Previous >>151581190Today, it'll be 1995. A federal building in Oklahoma City will be bombed, grunge's dominance begins to wane, Toy Story is the year's big movie, Marvel is in the midst of both the Clone Saga and Age of Apocalypse and Bill Watterson concludes Calvin & Hobbes. Meanwhile, things are about to get more dramatic in Funky Winkerbean.Last time, we were introduced to some fairly important characters in Susan Smith, Becky Blackburn and Becky's mother Roberta Blackburn as well as retiring teacher Bill Collins. Skip Townes may have ended up on the wrong side of the feds one time too many while a student brought a gun to school.But the big event of the last few years was the 5 year reunion for the Class of '88 as Cindy Summers returned to Westview as did Lisa Moore. Les and Lisa have since resumed a long distance relationship though for Christmas of 1994, Lisa came to visit Les as the calender changed over.
Susan's crush on Les is, I feel, the exact moment the tone of the strip turns. It might seem goofy at first but, well, it'll go places. Funky places.
Of course the irony in all this is that while EuroDisney would have been seen then as a failure, by the next year its fortunes did a complete 180 so if Dinle had rode it out he would have probably made a good amount of money.
>>151612866Return of the Funky!
Sadie has no time for confusing people with metaphors and similies, she speaks directly to the common folk in clear language that they can understand.A
Whoops, meant to say that also, Susan's poem is going to shortly be the cause of some problems.
Apparently I'm just screwing up.
>>151613481Should have pointed this out but here we have the first appearance of comic shop owner John Howard, he whose hair the snarkers have compared to a number of animals. He's going to be around for the longhaul and will even appear in Crankshaft after the end of Funky.He's also not very well liked both by the snark crowd and by people who liked Wally for... reasons.
And now we have the first of Roberta's many moral crusades.
>>151613553Two copies of 4/12 there and no 4/13, OP. Thanks for all your efforts though.
Cindy starts her career in TV news wihch she'll hold, in various forms, until the end of the series.
I can't believe I've had that for a few months and didn't realize I screwed that up. I'll save the strip until after everything else.
In the end, Les didn't lose exactly but he didn't necessarily win either.
>>151613665>>151613770Funky rocking the band shirts this year.
>>151613958No logos, just the names. It reminds me of the various shirts from It Hurts and Please Forgive Me.
Here's the most dramatic thing to happen in the strip's history so far...
Susie Suicidebean
I get that the intent is to make it more dramatic but Les, no, you cannot get her to a hospial faster than an ambulance that basically has its own traffic laws, can run reds, that cars are obligated to clear a path for, etc.
>>151614030You know, if you weren't a regular reader of papers, and you were at your parents house or taking a plane or train journey and just picked up a newspaper off the kiosk and flicked over to the funnies and saw this with no context and the amusing title of 'Funky Winkerbean', I imagine I'd burst out laughing.
>>151614030The goddamn juxtaposition of the goofy>FuNkY WiNkErBeAntitle with dramatic shit like this always sends my sides into fucking orbit.>>151614051To be fair, that depends how long the ambulance takes to arrive in the first place. In some places that can be pretty bad.
The first appearance of Jim Mateer who will be painting murals for Montoni's all the way until I believe the early parts of Act III. Also significant in that he's an actual existing person. Jim was a local area artist who, significantly, was Batiuk's art teacher when he was in school and he would also allow Batiuk to come sit in on his classes after Funky started, which Batiuk used as a way of trying to keep the strip current in regards to how teenagers behave.Jim passed away in 2011.
Get it, Diamond Jelly? Pearl Jam? The album is even a riff on Vitalogy... which is kind of how you can tell that Batiuk's now working with a buffer because Vitalogy came out in 1994.
>>151614128He apparently got a lot of complaints over this story and it being inappropriate and too heavy for the comics page which stuck in his craw for a long time. Because there are going to be more than a few strips and stories he'll start doing that essetially boil down to him going "COMICS DON'T HAVE TO BE FUNNY."
>>151614248>Because there are going to be more than a few strips and stories he'll start doing that essetially boil down to him going "COMICS DON'T HAVE TO BE FUNNY."This Tom guy sounds alright.
>>151614141At least he didn't include a smug or dramatic Les in the header.
>>151614297These strips with the restaurant mural and the places Les is going are genuinely pretty clever.
This lamp will later be revealed to have belonged to Crankshaft character Lilian Mackenzie.Also maybe the first instance of Batiuk aleady screwing up the timeline he established with the jump. Because TMNT's popularity wasn't until the '87 cartoon launched and even if you're generous and say they're talking about the original comics, that was still 1984 at the earliest. Either way they would have been high schoolers, not elementary schoolers.
>>151614248I mean I agree that comics don't have to be funny and it's great that Tom doesn't give a damn, it's just when you're reading this as an arc it works but when your format is 'anyone could pick this up and this will be their first impression of the strip' it does help to at least have your editorial 'previously on' bit.
>>151614379I know the CANCER and Drunky Drinkerbean arcs were collected but has Batiuk ever written a standalone GN? I feel like it would suit the style of writing he leaned into later on better than dailies. He'd surely have enough of a profile to get published.
Another significant Funky First: Batiuk's first use of the vertical strip. These would be printed sideways in the paper so you'd have to turn it to actually read it (they're sideways on GoComics too). These will be used somewhat sparingly, usually to emphasize a big point, kind of like a splash page. Eventually once you get into Act III they're just kind of tossed out with wreckless abandon, especially if that week is a comic cover Sunday.
This kind of puts a bow on the Les/Lisa proposal stuff . The rest of the year is a lot slower in comparison but considering that this had a few other plotlines wrapped up in it and has taken up about 3/4 of the year that's understandable.
Les's student teacher will last... I can't remember how long off the top of my head but once her story is wrapped up we won't see her again.
>>151614561Whoops, I was thinking ahead, that's not until the end of the month. Anyway, yeah, that'll be another story.
Haha, see it's funny because she's doing things an old person does't do!I personally have never liked this kind of jok,e the whole "Wow, granny is skateboarding and totally radical" type of thing. Batiuk will love it however and will use it to full effect in Act III when he starts using, and overusing, one of my least favorite characters in the strip.
Susan returns and again, Sadie proves to be a better and more rounded character than Batiuk could see despite him being the one writing all of this.
>>151612866So will a building get bombed next year?
>>151614874>first stripaudible kek
The Hot Sales Clerk makes another appearance.
Batiukism Alert: Bingo, Sherlock. A combination of "bingo" and "no shit, Sherlock." Batiuk will some times use a phrase or term that can only be described as unique to him. Some times they will be one offs, some times they will pop up here and there. Bingo, Sherlock is one of the latter.
That does it for this year. Next time is 1996, another big year. Les starts writing a book for real when he decides to write the story of Murdered John Darling. Love is in the air as well as Funky and Cindy enter into a relationship while Les and Lisa set their wedding date... but a bombing at the post office might throw a wrench into things.>>151614957>So will a building get bombed next year?Bingo, Sherlock.
>>151613125Then I guess we're on the road to "Days of our Funky Lives" now.
>>151613388What a people's person.
>>151613125>Funky places.heh
>>151613125>last panel on last stripsusan a cute, A CUTE!
>>151614141Plus let's not forget parts of Westview is kind of dubious in quality at times
>>151614030time to get FUNKY
>>151614457I don't think he has. I kinda wonder if he wants to. On one hand I think he's only doing Crankshaft, on the other hand I think he's in his late 70s
>>151614379>>151614457yeah this is the strangest thing about this, he could've continued funky as a daily especially with help from the other artist and started an independent comic, not like that wasn't unheard of or unsuccessful at the time. he could've even kept the characters.
>>151612866Now Zoomers will also be haunted by the shittiness of this comic.
>>151614835NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
>>151614377I remembered seeing that panel of kid Funky and Crazy but not the comic where it came from.And yeah this is screwy because1. Mirage TMNT was never sold in the larger markets like drug stores or grocery stores; it was available through comic shops2. Mirage TMNT launched in 1984, like you said3. The one that would be in grocery stores or drug stores would be the Archie one, which started in like 1988, when Funky and Crazy graduated4. Archie TMNT value wasn't that much in 19955. Mirage TMNT #1 was expensive but I don't think it was four figures yet. It was going down at this time but it was still more than a hundred dollars.Seems to me it's like another timeline that seeped into this.
>>151615713I think at this point the ship has sailed.
>>151615754He could but this was 1995. The comics crash happened and a lot of shops shut down, then Marvel went bankrupt in 1996, and then eventually Diamond became the sole direct market distributor. Doing Crankshaft and Funky at the time would probably look more like secure job security by comparison.And I don't know if Batiuk would've been a big enough name to get attention within the comics book readership. He is friends with a lot of people in the comics industry, and like maybe John Byrne might do a variant cover or something, Comics Buyer's Guide might do coverage of it. But people were usually reading Wizard or something and focusing more on whatever was popular at that time... like Bad Girl trend or Garth Ennis comics or something
>>151615902I don't think it's completely impossible, like maybe he could crowdfund a graphic novel or something
>>151614248>"COMICS DON'T HAVE TO BE FUNNY."He is the expert in not having funny comics
>>151615966I don't think he was ever a big enough name even within the comic strip community, much less the broader comics community. I really get the impression that its peak in terms of cultural penetration was the mid/late '80s and more people jumped off after the shift to more dramatic stories than jumped on. By the time it started having some relevance again it was in the 2000s and a lot of that was following it to see how miserable it would become and then that faded again by the mid-2010s to the point where it ended without much fanfare. Nobody even knew it was ending until an announcement (along with a series of strips that had another character retire) like a month before the final strips. Which, given Batiuk's year long buffer for writing, meant he knew at least a year beforehand he was going to end it which would have meant a year's worth off advertising and marketing and whatever to trumpet both that and the 50th anniversary.And I think he knew longer than that that he wanted to end it on the 50th because Harley starts popping up again in 2020 which would mean those strips were being worked on in 2019.
>>151616197>I don't think he was ever a big enough name even within the comic strip community, much less the broader comics community. I really get the impression that its peak in terms of cultural penetration was the mid/late '80s and more people jumped off after the shift to more dramatic stories than jumped on.It's possible but I don't know for sure, if a lot of people jumped off when he went dramatic surely the thing to do would be to shift back because otherwise circulation could drop? Assuming it's true lots of people jumped off between 1995 and 2007 it probably wasn't enough to affect the comic, remember that he'd also need to pay Chuck Ayers.
>>151616562I don't think it was ever enough to make a huge dent. At that point Funky ahd been going for 20+ years and the comic pages can be very conservative so it was something of an institution which probably made it relatively safe in terms of circulation but it's hard to know how many people were actually reading it. There's an NYT article from 2019 about the big Bull Bushka story which mentions that it was, at least at that time, in 350 papers. I found a 2014 article that said it was in 400 papers and a 1999 article that also said it was in 400 papers. I have no idea, however, if that 400 represents a drop in circulation or not and that would put it probably in line with stuff like Luann though well below other big ones like Foob, Cathy, Zits, etc.I would guess it did well enough for him to be comfortably upper middle class but never so well that he was rich, especially because it never had the licensing opportunities that the really big strips got.
>>151615966that makes sense, but there were niche comics that weathered the crash. I dunno, a former gag daily becoming a slice-of-life drama could have found an audience.
>>151614030I think batiuk missed an opportunity here.
>>151617621Susan wasn't in band (I think), so while funny it doesn't really explain him being there Now, what happens to Wally and Becky around I think 1998 (I forget when it happened), THAT would bring him in cause both of them were in band, though I don't know if there's a way to shoop him in the comic
>>151617754nonsense, there's never enough dinkle.
>>151613594>>151613718Kind of wondering what one word that Susan would use in a poem would set off all this controversy
>>151613634Not sure who the rest of the group at that table are but it's hard to see any of the four there voting against the magazine. Monroe is definitely in favor of keeping it >>151613770, Sadie is actually part of it and doesn't hate it by all appearances, and Linda is on good terms with Les so I don't see her going along with something that could get him fired. Nate seems unlikely as well since it's actually students applying themselves for once.At most, I could see Nate being irritated at just having to deal with this in the first place but it seems more likely that he'd just vote with the majority in that case.
>>151614217Wally is a hipster before his time
>>151614617There's a monster at the end of this football field
>>151614760Pearl Jam actually did try to fight Ticketmaster over ticket prices in the mid-90s (and lost, horribly), so that's probably what's getting referenced here
>>151614561See, that third strip is exactly what I was talking about with how well Mary Ellen could have fit into this era. Just make her the girl's coach that is in a one-sided "rivalry" with Stropp since her teams actually win.
>>151618729I'd say Nate and Linda would go against it out of a simple desire to not deal with all this shit. That or there are more people we just don't see.
>>151613125I know it’s one-sided but you just know today people would bitch about this being inappropriate.
>>151614377>>151615860Funky and Crazy would be like 25 in the present of 1995 taking in the 1988 graduation into accountIf they're like 10 years old in 1984 (and allowing for some reason a comic shop would look the way and stock Mirage TMNT on a spinner rack) then they were born 1974 and graduated in 1992, then the timeskip starts in 1996 instead
>>151612866bumping
>>151613942Wow, things are getting pretty dramatic…
>>151614030Holy shit!
>>151616938There are but I remember how a lot of comic strip cartoonists were reluctant to do the webcomic thing because they'd be giving up money. I imagine a similar situation with going into comic books, especially a post-crash world. Post-crash comic book work probably doesn't pay as well as having a regular comic strip in the 90s unless you're like a really, really big name or have a number of successes under your belt. For some it might be easy, like Frank Cho, because he's not only a comic book guy through and through, his style works in mainstream comic books and not just in his comic strip. But that just reminded me he hasn't done Liberty Meadows stuff in a long time.Also since Batiuk knows a lot of people in the comic book industry he likely heard about how bad things had gotten through them and that would make him less likely to jump in. Remember, he's like in his late 40s, early 50s during the 90s and it didn't seem like readership was severely dwindling or anything, so I could see why he wouldn't want to rock the boat.
>>151614924I think looking back the class with Wally, Becky, Susan, Sadie, Monroe, Mickey is probably the strongest of the bunch, based on reading these and what I remembered reading of the other comics years ago. I think with a little push they could be even better characters.
>>151621257I think they're all generally fine with the exception of Monroe. Mickey suffers the fate of most other high school characters and mostly disappears once she graduates.
>>151612866Bumpy Winkerbean.
Batiuk has been self-inserting in Crankshaft an awful lot lately. Relating how he got started in the business and what a joy it's been to be able to do these comics for all these years.>>151615713 says he's in his late 70s.I have a theory Crankshaft will be ending at the end of this year.Anybody?
>>151621734He'll be 79 in April and if he actually does retire I imagine it'll be in 2027 when Crankshaft hits is 40th anniversary and he'll be 80. He could do it until he's dead or pass it off to someone but I don't see either working. Supposedly he ended Funky because Ayers wanted to retire and he didn't want to go through the process of finding a new artist again so I can't imagine he's the type who'd pass it off. But going until he hits another anniversary only a year away would make sense to me. But who knows?
>>151621449I mean like as a whole as well as individuals. Monroe is the least developed, but he stands out against this crowd because of that>Wally goes from nervous looking kid to as someone pointed out, a Les/Funky hybrid, to saving Les and Lisa's lives to fucking up his and Becky's life which prompts him to enlist out of guilt, and that's just focusing on the high school part.>Becky is a little underdeveloped so far in the comics here other than having a controlling mother who's an antagonist for Dinkle, but we do see way more focus of her after high school/the accident during the rest of Act 2>Susan is basically unnoticed by everyone which leads to her fixation on Les because he is encouraging to her, but this leads her almost to tragedy. We also find later that because Sadie was there for her if I remember right she and her friends get Susan a makeover, and she eventually gets a boyfriend, but an abusive one>Sadie as much as Batiuk regrets creating her has storyarcs that show her gradually going form Cindy's worst nightmare/clone to being a better person/getting out from under the shadow of her sister.>Mickey is the best football player on the Westview team and she's Sadie's friend. As Mickey is Linda's daughter there really should've been more that came up since Linda hooked up with Bull, and yeah she really should've shown up more in Act 3; I think she only had like one appearance
It's not particularly well drawn.It's not particularly well plotted.It's not particularly engaging.It's not particularly funny.It just a little bit of those. The only appeal I can possibly see is that the characters got old along with the readership; I bet at some point some of the readers just were reading out of spite to outlast the damn strip.
>>151621888Median MediocrebeanPersonally I find it chuckle worthy, it’s a slice-of-life strip that like most slice-of-life stuff relies upon the reader having some connection to it in order to have a key to its meaning.
Also I forgot to address this post in one of the previous threads:>>151397255 >By the way, I don't for a second believe the "Byrne agreed to fill in for me when I couldn't draw because of injury" story that Batiuk tells because he'd stopped drawing the strip back in 1994 when Ayers took over that. He'd only been inking/doing corrections and said that on Byrne's time he was also inking/doing corrections so nothing changed. Byrne's time also lines up exactly with the big soap operatic story where Wally returns. So my assumption is that Batiuk and Byrne had become buddies, Batiuk gets the idea for the Wally story and asks Byrne if he'd be willing to draw it feeling his style would work for a story like that and help signal the subsequent chage in tone the strip undergoes and Byrne agreed.Byrne does briefly talk about Funky in the Modern Masters John Byrne book. He says that he's known Batiuk for a long time, and from what Byrne says it was as far back as that Spectacular Spider-Man comic that Byrne drew that had Crazy Harry cameo. Batiuk contacted him on that and they became friends.Byrne said about the storyarc he worked on:"...he had this one particular story that he wanted to have a certain kind of look. He was looking to take the strip to another place in terms of its look, and he decided that inking me for ten weeks might be the way to get it there."
>>151616823>I would guess it did well enough for him to be comfortably upper middle class but never so well that he was rich, especially because it never had the licensing opportunities that the really big strips got.I think like at most there was thishttps://dinkles.com/which has been going on 38 years And then smaller stuff like that Morning Funnies cereal
>>151621854She gets a few around the time Bull is forced to retire and other events which is more than Jinx gets after graduating. I think Jinx only ever shows up at the funeral, she doesn't even make the big final crowd shot.
>>151612908Kek
>>151612949Another good week, I’m glad act II can still give us some fun strips
>>151612949Another good week, glad to see the comic still has it (for now?)
>>151621888I've been enjoying it more than I thought I would. maybe it's because we've not hit the point of no return yet, but the serious arcs aren't as bad as you people made it out to be. susan's suicide was pretty ok, tasteful even.
>>151622429Likewise, they’re certainly the best threads we’ve had here for a while.
Saving bump
>>151614464That is a nice bit of art.
>>151613034How long are they going to run the drug dog gag for?
>>151622429Susan's suicide is probably the best of the serious stories he ever did.
>>151625016It being a Sunday, I assume it was colored in the actual paper but not the original version. Honestly I'm fine with that because I think color would likely make that look a lot shitier. It benefits a lot from black and white and gray screentones.
