Lone Ranger Danger

Ray
April 1, 2013 at 6:50 am
This has GOT to be an April Fools Day joke!!

…and one that I hope you enjoyed! I had a lot of fun “spoofing” a page from the cleveland.com site and posting my fake Tom Batiuk interview. I spent the better part of the past week working on it, and got a little extra bang for the buck by posting a link over at the Comics Curmudgeon.

Maybe my prank was a little too well executed? Some discerning folk were taken in, at least for a little while:

“…by the newspaper“? Nah, that was all me. I even bought the reasonably plausible clevelanddotcom.info domain and redirected it to my hosted page. Other savvy snarkers sensed something was amiss:

Beanie Wanker
April 1, 2013 at 7:24 am

Cleveland.com’s Dick Hertz? Really? Ha…

The scariest part of the whole thing was how easy it was to channel Tom Batiuk. I think I spend wayyyyy too much time contemplating the Funkiverse!

Thanks again everyone, for playing along.

Still shaken after witnessing Alex being bullied in the halls of Westview High, Owen seeks out a trusted, responsible adult: his Dad his Mom his guidance counselor the principal his priest/minister/rabbi the owner of the local comics shop?!?…who is only too ready and willing to offer his useless advice.

35 thoughts on “Lone Ranger Danger”

  2. Of course, if you have to explain what the letters in the acronym stand for, then it ain’t a good acronym. Or, should I say: IAAGA? True to form, however, a series about high school bullying will naturally be discussed all week by peripheral characters with nary a sight of the actual victim. Should be an excellent “powwow” session.

  4. Well, newspaper strip Spiderman would sit on his couch and watch TV, so I guess the Lone Ranger is as least as useful as that.

    Actually, the Lone Ranger would probably start shooting people, I don’t think Batiuk wants to go there.

  5. There’s a Lone Ranger movie coming out this summer, so for once Batiuk is (a year and) three months ahead of the time. I’m sure this is entirely coincidental, though.

  6. It was brilliant, TFH. You were absolutely channelling Batom (and it quite frankly concerns me a little). Pitch-perfect, it’s like you had an Auto-Batom 2000 over there or something.

    Is there some reason DSHJ and Owen aren’t pondering this over a slice or three? This BatWrite guy is really slipping lately. I personally can’t wait for the one where Owen gets the living hell beaten out of him by those special-ed kids with the weird heads, thus winning the heart of his dream girl…..er, woman, that is.

    I imagine Owen’s voice as a cross between Dolph on “The Simpsons” and Alex Winter in the “Bill & Ted” movies with some extra “duh” thrown in. I don’t imagine DSH’s voice at all, as I usually skip the dialog when I see it’s him talking.

  7. I recall the Lenny Bruce “Thank You Masked Man” routine.
    It can be found in animated form on You Tube.

  8. What happened to Alex, even though she is fictional, is unforgivable – for Batiuk. I know from reading today’s strip where this will try to go, but Batiuk always falls short on his “message” stuff.

  9. Aw, man, I missed April Fool’s Day, didn’t I? >_< I did some Mary Worthifying to my own site. Didn't think of linking to it anywhere, but the Slylock artist saw it, so that was fun. XD

    Anyway, that was a great article, TFH! The interview does sound disturbingly natural. You didn't take the cheap route: "it's gonna be so grim and gritty. Just wait 'til Starbuck dies of cancer. The puns! Lol I'm drawing with my feet."

    Where did you get Mr. Hertz's (snicker) picture?

  10. The interview just confirmed my suspicion that TFH is Tom Batiuk.

    Think about it: Batiuk clearly has self-hatred issues. How better to manifest them than by creating a website criticizing his own work?

    SOSF boosts readership of Funky Winkerbean. Don’t most of us follow the strip only because of this site?

    And the lawsuit? Traffic to SOSF probably went through the roof after that.

    It all fits.

  13. Even though I sniffed out the joke from the domain name and the columnist (co-written by Hadda Mae Kapupe), the BatDick voice was amazing. Very clever!

    Owen’s chullo looks like pigtails today. Swiss Miss Instant Cocoa, anyone?

    So THIS is who Chullohead turns to when he needs to speak to an adult??? That’s so very very very very very disturbing. Don’t know who his parents are, or if we’ve even seen them in passing, but they should be slapped with a large fish for their failure as parents. Even if they didn’t let him hang out with this pervy weirdo, they should be smacked around for letting Scruffyboy wear that disgusting smelly hat he’s so obsessed with.

  14. Y’know, I can sadly relate to Cowen’s experiences telling his teenage problems to random comic-obsessed 30-year-olds. But even I wasn’t dumb enough to talk to anything that looked like panel 2. I normally pepper spray those guys without a second thought.

  15. Owen: I don’t know, you fat, greasy fuck, because this is 2013 and The Lone Ranger stopped being culturally relevant before I was even born.

    John: Uh… What Would Smokey Stover Do?

  16. “What would the Lone Ranger do?” said the doughy man-child in the Batman shirt. “Here, I’ll put on this mask, set this videocam to ‘record,’ and show you! Now let’s you just drop them pants. HIOOOOO THILVERRRR!!”

  17. Maybe Alex will stand on a table in the cafeteria during lunch period and tell the other kids to stop picking on the comics geeks or maybe that only works in Canada.

  19. I stand in line TFH. That was outstanding work. Meanwhile, the actual strip just keeps mining new depths. I feel like a rubber necker.

  20. The believability of the clevelanddotcom interview is an interesting reflection on TB.

    S.P. Charles’ theory would be remarkable if true, perhaps even more remarkable, I think, would be if it wasn’t true but everyone who met TB believed it was.

  21. I’m reminded of an old Rat Pack/Amos and Andy routine, but I’ll tweak it: “if all of the women in Westview are as as ugly as your mama, the Lone Ranger is going to be alone for a LONG time”

  22. If our Tom F. Hackett is also Tom Batiuk, then that email TFHackett sent me makes creepy-perfect sense.

    He would be a masterful troll, all while yukking it up as a “writer”.

    However, there’s other evidence that the two Toms are different, and I’m just glad Starbuck Jones ISN’T spinning off.

  24. You know, it is truly fucking sad that the most qualified person in Westview for mentoring young boys is Skunk-Head John.

  25. In Funky Winkerbean, Les is the most hated character in the real world. Would Dead Comic John be second-most hated?

    Funky, Crazy and Bull are pretty much non-entities. The entire female cast also fall into this category.

    Who else really rouses the ire of the comic-reading world? Dinkle? Darrin? Pete?

    I guess my point is, we all expressed our loathing of Les to the degree that he’s not featured very often any more–whereas Dead Comic Book John seems to show up all the time. Would this be Tom Batiuk’s revenge?

  27. @ S.P. Charles… No me thinks that you are the real Tom Batiuk clone among us!
    Your attempt at diverting attention is as affective as dropping a story arch.

  28. Well what does the student handbook say about bullying? is it forbidden? Well if it is then that should be it! If it is not mentioned then it is not allowed. So arc solved.

    Easy.

    Peasy.

  29. I too have noticed that we haven’t see much of Les these days. My guess is, that not for the first time, Batuik has plotted himself into a corner. or rather the plot lines that come from Les’s marrying Cayla – dealing with In laws – the daughters, the evolving relationship between Les and Cayla – and being married takes work so you’re bound to have adjustments to make, all of which Batiuk has little or no intrest in dealing – in that in most of these plotlines Les would have to grow up a bit and be less of a douchebag in the end – so we have only see the yellow shirted one where he can be a douchebag – with his students –

  30. Tom: Nobody goes to direct market comic store owners for advice on moral agency. And while we’re on the subject, REAL online fans of newspaper comic strips don’t say things like “this new arc has potential, stop spreading dung on it!”

    Tom: Teens haven’t been regulars at direct market comic shops since the 90s. Over TWO DECADES AGO.

    Tom: You’re not fooling anyone with this “Alex” thing. She is -not- a student at Westview, much less a peer of Cody and Owen. Back to limbo with her.

  31. Beckoning: I present my most hated FW characters, win, place and show…

    1. Les, obviously. The Secratariat of despised comic strip characters. Hell, of fictional characters…period.

    2. Lisa. If you don’t loathe and detest Lisa, you need to read a few older FW’s to get caught up to speed. If Les didn’t exist she’d be an EASY #1…the sickly sweet wholesome saintly goodness, the nauseating, endless melodrama, the way she came along and took a big smelly dump all over the strip…words cannot adequately describe how much I hate Lisa, she can NEVER be dead enough for me.

    3. Summer. The grit, the girlish squeals of glee, the forced, unrealistic contrast between her and her clod of an old man, the haircut…Summer always makes me cringe in disgust.

    DSH is up there, but as awful as he is he’s in no way comparable to any of the Moores hate-wise IMO.

  32. Oh no! Server problems ate my comment. Here goes:

    It’s a bad pun on “What Would Jesus Do”, which is pretty dated in and of itself.
    The absence of Jesus, of course, is not surprising: the existence of Jesus is generally good. But this is the Funkiverse. We can’t have that.

  33. @Epicus – yeah, I thought of those two as well, but they are rarely seen these days…especially Lisa, who made a cameo appearance in the Mount Kilimanjaro arc WHICH INFURIATED ME BUT LET THAT PASS.

    Summer hasn’t been in evidence much either. Went to college, told her dad “I hate being seen with you” and witnessed Cayla beating the crap out of Les, but otherwise Consigned.

    DCBHJohn, on the other hand, shows up seemingly all the time to lecture people on this and that. He seems to be morphing into another author avatar.

  34. Merry Pookster, that’s a terrible accusation. And as I always say, accusations must be earned.

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