A Big Hit!

I hope that all of you who celebrate the season had a very Happy Easter. I made the mistake of offering to host our family’s celebration at my place this year, and I was exhausted last night! After cooking enough steak to choke a T-Rex, and littering my house with so many ceramic bunnies you’d think I’d petrified the cast of Watership Down, I collapsed.

So just a short post today. While I was melting together an unholy concoction of Velveeta, butter, sour cream, and sharp cheddar, I was talking to my housemate and we realized that she had never seen the Skunky Funkybuns stand up sketch by the late, great Dan Ronan. So I pulled it up for her to watch real quick. She thought it was amazing, but wondered if the part where the Batiuk expy hit a guy with his car was based on anything. I didn’t used to think so. I thought it was just a funnier stand in for Batiuk using his own experiences with cancer to write Lisa’s Story. But last week I did a little archive dive to that had me flipping through some volumes of Funky Winkerbean that I hadn’t looked at quite as closely before, and maybe Dan was referencing this arc from Act I instead? Anyone else remember this one? Continue reading “A Big Hit!”

What’s New is Old Again.

Spring has well and truly sprung around here. Despite a few days of moderately cold temperatures, things are greening up, baby calves are dropping, and I’ve been scrambling around in the dust underneath vertical tillage machinery dragging a grease gun along behind me.

So here’s some baby pictures for those of you who enjoy the ‘CBH posts unrelated farm nonsense’

Continue reading “What’s New is Old Again.”

A Full Deck.

March 27th is upon us. And you all know what that means?

Happy Birthday, Funky Winkerbean!

Funky Winkerbean the comic strip would be 52 years young today, if it hadn’t tragically passed on in some kind of time bubble collapse at the age of 50 years and 10 months.

Funky Winkerbean the character also celebrates his birthday on March 27. He’s anywhere from 52 to 80, depending on what time of day you ask Tom and/or his editor. Continue reading “A Full Deck.”

Silverware Down the Stairs

Friday night. All my lovely nerdy normie lady friends were logging into our group chat, ready for funny, scary, co-op vidya game shenanigans.

“What are you doing, [ComicBookHarriet]?” they asked.

“I’m looking for CHONGS.”

Stunned confusion followed.

“It’s for a Funky Winkerbean thing.”

And then, well they still didn’t understand, but at least they understood the location of the field of nonsense that held the specific rabbit hole I was furiously scrambling down.

Crack commenter, Andrew, pointed out a couple days ago that Tom had a new blog post up. A blogpost specifically about the I Chong gimmick that ran through nearly all of Act I. The first one I found in my records goes all the way back in 1973.

Continue reading “Silverware Down the Stairs”

I Understood That Reference!

Boy, the last couple Cranky strips have sure been botched. Like, there’s an anemic attempt at humor, but the punchline boils down to ‘Pop Culture Reference + Mundane School Bus x Unnecessary Cruelty = Humor’

As soon as I read Wednesday’s strip, I knew where the punchline should have been located. But it seems Batty and his editor misread the schematic. Like Lucy pulling the football away at the last moment, the line in the second panel sets up a joke that the third panel completely botches.

Here’s my attempt. Continue reading “I Understood That Reference!”