I mixed the last two Crankshaft strips into a much better joke.
Points for discussion:
Yes, I know Les is short for “Leslie.” But if Tom Batiuk can throw out decades of character history to make a joke work, so can I. It just makes the parody more realistic.
Is Lisa evil? Is she actually worse than Les? Les’ Muse Abuse sets the bar pretty high. But Lisa’s victim complex, need to be the center of attention, micromanagement of Les from beyond the grave, and complete disinterest in her child make this race closer than you’d think.
Have you noticed nobody in Westview actually watches or reads Lisa’s Story? As outlandish as the parody strip seems, it is 100% consistent with what we’re supposed to believe, that the movie was of Oscar quality. Pam and her dad having a nice movie night watching Lisa die again is a lot more plausible than them watching old Looney Tunes.
Murder In The Burnings will be resuming soon. There’s still a long way to go in the story, but I’ve been visited by Le Chat Bleu lately.
We continue our look at arson suspects with the more serious candidates. Some names aren’t on either list, because they will turn up later in the story. But let me know if I missed your favorite.
SUSPECT: Cayla Williams Moore (suggested by: bewareofevehill)
PROSECUTION: The wife of Westview English teacher, Les Moore, and personal assistant to high school principal Nate Green. Cayla witnessed her husband defy her boss’ mandate that books on the school’s not-approved list are also not approved to be taught. Les confided in Cayla about the plan to distribute the book via bookstores. Fed up with Les’s overbearing ego, Cayla used that information in an attempt to frame him for the arson. The damage was intentionally small, because Cayla had no other dispute with Ms. McKenzie.
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.
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.
Son of Stuck Funky 