Batton Thomas – Page 9 – Son of Stuck Funky

The 2021 Funky Awards Week! Day 3

This seems like a weird question to be asking John now. Batton has multiple times this past year been, as Epicus put it, ‘schlepping up that dingy, creaky old KK staircase’ to wax eloquent on the naissance of his funny pages obsession. You’d think this would have been one of the first things they chatted about.

I described DSH John once as a bartender in a town full of drunks. He slumps behind his counter dispensing the Westview drug of choice and getting high off his own supply. Character-wise, he has nothing going on for himself. He’s simply a springboard for other people to launch off of. He hasn’t had an arc to himself since the aborted plotline where he was going to be a consultant on the Starbuck Jones movie.

I thought a lot about the subject of ‘arcs’ when preparing these awards. For the Worthy Awards, picking nominees for Outstanding Story of the Year seems easy. The Worthyverse has months long super arcs, usually between three and five a year. However, in Funky Winkerbean, anywhere from a week to a month may be spent on a group of characters before he moves on to another group, and then often back again to an earlier thread, weaving together like a messy braid of nonsense. And then there are one-off weeks spent on plotless gag concepts. Was Dinkle suffering through a series of anemic high school pranks an arc? Was the Pizza Box Monster an arc?

What constitutes an ‘arc’? I thought about it a couple different ways.

One way was looking at what seemed like major events; high points where long running plot points had new developments, or where the status quo changed. It was easy to catagorise the Comic Con trip or the flopping of Lisa’s Story as an arc.

But another way I analyzed the year was by breaking it down by location. Where did the comic spend most of it’s time? This is how Funky and Holly got an ‘arc’ nomination that encapsulated all their banal medical and reno stories. We also spent way too long poking around St. Spires with the choir in a number of mini arcs that begged to be rolled together.

Number Of Strips Taking Place at Each Location.

In the end, I simply went with my gut. I felt bad about it, because it felt like something Batiuk would do.

So, the nominees for The 2021 Story Arc of the Year

1.) Dinkle Joins the Choir

2.) ‘Lisa’s Story: The Movie’ Wraps and Flops

3.) Phil Holt: Resurrections

4.) The Winkerbeans Rehab, Reno, and Recover

5.) Tom Worships Idols of Silver

And the winner of The 2021 Story Arc of the year is…

‘LISA’S STORY: THE MOVIE’ WRAPS AND FLOPS

For most of last week I was sure Phil Holt’s Resurrection was going to maintain its narrow lead. But at the very end Lisa’s Story swooped in to steal the prize. Congratulations to the cast. It will likely be the only accolade this cinematic turkey receives.

Come back tomorrow, when we’ll announce The Panel of the Year, I’ll show you another ridiculous spreadsheet that proves I have too much time on my hands, and we’ll go on an archive deep dive that will leave you scratching your head.

The 2021 Funky Awards Week! Day Two

Very sneaky of Batton Thomas today, trying to distract me from this awards show with a massive word zeppelin chock full names; tempting me with a whole list of googleable rabbit holes that I would have loved to dart down in other circumstances. I’ll give Tom this, the comics and artists he admires are usually worthy of respect. Maybe they haven’t earned a sacred tabernacle at the high altar in the temple of Rexall Drug, but I took a quick look at some of these artists and titles and saw art and story-telling leaps and bounds beyond the Funkyverse. Stuff capable of eliciting more than boredom, bafflement anger, and disgust.

No one in the Funkyverse elicits more anger and disgust from the Beady Eyed Nitpickers of this blog than Les Moore. It doesn’t matter what he’s doing, or what emotion he’s expressing, the pervasive undercurrent of unwarranted melancholic superiority that infuses everything he does truly gives him a face in need of a slap.

But which faces needed slapping the most? Your nominees for

The Backpfeifengesicht Award for Most Punchable Les Moore

1.) Remembering Old Friends (For the First Time in Years)

2.) A Single “Manly” Tear

3.) No True Sports-Fan Fallacy

4.) Self-Centered Stage

5.) Deadly Pundemic

6.) The Smile on My Face

7.) Interacting With Fans

And the winner of The Most Punchable Les Moore of 2021.

NO TRUE SPORTS-FAN FALLACY

This was an incredibly close and divided race, with no one face getting even a quarter of the votes. It seemed nearly every Les Moore face triggered a strong response. Les is a character complex in his awfulness, and every awful thing about him is the worst thing to someone. He’s designed so that, no matter your pet-peeve, this man will infuriate.

Not all categories were so evenly split in the voting. For some, the winner knocked the competition right out of the water, as was the case in our next award.

Most Puzzling Continuity Questions of 2021

1.) Who Directs the Community Band?

2.) What is Rachel’s Major?

3.) Who Did the Dinkles Have for Thanksgiving?

4.) Are the Reindeer Broken or is Tony Dead?

5.) Was Phil Holt Really a Ghost?

6.) Where Are the Kids? Who Are the Kids?

7.) What Even Is Continuity?

And the winner, by the widest margin of the voting this year, of the Most Puzzling Continuity Question of 2021:

WAS PHIL HOLT REALLY A GHOST?

Yes, while some of you did wonder about the breakdown of the Crankshaft/Winkerbean time differential, and others of you pondered the whereabouts of missing and mis-named children, it was the metaphysical question on the nature of death that was on most voters’ minds.

Join us tomorrow, as we look back on the stories of last year, and find out which narrative arc stood out as, arc of the year.

POST SCRIPT.

I realized I didn’t put up the graphs for yesterday’s awards, and thought some of you might be interested.

The 2021 Funky Awards Week! Day 1

Welcome, one and all, to the first ever Funky Winkerbean Awards Week!

And a very special welcome to an unexpected guest here at the awards, Batton Thomas!

It seems very appropriate that this week Tom Batiuk’s own author avatar has another of his John-and-Bat-gush-over-comics arcs. Because this week we are judging what Tom accomplished, and failed to accomplish, in the comic universe he controls.

2021 was the year of the author mouthpiece, the strawman, and the wry observer. Our first award goes to the unnamed character who managed to stand out in a sea of melting tired faces. Whether by attempting to one up the main cast in insufferability or obtuseness, or by giving voice to the feelings of the audience, these characters ensured that while we may never know their names, we are sure to remember their faces.

Your Nominees for The Thatsnot Hewmore Award for Standout Unnamed Character:

1.) Referential Heckler

The smirk that launched a blogwide meme.

2.) Suffering Saint Nursing Assistant

3.) Average Comics Fan

4.) Mature Comic Con Attendee

Another Batiuk mouthpiece monopolizes the mike.

5.) Zombie Orderly

The true face of existing in the Funkyverse.

6.) Oblivious Parade Spectator

I guess Harriet needed someone to blather at…

And the Winner Is….

AVERAGE COMICS FAN.

Though Referential Heckler made a strong showing, earning more than a quarter of the votes, the winner was clear early on. Whether it was cursing in front of children, complaining about the artwork, or paradoxically consuming the entire corpus of the comics he can’t seem to stand, we all saw a little of ourselves in Average Comics Fan. In attempting to make a strawman of his critics, Batiuk unwittingly built up the most relatable character all year. Bravo.

One way Average Comics Fan was like us is in complaining about the portrayal of women. While he complained that the women of Atomik Komix were too ordinary, we noticed women in the Funkyverse being stereotyped, being props, and flat out disappearing. Despite his seemingly earnest attempts at female empowerment via women in comics and media, it’s clear that Tom Batiuk will forever have trouble relating to, and portraying, the female characters he has created.

In recognition of this we present you with the nominees for

The Livinia Memorial Award for Achievements in Feminism

1.) Women Be Shopping

2.) Women Be Changing Their Minds

3.) Women Be Jealous

4.) Women Be Catty

5.) Women Be Another Species Entirely

6.) Women Be Tiny and Disappearing in the Background

And the winner is….

WOMEN BE JEALOUS

For a while, it seemed like ‘Women Be Tiny and Disappearing in the Background’ was a sure winner, but late in the game voters seemed to realize that Jessica Fairgood’s only arc this year was to become livid and suspicious at her husband of over a decade after half-hearing a single vague conversation, and then instantly gushing over his new, nerdy appearance. Though other strips might have been more blatantly stuck in the women-are-from-Venus, men-are-from-Marvel, mindset that plagues Batiuk’s thinking, and there were more tone deaf attempts at white-knighting, this arc showcases Tom’s willingness to betray the integrity of his female characters for a week of cheap ‘humor’.

Join us tomorrow, as we puzzle over Tom’s inability to remember his own history, and see which Les Moore face you wanted to punch the most.

Deere, John

Link To This One

Wow, what a miserable pratfall of a gag. “Comic book store owners are shitty businessmen and total imbeciles”…that’s what I got out of this peculiar little arc. BatYam’s real-life comic book store must love it when he meanders by for a visit. Maybe they’ll tape this strip to the wall behind the cash register. You know, ironically. Get it?

Coming next week: Les’ annual cancer screening ends with Les sneering “even I could have gotten into oncology school” as his doctor inexplicably smirks.

Dropping Mad Dimes

Link To Yesteryear

I’m amazed that this tedious anecdote amazes John, who’s literally surrounded at all times by thousands of vintage comic books that have the prices printed right there on the covers. On top of that the whole town is overrun with legendary old comic book codgers who just stroll right on into local comic book businesses and freely share comic book anecdotes with nary a second’s worth of thought. Not to mention the fact that he’s like at least fifty years old himself. Yet there he is, stunned by the buying power of a dime back in 1946 or whatever. Why, if I didn’t know any better I’d have to conclude that this John character is something of a total imbecile.