Previous >>151322103Last time, characters like Roland and Livinia disappeared, ones like Nate Green were introduced and Westview finally got its name. Today will cover 1978.
Wow Les, that is definitely not creepy at all.
Crazy Harry gets meta. This will, of course, never actually be referenced again.
These Sherlock Holmes things will be yet another of the week long running gags that will increasingly come to be used throughout Act I. Hope you like a lot of really bad puns.
>>151368085nice way to shake up the "character looking at the reader" cliche
>>151368424That one strip where it's "Free Kittens For Sale" and Funky's smirking mug is looking at the reader and taking up like a third of the panel might be the peak of it. Like it felt like Batiuk had to be aware that it was kind of grating and did it that way on purpose.
>>151368415It’s a shame he defaults to lame puns so often considering the writing is pretty decent when he’s actually utilizing the characters and telling story arcs
>>151368312Kek
>>151368634I think the only one of those week long gags I like are the Cheers For Losing Football Teams ones from the '80s because it's somewhat character-centric being that it seems to be Junebug leading the cheers and she's already been shown as being loud and cynical. It also works with the general Act I tone of the school and town just being shit.Westview in Act I is a very Springfieldish setting (long before the Simpsons was a thing) where it's just kind of a hellish, nightmare version of a typical mid-sized American town. The school system sucks, the administration sucks and it's populated almost entirely by morons, losers, incompetent dolts, jackasses with needlessly large egos, and loons and anyone who comes in bright-eyed or optimistic quickly has it beaten out of them. It makes the later attempt to portray it as a more normal town or the even later near veneration of it really weird in retrospect.
I believe that this is the first appearance (kind of) of Superintendent Shoentell. He'll basically be an unseen figure for a while before later on in the '80s showing up physically a couple of times and being even more jaded and checked than Principal Burch.
We have the debut of Neal and the Lighthouse, the home for troubled youth he runs. They'll be Act I staples and disappear afterwards. The Lighthouse shows up again in Act III having been closed down because "the guy running it turned out to be more troubled than the kids" which, uh, is a story that I guess Batiuk decided not to tell. Because Neal is never anything more than a pretty nice guy and aging hippie; never showing anything troubled.
Another debut in Melinda Budd, Holly's overbearing and kind of creepy stage mom. She'll be another Act I staple. She'll disappear afterwards until late in Act III where she comes back as a regular character for the last few years to make life difficult for Holly and Funky.
>>151368085>brown mumsBased rootbeer company bringing the ethnic MILF representation.
I believe the beard and glasses guy is Reed Roberts. He'll be one of the major characters in the spinoff strip John Darling and though it never really comes up in Funky, he's the father of Pete and Aly Roberts from Act II. Aly will be forgotten eventually while Pete will go on to be a major character and also in the last few years Batiuk seemingly forgot his last name and changed it to Reynolds.
I believe this is the last appearance of John Darling in Funky... at least while he's still alive. The last few few weeks of strips were pretty clearly a backdoor pilot for his spinoff which would launch in March 1979.
Also, of course, it's super ironic that the last time John shows up in Funky, it's a joke involving a gun being pointed at him.
Going from reasonably successful characters, we have what I would consider the first out and out and failed character in Jerome. I think he shows up into the very early '80s but not all that much. I assume that Batiuk wanted to fill out the band some more and maybe give Holly a rival but, and maybe it's because I was never in the band, his jokes are completely nonsensical and unfunny to me so the main joke seems to be his posture.I don't know, Jerome sucks and he disappears almost as quickly as he appears.
>>151369243>>151369298>>151369314Not going to lie, being in the military and having done marching, Jerome's schtick about posture does actually hit with me. Not to say that it's hilarious but I recognise the type of person who would take the 'shoulders back, chest out' too far.
Brenda Harpy (very subtle name) will replace John Darling for a short while. She was a major character in that series so it's more advertising I guess.
>>151369575Obviously he needed to smoke more opium.
Okay, I was incorrect and I believe that THIS is John Darling's last appearance as a Funky character.
The failure of the school levy is basically going to be a stock trope throughout the entirety of Funky Winkerbean. I think there's maybe one instance in the entirety of the strip where it actually passes.
>>151369184And the killer ended up being plant man instead of this guy
>>151369692Phil does show up late in Act III for a story about being forcibly retired by the station. Then shows up at the very end still the weatherman. But I guess if Phil Holt and Tony can return from the dead and Montoni's can still be in business and buying snow tires for its delivery cars months after closing, Phil can still have a job after being fired. That's just how late era Funky goes.
I can't remember if this is the first one but Monstrous Limericks will be another stock running gag throughout Act I.
>>151369184QRD on the spinoff and his death (if there aren’t any spoilers for the main series)?
That closes out this year. Next time is 1979 where Rita, the last of the early Act I holdouts, disappears. Batiuk also begins doing some longer storylines when Fred runs in the Boston Marathon and the teachers go on strike once again.
>>151369793I'm not sure of the reasoning but I assume in the late '70s Funky was doing well so it was decided to give John Darling a spinoff series. By the end of the '80s though things were going a bit sideways. Batiuk was in a dispute with his syndicate over ownership of the characters and was burned out from doing three strips simultaneously (Funky, Darling and Crankshaft although Funky was the only one he was also drawing). He'd also just had the artist leave (the second one on the strip) and didn't feel like having to find a new one. Darling was dropping in circulation and he had an out clause for it that said he could get out of his contract for that strip if it dropped below a certain number. It had so in 1990 he decided to end the strip but do it in a way that would make the entire thing unusable by suddenly having John get shot and killed.That was basically the end of it until 1997 when he decided to revisit the death of John Darling in Funky by having Les write a book about it which leads to the murderer (unseen originally) revealed. After that John's daughter Jessica would be added as a character in Funky as part of the same Westview class that included Darin Fairgood and Pete Roberts, eventually as an extremely minor character until just before the second timeskip where she begins dating Darin and becomes a more important character from then on.
That also gives me an excuse to go into the frankly absurd and weird family tree/connectios that exist in the Funkyverse. I'll put these in spoilers just to be safe because, well, there are spoilers.You have Ed Crankshaft, the surly bus driver who lives in Centerville. His daughter is Pam Murdoch who is married to Jeff Murdoch. Pam and Jeff have two children: Max and Mindy Murdoch. Jeff's sister is Jan Darling, wife of John Darling and mother of Jessica Darling.Reed Roberts, John's boss, is the father of Pete Roberts and Aly Roberts; Pete and Aly's parents are divorced and they live with their mother.Lisa Crawford dates Les Moore for a bit, transfers schools, gets pregnant and has a kid. Fred Fairgood and Ann Randall eventually get married. Lisa has her kid and puts it up for adoption. Fred and Ann adopt the kid, not knowing who the mother is, and name him Darin. Lisa eventually marries Les and they have a daughter named Summer.Darin, Pete and Jessica are in the same class. Darin and Jessica eventually date and then during the timeskip are married. Pete is currently engaged to Mindy Murdoch. After Lisa dies, Les eventually marries Cayla Williams so Cayla's daughter Keisha and Les's daughter Summer become step-sisters. Cayla is the daughter of baseball player Smokey Williams, a character who Crankshaft mentored in his own strip in the late '90s/early 2000s.The following families are all tied together in some way now: Crankshafts, Murdochs, Fairgoods, Crawfords, Moores and Williamses.
>>151370048The idea of a goofy side character getting his own spinoff that ends with him getting shot and killed makes me excited to see how the main strip goes off the rails
>>151370390Unfortunately, there's no complete collection anywhere of John Darling. There weren't any books released and it's not on GoComics. Batiuk some times uploads strips on his blog and I think that's legitimately all that's available. Unless you're willing to pour through newspaper archives, it's practically lost.
