Tag Archives: word zeppelins

K, Have You Ever Flashy-Thinged Me?

Greetings, Funkynauts! Banana Jr. 6000 here. In today’s strip, Summer asks the obvious question of whether Harley ever “nudged” her mind. It’s a valid question: he clearly has no qualms about nudging every person in town over the tiniest thing that might make Lisa hook up with Les faster. He’s basically a guardian angel for incels.

It reminds me of a moment in the first Men in Black movie, where Will Smith angrily asks Tommy Lee Jones if he ever used the memory-erasing “neuralizer” tool on him:

Agent “K” denies it, but we saw him do it earlier in the movie. It’s a fun little moment that fits the movie’s goofy tone, and underscores the MIB’s hilarious disregard for the safety of other human beings.

But fun and continuity have no place in Funky Winkerbean. No no no noooooo, Girl Les’ book about friggin’ Westview is of such grand importance that the time-traveling janitor couldn’t possibly influence it in any way! Because only Summer’s pure, uninfluenced mind could… do something, I guess. After 16 days of talking in a janitor’s office, we still don’t know why only Summer could write this book. This setup was dying to be a joke, like “yeah, I had to nudge your lazy ass out of going back for your 12th year at Kent State.” But like I said when this started, Summer is now officially a writer. Jokes at her expense are no longer permissible.

Then, Tom Batiuk tries to flashy-thing us all. He tries to handwave fifteen years of continuity problems with one panel of sci-fi mumbo-jumbo. Apparently, nudging (which is just influencing people) causes localized out-of-sync time bubbles (huh?), which means that Westview “sped ahead of other localities for a bit.” But now that Harley is sure Summer’s book will be written (something he has no more reason to be sure of then when he started), he’ll “see to it that the bubble is absorbed back into the timestream.”

And this man wonders why he never got hired to write comic books. This wouldn’t pass muster in the dopiest issue of Fantastic Four.

Yes, this is the only explanation we’re ever going to get for the massive timeline problems in the Funkyverse. Yes, “timestream” is one word. Yes, there is going to be a newspaper story where today’s strip will be described as “Batiuk deftly tied up loose ends.”


Here’s my choice for Great Moments in FW Arc Recap History: September 16-21, 2019: Linda Bushka spends a week opening an envelope.

I’m not kidding. That took an entire week. We got the see the mailman deliver it on Monday, and Linda regard it on Tuesday. The rest of the week was this:

Mind you, this was Funky Winkerbean‘s final “prestige arc”, about the death of Bull Bushka from football-induced CTE. A too-minor and yet too-major subplot was about Linda seeking payment under the NFL’s real-life settlement plan for CTE sufferers, without Bull ever knowing about it. It was never explained why she needed this money; we saw the Bushkas do things like travel long distance for health care they could have gotten locally. Nor was it spoken of again after this.

On top of that, it was a waste of a potentially good story. The NFL has been accused of dragging its feet about meeting its obligations to former players who were found to have CTE. And these stories were at a peak from 2018-19. Funky Winkerbean could have told a powerful story about how one man suffered, when the NFL failed to fulfill its promises. This is what Tom Batiuk did with it. He spent a week watching someone open their mail, then dropped it entirely. Then he had Linda say Bull wasn’t eligible because he was only on the practice squad, which (a) defeats the purpose of her applying for it in the first place, and (b) isn’t true.

Besides, everybody knows that receiving a letter for something you’ve applied for isn’t good news. Did she think there was going to be a check in there? Did Batiuk think he was building drama by revealing this obvious outcome so slowly, and then making it moot later in the story anyway? Abysmal. Just abysmal.

The CTE arc was an absolute disgrace. It played Bull’s dementia for laughs, killed him a way that made no sense, mocked him at his funeral, and then made it all about Les. Someday, when people are remembering Funky Winkerbean and what was so bad about it, this arc is going to be front and center. Tom Batiuk simply cannot write drama, or any realistic human characters or emotion. And this arc proves it. It’s aged badly in the three years since it happened, and it’s only going to get uglier.


This may be my last guest blog post, so I have some final thoughts about it all.

Since Funky Winkerbean announced its end, I haven’t had much to say about it. That’s because the strip is very loudly speaking for itself. The end of the strip came out of nowhere; most of us have concluded that it was not Batiuk’s decision or timeframe. Presented with only a few weeks to wrap up a 50-year comic strip, what does he do? He doubles down on all the worst aspects of Act III.

Another book publishing story. Another deification of Les by proxy. Another unnecessary character introduced. Another revisiting of that dumb space helmet. Another three weeks of needless exposition. Another plot ripped off from more competent works. Another comic book angle. Another tacky, demeaning usage of a real person in the story. Another clunky, pointless idiot plot. Another rat’s nest of loose ends, plot holes, and sloppy retcons. And above all else, another way to escalate Les and Lisa’s importance to the world. Apparently giving them an Oscar wasn’t nearly big enough.

If the current story is to be believed – that Summer’s amateur book about Westview will “create a science that allows us to recognize humanity as our nation”, to the point where interdimensional time travelers watch over her and make sure it was created – then Summer Moore is the most important person who ever lived. And despite that, she seems incidental to Harley’s story. He’s far more concerned with making sure Les and Lisa hook up, isn’t he?

So it ends up checking off two more boxes on the list of tired Act III tropes. It’s another phony female-empowerment story that’s really just Batiuk’s hateful sexism bubbling to the surface. And we all know Summer’s book is just a stand-in for Funky Winkerbean itself. We’re seeing how important Batiuk wishes it was, and/or thinks it should be. The strip’s last act was to indulge its author’s self-importance. I just wonder how any genuine fans, who probably wanted some kind of resolution or at least a few happy flashbacks, feel about how the strip ended.

I’m sad to see this community coming to an end, as it became a daily source of fun for me. I consider it an honor to have had a turn in the lead snarking chair. I thank TFH and ED for adding me to the team. And I thank the entire community for accepting me when I was a new and not-so-clever commenter. I hope I made everyone’s visits to this blog as bright as you made mine. This is one of the most knowledgeable and positive communities I’ve ever been involved with, and a shining example of how Bile Fascination can be a good thing.

I want to leave you with something that I found comforting, and you might too. It’s Episode 500 of the Dysfunctional Family Circus. The DFC was an early web feature with a simple premise: a blank Family Circus panel was displayed, and readers were invited to submit their own alternate captions. Which were hilarious, and not all in keeping with the family-friendly vibe of the original comic strip. As such, it was probably the only other community like this one that has ever existed: a long-running snark community devoted to a single newspaper comic.

Interestingly, creator Greg Galcik and cartoonist Bil Keane came to see each other’s points of view, and the party ended after the 500th such strip had been posted. A lot of fans wrote final captions that said goodbye, or celebrated what the DFC was, or talked about how much this silly community meant to them. A lot of them hit the same notes we have: the St. Elsewhere finale; variations on “it was all a dream”; ways to keep it going; retrospective haiku; jokes based on long-running memes. If I only have one thing left to say here, I will borrow this caption from DFC #500 (who borrowed it from Carol Burnett):

I’m so glad we had this time together, just to tell a joke or sing a song. Seems we just got started and before you know it, comes the time we have to say, “so long”.

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Nudge, Nudge, Say No More… Please

Hey folks, billytheskink here… I’m back for at least one more post so I can tag the ever-loving dickens out of today’s strip.

Lest we think Harley only takes agency and free will away from women, we learn today that he did the same to DSH and to the various members of the Westview High School class of ’92-’88-’78-’72 reunion committee. Since TB is looking back, let’s step into our own WABAC machine and see what exactly happened in the these two events that Harley interfered in.

First off…

Great Moments In FW Arc Recap History

November 19-December 20, 2012
An extended Crazy Harry arc begins. Harry explains to Donna his love of old comic books. The next day he walks into Montoni’s to inform Funky that USPS is shutting down the Westview Post Office and he’s out of a job. Harry decides he must sell off his beloved library, spending a week sorting and packing his books and his comics before schlepping them off to John, who offers Crazy Harry a job at the Komix Korner.

Granted, I cannot say what she was thinking, but back during this story arc, Donna never talked about leaving town. She didn’t do much of anything, really, except try to come on to Crazy while he moped about and spout off about how his political beliefs had changed with age. Also, is Harley admitting here that he “nudged” long-time Komix Korner employee Kevin out of existence to clear the way for DSH to hire Crazy? There are consequences to this time-meddling, Batiuk!

Now for the star flashback of the day…

We’re looking at August 21, 1993, when Les and Lisa reconnected at one of the incessant high school class reunions.

In the original strip, Les hung the moon for Lisa… in today’s flashback, he hung the “Westview Reunion” banner next to the moon.

Should we assume the committee back in 1993 (holding what was then a canonically a 5-year reunion) was the same cabal Les was drafted into replacing Cindy on in 2015: Cindy, Mary Sue Sweetwater, Junebug, who I think is Cindy’s frizzy-haired minion Carrie, and abdicated valedictorian Barry Balderman? Eh, why not? Barry wasn’t at this reunion, though, he had a cool job.

I’ll give Harley/TB this, his intervention into giving that crew Lisa’s Seattle address makes some level of sense as Lisa wasn’t close with ANY of those committee members (even nerdy Barry) and Les didn’t have her address until after he broke his hand punching Bull at the reunion for reasons that still defy explanation. In a rare moment of common sense, Lisa actually chided a deserving Les for still being stuck in high school. This moment passed quickly, though. Lisa was practically apologizing to Les for being upset even before dawn and the next week Bull was practically apologizing to Les for getting punched. What a time to be alive that was…

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Ruby the Grate

In case you missed it, we are in the final weeks of Funky Winkerbean. Tom Batiuk appears to be reluctantly retiring the strip much in the same way he’s written Ruby as reluctantly retiring from Atomik Komix this week and in today’s strip. The timing of this thin gruel of a story arc and TB’s fairly muted announcement is certainly no coincidence. Most all of us here at SOSF, despite speculating for over a decade on when and how this thing would end, are probably still processing the suddenness of the announcement, how soon it will become reality, and what that means for this wonderful community going forward.

But enough wallowing about, let’s leave that to the strip and try to get back to business as usual. I guess today’s strip is aiming for bittersweet, but it largely is coming across as just bitter. You can’t mask your true feelings in a wall of smirks, TB… And even if the strip wasn’t ending at the close of this year, I’m guessing we were never going to see Chester meet with the building manager by looking in a mirror anyways. I’d say “a pity”, but, you know, it’s not. It’s really not.

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Pulp Fiction

As long as author avatars are popping into today’s strip

Shoving the temples of your glasses INTO your ears is painful. Worst of all, you can still hear these two ding dongs when they talk. Would not recommend.

Durwood has a pretty poor grasp of economics for the holder of an alleged MBA… but look, if you really want, I’ll grant that the loopy and incredibly fictional economy of the Batiukverse means that Silver Age Omnibus books are such tremendous demand that Durwood’s Catch-22 makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that quite literally yesterday we were told that these fancy comic books couldn’t be shipped on time due to climage damate. Now the blame rests with the Pandemic/COVID/Supply Chain Issues/Amazon/Internet/Inflation (oops, we’re not yet a year out on that last one filling up the column inches, check back next summer when inflation somehow closes Montoni’s again)? Make up your mind TB Batton!

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Get The Funk Out

Today’s strip.

If comic strips can have clip shows. I guess they can have voice overs, too.

No characters are visible today, as (presumably) Funky rambles about how great Montoni’s history wall is. It’s the same irrelevant junk we saw Sunday, except that Mason Jarre is up there now. It’s not even drawn with much more detail.

And it feels out of order in the narrative. Summer has spent the last two days interviewing Tony about Montoni’s history, so she doesn’t need to be convinced Montoni’s has a lot of history she should investigate. Was this supposed to be Monday’s strip?

It even has another rewriting of its own history, calling John Darling a “TV celeb.” Oh, come on! The man’s dying words were a lament that he never got to become a celebrity:

On top of that, we saw John Darling being equated with these ancient fossils barely a month ago.

“Much of Westview’s history has passed through Montoni’s doors.” Yes, it’s amazing that prominent people in a small town have eaten in the town’s only restaurant. Sheesh. Get over yourself.

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