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.
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