Tag: boredom personified

How Many Times Did Funky Winkerbean Jump The Shark?

I didn’t mean for that last post to be a poll, but it’s revealing how many individual Jump The Shark moments posters were able to identify in Funky Winkerbean. Here’s a compiled list, in roughly chronological order (because, as you know, Timemop).

Act I (1972-1992, ends with the original class’ graduation)

Act II (1992-2007, ends with Lisa’s death)

  • Lisa’s first detection of cancer (1998)
  • Wally dies in the minesweeping simulator
  • Becky loses her arm
  • The first class reunion
  • Susan Smith’s suicide attempt
  • Wally’s first homecoming (2003)
  • John Byrne’s guest stint permanently alters the artwork (2003)
  • Sadie Summers – not because she was a bad character as Tom Batiuk thinks, but because she was under- and mis-utilized
  • The post office bombing (USA!)
  • Lisa’s cancer returns in 2006, because of a hospital error
  • Lisa’s death (October 4, 2007)

Act III (2007-2022, ends when Funky Winkerbean ends and its characters move to Crankshaft)

  • Tom Batiuk skips ten years after Lisa’s death, throwing away a gold mine of story ideas. Which also prevents Les Moore (and Batiuk) from ever moving past Lisa’s death, when that was the stated reason for the time jump
  • Les screaming at Summer over a dress for the winter dance he was pushing her to attend
  • Les saying “yes you did” and getting pissy with Funky over a mild joke about Les attracting two women at once
  • Wally’s second homecoming, which destroyed the likeable Wally-Becky relationship, and needlessly added to Wally’s suffering
  • Lisa’s Story becomes a thing
  • Starbuck Jones become a thing
  • The emergence of Cayla as a character
  • Funky’s car crash and time-altering coma (2010)
  • casting Susan Smith as the antagonist in the Les-Cayla-Susan love triangle
  • the gay prom story where the gay teens never seen or talked about again
  • Morton Winkerbean’s remarkable but never-addressed recovery from dementia
  • Wally hooking up with Rachel and turning his life around
  • Cayla’s appearance changes
  • Lisa calls in a bomb threat from beyond the grave
  • Darin and Pete become major characters
  • The rise of Atomik Komix as a central location
  • “Where’s father?” – the resolution of the Zanzibar The Talking Murder Chimp story
  • The death of Bull Bushka, which was ultimately insurance fraud
  • Les walking back his earlier forgiveness of Bull
  • Darin makes a toy for his son, out of a handgun that was used to murder his grandfather
  • The entire finale, featuring a long -forgotten janitor who is revealed to be a time-traveling agent, tasked with ensuring Summer’s book gets written
  • “behavior-patterned algorithms that will let us define humanity as our nation” or whatever that drivel was

Act IV (Crankshaft, 2023-)

  • The Funky Winkerbean characters invade Crankshaft
  • The alleged Burnings
  • The Batton Thomas interview arc

And must be a lot more candidates than that… because that list doesn’t mention Dinkle even once.

What’s in your head, in your head? Ruby, Ruby, Ruby-y-y-y

I’d argue that today’s strip is the product of an AI tasked with generating images for the word “wistful”… but that’s an insult to artificial intelligence and I don’t want to be responsible for unleashing Skynet. This is just completely sad, but in the stupidest way.

Mindy is the one that really punches up the stupidity here. First, “when” Ruby retires is essentially right now, it doesn’t need to be discussed as if it is well in the future. Second, Mindy also draws a paycheck from Atomik Komix… so does she dramatically underestimate the financial resources it takes to travel extensively or does Chester really pay that well?

And if Chester pays that well, why can’t he spend some money on an office that doesn’t look like a dungeon crawl game being played on a vintage grayscale Macintosh? Maybe everything in the office is made of stone. So that’s why they called him “Chester the Chiseler”!

Re-haiku-ment

Are we STILL on this?
More on Ruby's retirement
Here in today's strip

Batton butts right in
Again, he does NOT work here
Who asked him to speak?

Batton's questioning
A reflection of TB?
Is the strip's end near?

Or is this resolve?
Tom writing his thoughts in strip
Eff-ing ponderous

A warning haiku
The link above has cussing
That's NSFW!

With Dinkle, Linda
And others who fake retire
Do we believe this?

We probably should
Not like TB gave Ruby
Anything worthwhile

Chester looks depressed
I mean, he's just despondent
In his sad jacket

Pencil droppers, eh?!

Wait, is today’s strip taking place on the exact same day that Ruby drew Sunday’s Scorch cover?! Ruby drew a whole cover in a matter of hours?! Maybe that’s not at all surprising for a real life comic cover artist at a real life comic book company, but at Atomik Komix it sure is. These folks make “Turtle Thompson” look like AJ Foyt.

I mean, Batton is still there treadmilling and everyone is wearing the exact same things they were wearing in last week’s strips, give or take some colorist’s liberty… ok, scratch that, Mindy is wearing a skirt in today’s strip and clearly has on pants in last Saturday’s strip. Different day, I guess. In either scenario, though, we’re left to note how ridiculous it is that Batton spends so much time in the Atomik Komix bullpen. He, ostensibly, has a job drawing a comic strip, but we’ve never seen him do it. Heck, we’ve never even seen the strip-within-a-strip… and it’s not like Funky Winkerbean is above that kind of thing. He likes comic books and frequents Komix Korner from time-to-time (SUCH a unique trait in the Batiukverse, I know), but he doesn’t appear to be a regular there like he is here at the Atomik Komix bullpen. He likes or feels obligated to jog. And that’s it. That is everything we know about the guy. I don’t necessarily care to know more, but if TB insists on having his author avatar hang around places where it makes no obvious sense for him to hang around then Batton needs some purpose and motivation.

Oh yeah, also… Ruby is old, water is wet, and Chester now wears the look of someone clinically depressed.

With a capital ‘D’ and that rhymes with P…

Oh, we’re sticking with Ruby this week, huh… at least in today’s strip we are. Can’t you see the excitement on my face?

*staring noises*

Looks like Ruby is ready to start living off her social security checks and some meager and infrequent Miss American residuals. That or she’s dying (to start living off those social security checks and meager and infrequent residuals…). Either way, a blow for feminine editorial oversight at Atomik Komix, but what women’s lib doesn’t know won’t hurt ’em!