Can I say that I am absolutely obsessed with Andy in panel 3 of Wednesday’s Crankshaft?
That is the nervous and determined look of someone trying to beam important information directly into someone else’s brain with the power of eyeline alone. The kind of look you give your best friend when you’re the only one on the crashing airplane who’s noticed there aren’t enough parachutes. Or maybe Andy’s just terrified of Cranky’s flesh colored hair.
UPDATE: As of now (about 12:30 AM Eastern time), I have gleaned two more theories from the comments here and at joshreads.com, and added a sixth one of my own:
“Buy physical books instead of eBooks.” (HAT TIP: Colonel Chrome in the comments). Lillian is as a brick-and-mortar bookstore owner, writer of books that are presumably not in eBook form, and resident of a place where physical book signings are central to the economy and social structure. So this makes total sense as a position she would hold. (I include Y. Knott’s “download only from spinner racks” in this category.)
“Download from somewhere other than the Internet.” This is a new reading that I noticed. It makes no sense, but that’s never been an obstacle in the Funkyverse.
I can’t edit the poll without losing existing results, so if you want to vote for one of these, use the “something else” poll option above, and also like the appropriate post in the comments.
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?
Son of Stuck Funky 