Over in Crankshaft, Batty is taking a trip into the distant past of the Funkyverse as three old farts stand around in a storage unit while one of them regales his enraptured pals and unenraptured readers about how his daddy played the trumpet and wore a suit. Larry Dinkle went all around the Great Lakes region but was never around the one place where — *sniff* — it mattered most.
But while Batty is looking back to reveal the Funkyverse’s past, we shall be looking back in order to reveal its future. So nestle in, dear reader, for this tale truly told…
It is late 2022 and Tom Batiuk has just dropped his bombshell via crotchety Golden Age relic Ruby Lith that it’s over. After fifty long years Funky Winkerbean would be coming to an end in but a few short weeks. A half-century of characters mugging at the fourth wall, life or death school levy votes, old men geeking out over even older comic books, Les Moore’s undeservedly smug face, cancer, alcoholism, band candy and murderous gun-wielding chimpanzees would finally draw to a close.
However there were still things to learn about Westview, OH and it was the job of one person to learn them. They had to, after all, for as it turns out only they alone could do this. Only they had the ability to sift through the information and see the patterns and find the clues that would allow us to become a better, more united people. And someone else was there to make sure that they did it.
Summer Moore had a destiny. She would write the book that would bring about utopia. The book that would help us realize that humanity was our nation. The greatest work of philosophy by the greatest one book author of all time. But how would she get to this point? What could have caused an otherwise innocuous young woman from a middling Rust Belt town to eventually become the Pattern-Finder?
In order to answer these oh-so-pressing questions, I’ll be starting a new series examining the twists and turns of Summer’s life. Because surely this will be a sensible and logical development and not just Tom Batiuk pulling something out of his ass at the last minute, won’t it?
But while the cat’s in the cradle over in Crankshaft, we’ll be starting with a different cradle entirely as examining Summer’s life means that we must first examine her pre-life which means going all the way back into the wilds of 2001. It was a year of great tragedy as Funky started it drukenly passed out on the sidewalk, his marriage rapidly crumbling around him. In these dark times though there was a bright spot as Lisa, cancer free and better than you, was working on her law degree and decided to let slip that there was something else she wanted.
The Moores decide to talk about Lisa’s sudden desire for a child with Les expressing his worries in his usual whiny and self-absorbed manner.
Being the insufferable turd that he is, Les decides to take this time to bust out his new character that he’s been working on — Armchair Freud — and begin psychoanalyizing his wife’s desire to have a child.
Of course Lisa did not decide on a whim that she wanted a baby. As we all know, Batty loves his meaningful anniversaries and in November 2001 it had been 15 years since the story that forever changed the trajectory of Funky Winkerbean and Tom Batiuk’s career. And what better way to call back to it than to get Lisa’s biological clock a-tickin’ and have her come down with a case of baby fever? For the next month then, the reader is treated to a complete retelling of the Pregnant Lisa Saga from 1986 and I suppose it’s a minor miracle that Batty got Ayers to actually draw the whole thing as opposed to taking the exceedingly lazy way out and just reprinting it.
Tangenting here, and there may be more tangents as this series goes, but we see here some of Batty’s patented ability to completely disregard his own timeline. Lisa states that “Dopey” Darin Fairgood is a junior in high school which would mean, given that this is set around the time of his birthday, he’s just about to turn 17 years old. You’d think that wanting to call back to his most important story, Batty would just say “he’s a freshman in high school” to line up with the story’s anniversary.
Yet for some reason Batty is basically acting as if the last few years have been happening in real time even though time in this strip has always been a fluid thing — For Better or For Worse this ain’t. I mean it won’t be until 2007 when Darin’s generation, having entered high school in 1998, graduates. So for Darin to be a junior in 2001, his birth would have had to happen in 1984 which I guess lines up with when he started school but would then mean that, if we kept the original 1988 graduation date that Act II establishes, then Lisa would have been a freshman herself when she was pregnant which okay, fine. But in 2002, for the strip’s 30th anniversary, Funky will also celebrate his 30th birthday. With the Act I crew graduating college at 22, that would mean that Act II would have had to have started in 1994 and Funky’s group graduated in 1990 not 1988 which means Lisa would have had to have given birth, at the earliest, in 1986 which means Darin should be a freshman and not a junior which means…
God dammit, why do I put more thought into this than him?
Okay, back to the actual important stuff. After the flashback to Lisa’s nebulously dated pregnancy, she’s feeling frisky and decides it’s time to get to babymakin’ with the most sensual of come ons.
Wooed by those romantic words, in February 2002 we learn that Les was successful at implanting his miracle seed within his ovulating she-bride and that she now carries Ohio’s most divine child inside her cancer womb.
With the divine child now growing within her, life continues as normal for Lisa and Les over the next few months. Les does… uh, something — Les-type things I suppose — while Lisa graduates law school. At the same time both Funky and Crazy Harry are going through their own significant life changes as Funky’s in the process of getting divorced while Crazy has gotten engaged to Donna who, you’ll be surprised to learn, was actually the Eliminator the whole time! Betcha didn’t expect that, did you? Because of all these changes going on in their lives, the guys decide to go on a camping trip as this may be their last chance to do so, while at the same time Lisa is in Columbus taking the bar exam.
Everything’s going pretty well which of course means it’s time for drama to rear it’s head. Which it does when Lisa arrives back at Montoni’s and to her surprise ends up in a confrontation with an old friend.
Yes, while carrying the holy child within her Lisa is met with the appearance of Ohio Satan who, while not all powerful in his devilry, is able to draw upon his hellish powers to engage in minor annoyance. This annoyance comes in the form of Frankie demanding Lisa take him to his son — who ironically is right there unbeknownst to any of them — and he won’t take no for an answer. Because he’s evil, you see. So evil that he manhandles Lisa a little bit with dire consequences.
The stress of the situation causes Lisa to go into labor… I guess? I would assume that’s the reason anyway but who can really know? Godtiuk works in mysterious ways after all. Frankie takes the opportunity to skedaddle on out of the comic for the time being. With Darin and Lisa being the only two in Montoni’s it’s suggested that an ambulance is called but like a true Batiukian Hero, Darin decides he can get her to the hospital faster than the crummy professionals whose jobs it is to do this and who are basically their own traffic laws.
I mean how else was TomBa going to give us some hilarious dramatic irony and Teen Pregnant Lisa callbacks if the characters just left things up to the professionals like reasonable people? Don’t they know that there’s awards to be won? And oh man was Tommy Boy really in love with the dramatic irony for this story because he was practically ODing on it.
Okay, what the hell? Darin was canonically born in 1986 so he, if this took place in real time, cannot possibly be in the 11th grade. Unless I’m discounting the possibility that TB doesn’t actually know the difference between freshman, sophomore, junior and senior which maybe I shouldn’t be.
Anyway, the whole situation means that that the Annointed One was born a little earlier than normal and so she’s put on a ventilator to help her survive.
While talking with the doctor, the Moores realize that with all the craziness going on this summer they forgot to decide on a name for their little girl. Lisa decides that craziness means that Summer is the name that they’ll be going with which means I can finally start calling her by her actual name too. With the newborn Summer now clinging to life in Doctor Depresso’s Breatheinator 5000, Lisa fills in Les — who’d zipped back from the camping trip because he somehow felt that “something was wrong back home” — on the events that led to their kid’s premature birth. Les comically threatens to kick Frankie’s ass if he ever shows up again.
While you’re thinking of people more qualified and able than Les to beat up Frankie — the newborn Summer for instance — our hero decides to start making a list.
Batty, of course, is milking the apparent touch and go nature of Summer’s situation for everything it’s worth.
But fret not for this is but a fake out and these are happy tears! It turns out that Summer has gained a pound and Les is overcome with joy, huzzah! Things are going well and Summer’s about ready to leave the hospital, so Les goes out to buy a fancy new digital camera so he can get Boy Genius to explain to him and Lisa how uploading a picture works.
By the way, giving me vibes similar to this gem.
But even back in 2002 uploading pictures of your kids onto the internet for the whole world to see could lead to some suspicious characters coming across them. Characters you might not want.
Who could this be? Frankie? Or someone even more sinister?
Why it’s just another fake out as Lisa’s dad and/or mom were sinisterly and dramatically narrating their every action for our benefit simply to fool us. Perhaps they’re aware they’re characters in a comic strip and understand dramatic tension. Who can say? Regardless of any potential medium awareness, they’ve decided to move back to Westview to be closer to their family and so Lisa can have a convenient babysitter. Summer soon after has her first Christmas and Les decides to end it with the type of uplifting positivity that only he can provide.
With that I’ll close things off here for the time being. The future Messiah has been born and all is right with the world for now. There will be plenty of time for Batty to screw up his handling of this most important of all Westviewians later but next time we may possibly rocket through a good chunk of the remaining years of Act II. Or we may not. But there will be a next time because we’ve got a long way to go.
Son of Stuck Funky 