The last two weeks of Crankshaft have been about their annual trip to Comic-Con. It has been an exploding clown car of all Tom Batiuk’s worst qualities as a writer. I think it’s worth analyzing as a window into how far gone Funky Winkerbean was by its end. All of the mistakes in this story grew from Funky Winkerbean, or were just as commonly made there.
The story is about Pete and Mindy taking her father Jeff to Comic-Con. Because it’s July, and Tom Batiuk must do a Comic-Con arc. It’s the second-most important event on the Funkyverse liturgical calendar. It’s ahead of Ohio Music Educator’s Association Week in February, but behind the ongoing Millennium Of Lisa.
This will be a multi-part series. But today, I want to focus on that obnoxious inner child character.
Inner Child’s most famous appearance in Funky Winkerbean was during the during the Lisa’s Story/wildfire/Bronson Canyon/Phantom Empire/climate damage/setting up Les’ Oscar arc:
Bronson Canyon was of importance to something from Tom Batiuk Jeff’s childhood, so it makes sense for Inner Child to appear as adult Jeff is discovering it. As adults, we sometimes get opportunities that appeal to our younger selves, and remind us of that time in our lives. For example, I just bought this thing:
I was born in summer 1972, which is the perfect window for arcade games to be my childhood passion. I was hit by puberty and The Video Game Crash Of 1983 in the same week. When I saw I could buy this magnificent device at the furniture store, my inner child came out too. So this comic strip captures a real feeling, and one I can relate to.
Inner Child’s first appearance in the current story, on July 12, is similar to this. The problem is that Inner Child keeps showing up, in ways that make no sense: doing favors for their father, losing their luggage, enforcing terminology, and carrying stuff. Twice. How do you even lift, bro?
And what aspect of getting on a plane, going to a comic book convention, and using an app to locate your luggage brings out your inner child? None of those things were widely available during Jeff’s childhood, so they can’t be stoking his memories. There’s no reason for Inner Child to be in these moments. And he’s absent from moments where he should be, where adult Jeff laments his past. (Which has the side effect of confirming that no “Inner Child must be in every strip” rule is in play.)
Another big problem is that there’s no indication of this character’s nature. This wasn’t a problem in Bronson Canyon, because there were no other people around. But now he looks like a real child, standing around an airport, talking to a grown man about his underwear. Chris Hansen needs to get involved.
Why doesn’t Batiuk make Inner Child transparent, to portray that he is a non-corporeal being? Oh, wait, he did do that:
Transparency to represent dead, imaginary, or otherwise non-corporeal beings is a common visual trope in comics. In the Funkyverse, it somehow makes things even more confusing. More recently, Batiuk has also used the transparency trope on people who weren’t dead. Tony Montoni appeared in the strip just before its end, but was transparent the winter before, as if he had died off-panel. There was also this:
Neither of these transparent characters is actually dead. Phil Holt was revealed to be faking his death, and Dead Lisa has shown up in the strip so many times she should be called Undead Lisa.
But there’s another problem: the Funkyverse is full of blond boys of indeterminate age, mainly Skyler and Mitch. They’re both about 5, with gusts up to 12. On other comic strip forums, people (inlcuding our own J.J. O’Malley) had to explain who this character was. Because Lord knows the story didn’t.
So Inner Child’s appearances had visual cues, no written exposition, and didn’t make any sense in the story. Other than that, he’s fine, I guess.
Son of Stuck Funky 