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.
Everybody’s humouring ol’ Skipper. “Great edition this week, Skip! Read the whole thing cover to cover! And all for 10 cents — what a bargain!”
There hasn’t been a newspaper published in years, of course. But it makes the old man happy in his dotage to “interview” people, to write “stories”, and to have “interns” around who will give him someone to talk with.
It’s the same for Les Moore, who wrote some “books”, won an “Oscar”, “teaches”, and “climbed” Mount Kilimanjaro — although he hasn’t left his house since he finished high school.
That would explain a lot about this world, and why it’s so focused on literature when its inhabitants (and its creator) can barely read, write, or even speak.
Take this week’s Crankshaft, for example. It’s yet another book signing arc, starring the insufferable Lillian McKenzie. This week, Lillian bends over backwards to prove she’s incapable of writing a sentence, much less a book series that’s been showered with awards. This on top of her usual smug condescension, and Tom Batiuk’s spammy corporate logos of real world events that still tolerate him. We get:
Monday: Lillian gets in line for a book signing, not realizing the line was to see her. (I guess those pre-teen twin assistants of hers set everything up, which is usually the host’s responsibility.)
Tuesday: A fan gives an incoherent title suggestion for Lillian’s next book. Lillian seems to be sarcastically mocking her.
Wednesday: Lillian wasn’t mocking her. The fan jokes that Lillian is “all done except for the book part!” This may be the most self-unaware joke Tom Batiuk has ever made, for reasons I’ll get to.
Thursday: A line of signing attendees spits out more title suggestions, which are all “Murder” followed by a preposition, and then random words. How would Murder On The Zoom Panel even work? The meeting attendees are all in their own homes, and anything that happens is video-recorded while an AI generates a transcript. Doesn’t leave much room for mystery. But Tom Batiuk Lillian doesn’t think this far ahead.
Friday: Lillian repeats Wednesday’s joke. We also see that she wrote down the suggestions, further confirming that she is serious about using them.
Saturday: Lillian goes even further to show how dull and uncreative she is. She says “White-Collar Crime at the Book Publisher just isn’t as attention-grabbing” as the Murder titles.
Well, Lillian, I’ve read the books Bringing Down The House about the M.I.T. blackjack team, and Fake: Forgery, Lies, and eBay about art forgery in the early days of online shopping. They were compelling reads. There are also many great movies about white-collar crime: Wall Street, The Big Short, Catch Me If You Can, and others. That Lillian rejects this concept out of hand, but wrote down Murder At The Airport Book Kiosk as a worthy suggestion, is a greater indictment of her talent than anything I could say.
Les Moore is another person who can’t possibly have written the books he’s credited with. This one strip exposes him as a fraud:
How can Les write Lisa’s Story when he’s too emotionally fragile to even read Lisa’s story?
Les can’t give his readers a raw, emotional look into the world of dealing with cancer, because he never even dealt with it himself. He spent the whole time avoiding anything other than his own feelings, mostly leaving Lisa and Summer to fend for themselves. Real-life cancer sufferers, like Alex Trebek was, can at least be honest about their condition, and acknowledge the role loved ones play in support and survival. The short personal stories at thisislivingwithcancer.com are light-years ahead of anything Les Moore or Tom Batiuk has ever hinted at in the 20 years Lisa’s Story has been attracting attention to itself.
So Lillian and Les are frauds. Skip Rawlings is a fraud, because there’s no way one man with one arm is creating a full-featured daily newspaper alone, especially when that man is over 100 years old. (He was also the villain in a white-collar crime story, but Tom Batiuk is too blind to see it as that.)
Pete Roberts-Reynolds is a fraud, because all we ever see him do is design comic book covers and steal ideas from his girlfriend. He never actually writes anything, even though he supposedly wrote this world’s Star Wars. And since today is May 4th, may the force be with you. You see what I mean? Starbuck Jones has been around for decades, and it doesn’t even a catchphrase!
You know which author I do believe in, though? Harry Dinkle. He’s the one person in this world I can believe wrote an actual book. Unlike most of the others, we’ve seen him work on it. Dinkle at his typewriter writing bad puns was a staple joke in Act I. It was replaced by the self-indulgent “lord of the late”, “le chat bleu”, and book signings in Act II. Dinkle has the work ethic and obsessiveness you need to get the job done. Nobody would ever read it outside of historical research, but it would get written.
Lillian, Les, and Atomik Komix are lazy. They write books like most people buy lottery tickets. They’re certain this is the one that will make them rich and famous. But even if they win awards, Monday morning they’re still working their dead-end jobs in their dying poverty suburb. (A dying poverty suburb with a strip club, which was an unexplored plot point in Crankshaft after the Valentine Theater closed.)
Which brings me back to the original question: what is the purpose of book publishing in the Funkyverse? Because it sure as heck isn’t quality literature. Lillian thought an arson attack on her own home was a great inspiration for a book, even though she never bothered finding out who did it. (We will, though.) Does the Hercule Poirot of this series solve murders by giving smug lectures and astroturfing flash mobs?
If Murder At The Bookstore Burning and The Centerville Sentinel and Lisa’s Story and Starbuck Jones and Singed Hair and Fallen Star and the entire output of Atomik Komix aren’t actual books, then what are they?
I think the Funkyverse is a cargo cult. When European and American cargo ships started showing up at remote South Pacific islands, the locals invented a narrative about John Frum. Who was probably an ordinary person who introduced himself as “John from” wherever. The locals made him a god figure, and started doing rituals intended to bring John Frum back to their island, with a cargo ship full of goodies. They made a god out of some shmoe who worked for a shipping company.
On top of that, the book scene in Westview has elements of joss paper. In Chinese culture, it is common to give gifts of money for New Year’s, to deceased loved ones at funerals, or to use in burnt offerings. A whole industry of printing fake money for these purposes exists.
If you combine these two concepts, that’s what these books are. The residents are simple natives in a forgotten place who know book writing is a path to fame and fortune, and absolutely nothing else about it. They are performing a ritual to try and appease a fickle god. But they need physical books for that ritual. The book can’t exist as merely a Word file. It has to exist on paper, with a title and a cover. It doesn’t have to have any content, just a title and a cover. Which is why Funkyverse denizens spend so much effort on titles and covers, and absolutely nothing on the contents of the book, even if it’s just a comic book.
It’s why Chester Hagglemore puts so much effort into creating comic book covers of characters his staff can’t possibly support.
It’s why they spend hours in line at each other’s book signings, buying books that aren’t even new anymore, and which no one would ever want to read even if they existed.
It’s why they spend so much time acting like Hollywood’s idea of a writer, smirking at each other over incoherent sayings. It’s like they’re trying to be witty, but don’t know what wit actually is.
And when they’re not on panel, Lillian and Les and Pete and all the others are in line buying other people’s books. The whole town belongs to the cargo cult, and they all reinforce each other’s behavior. It’s basically the local economy.
That’s my fan theory, and I’m sticking to it. In the Funkyverse, when you’re “all done except for the book part,” you’re done.
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?
Well, I didn’t really lie. I did as thorough a deep dive on Bulk as I could without subjecting his chinstrap beard to a spectrographic analysis or taking a DNA sample from his number 90 jersey.
But the entire time, it was Heather ‘Chien’ Parks I was planning to put under the microscope.
Chien has been oft requested as a subject of further scrutiny. And it’s easy to see why. In a fictional world almost completely filled with sequential photocopied, reused stereotypes of unattainable blonds, comic obsessed geeks, sweet girl-next-door types, and dumb jocks, she seems unique. On the surface at least, unlike any Funky Winkerbean character we had seen before or since.
And, crucially in a fictional world where every initially unique character gradually devolves through inexorable Batiukian forces of Blandness Entropy to a crushing uniformity of personality, Chien resists becoming just like everyone else for nearly a decade.
Most of her Act II arcs have already been posted in the comments section with SOSF brand snarky captions by our junior Batiukstorian, csroberto2854. But I wanted to take things a step further. Reviewing her tenure in the strip with a few questions in mind.
1.) Is Chien truly unique in personality?
Some Funkyverse females may not be ‘bland blond’ in character model, but a simple dye job would render them identical to the crowd. Cayla, Becky, and Rachel for instance. Does Chien ever degrade to this point?
2.) Where does Chien come from?
What media out in 1996-1997 made Batiuk decide he wanted a pretentious goth in his next high school class?
3.) Is Chien morally/intellectually/philosophically justified in the author’s eyes?
When Chien speaks, are we supposed to take her words as a mouthpiece of Batiuk, or has he intentionally written her as a character with a flawed viewpoint?
4.) What can Chien’s portrayal tell us about how Batiuk views and writes the internal lives of women?
For example, here is Chien’s first proper ‘arc’ following her classroom introduction.
So the very first thing we hear from Chien is angst about her own lack of attractiveness and low social standing in comparison to perfect preppy Jessica Darling.
So I just put on some black eyeliner, black lipstick and red eyeshadow and white foundation. Then I came. We all went outside the Great Hal and looked in from a widow. A fucking prep called Britney from Griffindoor was standing next to us. She was wearing a pink mini and a Hilary Duff t-shirt so we put up our middle fingers at her. Inside the Great Hall we could see Dumbledork. Cornelia Fudged was there shouting at Dumbledore.
‘My Immortal’ by Tara Gilesbie
On the one hand, the ‘unattainable hot girl draws the interest of a pack of dudes’ is a trope Batiuk has drawn from again and again and again, as well as showing women being jealous of the benefits other prettier women get. On the other hand, he also shows men as being desperate losers at the bottom of the ladder comparing themselves to other guys.
The only consistency is that a girl or woman is the focus of unattainability.
The ‘most popular’ recurring male character almost never appears in Funky lore. Matt Miller was a bait and switch because you learn he’s an abusive loser and he’s put into his place within months of being introduced. Maybe, very very late in the game, you could put Masone Jarre up there.
In the meantime the Most Popular Girl in School is like the office of the President: a role that must always be filled, at least nominally, by someone.
Mary Sue Sweetwater, Cindy Summers, Sadie Summers, Jessica Darling, Rana Howard, Mallory Brooks, Maris Rogers. Those last two were barely characters at all, but still…there.
Unlike Jessica filling Sadie’s space of Popular Girl, and Pete and Darin filling Wally and Monroe’s as Those Two Guys, there isn’t an exact Chien and Ally shaped empty space recently vacated in 1998. Becky was a bland, sweet, girl-next-door, overachiever. Susan Smith was a cripplingly shy wall-flower who had no friends until she struck up an unlikely camaraderie with Sadie.
If anything these two seem set up to be girl versions of Those Two Guys. And if that was Batiuk’s intention, it was a noble attempt that failed. Mostly due to Ally having the personality of a sour hearted, elderly woman complaining about the new formula of her cat’s food on a one star Amazon review.
Ugh, I hate it when my super annoyed sister is super annoyed that she has to enter my bedroom to do school work on the shared computer that I alone get to keep in my extremely nerdy bedroom. Woe is me!
But what do you guys think of Chien (And Ally’s) introduction to the Funkyverse?
It’s been a good long while since I’ve embarked on a character dive. Ever since Skunk Head John completely burned me out on comics, comic books, and various and sundry nerdery more than a year ago, I’ve been taking my cues from Crankshaft or the Batty Blog for what to talk about any given post.
But I feel like I’m really hankering for a single subject to sink my teeth into. So a few days ago I posted this little teaser. A strip that ran on September 2, 1998 and served as our role call introduction to what would be (sans one) the graduating class of 2007.
And so, I’m proud to introduce our next deep dive on the pivotal and unique Act II character.
Bulk Dombrowski
Sporting a shaved head, chinstrap neckbeard, and blank expression, Bulk would first appear on August 27, 1998.
Bulk is from a long and storied lineage of giant, often meat-headed, Scapegoat football players with dumb nicknames.
Following in the Neanderthal-like fossilized footsteps of Act I’s Jerome ‘Bull’ Bushka, in Act II and Act III a succession of faint copies would be created from his original stereotype.
In the Wally, Monroe, Becky, Sadie, Mickey and Susan class a threatening and stupid ‘Morton’ filled the Bull bully role. With no less than three dumb names attached to the surname.
Were these supposed to be siblings? Did Batiuk just forget what stupid nickname he’d given him? I don’t know.
First IronheadThen StoneheadFinally Marblehead
Marblehead seems to have been settled on, and his distinctive pointy headed, high top, look allows him to be identified through the rest of the Class of ’98’s tenure.
Like the time he defaced an Asian restaurant out of misplaced Montoni’s Pride.Or when he was the wingman of the vile Freshman quarterback, Matt Miller.
With the graduation of Marblehead Morton, the Meathead mantle passed to Bulk Dombroski. And what a glorious career at Westview he had!
Like that time in October 1998 when Bulk wouldn’t let Matt Miller copy his homework. Probably because Bulk could tell that Matt was actually a 35-year-old Mormon missionary pretending to be a high school student.
Then, there was that time in January 1999 when he was used as visual contrast with Mooch Meyers.
He was a prominent figure in the September 1999 arc wherein Chien and Ally blow the lid off of the hypocritical new school dress code.
By prominent I mean he got his picture taken. Once.
He showed up a month later at the homecoming bonfire during the arson mystery. Perhaps he was a suspect!? (no)
That November, Bulk, Matt, and the rest of the Scapegoats had to suffer though Les Moore coaching the team to a conference championship because Batiuk hates Bull Bushka and will never give him anything nice ever even though Bull is the greatest character in the entire strip and I will fight anyone on this and I need to stop ranting now so bleh
Why does the back of his jersey say ‘Bulk’ and not ‘Dombroski’?
Bulk also had to suffer in January 2000 as Les Moore, went on a vain power trip masquerading as ‘teaching’.
And then…well…Batiuk just forgot for a while. Just forgot about any kid at Westview who wasn’t Pete or Darin. Were these guys still around? Had they graduated while Pete ad Darin were held back? Month after month, Year after Year. Nothing.
Then, August 29, 2004.
Okay, that’s Matt and Bulk. I guess they’re still here. I guess.
But by October of 2004.
Is that Bulk? Did he find a time helmet to the future and score some Ozempic?
Then again, in November…if we ignore the dumb colorist giving Bulk a sudden tan, there he is, suffering again under Les Moore’s watchful eye.
In September of 2005, we are blessed with confirmation that the smirking shitstain, Matt Miller, has finally left this world. (This world being The Batiukiverse)
But what about our sweet hulking boi, Bulk? Is he safe? Is he alright? Batiuk decided to keep us in suspense for an entire YEAR.
September 2006. The very beginning of what we finally had confirmed to us as the Freshman Class of 1998’s Senior Year at Westview.
What would be Bulk’s exciting adventures in his last year at Westview?
Uh…
He went on the senior class trip, I guess.Attended at least one day of classes. Had a Prom date who laughed at him.And that’s pretty much it. The End.
When Act II morphed to Act III, the high school generation of Summer Moore, Jinx Bushka, Maddie Klinghorn, and Cory Winkerbean also included another muscle mammoth with a dumb name. The next in the chain. ‘Big Mac’ Ronald.
Heralding a new generation, with new, more open minded, ideas, Big Mac truly broke the mold. For he dared to venture into the place no musclebound linebacker had ever strayed.
Son of Stuck Funky 