It’s quiet around here…TOO quiet. I was poking around on the Batom Comics interactive comic book cover spinner rack (if you haven’t checked that out yet, shame on you), and I happened across this old gem, which I do not remember at all. This is “Fantastic Voyage”, from 1966. The guy comes up with a brilliant premise, like a scuba cop, and couldn’t think of a single original thing for him to do. Rip Tide should have been busting illegal dumpers, thwarting pirates and defusing old WWII mines, not ripping off old Raquel Welch flicks. Boo.
Son of Stuck Funky 
By the way if you all saw a post go up other than this post tonight that was a mistake and you saw nothing.
LOL I did that so many times.
I used this cover for my TimeMop-Rip Tide team-up. Had to do quite a bit of fixing.
I love that one. I can’t imagine how much time it must have taken you to get it just right.
Like his one other brilliant Act III idea (Buddy the dog), “Rip Tide” was just bursting with potential. And, like with Buddy, he squandered it faster than you could say “Denny McClain”. Look it up.
He ripped off “Fantastic Voyage”, so maybe I’ll run with the “Rip Tide” premise and create my own scuba cop. He could be Lo Tide, the Asian scuba cop, or Hy Tide, the Orthodox Jewish scuba cop. Same basic premise, though. All those underwater crimes going totally unsolved.
“Hi and Lois Tide–They’re 90 years old and washed up–IN DANGER!”
“HI TIDE! There is trouble ahead with those trained KILLER WHALES!”
“Oh, Lois Tide. I need to golf and hang out with our alcoholic neighbor, Blitzed Tide. You handle this. And do the laundry after you defeat the monsters. DON’T TOUCH MY COMICS!”
And the worst of it is that he has no idea that there was any potential to begin with.
I still want to see the TV show Jet Ski Cops.This is a real thing.
There were exactly three good things about the “Fantastic Voyage” movie. Two of them belonged to Raquel Welch (insert rim shot here). The third was the novelization by Isaac Asimov, which actually made the rather dumb movie make some sense. F’rinstance, Asimov was careful to get the several hundred tons of nuclear powered submarine out of the patient’s body before the “miniaturization” ray wore off, while the movie left it dissolving inside a white blood cell in his brain. “Well, we removed the blood clot in his brain, but he’s gonna have one hell of a headache when what’s left of the submarine returns to full size…”
Along these lines (good authors being hired to make sense of messed-up sci-fi movies), Theodore Sturgeon was hired back in the ’60s to do a similar novelization of Irwin Allen’s “Voyage to the Bottom” flick, in which (among other things) the Van Allen radiation belts “caught fire.” He tried hard, turning the “flaming sky” gimmick into a reaction in the ozone layer triggered by cosmic rays affecting the radiation belts, but it was much less convincing than Asimov’s “Fantastic Voyage” novel.
Alan Dean Foster got the unenviable task of writing a paperback novel from Disney’s disaster “The Black Hole.” The movie ends with the heroes flying a space ship through a black hole, which happens to contain hell and devils and angels, before eventually returning to the normal world. If I recall correctly (it’s been years and I no longer have the book), Foster went with a scientifically correct ending. In other words, “squish.”
Asimov’s version was serialized in (IIRC) The Saturday Evening Post. I was living in my university dorm, and we used to line up to read the copy that the dorm subscribed to. Good story–except for Ms Welch, it was much better than the film.
8/6 Crankshaft: it doesn’t rise to the level of
‘Easter Egg Island’ does it?
…
WAHT?
I thought it was about Easter Eggs, like you get in modern movies! But it’s Easter ISLAND, and instead of giant heads it’s giant EGGS okay, Tom made a joke that went over my giant monolithic rock-solid head. For a whole week.
No. NO, I AM NOT PROUD OF MYSELF RIGHT NOW. Maybe I’m too dumb for Marvin jokes now!
I have opinions on today’s CS, but you’ll have to wait for the chute to clear. And my head.
Oh dear Splut,
We do love you!
WOW, am I not commenting on GC about 8/6.
Tom…are you okay? There’s “nostalgia”and there’s whatever your strips are lately. You know it’s not 1966 still, right? This is the thing that begins the talks about “Look, Dad, me and the wife have been talking to your grandkids about a very nice place for you to live!”
I’m not being mean, this is just getting weird. If someone just starts babbling obsessively about something they never cared about before, say comic books, or babbling about the Good old Days or just…whatever is happening today, I’ll be kind and not say “psychotic break,” but…
I watched my beloved sharp-as-a-tack Scots Nana lose to Alzheimers, and it was not fun. It was not fun. I know I’m the snarky asshole, but this (like his flippant look-at-ME! Not HER! treatment of cancer), this is kinda upsetting. I know it’s not about dementia, but the ones coming down with it never know.
WELL THAT WAS A FUN POST!
Umm…Jeez, let’s hope tomorrow Jff doesn’t go “OH, BOY! Yellow matter custard! Glad I brought my spoon!”
“Crankshaft” Sunday August 6th.
Like a bad penny, Jeff Murdoch keeps turning up.
In the most-punchable face sweepstakes, Jeff Murdoch is hurtling up the charts into Les Moore territory.
One good wallop, that’s all I ask for.
If we do a Cranky awards for 2023, I know who will be replacing Les Moore for the Backpfeifengesicht.
Eve,
You get “Joke of the Day”!
At least he hit the ground running when making an author-insert into the new main character. It took years to shove Dick Facey in our faces.
Also, we get reminded of the other reason Stan Lee is an ambiguous figure. He told an unimaginative clod to use his imagination!
This is why Batty talks a lot about comic books, he obviously cannot create them.
I think, in reality, scuba cops mostly just look for discarded evidence/corpses in whatever deep water is local.
I never wanted Rip Tide to be about a guy who scuba dives for the cops, I wanted him to be just like a regular cop, but underwater. Imagine Rip Tide hiding next to a shipwreck, waiting for speeding boats to go by, then popping up and writing them a ticket. Stuff like that.
D’oh! Don’t you hate it when you read the whole discussion, then compose a time-consuming comment you think is clever, only to refresh the page later to discover somebody beat you to the punch by almost an hour?
Sorry about that, Epicus.
Oh, like a scuba detective. Well, that makes a heck of a lot more sense.
The whole concept of a scuba cop is odd to me. Is Rip Tide part of a squad or does he work alone? Does he have a dispatcher? Is there a scuba cop police station? Are there underwater holding cells (tanks) in the scuba cop police station?
What kind of cases does Rip Tide handle? Does he break up underwater drug rings? Answer calls for domestic disputes between aquatic life forms? Robbery and murder investigations? Between whom?
Charlie Tuna: Jabberjaw ate my brother. He’s a cold-blooded murderer!
Jabberjaw: I’m a shark and I have to eat fish to survive! Woo-woo-woo!!
Rip Tide: Save it for Scuba Court! (slaps on the fin cuffs and escorts Jabber jaw into the scuba police car.)
Ok, I’m getting silly, but there are certain other limitations. Scuba cops would be limited of what they could do by the amount of air in their tanks.
Rip Tide: Don’t go anywhere, you pirates. I’ll be back. I have to get more air.
How can a scuba cop defend themselves with only a one-shot spear gun and the knife strapped to their thigh?
I also had a mental image of Rip Tide holding a radar gun and ticketing speeding submarines. Speeding fish?
I’d like to see Rip Tide pull over a U.S. Navy submarine.
Rip Tide: License and registration, please.
You do realize the reason the potential of “Scuba Cop” is squandered, right? It’s because it’s not about the scuba cop. It’s really about the unbridled hilarity of the name “Rip Tide.” The scuba cop stuff is just an afterthought.
TB does this a lot. Gets a very childish, shopworn idea, thinks it’s clever, thinks it’s new, and runs with it. And runs and runs.
I used to wonder why Batty didn’t self-publish his own comic books. He has the time, he doesn’t need the income, but the problem is, he just can’t write an interesting story. ( I can’t either.)
He hates technology and the modern world, yet today there are no gatekeepers, and so artists are free to put their work out there. He should be celebrating this, but instead he just pines for that old spinner rack. Sigh.
At this point, Crankshaft the character is receding rapidly. It’s obvious TB has no editorial oversight, and there’s not a damn thing to prevent him from, say, making Jff into a Walter Mitty-type character, and then writing a bunch of superhero stories for him. “Fantasy stories within a realistic story” is an old and very serviceable trope.
But, as you say, he can’t even write a freakin’ comic cover or even a comic concept that’s not boring, dumb, or clichéd. No, better to blab about what might have been and walk around smugly because you’re “in the know” about the Green Lama. Sheesh.
My assumption is that Ed’s a member of the Screen Actors Guild (having been the title character in his own strip), and is out on strike with all the other A-listers. Jff, Pmm, etc., backfull the strip because they still can’t make the cut for union membership.
IMO it was BY FAR his best Act III silly name/pun. Way better than “Wayback Wendy” or “Doctor Atmos”, that’s for sure.
The nadir, I think, was Hershey Barr and Bubu Zayla.
Okay, I’m going to need ‘Bubu Zayla” explained. Grampa Goog autocorrected it to “vuvuzela,” which…I know what that is, I just don’t get it. She’s Latina, so she must love the Horror Flutophone? Will he have a Maori musician named “Doug E. Ridoo”? Just wait, he will.
And…why is this schoolteacher turned writer of failed books buying a damn mansion? In rust belt Ohio? Is it because he “won” an Oscar? I’ve tried to use the part of my brain that I used to store store important phone numbers in, but it just rejects Funky plots.
Oh. GranGoo also lists this page:
https://sonofstuckfunky.com/2020/06/14/chemical-snore-fare/
Which does not have the name, although the GagaGoogoo link claims it does. Interestingly, that page mentions Rips Farts, Scuba Guy in his Bathtub.
I’m pretty sure the “vuvuzela” pun is the “joke”. (Batiuk’s “first thought, best thought” in action.)
As for the mansion, Les isn’t buying it. He’s visiting Generic Blonde 68-Year-Old Woman (though she’s probably not 68 at this point) and Mason Jarre-Jarre in Hollywood – something to do with the Lisa’s Snory movie – and it’s their mansion. (He wouldn’t have “won” the Oscar yet, since I’m pretty sure this was while the movie still was in pre-production.)
I think you’re right. Rip Tide started and ended with the punny name. That it accidentally hit on a fascinating concept doesn’t register with the man at all. It’s pearls before swine, but the swine is also the oyster!
The same thing happens with FW’s inadvertent story points, like the parent-child conflict between his 60-year-old “kids” and their 90-year-old parents. This has hardly ever been explored in media, but it’s a real phenomenon, and would be a perfect fit for the demographics of the comics page. It’s brought up, and then… nothing. It’s just dropped like a piece of lint.
Crankscheisse, 8/6:
TB needs to stop getting fleeting, half-formed ideas while jogging on the track, and then turning them into strips or whole arcs. The “jogging robot” arc still makes me irrationally annoyed.
Meanwhile, somehow, in defiance of all that is good and holy, he manages to get the lyrics to “Penny Lane” wrong. I suspect he’s a guy who’s not good at listening or paying attention.
There is no “in” in the first line of Penny Lane. Clearly and audibly, it starts: “Penny Lane, there is a barber showing photographs…”
Cloth ears, reverse Midas touch — he wrecks every concept he touches, even concepts that started out as garbage.
Thanks, that threw me off and for a few seconds I was trying to think of which 1930’s song he was singing. Ah well, I hadn’t had my coffee yet.
Eh, it’s not like Batiuk claims he’s such a huge Beatles fan that he’s proud of skipping a final exam to buy one of their albums or anything, right?
I know we’ve discussed this before, GL, and the consensus was: Beatles album, nothin’. Today’s strip proves it.
What band’s album was it, really, assuming it was anything at all?
Gary Puckett and the Union Gap? Paul Revere and the Raiders? Something tells me maybe Simon & Garfunkle. Popular, yet just right for the sensitive soul tossed about by an uncaring world. And associated with New York City. You know, that magical, sophisticated place where Marvel and DC were headquartered.
^^^Garfunkel! But you get the gist.
He probably made up that Beatles album story or maybe he really did buy that album just so he could fit in.
Either way, today’s strip was just crappy, half baked boomer nostalgia.
I’m a big Beatles fan. As a kid, I remember Dr Pepper as “the only rock album everyone’s parents owned.”
I remember the White Album as “the one you used to clean out the twigs and seeds.”
Tom’s smokin’ the seeds, guys.
Probably The Lovin’ Spoonful… TB adapted that tale he’s told so many times about the Beatles album into a Crankshaft flashback story arc where Jeff skips his Kent State exams to go buy a Lovin’ Spoonful record.
BUSTED! I knew he wasn’t cool enough to like any of the later Beatles albums, especially when they were coming out and sounded like nothing else anyone had ever heard. (“Number Nine. Number Nine…”)
I was close with my guesses, wasn’t I? Nothing whatsoever against The Lovin’ Spoonful (or any of the other groups I mentioned), but they seem like “safer” top-40 choices for the guy who doesn’t really get the experimental stuff, yet still wants to seem “with it.” (And in my mind’s ear, I hear him using that exct expression. “Hey, I’m with it. I dig the Lovin’ Spoonful!”)
Look, the strip is terrible because there are too many words. Every panel should have been silent, except the last one where Jff is singing. And that stupid, ugly, black and white panel where Jeff is bending over in a way no human being ever has or will, instead replaced with a very close up of the penny so we can see what it is.
But when your artist just doesn’t give a shit anymore…you probably feel like you need more words to ‘carry’ the ‘strip’
Ha-YUGE improvement, CBH.
And, of course, I think we’d all agree that your comment is universal — that every strip he writes should have a lot fewer words.
And I think most of us agree that his best strips in the last few years have almost always been the wordless ones.
his best strips in the last few years have almost always been the wordless ones.
Like the “Sunshine and Lollipops” stroll through Ohio? And Saint-to-be Summer’s stroll through Ohio? A week each?
I think his best strips have been all the ones he’s done since 1/1/23 in Funky Winkerbean.
Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot “Week to Open a Fucking Envelope Already.”
I do agree that the less of Tom’s it’s-called-writing there is, the better.
Ah, no. I didn’t say all his wordless strips have been his best ones, but that his best ones have been wordless. There’s plenty of wordless dross too, as you mentioned.
TB needs to stop getting fleeting, half-formed ideas while jogging on the track
And what about that? TB runs on the high school track, so all his characters have to too. Having them jog in a park or on a fitness trail – where you’d be much more likely to find a penny – is too much of a mental stretch for him.
Be fair! BJr, who of us doesn’t jog in hot pants with a pocketload of pennies! Maybe it fell out of someone’s sock!
CS 8/7:
WHO IS THIS GUY?! Forget him, what doctor is he seeing for his comic books?!
For the love of gourd, please tell me aren’t going to have a week of Rotnose getting his blackheads sucked out.
Hey, it’s an old guy complaining about his ailments and all the specialists he sees…thank goodness. I look forward to tomorrow’s proctologist joke (Can’t say that on GC; I promised that if Ed came back I’d hold my tongue for 48 hours, and I’m a fairy godfather of my word).
Yeah it’s a premise that has been recycled many times, but it was a solid strip. Sure beats hearing about comic books.
As of 6am your comment remains, but I still think someone will flag it.
It’s an inoffensive strip that’s right in the wheelhouse for the majority of Crankshaft readers. Admittedly, I have an appointment with the ophthalmologist on Friday (If she doesn’t cancel again.)
Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it would sure be nice to read a strip featuring Ed where his rear end isn’t superglued to a Dale Evans booth. I guess Ed’s ‘Bean’s End’ membership has been revoked.
You are true to your word. Even your critics are giving your comment likes. 😂
“It would sure be nice to read a strip featuring Ed where his rear end isn’t superglued to a Dale Evans booth.” So, uh… that was a real monkey’s paw wish, wasn’t it?
OMG. Sometimes you have to be careful about what you wish for.
🤦♀️
At least whining about getting old isn’t jabbering about shiny trash.