Anon-O-Characters – Son of Stuck Funky

Doppelgängerstadt

Here’s a writing tip: Don’t make jokes that draw attention to your worst tendencies as a writer.

Today’s joke in Crankshaft was that the insufferable Batton Thomas called himself the “doppelgänger” of the slightly less insufferable Jeff Murdoch. Complete with umlaut. One of those worst tendencies is how Tom Batiuk loves to get little details like this right, while ignoring the basic history of his own world and characters.

But that’s not the worst tendency I’m here to talk about today. The below images are of nine different women from the Funkyverse:

And to show that they all don’t just look alike, here are some hints about the group:

Five of them have made some kind of audio-visual product. (Obviously, #2 is one of those.)
Four of them are in long-term relationships with comic book-addicted dorks.
Three of them have only been seen as high school students.
Two are members of the original high school class of Funky Winkerbean.
Two of them are identical twins, who somehow manage to look different despite being indiscernible.
The number of characters who also appeared in both Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft is… well, your guess is as good as mine.
Amazingly, only one of them has written a book. And that book was only mentioned once.

Post your guesses in the comments. I’ll give everyone a day or two before I reveal the answer. Have fun!

(UPDATE: CSRoberto aced this quiz in the very first post. Alternate quiz: tell me who these women are, but wrong answers only, a la Y. Knott and The Drake Of Life’s posts. Have fun!)

A Very Funky Week

Welcome to the second installment of This Week In Act IV. This Crankshaft arc had no characters or overt ideas from act IV. But it was still a cavalcade of everything that sucked about latter-day Funky Winkerbean, and how that suckitude has infected Crankshaft.

Let’s start with Monday’s strip. The previous week was about Ed Crankshaft soliciting Montoni’s to sponsor his softball team. Ed told lame jokes for a week, then it ended with Mindy and Pete at the softball game, meeting the detestable one-armed news reporter Skip. I ended last week’s post by calling this “undue attention from the local media.”

I undersold it. Because now there’s a frickin’ TV reporter at the game! Are they broadcasting live? Is it viewable on my ESPN app, between kabaddi and the New Zealand pro basketball league? Can I bet on Summer Silver Senior Slowpitch Softball Society games on DraftKings? Did they really need two media outlets to report on a 93-year-old softball player turning 94? It’s like something out of The Onion. “Local Old Man Is Now Slightly Older.” How much media coverage does this small town need? Especially when 60% of residents are content creators themselves?

Knox Landing

Mitchell Knox will obviously want the picture of John Darling, Jessica’s father who was murdered.
erdmann

Maybe Mitchell Knox will make some outrageous bid on the John Darling photo that will be enough to bail Montoni’s out of whatever supposed financial straits they’re experiencing.
bobanero

I wonder whose photo they’re removing to make room for Summer’s. John Darling’s? Somebody call Mitchell Knox!
be ware of eve hill

Winners, please come to the pay window!

A lot of you predicted this development, and today we get it as the “memorabilia auction” starts. This is the kind of detail Funky Winkerbean never gets wrong. Characters fluctuate between being dead and alive, and their surnames randomly change. But it would never forget the memorabilia preferences of a comic book artist!

Beyond that, this scene raises so many questions. What’s in all those boxes? It looks like framed pictures and rolled-up posters. Is Funky selling memorabilia that wasn’t even good enough to put on the walls? “Now up for sale, this historically relevant artifact we took off our history wall to make room for a third picture of Tony Montoni. The bidding starts at $10,000.”

How – and why – did Montoni’s con Lillian out of her tiffany lamp? That anecdote has more story potential than anything we’ve seen all week.

Where are any of the regulars? Where’s Les, who wanted to buy the sign? Where Summer, who’s supposed to be recording all this history before it’s lost forever? Where’s Crazy Harry, who spent so much time at Montoni’s he forgot to do his job?

Is “Ferris Wheeler” the best punny name Tom Batiuk can come up with anymore? He doesn’t sound like an auctioneer, he sounds like a carnie played by Matthew Broderick. At least “Amicus Brief” got his profession right. And when I’m holding up Amicus Brief as an example of how Funky Winkerbean used to do something better, there’s a real problem.

I feel like I’m watching Funky Winkerbean deteriorate in real time. It can’t even be bothered to follow up its own self-serving story points, which it just introduced last week. Did Tom Batiuk forget he has to make Summer famous? Or does he think he did enough already?

The strip’s laziness, lack of focus, and emphasis on all the wrong things, are getting worse.

Trust Fall

Way to set the tone, jackass. As if the crossed arms and manspreading weren’t off-putting enough: Funky has to respond sarcastically to Seminar Guy’s innocuous icebreaker inquiry. It’s not like this guy showed up at their front door at dinnertime to pitch financial services. Loretta and Leroy–I mean, Holly and Funky–showed up at his seminar, sat in the front row, and are drinking his coffee. Is it asking too much to have them just sit and listen?

Mates of Estate

It’s true that many people neglect the important task of estate planning, leaving “a big mess behind” for their survivors. One would think, however, that a small business owner, the head of the chamber of commerce no less, would already have seen to his affairs by the time he’s reached Funky’s age. Rather than having to be dragged along by his wife to a financial seminar.