Atomic Komix – Son of Stuck Funky

Predicted Character Appearances In 2024

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year without Funky Winkerbean. Then again, has it really been a year without Funky Winkerbean? Those “new original Funky stories at from time to time” Tom Batiuk promised on his website never arrived. Because all the “new Funky stories” are going straight into Crankshaft. Why have web-exclusive content when you can just submit it as your day job?

Speaking of day jobs: my day job is working with financial data. Sports handicapping is a side interest. So I love making half-assed guesses from non-specific data. The great Comic Book Harriet has inspired me to apply these skills to the Funkyverse.

We just saw her third annual breakdown of character appearances in the Funkyverse. She also did this for the 2022 and 2021 years of Funky Winkerbean. I will to try and predict what the character appearances in Crankshaft in 2024 will be. I’m only interested in Funky Winkerbean characters, though. Characters like Lena and Keesterman belong in Crankshaft, so I don’t think they’re worth talking about here.

The count of FW characters in Crankshaft is a good data point to view how far Tom Batiuk is going to convert Crankshaft into The New Funky Winkerbean. For example: Pete Roberts/Reynolds was the sixth-most popular character in Crankshaft last year, behind only Ed, Lillian, and the Murdoch family. And all he did was go to Comic-Con, write Lillian’s author blurb, and re-open Montoni’s. In light of what we know about Montoni’s and Pete, that story arc only makes sense in ways that can be divided by zero. But Batiuk wanted Montoni’s back, so it’s back. I’ll speculate why in a moment.

Here are my predictions for the most prominent Funky Winkerbean characters in Crankshaft in 2024. I won’t guess exact counts, but a ranked order, and the probability each character will appear at all.

Ruby the Grate

In case you missed it, we are in the final weeks of Funky Winkerbean. Tom Batiuk appears to be reluctantly retiring the strip much in the same way he’s written Ruby as reluctantly retiring from Atomik Komix this week and in today’s strip. The timing of this thin gruel of a story arc and TB’s fairly muted announcement is certainly no coincidence. Most all of us here at SOSF, despite speculating for over a decade on when and how this thing would end, are probably still processing the suddenness of the announcement, how soon it will become reality, and what that means for this wonderful community going forward.

But enough wallowing about, let’s leave that to the strip and try to get back to business as usual. I guess today’s strip is aiming for bittersweet, but it largely is coming across as just bitter. You can’t mask your true feelings in a wall of smirks, TB… And even if the strip wasn’t ending at the close of this year, I’m guessing we were never going to see Chester meet with the building manager by looking in a mirror anyways. I’d say “a pity”, but, you know, it’s not. It’s really not.

Damate Climage

Much thanks to Banana Jr. 6000 for slogging through Summer’s ludicrous Could Be A Book Deal Here moment over these past two weeks… which, despite revealing that Montoni’s is apparently closing (!!!) and launching Summer off to interview countless uninteresting people who appeared in this strip 30-40+ years ago, does NOT continue in today’s strip. I’m not mad about that or anything, but I am surprised.

But should I really be surprised? Over the past 5 years or so we’ve seen TB shift well away from the two workplace communities (Westview High School and Montoni’s) that have defined this strip for pretty much all of its existence, largely replacing them with this new one he’s created at Atomik Komix (toss in the Komix Korner scenes and the shift is even more pronounced). If you had told me 5 years ago that comic books would somehow become MORE important in this comic strip in the near future I wouldn’t have believed it possible. But it is and they are, as very clearly evidenced by today’s strip in which TB’s latest issue du jour has taken on even more critical importance because it has now directly affected his author avatar’s sad little comic-obsessed world.

P.S. – I am now refusing to use the asinine term for climate change that TB continues to flog even though no one else on the planet uses it. I’m going to call it damate climage or climage damate or issue du jour or nothing at all for the rest of this story arc and the foreseeable future. I am aware this is stupid, but it is not as stupid as the term I’m refusing to use. Thank you in advance for your understanding.

Smell That Oceanaire

No prizes for anyone who saw this coming: a Sunday Sideways Comic Book Cover, the Oceanaire’s second and James Pascoe’s third in three months.

For this one, Pascoe’s softened the character’s looks, compared to her first cover and especially compared to the Elementals Force cover, where she appears to be throwing up. As clumsily composed as that cover was, at least it depicted action. While her posture is one of repose, her fists are clenched, and the Oceanaire gazes intently at the viewer. For an artwork created by a nonagenarian cartoonist, on a drawing board under a floating fluorescent lamp, this sure looks…digitized. Everything surrounding The OC’s face is soft and blurry. Is she standing underwater? Or mostly submerged, lying on her back on a vast bed of garbage?

To answer Phil’s question: the cover doesn’t need more trash, just for the trash to be realistically drawn. These floating bottles and cans are rendered in such odd shapes and sizes, so generically as to be almost abstract. And I don’t even wanna know what those white blobs are floating around her collarbones.

Billytheskink takes over the reins with Monday’s strip. Thanks for reading! Stay Funky and stay tuned for news about a couple special events!

Color Me Badd

The proofreading sucks, too! It should be spelled “*ATOMIK* Komix”

Still gotta question Mindy’s wisdom in engaging with this lunatic, particularly with someone else’s small child in tow. And what kind of shopkeeper would not immediately intervene in a shouting match between customers involving his comics professional friends for cryin’ out loud?

“The coloring” seems such a weirdly specific thing to like about a comic book, but there’s a creative achievement Eisner award for “Best Coloring.” A number of which awards have been earned by women, likely none of whom lucked into her career the way Min-duh did.