of Act III Darin barely exists.

Anyway, it’s the final game of the season which of course is against Big Walnut Tech and Keisha’s former teammates are showing her how they deal with traitors while Cayla also shows the reader that she has her daughter’s raceswapping properties in what retroactively turns out to be a genius bit of foreshadowing of Cayla’s eventual visual evolution. Bravo Tom!

Summer decides she’s had enough and pretty much inserts herself into the game.

And then swoops in when Keisha’s in trouble.

Westview loses but Summer’s back to her old self and her and Keisha are now on the same page and bonding over their dads. Well, one of them has a dad anyway.

Which of course transitions into more Les insisting he’s not dating Cayla nonsense.

Which I think gets into the core of what Batty was actually doing with this storyline. It wasn’t about Summer per se and lord knows it wasn’t about Keisha who doesn’t have much of a character to speak of. It was mostly just flavor, giving Summer something to do, in service of the real story which was Les, Cayla, and the world’s lamest love triangle. That said, it at least is a story about Summer that’s based on something she’s into and that’s important to her and doesn’t end with her becoming the trophy for a lame nerdy male character like so many other female characters in this comic. So she’s got that going for her.

That love triangle is also where we’ll be detouring to for a little bit as well. After a month of shenanigans focused on Dinkle, Cory, and Funky’s suicide inducingly bad day, Dinkle’s comic opera (because it’s laughably bad you see) The Magic Flutophone is set to open and Susan decides that this will be a great date for her and the hunky English teacher of her dreams. Unfortunately, Cayla’s snapped him up first.

Summer teases Les over the fact he’s still insisting that going to a concert with Cayla is not a date and that he and Cayla aren’t dating.

Cayla comes by to pick up Les, because if nothing else Les is consistent in being a lazy jackass and making his girlfriend drive him around everywhere, and proceeds to have a little schizo break.

Cayla apparently doesn’t mind dating a lunatic who talks to the ghost of his dead wife and the two go to Dinkle’s undoubtedly awful concert and somehow enjoy themselves. At this point Les finally stops dancing around things and acknowledges that he and Cayla are indeed dating. The two lovebirds share a kiss in what is surely one of the most infamous and unintentionally hilarious strips in the history of Funky Winkerbean.

With Lisa the Ghostly Cuckquean’s approval, Les and Cayla are official.

As for the main subject of this series, Summer shows up for the requisite random installment of the Dead Lisa Tapes and also makes an appearance during Cindy Summers’ (who insists she’s going by Cynthia now but that doesn’t last long) return to Westview.

She also shows up for an insipid story where Cory attempts to cheat by writing his answers on his water bottle. Now that I think of it, I feel like the only times in Act III where Les is shown actually teaching his class is for these stupid “a student has cheated and Les puts them in their place” stories.

We then get another summer story of Summer and Jinx’s softball shenanigans.

But this was all light fare to relax the reader for most of the rest of the summer after this is taken up by what is undoubtedly the most infuriating story in the entire strip. Wally comes marching home to find DSH John has cuckoo birded his way into his nest, beady-eyed nitpickers complain, Wally walks off into depression. It’s called writing.

Batty bookeneds that story with another Montoni’s Softball one.

He seems to have quickly grown bored of this setup though for this is the last we’ll see of the softball team and poor Jinx’s relevance to the strip disappears with it. Her spot as Summer’s best friend (I guess? She sure seemed to be) has by now been usurped by Keisha and eventually Jinx will disappear so thoroughly from the strip that she won’t even make it to the St. Spires Christmas concert which features damn near every other Act III character.

By this point Summer has just turned 16 and drops the news to her dad that she wants to get her license and that Bull is teaching driver’s ed.

Les spends the next week fretting over this showing that everything Bull has done for him since high school has been for naught. And with school starting up again, Batty also begins seeding the post-Summer class with the first appearances of Funky and Les IV: Owen and Cody.

In October, Keisha learns the benefits of being “part of the family” when it comes to the Moores: acting as free labor for Les’ ego stroking charity event.

Summer also engages in some practice driving and Les acquiesces to her desire to stunt all over Maddie.

Summer also wants to be able to get a car once she has her license and Keisha pushes her to get a job. Oh no. Summer and Keisha are female. They are young. They want jobs. You know what that means…

Say hello to the newest residents of Westivew’s Home for Wayward Young Women. Because Pete sure as hell is about to.

Just in case he wasn’t clear enough…

Yes, here is Pete trying, like the creepy little dweeb he is, to flirt with Les’ daughter and the half-sister of his best friend. Let’s ignore how awkward and nonsensical his flirting is and focus on what’s important. He knows, he fucking knows how old Summer is and still he’s trying to put the moves on her. Let me reiterate this: Pete Roberts is a man of around 30 trying to flirt with an teenage girl roughly half his age. A girl that he undoubtedly knows is underage because she’s the half-sister of his best friend.

What the hell was even Batty’s intention with these two strips? Was he trying to make Pete come off as cool and confident? Because he not only failed, he backfired in spectacular fashion. Pete looks like a giant tool. He looks like a creep. He looks like someone who buys a lot of Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

I hate Pete. I really, really detest him. Darin is the world’s most boring person to be sure. Les is a punchable smug douchebag. Dinkle is an unbearable egomaniac. But Pete is something else entirely. He’s an annoying gnome who gets constantly rewarded for no real reason. At twentysomething he was the top writer in the comics industry. He bounces around from publisher to publisher, being given opportunity after opportunity and when he inevitably fails out of this or that one — because he’s a talentless hack — he fails upwards into better jobs. And it’s not just jobs. By the end of Act II he has Chien interested in him though thankfully Batty jettisoned her before he could shackle Pete to her.

Later on he’ll have poor Mindy enamored with him because… well, I don’t know. And how does he treat Mindy? He whines and berates her for daring to create a character he doesn’t like for his stupid comic book. He quits his well-paying and seemingly dependable screenwriting gig to force her to help him run a pizza restaurant and live in the shitty small apartment above it. There’s a strip later on in Act III where it’s heavily implied that Mindy is sending him erotic photos of herself and what does Pete do? Like the giant irredeemable asshole that he is, he shows them off to Darin as some kind of flex.

But it’s okay because Pete is a wish fulfillment self-insert for Batty in a way that not even Les is. He can never fail even when he objectively does and he can never, ever face a negative consequence for any action he undertakes. He can do stupid and despicable things, he can be the shittiest writer of comics this side of Chuck Austen and for some reason will be rewarded for it. He can be a giant creep and still get women way out of his league and everyone treat him like he’s just such a lovable cool guy.

Calling him a tool would be understating what a rotten ugly little troll man Pete is. I hate him. I loathe him. And I can only hope the end of Crankshaft is a nuclear missile striking Montoni’s after Mindy has finally wised up, grown a spine and locked him and his precious comic books inside.

Moving on to actual matters, we close out the for Summer with a family gathering.

That will likewise close out this entry. But while 2009 may have been a down year for our budding little savior, 2010 will be a year that’s looking much brighter. Probably because I won’t have any more reason to rant about how much I hate Pete.

Love Duds

When last we left this examination of the life and times of Summer Moore, the retiring Betty Somethingorother was replaced as Westview High’s secretary by Cayla Williams. As we all know, Cayla will eventually be Les Moore’s second wife and Summer’s stepmother. She also happens to be the daughter of Smokey Williams, a pro baseball player who had appeared much earlier in Crankshaft being mentored by the crusty old bus driver. Cayla’s future position as Queen of the Taj Moore-hal will not be for a while, though Batty will get to kindling that fire in this, the year of love.

But love can take many forms of course such as the bonds between parent and child which will be somewhat tested this summer when our Messiah finds that her genetic contributor will be spending the time off from school making a nuisance of himself at her hangout spot.

In fact, Sporto Spice already has a backup plan by spending the summer playing youth softball which dear old dad sees as a potential gravy train.

*Not pictured is the fourth panel where Les’ eyes turn into dollar signs with a CHA-CHING sound effect.*

And it’s not just going to be Summer because Linda has noticed Jinx giving her father the typical teenager attitude because they’re just, you know, so opposite and all and decides to solve this problem by meddling. First by signing her daughter up for the same softball league behind her back.

While also signing up Bull to coach behind his back, christening it a bonding exercise for the two them and gloating about how her scheme is already working.

Now on the subject of love, Batty gives us this rather peculiar Sunday strip at the beginning of July.

*Tension isn’t the only thing building.*

This has nothing to do with anything, of course, but when I was collecting material for this piece I came across this and just had to grab it. This has to stand as one of the most bizarre strips in the comic’s history, right up there with Zanzibar, the Gun-Wielding Primate. Now I can clearly guess that Batty’s intention was just a simple “Pete gets pulled over and the cop’s amused by his wit and lets him off” kind of gag but I mean… he and Ayers had to know what they were doing right? The dialogue, the little knowing looks between them and the cop’s fierce way of walking away. A big Pride float filled with leather daddies going down Westview’s main street wouldn’t be near as homoerotic as this exchange between Mopey and Officer Sassy.

And now that I’ve given the yaoi fans the fuel that they’ve undoubtedly been craving, we go to the opposite end of the spectrum as Jinx is just thrilled, positively elated even, to be on the same team as Summer.

*TB was really on something this month.*

But ultimately this is more of a Jinx story where Summer is just along for the ride and it’s about her one shot of relevance in the strip’s entirety.

Meanwhile, while the girls play, the douche has been away having been sent off to New York by Funky to “take care of some things” at Montoni’s NYC location for him.

What that something is we never actually find out because instead Les’ entire trip is spent wandering around NYC talking to Cindy, bemoaning his so-far-failed writing career or reminiscing about his and Lisa’s honeymoon… anything except doing his goddamned job which will be a startlingly common thing with him going forward. It’s during this trip that we also learn that love never dies, it just remains trapped in a depressing purgatory that leaves you looking like an utter lunatic to everyone around you.

That’s right, everyone’s favorite wraith has made her entry into the comic ready to show up at only the most inopportune and awkward times.

Les returns home to news of The Coming Reunion and decides to spend all day moping about getting old and telling his bemused daughter that the ravages of time shall be visiting her too.

By this point Summer has turned 16 and her hospital is throwing a party for all the NICU kids like her who are also turning 16 this year.

And not content to haunting this earthly realm in spectral form, Lisa has left Summer a little birthday present. We get the first of Lisa’s video messages so she can lecture, chastize and threaten the world of the living from beyond the grave. She takes advantage of this inspired bit of forethought to tell Summer the harrowing story of how her half-brother was almost named Econoline.

*“Now, my lovely daughter, I want you to find my diary so you can have all the filthy details. This, your mother commands!”*

By the way, Lisa sounds like Doris Grau in my head whenever these cancer video strips pop up.

In September a new player enters the scene when Susan Smith returns as a full time teacher at Westview, crossing paths with what will be one of the other parts of the most nonsensical love triangle imaginable.

In October it’s time for another Lisa’s Legacy run with everyone oohing and aahing over Summer for how she’s helped organize the event. She’s also shown hanging out with Cory who’s been forced to come by his parents.

Unfortunately all the money raised this year has been stolen but Funky graciously offers to have Montoni’s cover the amount which Summer has to accept on behalf of her dithering dad.

Of course we immediately find out that Cory stole the money, Holly and Funky know and Funky declares it the “last time I cover for you.” As should be expected though, the shock of Cory being the thief is what’s most important so this is never again followed up on. Cory stole thousands of dollars and basically got away with it. Great writing, Batty!

And speaking of the complete opposite of great writing, soon after Les is moping around because yet another of his crappy stories has been rejected.

*How could they reject “Majors League: The Unauthorized Biography of Mike Majors”?*

In despair Les tells Summer to file it away with all the other garbage. But our curious as a cat savior spies something.

After a quick perusal of it she tells her father to use it instead.

And thus is born Lisa’s Story, the third part of the unholy trinity that will allow Lisa to forever haunt this series for the rest of its life.

With school back up in full swing and Summer now on the varsity squad, life decides to throw her a few curveballs. First up is the loss of the team’s coach who like St. Lisa before her decided to leave Westview for Seattle. Forced to take her place, and still fretting over coaching girls, is newly minted athletic director Bull Bushka.

And he’s not the only new arrival because also transferring is Big Walnut Tech’s star player, Keisha Williams.

Summer is naturally none too happy that she now has competition for the spot of being the team’s star player.

I will give Batty some credit in actually giving Summer a somewhat negative character trait but not overplaying it too much. One would expect someone with the competitive drive to be a star athlete to also have a bit of arrogance to them and not really take kindly to threats to their status. Of course it’s not overplayed for the reason that almost all of his stories ultimately go nowhere but hey, it’s something.

Les decides to take the opportunity to tease Summer about her feeling threatened.

And in a Sunday strip we get Summer tagging along for the incredibly rare Maddie-centric comic as she buys a hat that’s just like her father’s.

*Thankfully TB didn’t also have her decide to start living in her locker.*

Les and Cayla both show up to basketball practice and Cayla decides for some ungodly reason to begin flirting with Les while also revealing that she’s Ketamine’s mother.

At this same time Summer gets picked to be part of the court at the Winterfest dance but is bemoaning not having a date. We also learn that she has apparently been dating — and broken up with — a mysterious “Ron” the whole time so I amend my statement a bit from the previous entry. Now if you thought that showing Summer with a boyfriend, you know the kind of thing that would good both for her and for doing stories about a father dealing with his kid growing up, would be important… well you’re not Tom Batiuk. Maybe Ron just went to a different school in Canada so we couldn’t see him, who knows?

A big school dance would also require a new dress which leads to another Ghost Lisa appearance in what is a favorite strip of readers of this site wherein Les basically yells at his daughter to stop dressing like a tramp.

Cayla, like Les, has signed up to chaperone the dance and makes very subtle come ons to him.

Summer continues to curse the cruel whims of her Flash-obsessed creator. She’s the dateless loser while her dad is going on a date with her rival’s mother? It’s utterly preposterous! Les, of course, plays the role of dense harem manga protagonist to a T just to make him even more annoying.

But lo, the tables turn because Cory has been “volunteered” to ask Summer to the dance.

Cory, despite his protestations to the contrary, doesn’t seem particularly thrilled. I assume going on a date with the school’s popular star athlete was his “punishment” for stealing thousands of dollars from a charity event and maybe he realizes what a farce this whole story and indeed series is.

I don’t know if Batty had any intention of actually doing some kind of a romance between Summer and Cory but if he did then he rightly realized that actually putting Les and Funky’s kids together would have been too lame and cliche a move even for him because this is immediately dropped. One thing he didn’t drop of course is the one between Les and Cayla.

As we can see, TB seemed to be in a bit of a lovin’ mood in the back half of the year. 2008 was the year where he’d had his car crash so maybe that close call led him to a bit of reevaluating that he decided to temporarily reflect in Funky. Whatever the case most of it will end up going nowhere: Summer’s love life, Pete’s flirty little brush with the law, not a one of them.

Summer at least is actually getting a reasonable amount of focus now compared to most of the first year or so of Act III but of course you can still see issues. Batty’s love of doing something shocking only for it to go nowhere is evident in Cory’s stealing of the Lisa’s Legacy money; as I said maybe the date for the Winterfest is the “punishment” but if so then that’s a pretty poor cap to that. Les takes a job at Montoni’s which mostly seems to exist as a reason for him to go to New York so he can mope about his failed writing career and see Lisa’s ghost.

But at least his writing career up to this point can be described as “failed.” Not so for Mopey who, if you remember, is reintroduced in Act III as a successful writer for Marvel. Not brought up here is that he’s now, somehow, moved over to DC to write Superman which leads a multiweek storyline about Pete feeling inadequate and going to Jerry Siegel’s childhood home where he imagines what Siegel (or Pete playing the role of Siegel) must have felt when creating Superman in what is the first of the Pete (and later Darin) flashback to the olden days of comics strips.

Les, of course, is a self-insert for Batty but Pete feels like an even more blatant one at times.

But that’s getting off track and is also enough ranting for one day so I’ll leave things here for now. Batty’s plots may be going nowhere and neither is this retrospective as brother, we still have a long way to go.

Funk Them Kids

They laid Lisa Moore to rest in 2007, scattering her from Ohio to New York. It was a sad thing; so very sad that Tom Batiuk didn’t want to deal with it and have Lisa’s death drag the whole strip down. No sooner had she croaked than we were thrust a decade into the future. Les and the other Act I characters were now middle aged; 46-going-on-60. But they weren’t the only ones who’d aged up as Act III was promoted with a promise. It wouldn’t just be the old men and women getting the stories but their children as well.

That’s right…

*It’s like an ad for a new totally radical syndicated Saturday morning teen show from 1994.*

First off, I wonder who they got to do this art because these characters all bear only the vaguest of similarities to the characters from the comic itself. Second, we were indeed intended to be getting stories about the sons and daughters of the Westview High School Class of ~~’92~~ ~~’88~~ ’78 but as we’ll see, Batty eventually seemed to have his own ideas.

Why that is, who can say? In the last couple of years of he’d been getting some writing help from Sean McKeever, a comic book writer who’d been making a name for himself at Marvel on books starring teenaged and college-aged characters. His scripting duties (for I assume he was scripting based on Batty’s plots) included the Senior Skip Day story that started the Dopey/Jessica romance and I suspect almost all of the stuff with them was done by him as well as he’d also done the story about Darin learning that Lisa was his birth mother. I was, and am, a fan of the stuff he was doing for Marvel from that time period and a lot of those strips read like watered down versions of the kind of things he had been writing. McKeever, in an old interview from the COVID times, had said that Batty actually wanted to bring him on full time as a co-writer but by 2007 he’d just signed with DC to write Teen Titans which had been his dream book so turned it down.

I suspect that had McKeever taken up Batty’s offer, he would have been doing stories with the high school characters and without him Batty, who showed less and less interest in younger characters the older he got, just kind of shrugged. But he did still make an attempt at writing them which means it’s now time for the fourth entry in our examination of Summer Moore’s history.

The very first thing Summer gets up to is tagging along with her father on a trip to New York for the (first?) Lisa’s Legacy run.

*Remember, he didn’t want the spectre of Lisa’s death hanging over the strip.*

And tagging along is the right term because while she’s there, she’s just sort of around to throw in a comment or something. While in New York, the Moores meet up with Cindy who takes them to the grand opening of Montoni’s NYC location where Summer promptly gets hit on.

And we also get our first look at Act III Funky who’s become balding and fat.

*Summer is having no part of Funky’s crap and frankly I’m right there with her.*

In November we also get the reveal that she’s a jock as Summer takes the opportunity to make fun of her father. Also, her teammate looks like she could be the sister of that one balding kid from the final generation of WHS students.

Around this time is also when we’re properly introduced to the rest of the Funky Kids, the next generation who will theoretically be carrying the strip. Aside from Summer we have Jinx Bushka, adopted daughter of Bull and Linda Bushka. She’s introduced in a way that would make you think she’s a performative theater kid type but if she was that disappears immediately.

There’s Rana Howard, formerly Rana Winkerbean. Batty seemed keen on the idea that all the kids were the opposite of their parents so while Rana’s the daughter of a band geek and comic store owning dweeb, she gets to be the requisite Most Popular Girl In School right down to what I believe is stealing an old Cindy joke.

But on the flipside there’s Maddie Klinghorn who’s set up as being her father’s daughter. Except you’ll never know it because she gets absolutely zero focus and thus very little in the way of actual personality. Like even Jinx will get a couple of stories focused around her, Maddie gets absolutely nothing. She’s pure scene filler.

Rounding out the group is Cory Winkerbean, the bad seed. A big story throughout the first few years of Act III is how Funky’s focus on business has led to neglect of his family and so with the money that Funky provides but not the terrible puns, Cory’s turned out to be a moody troublemaker.

While it’s not directly related to Summer (yet), Mopey Pete Roberts (not yet Reynolds) returns to Westview having achieved the highest level of prestige in Batiukland: becoming a comic book writer. In this we’re also introduced to Maddie’s younger siblings Tyler and Abbey.

I am almost 100% sure that this is the only time in Act III that Crazy Harry’s other kids are shown or even mentioned. Donna was pregnant at the end of Act II which also makes this extra confusing. Because Maddie was born in 2003 but looks as if she’s a full decade older than her brother when at most it should be like 3 or 4 years. I guess it doesn’t matter because Batty memoryholed them but still, come on man.

It’s Christmas time and Summer, being 15, wants to go on a “solo car date” with a guy. Les responds to this in the way that only a loving father can: by laughing in his child’s face as if she’s the biggest moron on Earth.

*C’mon Summer, slug him! Right hook! Shoryuken! Something! He’s wide open!*

But Les caves and decides to let Summer have her date, and Summer gets back at him by laughing at him for being a dork and trying to explain the birds and the bees to her. As she says, she’s a teenager with the internet so presumably she’s already been exposed to at a minimum Naruto and Harry Potter slash fiction.

*There’s nothing you can teach her that she hasn’t already learned* from the writings of xXSasukesGrlXx.

All of this is just build up to her date showing up for one strip so Les can play the role of embarassing parent while turning it into a sappy Lisa tribute.

Oddly enough, this is also the last time that Summer is shown being involved in anything romantic, at least on her end. There’s other stories that involve boys having crushes on her but never again is she shown having feelings for another boy, trying to date or anything like that really. Why that is are things we can speculate on much, much later so we’ll just move on to Summer’s last significant appearance of the year.

Just before New Year’s, she’s shown joining her dad and his buddies for a game of football and naturally, like the true jock she is, can’t pass up the opportunity to bully her father for being a wimp.

*Meanwhile, Funky’s smug grin is growing to cover his face like lichen on a large rock.*

She also shows up at the beginning of the year having attended a party that Cory threw to further the story of Cory being Problem Child (1990) as he’d thrown the party while Funky and Holly were out of town.

She starts getting some attention paid to the fact she’s an athlete in February which leads to a week of flashback strips where she climbed up a tree…

…and Les got stuck going up after her.

*Should have left him there. I’m sure he would have been fine.*

March begins a story wherein she leads the JV team to the conference finals.

Which is, of course, against Big Walnut Tech leading to the first appearance of Keisha Williams and Summer showing that, as great athletes tend to, she can be both overly aggressive and a little conceited.

*She’ll eventually be your mommy too, Summer.*

And being that kind of athlete means she eventually decides it’s time to play hero ball.

Which of course works, bringing Westview its first championship since some time during the Act II days. The excitement is so much that it almost kills Les, though unfortunately “almost” is the operative word there.

A month later the trophy arrives at Westview as Les and Becky gush over how amazing Summer is. I believe this is the first of the comic cover homages which will become an Act III staple. Apparently this is also the last professional work of the great Jim Mooney who passed away a few weeks before this strip was published.

She also shows up for a Mother’s Day strip that naturally flashes back to Lisa.

There’s also a few debuts and returns around this time. First off is Summer’s half-brother Darin who returns to the strip in order to welcome back Mopey who’s going to be living in the apartment above Montoni’s as all young Westview men must do.

*Also Mooch is there and then promptly disappears into the void. Should have brought him back for that L.A. fire storyline.*

At the end of the school year, long time secretary and walking pile of nothing Betty decides to retire and turn over her duties to another woman. A transfer from Big Walnut Tech.

Cayla is here (and has yet to undergo her caucasoid metamorphosis) and she, and her daughter, will play a big role in Summer’s life going forward.

But already we can kind of see how things are going. Despite all the proclamations, a lot of that initial year or so of Act III is spent largely on Les, on Funky, on the adults in general. I didn’t mention it before for instance but at this time Les takes up a secondary job of becoming the new night manager at Montoni’s. A lot of time is spent on Funky being so focused on success that he’s letting his personal life and business go to shit while all his employees are beginning to dislike him.

Summer’s around of course and has yet to be completely sidelined (that’s for later) but aside from the month or so focused on her basketball prowess, around is all she really is. She’s just sort of there and that, I am sure, will bode well for her future usage under the Batty’s pen. That still puts her as better than Jinx and Maddie and at least she hasn’t disappeared into nonexistance like Crazy Harry’s other kids. Small miracles I suppose, but it’s a rather inauspicious start for humanity’s supposed savior.

Since we’re at the end of Summer’s freshman year of high school I figure that this is as good a place as any to leave off for now. We’ll take a look at how things go for her in her sophomore year next time.