Yup, out here in hicksville, we’re juuuuuuuuust about done. We’ve got one field of corn that we’re running through the chopper to bag as cattle feed, but that endeavor has turned into Zeno’s earledge. Like a shriveled baby carrot left in the back of the crisper drawer for a year, the corn is way too dry and old. Meaning we’re not chopping and crushing yummy moist corncobs, but grinding kernels into flour. The wind has to be out of the right direction, at the right speed, or both the chopper and the tractor get lost in a huge white cloud of potentially explosive cornmeal.
Fall is winding to a close, we’re less than one week away from the Nationwide Food Coma that heralds the beginning of the holiday season.
Tom Batiuk loves fall. Of course. More than any other season. He’s had some winter wonderland strips, some spring has sprung strips, some summer heat strips. But the sheer number of fall strips outweigh all others. Year after year, he revels again and again in the liminal nature of it’s natural beauty.
Batiuk loves the season where everything is tragically dying. Shocker.
In 1975 we got the first of ‘Existential Leaves’ week. The first of MANY.
“And you, Livinia, will soon be discarded like decaying trash.”“Talk to your landscaping about the warning signs of Liver Disease today.”“Just ask Frank Olson!”“Where the Centipede shall lie down with the Pill Bug.”“How dare everyone else copy my fear of death!? I was scared first!”You’re in Funky Winkerbean, it’s always Bad Joke Time. Kind of what it feels like reading Crankshaft these days….
(I seriously have no idea what happened or how to fix because I’m a technological luddite driving a borrowed blogging vehicle I barely understand.)
WHY ARE EMILY AND AMELIA SUDDENLY HIGH SCHOOLERS?
(I know that this Time Mop splash first spilled out in The Burnings arc, but I wanted to reiterate it. They were grade/middle schoolers in May, and then BAM.)
WHY IS EMILY’S LAST NAME NOW REYNOLDS?
(Emily and Amelia’s last name had been stated at least once as Mathews. Though it had hardly ever come up.)
And, as BWOEH said, WHY DOESN’T WESTVIEW HAVE A NEWSPAPER?
But. Most importantly.
WHY BLOG LOOK LIKE THIS?
And now…for your viewing pleasure. More entries in the “CBH DUSK HARVEST” collection.
In my last post, I said comic book week could have been a charming little throw back to Act I, and that Tom Batiuk should do this kind of thing more often.
I take it back.
Last week’s “bus driver shortage” arc in Crankshaft was a perfect example of why Tom Batiuk shouldn’t try doing Act I-style stories anymore. They miss everything that made Act I arcs good.
What did those stories have that last week didn’t have?
There were actual stakes. Les was facing criticism, and possible termination of employment, for what his magazine published. Westview faced threats remove to popular video games. The Eliminator was tampering with Crazy’s grade, War Games-style.
A bus driver shortage should have serious effects on a high-school centric world, even if it’s just “hey, none of us have to worry about getting fired for awhile.” That should push Ed and the crew into even more extreme behavior, which is a staple of the strip. Here, of course, there are no stakes, no implications, and nothing that even escalates existing stories. Speaking of which:
There was an actual story. In all three examples, any gags were part of a larger story which the strip took time to unravel. For example:
The two strips are jokes, but they’re good ones, and they flow naturally from the story. The strip had spent a good week talking how the literary magazine had offended the community, which drove the easily-upset Les to having nightmares, and the feckless Fred Fairgood into making an actual decision. Then the story moves forward.
Bloom County was good at this:
This is silly as hell, but it was actually a small part of a long, complex story about Oliver Wendell Jones’ hacking misadventures. Which itself was also a longrunning theme in Bloom County. The story supported the joke, and the joke supported the story. Berke Breathed had a talent for writing insane stories, but also making them make sense in context. Which is exactly what’s not happening here:
The bus driver shortage isn’t a story, but just a premise to be restated at you over and over and over. It’s another form of “What are you doing, Dad?” Which as it turns out, Pam doesn’t actually say that much. It’s the Funkyverse’s answer to “beam me up, Scotty” or “play it again, Sam”. But you know what I mean: it’s the stand-in phrase for an overused trope. Even if Pam doesn’t say those exact words, she might as well be.
Those stories weren’t contrary to the reality of the world. The literary magazine arc in particular was very consistent with Les’ established personality, Roberta Blackburn’s personality, and the general spinelessness of school leadership in the face of obnoxious citizen critics.
Here, we were treated to a joke about how the school board was so desperate it was forced to hire a Hell’s Angel as an elementary school bus driver. A Hell’s Angel would probably be a way better bus driver than Ed Crankshaft is! They do Toys for Tots, so they must have some degree of altruism, and ability to interact with children. Ed Crankshaft and the other drivers certainly don’t, considering how they routinely blow off children at bus stops, and cause traffic jams to amuse themselves.
The jokes were aimed at the right targets. Les’s worry, Fred’s spinelessness, Roberta’s Karen-ness, and the public’s excessive squeamishness about the tiniest hint of sexual content were all on the receiving end of the barbs.
Here the victim is – to the extent there even is one – this Hell’s Angel who did nothing more than show up and apply for a job. Ed gets no guff for being an awful bus driver. Lena gets no guff for making bad hiring decisions. The school system gets no guff for managing its resources so poorly that it gets into this state. The “Tucker Twins”, who’ve never been mentioned before and probably never will be again, get no guff for bullying a grown man out of a job. (Can they please be assigned to Crankshaft’s bus?)
This is more evidence that the “good” characters can never, ever, ever be in the wrong, not even in the tiniest way. Even unseen “main “good” characters.
There isn’t much to say about this week’s “If Amazon drove your kids to school” arc, even though it progresses naturally from a “bus driver shortage” arc. Yeah, the jokes are lame, but a week of formulaic jokes isn’t worth talking about. It’s well above the level of awful that makes the Funkyverse fascinating.
What is worth talking about? The Burnings! And I haven’t forgotten that I owe you all the next installment of the reimagined Burnings story, so that is coming soon!
I had one last post I wanted out on this year’s Pizza Box Monster arc. One last thing to explore before we leave the joys of spooky season (and the horrors of non-stop political ads as hamfisted and braindead as a Snuggie infomercial trying to convince you that your duvet worships Satan,) and enter into the two month long season of frantic shopping and guilty gluttony we annually use to distract ourselves from noticing the world slowly, day by day, growing darker, colder, and more full awful pop music.
So take a break from your doom scrolling! And join me on an exploration of a more innocent time!
After the Burnings piddled out, Tom Batiuk spent two full weeks on comic book covers. Pointless, derivative, unimaginative, actionless, talky, over-expositioned, self-indulgent, still-auditioning-for-Marvel-and-DC-at-age-76 comic book covers. It was so bad I struggled to write anything about it. Then on Sunday, I asked myself a question I never thought I would: why’d he stop?
The November 3 Crankshaft strip is perfectly suited to be a comic book cover. It’s already turned sideways. It’s already framed like a comic book cover; there’s empty space at the top where the Atomik Komix livery and price tag would go. There’s more action in this drawing than anything we saw during Pizza Box Monster week. So why isn’t it one?
It could have been a nice little self-callback. It’s hard to remember now, but comic book covers and comic book art in Funky Winkerbean used to be a way of framing the actual story arc. Not-Yet-Dead Lisa would imagine herself as a cancer-fighting superhero. The obstacles in a character’s world would manifest themselves as comic book-style villains, and so on. It had its charms.
Or at least, it had a point. It complemented the narrative instead of replacing the narrative with something that wasn’t narrative. Sometimes it was just in service of a “collecting comic books” story, but that was still in-bounds. It wasn’t just to flesh out Batiuk’s imaginary comic book continuity he never does anything with. Or indulge his fantasy of what he wishes he’d been doing for the last 50 years.
This Crankshaft strip is perfect for that treatment. It’s about urging people to vote, a common theme when an election is imminent. But it could have been so much better, if Batiuk had just leaned into what he’s been forcing onto us for the last two weeks. Put Ed in a America-themed costume. Call him Super-Citizen or something. With the power to change mighty governments in a single vote! Instead of Meckler lamely saying “we’re trying to encourage younger voters”, Ed could have compelled them to join his superhero team! This would have made a garden-variety voting story a little bit fun.
Which is what’s missing from all this. For all the time Tom Batiuk spends in Comic Book Cover Land, it’s just. Not. Fun. Not even to him! The comic book covers aren’t funny. Or interesting. Or skillfully drawn. or passionate. Or frame the story a different way. Or set up anything that gets explored later. Or serve as a entertaining spectacle in themselves. They feel obligatory.
This is like the song “She Keeps Me Up”. It’s an overproduced disco rock song from the humorless band Nickelback, played with complete earnestness. This should be hilarious, but it’s not. And it’s not because the song is bad. It’s fine for what it is. But watch the 70s-style music videos for “Are You Gonna Go My Way” or “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” or “Ooh La La” by Goldfrapp, and you’ll see the problem. Those people are enjoying themselves! They clearly love this type of music, and know how to create it. They have a sense of a humor. They put some thought into merging the disco sound into their usual songwriting.
As much as Tom Batiuk professes to love comic book covers, he draws them like it’s a contractual obligation.
Son of Stuck Funky 
