Crisis on Infinite Funkyrths
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Crankshaft, 11/4/26
I don’t talk about it very much, but ever since Funky Winkerbean triumphantly (?) concluded, Crankshaft has been afflicted by thinly veiled authorial insert character Batton Thomas, creator of the comic strips 3 O’Clock High (thinly veiled Funky Winkerbean) and The Wrinkles (thinly veiled Crankshaft). Except the characters in Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean look more or less like people, while the characters in 3 O’Clock High and The Wrinkles are these grotesque, large-eared parodies of humanity, symbolizing the fact that they are a narrative layer further away from our real world. But now they’ve escaped containment! And they walk among their Funkyverse counterparts! What happens when Lovable 3 O’Clock High band director character [NAME NOT INTERESTING ENOUGH TO FIND] interacts with his obvious model, Harry Dinkle? Will it tear a hole in the fabric of reality and allow them to enter our universe, in a crossover event that will greatly amuse some unknowable-to-us observers in yet another, more “real” universe? I hope not! I don’t want to talk to any of these guys! What if they read all the mean stuff I’ve written about them on my blog?
Herb and Jamaal, 11/4/26
I was going to try to parse the “punchline” here and try to figure out if it represented a joke or even wordplay of any kind, but then I realized that the dialogue in the first panel is in a thought balloon, which I guess means that this isn’t Herb being sullen about one of his loudmouth customers, it’s him ruminating at random, possibly after experiencing a minor cerebrovascular event, so I don’t feel obligated.
Mary Worth, 11/4/26
I know “suspenseful” is not a term we usually use about Mary Worth plots, but I’m genuinely unsure if where she’s going with this is “Nelly is such an unhappy soul, nothing I could do or say would be worse punishment than just living with herself” or “Nelly could lash out and hurt anyone at any time, and that’s why we have to put her down like a rabid dog.”
33 replies to “Crisis on Infinite Funkyrths”
Any Minnesota mudges going to see Stephan Pastis at Magers & Quinn November 15? I went when he was there a few years’ ago. Magers & Quinn is a great store, but it’s pretty crammed, so it’s probably best to get there early. I may make it – depends on the weather and if the streets/sidewalks are too slippery for me to walk on. If I make it and you see a guy with a cane and a baseball hat with the MLB logo on it, please say hi.
Some people take their unhappiness out on others by gossip. Others, by force-feeding them the world’s worst muffins. Who’s to say which is better? Was going to say “which is healthier” but, that is definitely not the muffins.
Crankshaft: No-one in the Funkyverse has ever got high, at 3 o’ clock or any other time.
H&J: If you read this strip backwards, Memento-style, it actually makes more sense.
Crankshaft:
“Think pretty highly of yourself, don’t you?”
“Well, yes, but not nearly as highly as the commenters on our strip think of themselves!”
MW: “Maybe some other unfortunate victim like Wilbur. Wait, unfortunate and undeserving aren’t mutually exclusive are they?”
Mary Worth:
“Oh, have you seen the muffin hag,
The muffin hag, the muffin hag —
Have you seen the muffin hag
Who lives on Dreary Lane?”
— Traditional children’s nursery rhyme (adapted)
Crankshaft-Middle of the week and already he’s out of ideas.
Blondie: That stink line tells me all I need to know about where exactly the mailman has been carrying this letter for Dagwood.
DT: The real mystery here is, with the pinhead nurse all murderized, who is going to carry the frail husk of Wendell Wodehouse VI around the gothic mansion now? His curiously, let’s call them “insular,” clan appears to be none to fit.
MW: What are we up to now, three dozen muffins? I guess Mary wants to get the balance of arsenic-to-bran just right for Nelly!
Mary Worth:
“If it wasn’t the objective ‘me,’ maybe it’d be the nominative ‘I’ !”
Mary Worth:
Why is Mary grinning coprophagously as she’s ideating “Unhappy people tend to take their unhappiness out on others…” ? What exactly is funny about that disheartening observation about human nature?
MW: Yes, yes, Mary is a perfect saint who can only pity the people who spread malicious rumors about her. We’ve more than established that, so may we please skip ahead to the part where Mary tries to give Nelly a basket of muffins and gets the door slammed in her face? Bonus points if Nelly insults Mary’s baking in the process.
CSh Huh, at first glance I thought that this might be some kind of Haloween story that ran long, but turns out its much stupider.
H&J Bold choice, in the morning following a historically consequential midterm election, to publish a strip that essentially says “your opinion is one among millions, nothing matters in the end!”
MW “But instead, she is the unfortunate victim…” Mary mused, as she took the last batch of ‘Nelly muffins’ out of the oven
MW: Nelly declines the muffins, but takes the opportunity to advise Mary that everyone—but EVERYone at Charterstone—detests Mary’s baked goods, casseroles, and salmon squares and laughs at her behind her back every time she shows up with one of her culinary creations.
Pluggers are fat glutinous slobs #6933. They will consume anything that is put in front of them.
“Mmm Pie” should pretty much be the Pluggers motto.
GT: Oh boy! Gil’s gonna get out the laser gun and fry Borys, just like Lenny’s fantasy in that one episode of the Simpsons!
JP: Yesterday I was confused why Abbey is being so pissy about Neddy wanting to go do something other than mope and loaf around her property, today I’m confused why Neddy is being pissy and sharing Abbey’s word balloon in panel 2. Sophie IS helping! She’s bolstering your case that Thanksgiving doesn’t have to be spent with people you don’t want to be around!
From yesterthread:
@richardf8: On No-Manners’ pardon: If he was ‘pardoned’ on the condition that he be remanded to the custody of one ‘Ignis Vindicta’ who has now been shown to not really exist (oh wow, what a twist, who would have suspected…) then does that mean the pardon was granted under false pretenses and therefore the pardon is null and void?
Crankshaft:
I’m not sure what possibility is sadder: that this strip was inspired by Batiuk actually encountering someone cosplaying as a Funky Winkerbean character, or that he was so sad that that never happened that he had to write it into artistic existence.
Wow, Nelly is living rent free in Mary’s head.
@Charterstone: Dune: On DT – I’m guessing that part of the plot (such as it is) is that one of Wodehouse’s relatives is out to off him and without the nurse he’s now bedridden and no longer a moving target.
C’shaft: I have to imagine BatTom (and TomBat) hears, “Think pretty highly of yourself, don’t you?” multiple times a day.
MW: Oh no, Mary, this absolutely was personal, directed and you specifically and nobody else. And you deserved it.
Only in a world where Academy Award statue-given author Les Moore an author whose readings pack the local book stores would people cosplay as a Funkyverse’s Funkyverse character, further giving credence to my theory that they are all dead and in Funkyhell.
***
Somebody needs to introduce Mary to podcasts so she doesn’t have to be alone with her own boring thoughts.
MW – I love it that Brigman seems to have gone full Roy Lichtenstein on panel 2.
@Maltmash3r: Maybe we’re getting a back-door pilot for Nelly Feneley, a strip about a viciously resentful old maid who as a young woman was forced into a Magdalene laundry for the sin of being independent-minded 1960s Ireland and only permitted to leave in her late middle age in order to care of her overbearing parents in their aged decrepitude. Meanwhile her wastrel brothers drank through any inheritance she might have had, and once they all shuffled off this mortal coil, she was left with nothing but curdled fantasies of the life she could and should have had—that and the joy that comes from inflicting misery on the soft, lazy, ungrateful good-for-nothings of Charterstone, especially that pompous Scot with the hot, young American wife..
DT: Ironically that’s the most expressive Nurse Giraffeneck has looked since this arc started.
Luann: Oh please, like this strip isn’t so gender essentialist it could host a tradwife channel.
Phantom: The Ghost Who’s a Big Fan of West Side Story.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX: And if you don’t make it, should we just say hi to the random guy with an MLB cap and a cane who will look at us like we’re fucked in the head when we address him as “Scratchy?”
(Seriously, I like his strip well enough, but not so much as to cross the river for his autograph, so I’m not likely to be there).
@The Quiet Man: I don’t think pardons work like that, and an extraordinary rendition would have been a better instrument fir the purpose.
IANAL and will happily accept correction from any attorney on this site.
“The muffining will continue until Nelly improves.”
CShaft: You don’t need to look up the name of the 3 O’Clock High Dinkle substitute, Batton Thomas specifies this guy’s imitating Art.
The strip is one grand retirement tour for Batiuk. Remember, he gets paid for doing this.
“Unhappy people tend to take their unhappiness out on others… just like I’m about to take these muffins out of the oven! In that I am slightly miffed about this whole Ian-rumor thing, and the word muffin is kinda like the word miffed, and look, it made sense when I started making these things, but now I’m thinking those herbs I got from Tommy weren’t oregano; maybe I shouldn’t have eaten the first batch all by myself.”
H&J: Or, hear me out here, the first panel thought balloon was supposed to be a word balloon coming from the customer. Yeah, you’re right, nothing worth parsing here.
Catching up on Phantom news, sorry to hear King Features Syndicate is giving Tony DePaul the bum’s rush. To me, he did a fine job with Phantom. Through the years, some of his strips and storylines have been snarkable, but you could tell he was always trying to do right by the character. And many of those strips would come across better in context as part of a collection of some of the storylines (hint to KFS). Wishing him the best.
Herb and Jamaal: “That’s my opinion!” Herb yells at his brain! Quickly followed by, “Oh, thank God, I wasn’t listening!”
@Vulpes: The only pop-culture exposure Funky Winkerbean has ever gotten was as a Parade Float in an episode of The Simpsons
And that was meant to be an insult.
H&J: “And that’s the way I think we should run this country!” Strange phrase for a thought balloon until you realize Herb has a bicameral mind.