Les – Page 2 – Son of Stuck Funky

Testimony Of Nate Green

(NOTE: This begins my retelling of The Burnings. It uses information from the real comic strips to tell a much different story. Think of it as an “alternate universe” version of The Burnings. Be aware that court transcripts do not include stage directions, or descriptions of how forcefully or quietly the defendants spoke, just what they said.)

BAILIFF: All rise for the Honorable Collis D. Smizer.

JUDGE: Please be seated. We begin with case 53766673. Ah, this is the criminal trial for the Village Booksmith fire. Prosecution, you may call your first witness.

(Nate Green, having sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, testifies as follows:)

PROSECUTION: Please state your name for the record.

NATE: Nathaniel Green, but I go by Nate.

PROSECUTION: And you are the principal of Westview High School?

NATE: Yes.

PROSECUTION: And how long have you had that position?

NATE: I joined Westview High School in 1977 as a teacher, Al Burch retired in 1986, I was vice principal in 1988, and was principal by 2008.

PROSECUTION: Were you aware that Westview’s teacher Les Moore was teaching Fahrenheit 451 in class, even though this book was unapproved by the school board?

NATE: Yes.

PROSECUTION: Did you allow him to teach it?

NATE: No.

PROSECTION: Did you take any action to stop him from teaching it?

NATE: Yes. I specifically told him it wasn’t approved to order, and that meant “not approved to teach.”

PROSECUTION: What did you do when you discovered he was teaching the book anyway?

NATE: Nothing.

PROSECUTION: Why not?

NATE: Because I can’t do anything to Les Moore. For some reason, he’s got some kind of protected status in this community. I don’t dare discipline him. I get that he’s famous because of Lisa’s Story, but he’s honestly an awful teacher. He’s basically a tenured professor, and he knows it. I couldn’t even get rid of him when we had layoffs.

PROSECUTION: How is he an ineffective teacher?

NATE: Have you interviewed the guy yet? He’s elitist, condescending to his students, thinks he’s God’s gift to writing because of that book, wastes class time on pointless speakers he likes, and disappears for months at a time. One time he used his students to wage an in-school media war against me about copier usage, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

PROSECUTION: You couldn’t discipline him for that?

NATE: No. The school board said it would “upset the community.” The same school board he’s defying now.

PROSECUTION: You said he missed months at a time? You couldn’t discipline him for missing too many work days?

NATE: Oh, get this. Every time Les didn’t want to go to work, he took bereavement leave. He found out the school board never put a time limit on it, so he just kept mourning Lisa for decades. Then when it was time to make the movie, he spent months in Hollywood because he had a huge number of sick days saved up. Again, the same school board he’s defying now.

PROSECUTION: Did you know that Mr. Moore had instructed his students to pick up the books at Booksmellers, and later The Village Booksmith?

NATE: Well, he didn’t tell me, but you know, it’s high school. Kids talk, word gets around.

PROSECUTION: Did Mr. Moore say anything to you about this plan?

NATE: Of course not.

PROSECUTION: Did any parents contact you with concerns about the book being taught in class?

NATE: No.

PROSECUTION: What did you think when you heard about the Booksmellers fire?

NATE: I didn’t really believe it. It seemed far-fetched. Fahrenheit 451 is not an offensive book. It’s not the kind of book anybody would burn in protest. At the time, I thought maybe the fire was unrelated.

PROSECUTION: And what about the second fire?

NATE: Well, after the second fire, the school board called me in for a meeting. I guess they didn’t believe the first fire either.

PROSECUTION: What did you say?

NATE: Well, technically Les was right. The book wasn’t approved to order, and he didn’t order it. So he didn’t really do anything they could punish him for. I just told the board he did this without my permission or approval, which was true.

PROSECUTION: So Mr. Moore openly defied you and the school board?

NATE: Well, he found a loophole, but he knew he was defying their wishes. He gave me this smug speech about the list not being clear.

PROSECUTION: Did he ever say why he chose to teach the book when the list implicitly forbade it?

NATE: Hmm. He didn’t, now that you mention it. You know what else he did, though? This one time–

PROSECUTION: –okay, thank you, Mr. Green.

Bad Parenting From Beyond The Grave

So Tom Batiuk’s recent email newsletter started off with this December 2008 strip:

Comic Book Harriet wondered why Batiuk chose to highlight this seemingly random strip in his email newsletter. I have a different questrion:

Why did Tom Batiuk choose to include this absolutely disgusting strip in his email newsletter? Continue reading “Bad Parenting From Beyond The Grave”

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.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Batiuk?

Hey! Remember when Act III was mainly about Les Moore’s struggles as the single parent of a precocious teenage daughter? Well, then, go visit “The Komix Thoughts” right now and check out BatYam’s ad for “The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume 3”, which drops on January 2nd, just in time for the holidays! He thoughtfully included a few holiday themed “teaser strips” in that post (just go there yourself, I don’t feel like linking to it) featuring Summer’s stunning election to the sophomore Winter Court, and going shopping for dresses with her bearded simp of a father. Those strips really took me back, and likewise reminded me that maybe getting away from Summer wasn’t Batty’s worst idea ever.

r/IsLesTheAhole

Happy Turkey Day! I hope your Thanksgiving Day is full of loved ones, great food, and thankfulness for all the blessings you’ve received. If you’re capable of reading this message via the Internet, and have time to spend on this dead newspaper comic, you have a pretty good life compared to most people on this planet. So let’s all be thankful today. I’m thankful to have all of you in my life.

We have some Funkyverse news, from an odd place. In an offhand comment in my last post, I mentioned the YouTube channel Mainly Facts, which is one of many channels that read and discuss Reddit posts. A recent episode has some themes that will be very familiar to observers of Funky Winkerbean. It’s the first story of this YouTube video, and is about 8 minutes long. (Embedding is disabled so I can’t directly post it here.)

You really should listen to the whole thing, but here are the key details:

The male letter-writer was married to a woman named “Laura” (a pseudonym) who died of an aggressive form of cancer when they were 28.
He and Laura had a 10-year-old son.
He met a new woman named Kayla (implied not to be a pseudonym) at a “work event,” and began dating her.
Kayla admits she feels neglected, and that the letter-writer is using her as “a replacement for his dead wife.” Letter-writer is shocked to hear this.
Kayla begins wearing Laura’s jewelry, dies her hair like Laura did, gets clothes/piercings/tattoos matching what Laura had, and wants letter-writer’s son to start calling her “Mama.” Letter-writer finds this unnerving.
Kayla confesses she “felt she had to live up to the memory of a ghost.”
Kayla attempted suicide, later saying “maybe if I was dead too, (letter-writer) would love her even a fraction of how much he loves Laura.”
Letter-writer’s family tells him he should have been more attentive to Kayla.
Letter-writer wonders if he’s the asshole of the story, and if his family is right.

This is almost exactly Les Moore’s life story after Lisa died. He married a woman named Cayla, and then his dead wife became the centerpiece of their relationship. But in Funky Winkerbean, this was driven by Les, not Cayla. I think this story gives us some helpful insights about the Funkyverse:

It’s a great example of why Tom Batiuk’s approach to storytelling simply doesn’t work. Unlike stories in the Funkyverse, characters react to events in the story. Kayla perceives herself as being less important than the dead wife, and tries to rectify that. Funkyverse Cayla never does this. She’s perfectly happy to play second banana to Lisa, and indulge all of Les’ ridiculous demands. Even after Les’ Oscar “win”, which should have been the end of it.

This is unrealistic. Married people operate from the reasonable expectation that they are their spouse’s primary focus. Being a widower complicates things, but Les never made any effort to move past Lisa’s death. He wanted all the benefits of being married to Cayla, without any of the emotional commitment it requires. Which would ultimately cause problems in their marriage.

The real-life letter-writer’s story shows what a selfish craphead Les Moore is by comparison. If Les was a good person, this real-life story is what he would have done.

Unlike Les, the letter-writer comes off as pretty reasonable. He seems to have a healthy balance between honoring his deceased wife, and moving forward with someone else. The letter-writer’s story mentions going to therapy, and bringing his 10-year-old child as well, to deal with the shock of losing “Laura.” It’s not clear whether Kayla is overreacting, or if the letter-writer is inadvertently assigning too much importance to his dead wife. But you get the feeling there’s room for discussion, and that an otherwise good relationship can be saved.

The letter-writer is also genuinely concerned about people other than himself. He’s concerned about Kayla’s feelings. His child wasn’t comfortable calling Kayla “mama”, and he honored that. In the Funkyverse, Les did things like make his daughter read her mother’s rape journal, and forbade her from throwing out Lisa’s pointless VHS recordings. Ten years of not being allowed to move on from a parent’s death, and having no other adults in her life, would have damaged Summer. Not the “Lisa would be proud of the woman you’ve become” nonsense we got, as Tom Batiuk skipped ten years to avoid dealing with the situation he created.

CBH CUTTING IN HERE!

I second everything Banana Jr 6000k said about thankfulness. I’m so thankful for HIM. For his hard work while I’ve been busy with real life. And I’m thankful for this site. I’m so thankful for all of you commenters who have kept this place going. And I’m thankful for all your patience as harvest has pulled away my attention over the last couple months.

Also wanted to note that this year Cranky feels the need to name-drop Sam’N Ella’s Turkey Farm. Batty has spent the last year making a point of constantly name dropping old Funky Winkerbean references into dialogue with all the finesse of a bowling ball onto a egg carton. Like poor old Les constantly moping over Lisa and mulling over their past…he is tainting the living with memories of the dead.

ALSO also, the polymelic turkey joke is a rehash from 2016.

I leave it up to you guys if eight years is past the statute of limitations for self-plagiarism.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!