Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis for December 27, 2023

Tom Batiuk – Do you think you can photoshop Crankshaft to appear in this strip somewhere? Maybe wearing a fake shark fin and swimming in the around in the background or whatever. Something. Anything.

Where’s Crankshaft?

“Say, Holly, could Photoshop make me look a bit less like a Metalunan?”

“If it could, why doesn’t it make Mopey Pete look less like a Mutant?”

…Says Davis as he C&Ps. Didn’t Montoni’s open yesterday? Tom’s retconning already.

“I’m supposed to believe that our old customers just gave this stuff to them? For free? Our customers? The people who always ordered the cheapest dish on the menu, then sat around all day, enjoying the heater in the winter and the air conditioning in summer, and preventing other customers from sitting down to do business?

Will 2024 start off with a re-naming of this strip to “Funky and His Pals”?

This is a curiosity question, not meant snarkily even though it sounds snarky. Do you guys hang out in comment sections of comics you like?

Maybe Batiuk could photoshop Pete so he doesn’t look so mopey..

Photoshop, duh, I always thought the word was photochop.

“I can’t believe I found a sucker to buy that dump!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!”

People retired in Florida are always shown sitting on the beach. They don’t do anything else.

Highly unlikely Funky knows how to photoshop

Funkshaft continues

“I guess so. Crazy looks like an old lady. A crazy old lady.”

Too bad all those generous souls are now trapped in the restaurant due to the raging blizzard being depicted. Since it snows nonstop in this world until March, they’re in trouble. Well at least they can eat pizza. Oh, wait, the owners have no idea how to cook or operate the place. How soon until the cannibalism starts?

maybe batituk wants to do this pizza story as long as a phantom story and it might be interesting in in the bandor tongue

Not gonna snark today. The strip was actually kinda sweet.

For much of Funky Winkerbean’s later run, it seemed Batiuk hated the title character, perhaps because he was the only one who seemed to have actually moved beyond high school and comic books. Funky ran a business and struggled with adult problems like divorce, alcoholism and aging, while just about everybody else remained in a somewhat juvenile world that revolved around the high school (Les, Becky, Bull, Dinkle, to name a few) or comics (Pete, Darrin, John, Masoné, Cindy, etc.). If anything in the strip was actually the “quarter-inch from reality” that Batiuk bragged about, it was Funky’s life. And, for this, Batiuk seemed to be constantly punishing the character, ultimately with what looked like a business failure that forced him to auction off the precious “memorabilia” and shutter the place just before Christmas.

Now we find Funky and Holly relaxing on the Florida coast, which makes me think they in fact did pretty well in the end. Maybe they closed the business so they could retire (though the strip gave us little-to-nothing to foreshadow this). Looks like they are financially OK, able to afford a home on the coast (and the necessary hurricane insurance) and in good enough health to enjoy it. And, best of all, they have escaped the Westview-Centerville Black Hole Of Misery. It makes me hope this is the last time we will see them, because (unlike virtually everyone else in the Funkyverse) they look happy. Good for them.

It’s real Funky.

There has been a change in the rankings. Through the 27 strips of December: Mopey Pete has been in 21 of them; Minty has been in 20; Funky has been in 11; Lil has been in 10; and Crankshaft has been in 9 (and only spoke in 5). Hannah is still at 7 (although for a moment I almost added more because I thought Jessica was her—all the generic blondes are hard to keep straight—it was only after I realized Dorkin was present too that I figured out who she was).

The change that Lil used to trail Crankshaft, but she has now passed him for number of appearances.

They like what they do here so much why would they hang out anywhere else?

Darin Fairgood and Mindy Murdoch worked at Montoni when they were teenagers

I still can’t believe that Funky married the cheerleader…

Ain’t it nice to stay in touch!!!!1

Yes, Funky, they can do some amazing things in Photoshop, but in this case, it’s reality.