CBH here folks!
First of all, much thanks and admiration to Banana Jr 6000 and Epicus for giving me a little reprieve from Wally World. Farm life has gotten busy, and the daunting task of tackling the behemoth of failed potential that is Wally Winkerbean’s homecoming was just a little too much for my brain to speed through. Rest assured there’s a half done deep dive post tucked away in my drafts. A post I intended to go up tonight.
But, last week though… Last week of Crankshaft strips was just SO BAD. I couldn’t let it pass without comment from me. Though all of your excellent comments covered most of this already. I still just had to unburden my own opinion onto the pile. Like a dumpster of anger we all need to keep our minds uncluttered.
For about half a strip, I had one of my patented ‘CBH finds this relatable’ moments. Because I was flashing back to the first time my dear mother entered my comic book store of choice and wandered around. The baffled shock and awe on her face as she stared at the walls and walls of nerd tat, while bombastic anime music blared in the background.
But Pam has been married to Jeff for DECADES. They are GRANDPARENTS. His love of comics is something she’s been established as not sharing or even understanding, but damn girl has never been in a comic book store before? Looking for a present?
And there’s no plot. And the only joke is WOMEN DON’T BE GETTING COMICS. Which is just so tired and dumb. And Batiuk himself has tried to buck it on rare occasions, paying weak lip service to females sharing nerdy interests. But he can’t be consistent with it. There has to be a Cathy/Mother clone looking baffled, because part of Batiuk’s identity is built not only on his love of comic books, but also his love of comic books in face of a woman’s confusion. It’s the nerdy male version of a tramp stamp to get daddy’s attention.
Batiuk doesn’t just need to love comic books. He needs other, very specific, people to hate them. Because the Woody Allenesque misfit persona of himself he aspires to is dependent on being misunderstood.
Wally will return, after these comments…
PS I was able to find the statue from Tuesday’s strip. So here ya go [o]!
Son of Stuck Funky 
What is Batiuk’s fascination with the omnibus editions? These story arcs with Jeff almost seem to be advertisements. Does Batiuk have some monetary investment in them?
The only thing missing from the strips is the website where you can buy them.
“Did you know you can buy lots of Golden and Silver Age comics reprinted in these nice hardcover omnibus editions? Pretty great, right? And you know what else you can get in that form? Lisa’s Story! Since you love reading those collected editions, you’ll surely love the collected edition of my work, right? R-right…? Uh, anyway, buy my books, on sale… um… I dunno, somewhere, probably, I hope, Kent State won’t tell me where they sell them. They claim that they haven’t ever actually sold any, but, c’mon. Anyway, buy my book. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE BUY IT, MY MORTGAGE IS DUE AND I’LL HAVE TO SELL MY COPY OF FLASH #140, THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF HEAT WAVE.”
(I probably shouldn’t be posting after I’ve taken my nighttime medications.)
Oh man, that cancer omnibus is still flying off the shelves…and into the dumpster out back.
I remember visiting a local book store not far from Kent State and the single copy of Lisa’s (Les’) Story was dusty and the cover was sun bleached.
I laughed way too hard at both paragraphs of your comment, Rusty. Thanks for the morning guffaws.
Not to mention twelve volumes of The Complete Funky Winkerbean. I suspect you have nailed the reason for Batty’s preoccupation with omnibus editions.
As I’ve written before, I’m sure Batty’s books would sell better if he offered a paperback option. Who wants to pay $40+ for a three-year collection of Funky Winkerbean strips? A paperback would slash the price almost in half. So many people just don’t understand marketing.
At first glance, I thought you typed “nightmare medications”. 😬
Given that the nighttime medications include Ambien (chronic insomnia SUCKS)… “nightmare medications” is a lot closer to the truth than I’d like…
Oh man, Ambien always prevented me from dreaming. I had to really limit my usage of it to times when I fly overseas and need it to combat jet lag.
It was very difficult to wean myself off of this drug and so I am careful about using it too much. Fortunately, I have developed good sleep habits. Now I only have bad insomnia very infrequently.
I never got the nighttime eating side effect but a colleague at work said she once woke up surrounded by a torn up bag of chips and crumbs all over her bed.
Dammit, if paperback editions have been good enough for Shulz, Breathed, Watterson, and countless runs of great comic books past and present, then why the hell aren’t they enough for Bats?
I think some of you are onto something when you suggest that the shilling of the Golden Age hardbacks is a sidelong shill for Les’ Story.
We have a whole shelf of modern and classic DC and Marvel color reprints in paperback. They make for far more comfortable reading than a 2-lb paperback.
I think the appeal of omnibus editions is that you can get an entire series of comic books collected in one volume, and don’t have to worry about preserving condition. That makes a perfect solution to Jeff’s problem: he can have his comic books back, and not have to worry about Crankshaft damaging them.
It’d be nice if the story told us this, because it makes no sense otherwise. But Tom Batiuk thinks everyone else sees the world exactly the same way he does, and that comic book minutiae like this is self-evident.
That makes sense. When Tommy is reading comic books on the floor with his hot chocolate and cookies, he won’t have to get up as often to find something else to read.
Tom Batiuk’s writing style makes me wonder if he ever thinks of the reader at all. He seems to be writing for an audience of one. Himself.
It didn’t used to be this way in Act I. Sure there were maybe a couple of brief references to comic books, but nothing like the garbage today.
Batty writes for self glorification, and now that he knows he won’t be getting that Pulitzer, he just pushes comic books.
Thanks, CBH! Great strips! A bit ruined by having identifiable punchlines. Always remember: “If you ain’t got one, just yell PIGEON!”
My favorite comics-loving niece was with me and my now-90 year old Mom. Niece mentioned she was thinking about taking voice acting lessons. I said that there’s been talk about restarting the Batman: TAS show. “Maybe you could voice Harley Quinn opposite Mark Hamill!”
She said “I couldn’t be any worse than the current Harley! She doesn’t even do the Noo Yawk accent!” I said “Mistah Jay” and she said “See, you do it better than her!”
Mom said “I have no idea what you two are talking about.”
I said “Now you know how we feel when everyone else in the family talks about sports!”
Do we hate sports? We–okay, personally, we think they’re boring. Do we think differently of or demean those that do like sports? No. That makes no sense.
That CS week was like trying to get someone into D&D or Catan while saying “I suppose your board game tastes ended at Candyland. sniff.” It’s okay to not like something someone else is into. It’s not okay to act like they’re inferior to you for them not being into your obsessions.
I remember that period between high school into college when people would get So Mad that you didn’t love Lynyrd Skynyrd or whatever, but instead liked Talking Heads and Wire. Am I forcing you to listen to it? Then why do you care? If you’re against gay marriage, then don’t marry a gay! Seems pretty easy!
Although my niece is wrong. DC isn’t as good as Marvel. Oh no, now I can only talk to her condescendingly from Mount Olympus!
What is that in the Batman figure’s shot? A graveyard? Not kidding, my first thought was “Bruce, hold it in, you’ve got more comfortable toilets at home.”
My first thought was ‘Wow, Bruce has really been skipping leg day.’ I’m dubious those toothpicks could support that torso.
“Because I was flashing back to the first time my dear mother entered my comic book store of choice and wandered around. The baffled shock and awe on her face as she stared at the walls and walls of nerd tat, while bombastic anime music blared in the background.”
December, 1982. My mom wanted to get me a gift certificate from my favorite record shop, but they didn’t offer those. So she asked the proprietor for some advice. She ended up buying me Venom’s “Black Metal” (autographed by the band), Witchfinder General’s “Death Penalty” (the pic disc, go check out that cover right now), and an Iron Maiden “Number Of The Beast” pic disc. As Christmas gifts. My mother was fearless. I was awe stricken. She had no idea what any of them were, to her, music was just music.
“Batiuk doesn’t just need to love comic books. He needs other, very specific, people to hate them.”
Yes. And he doesn’t love everything about comic books, oh my heaven’s no. He likes a very specific form of comic book nerddom. He shuns “new” comic books, he shuns collecting them, and he shuns anyone who likes or does either. He only likes the comic books of his youth, which he bought and read under very specific circumstances. In fact, sometimes he doesn’t really seem to like “comic books” very much at all, as he’s constantly mocking the whole subculture there. It’s really odd, and it grew tiresome decades ago.
I’ve said many times what neurological condition I think Tom Batiuk has. His behavior just proves it more and more.
I’m gonna put forth a bold assertion, and I welcome contrary viewpoints.
I think TB doesn’t even like “comics” or “comic books” or even “comic books from 1960-1975.” I think his interests are far more narrow, but it sounds better to him, and, he thinks, to others, to call himself a “comic fan” and defender of the medium.
Evidence: He was in college from 1965-1969, if my timeline is correct. During that time, the underground comics scene was exploding. Yet he has never once mentioned (to my recollection) Zap! comics (Issue 1: Feb 1968) or the work of Robert Crumb, which should have struck any comics fan of the era like a lightning bolt. (It still hits damn hard.) He has never mentioned the guy who actually did win a Pulitzer for comics (Art Spiegelman). Was he even aware of Maus when it was running, or when it was issued in paperback? I have to assume not, or he wouldn’t have crowed about how revolutionary FW was by not being funny. Did he ever notice Raw? Heavy Metal? Love and Rockets?Cerebus? And I could go on and on.
Anyone who actually loved comics would have known about those things and at least been curious. They would have found something outside the DC and Marvel universes that piqued their interest.
Therefore, I conclude: He loved those moments in his childhood, and he loves his nerdy cocoon. But he does not love comics.
This. A thousand times over.
Yeah, it’s like he’s trying to make his narrow little obsession sound more mainstream and acceptable than it really is.
He’s not really into comic books. He’s into his very narrow personal experiences with his very narrow preferences in comic books. And the very narrow subset of topics he’s interested in (covers, splash pages, the fictional “bullpen”, the reaction of females to his obsessive fandom).
It’s the textbook definition of an autistic special interest. It might coincide with a broad hobby, but it’s specific and obsessive to the point of being unrelatable to others.
He likes comic books, but only within the framework of his own nostalgic memories. He’s like Billy Crystal yammering for the millionth time about Mantle and Maris in 1961.
I’ve made similar comments. His interests are so narrow. Radio Ranch was a cultural keystone for him, but he has no interest in, say, Flash Gordon or any other serials, just the one shown as a time filler in his grade school.
Even during his peak comic-reading period, there were plenty of other comics genres that he seems entirely unaware of. (Other than Pete coming up with a cover for a Western). Does he know that Stan Lee wrote romance comics? Does he know that romance comics existed?
Bless your Mom, Epicus! You remind me of being in a record store in the 1970s with my mom, an era where there were pot pipes and paraphernalia in glass cases. My mom called me over and pointed to a bong and asked me what it was for. I have NO IDEA how I knew but told her it was a pipe for smoking marijuana. She replied, “Aha! I found one just like it in the garage and your older brother said it was a musical instrument!”
Well, I’m still being good on Arcamax and GC, so…
8/8/23 Crankshaft: Hahaha, it’s funny because an old man is exposing his junk to a female doctor!
Still beats comic books.
For someone trying to reach out to seniors, Batiuk sure does seem to hold them in contempt.
“Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop snarking on Crankshaft…”
It’s an old joke I’ve seen elsewhere a hundred times. It still beats comic books.
I think it’s Ed’s move. Like Frank Costanza’s “stopping short”. It’s direct, to the point, and you get your answer quickly. When the doctor throws up in her mouth, you know it’s time to skedaddle.
CS 8/8:
“I’m the dermatologist. I assume you’re here for that pimple.”
CBH, this is great. First you had my laughing with your reworked strips, but then you write this: “ It’s the nerdy male version of a tramp stamp to get daddy’s attention.”
You put a smile on my face that’s going to last the day! Chef’s kiss!
Sorry for the typos, my iPad constantly fights me. According to Batty I should be using a typewriter and then mailing this in.
I grew up reading comics, whether it was newspaper comics, Mad or its many imitators, or whatever comic books came into my hands. When I got a bit older, I started reading “underground” comics. Then I married a comics nerd, a fan of the Silver and Bronze Age comics. We used to have about a half dozen titles delivered every month and we both devoured them.
Batty has turned me away from comics more than a thousand Roberta Blackburns marching hand in hand with a thousand Frederic Werthams ever could. He makes the whole thing seem so petty, so pinched, so uptight and full of arcane, rigid rules.
He makes it seem like a nostalgic snapshot of one brief long-ago time, instead of an art form that’s existed since the Bayoux Tapestry — no, since people began to draw on cave walls.
He makes comics seem dead, preserved in amber, instead of alive and evolving.
He’s the worst ad for comic book stores since the Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy.
I loved to read MAD, and to a lesser extent, Cracked. I like satire. Batty will hate me for saying it, but I prefer my comics to be funny. I don’t mind some seriousness here and there, but I like to laugh.
As I have said, the need is to not understand what he looks like to the person baffled by him. He sees a misunderstood and mistreated figure surrounded by the uncaring, hostile and ignorant. We see a colossal bore with a persecution complex.
Harriet, thank you for the detective work! It’s just another piece of how easy that they can make things for themselves by simply taking other existent content and copy&paste it into the strip here. It makes more sense here in context than other times at least, so, eh.
Batman TAS. I was 12 years old when this started. Even by that age, probably fostered by my fondness for golden age cartoons (WW2 Warner and Disney and such), I had a liking for 1940s styling and art deco content. So here’s this cartoon which strove to be non-campy with neo-retro art deco production values in visual and aural content. It quickly became a must-watch series in my life at the time. However, even then, it wasn’t enough to convince me to look more into the original comic series. Between that and the 1989 movie and other cultural osmosis, I guess I felt that I knew what I needed to know about the Batman world.
There was a week of strips in 2022 FW that had Funky and Crazy sitting and watching the show (“how much did this 4K TV cost? 4K amirite? hawhawhaw”) and given the show’s content, I could see TB being fond of it. I prefer TAS to the 60s show. I understand why someone would want to see a show be more like TAS than the 60s show, and be upset when the latter is provided. Despite all of that, there is still yet a lot of disbelief that needs to be suspended when watching TAS or the 1989 movie – there is still a lot of hammy dialogue and childish “comic book” elements to that content. “Heart Of Ice” does plenty of things well, but there’s still an abundance of stilted dialogue and situations which don’t reflect how the real world operates if you analyze that TAS episode (and, by extension, TAS itself) for more than two seconds. The point is that even when comic book content is “done right”, there’s still ultimately an aspect to it being “comic book” content which requires a child-like mentality to accept. Or, at least, this is my understanding of it all. People like Tom Batiuk evidently don’t agree, and cannot understand that concession. Good for him in finding an audience to agree with his worldview and catering to it enough to keep a job.
While I’m here otherwise – that’s another batch of great alternate strips. 08/08’s CS can have him saying “rearrange these molecules, toots”.
TAS often revels in its comic booky-ness, usually with fantastic results. Who doesn’t love “Almost Got ‘Im”?
Knowing TB, though, his favorite episode of TAS is probably “I’ve Got Batman In My Basement”…
bts, those eps, along with Heart of Ice, are my faves. Basement was the one with 3 different versions of Batman, IIRC, from 50s goofy right up to Dark Knight Returns. That would be the exact moment that TB said “Ugh! Post 1965 comics!” and quit watching.
Almost Got ‘Im–that’s the one where the Big Bad Guys all talk about almost killing the Bat, right?
KILLER CROC: “I once hit him with a ROCK!”
(Joker, Penguin, Riddler stare)
Croc, sheepishly: “It was a BIG rock…”
You are correct on “Almost Got ‘Im”, with all of the villains’ almost got ‘im stories coming straight out of comic book silliness (exploding pumpkins, giant pennies, an “aviary of doom”). Killer Croc’s rock line is a classic, more so when the twist at the end of the episode is revealed.
The kids recounting 3 different versions of Batman episode is “Legends of the Dark Knight” from the New Batman Adventures continuation of TAS. A fantastic episode, though the shot at Joel Schumacher seems in poor taste these days.
“Basement” is generally regarded as one of the weakest TAS episodes, despite it introducing Paul Williams’ Penguin, where a couple of 12 year olds save the day while Batman spends much of the episode incapacitated and hiding in their basement.
I’ve given up trying find the full-length version, but Brave & The Bold was a very funny cartoon. Here’s what I think is half of the Mark Hamill one:
Hi, former commenter and long time skulker.
I hope it isn’t permanent but ‘Crankshaft’ has disappeared from the GoComics website! The feature was absent from my daily subscription list. ‘Crankshaft’ isn’t even on the GoComics A-Z list. Did Batyuk yank it?
Oh come on, they wouldn’t–
HOLY SHIT THEY DID.
Crankshaft is gone! Wow.
Is Tom Tom going full Dilbert with a sub-only page? If so–Tom, hope you have a very small sock to put those pennies in!
Batiuk’s identity is built not only on his love of comic books, but also his love of comic books in face of a woman’s confusion. It’s the nerdy male version of a tramp stamp to get daddy’s attention.
This is a great observation. There’s something confrontational about it all, as Batiuk feels a constant need to defend the cultural worth of comic books. Which absolutely no one has questioned since June 19, 1989.
In fact, this is a common theme in the Funkyverse: people needing to protect the things that define them from…. absolutely nothing. Jeff is so concerned about protecting his comic book fandom from his wife, when there’s zero indication she’s ever had any problem with it. (Most wives don’t object to their husbands’ geeky hobbies, considering the much worse things they could be interested in.) It becomes a manifestation of Jeff’s mommy issues.
CC: Donna “needing” to conceal her identity with the Eliminator helmet when playing Defender. No confrontation of any kind was depicted to indicate why this was ever deemed to be a necessity for Donna.
The lack of it in A1 itself can be forgiven in that the character was never originally intended to be Donna, and TB felt it cute to completely retcon Donna to be Eliminator during A2’s run. Yeah OK, but if you’re going to do that, there should be a reason, right? Nope. Donna protected herself from absolutely nothing.
Is anyone else as of 8/8 12:35 PM cst not finding any Crankshaft on GoComics? Did the reversed robe finally tip the scales somewhere?
Oh, my, same here. DON’T TAKE YOUR BALL AND GO HOME IN A HUFF, BATTY!
I hope it’s only some kind of maintenance. Adding Sunday Crankshaft comics to the archive would be nice.
I’m seeing it just fine at 4:07PM EDT.
Wait. I just refreshed the page and now it says “Sorry, but that feature is no longer available.” I assume it will be back, unless Tom was reading the comments and threw a hissy fit?
Just loaded it at 6:02 EST and it’s there.
Huh. 6:19 PM EST and I’m not seeing it. Weird.
Okay, now it’s gone. I went back in my browser history and reloaded it, and it said “That feature is no longer available.”
I looked at the GoComics list A-Z of the comics they carry, and it’s gone from there too.
I think it’s gone. Like gone-gone.
Still on Arcamax, though… for now… did Andrews-McMeel finally get sick of paying for “Crankshaft” and getting “Mommy Issues ‘n’ Komix Follies”?
8:07 EST. “The curse has been temporarily lifted, and that feature is no longer available. You will know we have somehow angered the comics gods if you see it back here tomorrow.”
🤣🤣🤣
10:32 PM EDT, Crankshaft is back up.
Crankshaft is up! Crankshaft goes down. Crankshaft is up! Crankshaft goes down. Crankshaft is up! Crankshaft goes down.
My brother, a premium subscriber, says the daily email of his GoComics titles was about eight hours late this morning, arriving a little after 11:00 AM EDT.
Perhaps, all is not going well with the upgrades planned for September? Uh-oh. I hope they don’t make a “Comics Kingdom” of it.
What’s really odd is that I have comment notifications from some of the Crankshaft strips (i.e., when someone replies to or likes a comment), and the comments show up in my profile, but the strips (and comments) themselves are inaccessible. When they delete comments, the notifications go away and they don’t show up in the profile, so… they must still be there? I guess? I don’t know, this is weird. No idea if it’s happening to any other strips; I haven’t noticed it on anything else I follow, but that doesn’t mean much.
While not the most offensive thing about it, perhaps the most irritating thing about last week’s Crankshaft is how pointless it was. As he usually does these days when he brings them up, TB had nothing to say about comics or women or women and comics together. He simply let the strip wallow in a trite and regressive stereotype for a week and offered no commentary whatsoever.
Here’s some pages from a comic on the subject of women and comics that ran in a 1998 issue of Disney Adventures magazine. The comic features the title character from Disney’s then-airing Saturday morning cartoon series Pepper Ann, who, in the show, was depicted as having an interest in an in-universe comic series called Fuzzy.
In this comic (apparently written by The Walking Dead‘s Scott Gimple), Pepper Ann reads an X-Men pastiche that her younger sister’s best friend leaves at the house. As the comic book ends on a cliffhanger, she seeks out the next issue, leading her to approach the wonderfully-named comic book store Dr. Explodo’s Closet with trepidation.
Perhaps the artist (comic veteran Stephanie Gladden) wanted to prove her geek bonafides to anyone acting like the nerds populating Pepper Ann’s imagination… because those nerds appear to be dead ringers for Evan Dorkin’s Eltingville Club! Also, I laughed at the closed “Just Tamagotchis” store.
Pepper Ann overthinks the situation and does something silly, which is the plot of most of the television series’ episodes (she’s a 7th grader, so that tracks), disguising herself in heavy clothing and lowering her voice to sound like a boy. She tosses off the disguise when she assumes the guys in the store are about to live up to what she imagined them to be after a little girl enters the store to buy a Fuzzy comic.
Well, out of the frying pan and into the fire, I guess… this story subverts the moldy trope of nerds gatekeeping their comics from icky girls with the slightly less moldy trope of nerds being instantly attracted to any girl that shows interest in their nerdy pursuits (sorry Eltingville Club, y’all got nothin’ on 8th grader Craig Bean). Well, at least the girl and the comic shop clerk seem to have their heads on straight.
Is that any better? Compared to last week in Crankshaft, absolutely! This Disney magazine space-filler had a point and refuted an outdated and harmful stereotype, even if it did swap one dumb trope for another. Plus, Stephanie Gladden did a wonderful job mimicking Tom Warburton’s wonderful artwork from the TV show.
Thanks, CBH. As usual, great blog. The only reason I was the first to post a reply was, like a drug addict, I needed a fix. 😂
Bwoeh: Is there a new SoSF post yet? Yes!!! Ahhhhhh.
🥴🥴🥴
What is up with Batty and comic book covers? His Atomik Komix comic books are covers only. We never read anything about content. His ‘Cover Me’ blogs are always “Ooh, pretty cover!” if he writes anything at all.
I wonder what a comic book creator would think, seeing the cover of his work plastered on a Tombatiuk.com blog with no commentary whatsoever.
Comic Book Creator: Well, what do think about the book? Did you even get past the cover? Did you buy it? If not, screw you!
Is the ‘Inedible Pulp’ a hero? A villain? A force of nature like Godzilla?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Like “Rip Tide, Scuba Cop,” the only function of “The Inedible Pulp” is to showcase the ha-ha, oh-my-sides hilarity of the “wordplay.” Bear in mind that he freely admits — he brags — that he came up with “The Inedible Pulp” when he was 10.
My little brother came up with a much better riff. When he was about 5, he used to watch the “Incredible Hulk” TV show. In his innocence, he used to babble about “The Credible Hawk.” I think that’s a much more promising title. But then again, there is no concept that TB can’t miss the point of by a mile, squandering everything potentially interesting in favor of a muscular guy in Spandex delivering a limp social-justice bumpersticker message.
I think the Inedible pulp belongs in Chaotic Neutral
I’ve harped on this before and by cracky I’ll harp on it again.
He has never once, that I’ve seen, explained what he likes about the covers. The furthest he’ll sometimes go is “it makes you want to read the comic.”
But WHY? Now, bear in mind this is a guy who got an art degree from Kent State. Yet somehow he can’t express what he finds neato about the covers. The swooping sense of movement? The expressionistic, off-kilter angles? The tension in the faces of the hero and villain? The ciaroscuro that emphasizes Batman’s loneliness while he watches a bright, lively party at Wayne Mansion? Or maybe just that there’s a gorgeous woman with big ta-tas he’d like to see more of?
Nope, never.
He should be embarrassed, but thanks to the Dunning-Kruger effect, he doesn’t even know enough to be.
I’ve mentioned this video before, but the Angry Video Game Nerd did an art criticism-style review of old video game box art. Unlike Batiuk, you can tell he went to art school. And he has some interesting things to say about each one.
Explaining his “Cover Me” posts is one of the ways he uses his “rearranged my molecules” phrase; real lukewarm way of saying “bro this looked so awesome I *HAD*to buy it!”. And in that respect he seems to think the cover’s picture speaks louder than words whenever he shares it, even when it’s as something as simple as a forward-facing headshot of a Transformer from a “Best of Hot Rod” collection. And even then he isn’t always complimenting them with his series, given the one “Extra” blog post where he ranted about a scratch-off variant cover gimmick.
Also, looking at his recent entries his “Flash Friday” had this nugget of wisdom:
“[…] for the second issue in a row, the Flash cover contains a scene that has not a single thing to do with the story inside. It flies in the face of why there are illustrated covers on comic books in the first place. This seems to point to a scheduling situation of some kind rather than an artistic choice by the editor or writer. Maybe there was a need to crank out a couple of generic covers well ahead of the stories to get certain aspects of the book back on schedule. Ah well, as every show on the History Channel always ends: “We may never know the answer to this question”.”
I dunno, Tom, misleading comic covers are so normal (especially in your lauded Silver Age) that one giving absolutely no explanation of the story is pretty comment, particularly when even today some comic covers can get pretty abstract and more like a poster showcase than any real story explanation (I noted it a lot in Titan’s Doctor Who runs, most recently). Is it the best thing? Probably not, but it produces good art anyways, and I don’t think that’s really the most outlandish thing to get ticked about.
“bro this looked so awesome I *HAD*to buy it!”
And some of the comics he feels compelled to buy because of the cover make zero sense. Like this sparse feminist thing that looks like a book of poetry that was printed at Kinko’s. And a Batman cover that’s in the same style as that TV show he hates so much. That at least calls for a justification; why is this OK if the show wasn’t?
I’ve read multiple times that Batiuk has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, majoring in painting. Has anyone here ever seen an original Batiuk painting? Can I find one on display in the Akron Art Museum? Can we find Batiuk sharing his paintings at an arts and crafts fair in Medina?
Has he ever posted a photo of one of his paintings on his eponymous website? Does he have any on the walls of the Comic Book Castle (his term, *cringe*)? What’s up with that? We know how Batiuk likes to brag.
To be fair, not everyone turns their college degree into a career. My college roommate received a bachelor’s degree in communications, and she’s been managing restaurants for almost 40 years.
I’d wager that very few fine arts graduates make their living producing fine art (though most continue it as a hobby).
Though it is interesting that we’ve seen all kinds of childhood scribblings and half-finished cover and strip concepts, but never any “fine art.” But it’s not so shocking; perhaps he prefers to keep it private for some reason, or perhaps he just hasn’t created any.
The shocking thing is that, as both a fan of comics and a student of art, he would certainly have learned the terminology and criteria of critiquing. Even if he hadn’t, he’s been exposed to decades of analysis and critiques of comic art. Some of them can even be found in introductions to omnibus editions!
Besides, you can’t get through art school without having your work critiqued constantly, watching others get their work critiqued, and learning to write intelligently about your own art and others’.
Or did “Caravaggio’s ‘Conversion of Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus’ is neato” and “Edward Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’ is a cool painting” pass muster back then at Kent State?
a bachelor’s degree in communications
Same one I got in 1996. I went into IT in 1998, and have been there ever since.
Coincidentally, my older brother originally pursued an art major at Kent State. He switched majors after a couple of the instructors opined that if you didn’t do it their way, you were doing it wrong.
after a couple of the instructors (at Kent State) opined that if you didn’t do it their way, you were doing it wrong.
Sheesh, no wonder Tom Batiuk fits in so well there. What is it with that place? Why does such a third-tier university breed such arrogance?
The Disappearance of Crankshaft
* Has somebody at GoComics actually been reading the strip?
* Has somebody at GoComics actually been reading Batiuk’s site? (Which right this very second boasts “Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft are currently syndicated by King Features Syndicate.”)
* Did Tom get a writing contract from Marvel, and is abruptly leaving behind the world of comic strips for his true calling, writing comic books?
You’ve got to admit, all seem equally unlikely….
Aaaand … it’s back.
“Some sort of GoComics glitch” was always the most likely explanation, I suppose.
Aaaaand it’s gone again?
This is hella weird. Given Batiuk’s previous dickering with syndicates I hope he’s not causing trouble this late in the game. He’s coasting on fumes, that’s not a good time to be making a stink over residuals or rights or publishing or some nonsense.
Still could just be a glitch, tho.
At least as of this post, Crankshaft is gone from the GoComics A-Z menu … but today’s actual strip is here: https://www.gocomics.com/crankshaft/2023/08/09
So, yeah, I’m thinking glitch.
It looks like the strip is back, but will Ed get cancer and die? This would make more space for Jffff and his comic books.
Waiting for the magic hour of 1:05 AM EDT to happen, but 8/9’s there on Arcamax:
https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/crankshaft/
Yes, he has cancer. He has cancer on his cancers! Tom has to replace his underwear for the 3rd time today! He shrieks at the sky “PULITZER THIS TIME FOR SURE!”
Fantastic! His force ghost will be chilling with Dead Saint Lisa!
Strips on GC are updating oddly. Gonna guess that there’s some glitch in that, rather than “half the comics decided to give up on a Tuesday.” Pretty sure Pearls Before Swine’s gonna have a strip today.
But…CS just isn’t there. The only strip that just flat-out disappeared. Arca’s version’s there, so the comic’s there.
What’s going on? Tom can’t afford to lose 2 comics in 8 months and still buy his omnibuses. Does Davis get better pay from Arca than GC? Yeah, Tombo can buy mountains of old comics, yet also freaks out when Ayers wants equitable pay, and maybe Davis is sick of being treated the same way as Ayers, which…Actually, that tracks.
Did Ayers ever do a farewell, wherein he talked about how great it was to work with TB? The guy who’d write something dumb and sit on it for an unedited YEAR, then ship it to the artist 2 weeks ahead of time, while screaming (I assume) “NO! Perfect drawings of THESE buildings in rotting Ohio, not THOSE! Are you stupid?!”
If I was to pick a side of the conspiracy theory to go with, it’d be that.
Davis is done.
So is the Winkerverse.
(If I’m wrong–well, it was fun to imagine!)
OH.
Crank’s back. It’s apparently some weird GC glitch.
(shoulders droop)
I wanted drama, Tom!
Not there as of 6am EDT.
See the direct link above, that will give you access.
CBH, your parody strips are brilliant!
This is all I’ve got:
Is that Leroy from The Lockhorns in drag?
You won’t believe what TB just posted on his blog today:
My Name is Funky came out at the same time as Lisa’s Story The Other Shoe, and as a result was basically swept away by the tsunami that Lisa’s Story engendered.
You know, the same Lisa’s Story that Batiuk just complained didn’t sell:
Promoting the (Lisa’s Story) book a year after the story arc’s run in the papers, was a bit of an uphill slog because, by the time the book came out, the heat of the story arc had pretty much dissipated, which was a shame because the book deserved a wider audience.
Tom Batiuk is delusional about his delusions. He thinks the success of Lisa’s Story killed his other book. The reality is that nobody wanted either.
Besides, that’s not even how this works! If Tom Batiuk actually had a hit book, there would be more interest in his other works, not less.
Tsunami.
Tsunami.
Les-a’s Story. A tsunami. Sweeping the nation, on everyone’s tongue, the water-cooler topic in every office.
More like a pigeon splashing through a puddle than a tsunami. Unless…
…like a real tsunami (and that’s a tasteless allegory, Tom), it destroyed everything it touched and then quickly receded, leaving nothing but debris, sorrow, wrecked lives, and shattered dreams.
Guess it’s no wonder My Name is Funky flopped.
Wow. The whole post is just obnoxiously, preposterously breathtakingly delusional.
I’m really, really glad that Tom Batiuk has no audience, no storytelling talent, no charisma, and no political ambitions. Because a man THIS convinced of his value to the world could be very dangerous under the right circumstances….
Hello my sweet, beautiful, nitters!
Hope to have a Wally post out for you guys tomorrow night. In the meantime have fun imagining those poor nurses staring at Cranky’s little camshaft.
Keep on snarking in the free blog!
When I had my slip&fall incident, I went to the ER. The admissions guy looked to be in his late 60s. I took my shirt off and he looked at my shoulder. And he said “Holy shit!” This was a guy who’d seen everything, except maybe my shoulder. You know how a bruise can be black&blue, or purple if it’s worse than that? It wasn’t black, it was some negation of color, like the interstellar void of deepest space, a black hole sucking in every photon around it. I just cringed and thought “Groovy.”
Don’t know how long this guy had worked at the ER admissions, but the manager of the store I was working in 25 years earlier had moved to that part of town because she grew up there. She brought her aged mother with her. One day she got home, and Mom said “Oh, we had some excitement today!” Whatever, Mom, she thought, did the power go off? “What happened?”
“Oh, there was a gang shooting around noon in front of the house, and Lifestar landed their helicopter here!”
It’s not like that 30 years later, mainly because this led to a curfew enforced by heavily armed state troopers.
There is literally no time “Holy SHIT” is a good thing to hear in healthcare.
Re. 8/10/23 ‘Shaft:
Funny, “horse’s head” was not the equine body part that first came to my mind.
Frankly, the “Dick Van Dyke Show” episode where Rob thought the freckles on his back formed the Liberty Bell did today’s joke better. The “M*A*S*H” episode where Radar is looking inside Col. Blake’s ear and sees something that’s “almost like a little Nativity scene” did it better. Heck, the “Gravity Falls” episode where Dipper’s birthmark is revealed did it better.
By the way, how do you mention Dick Van Dyke on the GC site? I kept getting censored.
I usually use diacritical marks: Dîck Van Dÿke.
You could also try Rick Van Ryke or similar. The robo-censors are what drove me away from CK. It got so burdensome that eventually it wasn’t worth it, as much as I hated to give up commenting there.
A horse’s head on Crankshaft’s back makes sense to me… given what typically comes out of his front.
8/10 CS:
Crank: “Could you NOT mock my cancerous lesions?!”
Doctor: “Err…it looks like Comet the Super Horse from Adventure Comics #29! From the LESION of Super Pets!”
Crank: “OH BOY COOL!”
Ah, yes, Comet the Super-Horse. When Batiuk waxes nostalgic for the Silver Age, just remember that this is the type of thing that was prevalent.
For those unfamiliar: Comet was actually a centuries-old centaur named Biron. He wanted to become human, so he went to Circe (like from The Odyssey), but she messed up the spell and instead turned him into a horse. (I guess “try the spell again” just never occurred to her.) But she did make him immortal and give him super-powers to make up for it. Also, whenever a comet passes by Earth, he can transform into a full human.
So this centuries-old guy spends all his time pretending to be the horse of Superman’s 15-year-old cousin, who he tries to make out with whenever a comet passes by. Except for the time he hooked up with Lois Lane. No, really.
But, y’know, the Adam West Batman show just didn’t treat the comics seriously.
Crankscheisse, 8/10: Once again, a medical professional is portrayed negatively. What is it with TB and the medical profession? I wouldn’t even care if these were incisive, sarcastic gags, but they mostly just seem hostile.
Crackpot theory: He doesn’t like doctors because they remind him that he’s getting older, more fragile, more vulnerable. The whole experience is scary.
And he also doesn’t like being The Expert in the room. Doctors know stuff he doesn’t know, and they don’t care about the stuff he’s an “expert” in. He can’t lord it over them, and he can’t impress them. He’s just another human body.
Also: the stupid, insulting jokes are exactly what Funky did every time he went to a doctor’s office. And we’re supposed to think he’s being cute and funny when he does that. Medical professionals are trained not to act like this, so the whole scenario is implausible to start with.
If some nurse actually treated Tom Batiuk like this, he should file a complaint about it.
To jump on the defender box for a laugh. In the context of Crankshaft, medical professionals acting like snarky assholes for the sake of a joke is perfectly in the tenor of the universe, and isn’t out of line with anything we’d see in sitcoms, cartoons, or other comedy strips. Even ones that occasionally ‘get serious’.
And since Crankshaft is built as ‘an asshole with a heart of gold’ it means that when bad things happen to him, we accept it as funny karmic retribution that he probably deserves, and if nice things happen to him we don’t get too mad because he isn’t, to quote Guardians 1, “100% a dick”
Yeah, the joke isn’t unique. It’s a stock joke, like J.J. O’Malley points out. I wouldn’t say it’s stolen, because jokes don’t have to be ‘the first time it’s ever used guize!’ to be funny. I mean, I used a bucket load of stock jokes in my stupid edits.
And because it’s a stock joke, it’s better than all the soggy tripe we got last week. But it still is fumbled in the execution. They just flop the old joke onto the page, clumsy, obvious, and artlessly.
The second panel should sound like normal, even concerning, doctorese. That way the final panel is punchier due to the reversal. Why would a doctor talk about ‘connecting’ the moles? Clues you in too soon that she’s not speaking professionally.
Second panel should be something like, “This irregular grouping of lentigo on the shoulder…”
Alternatively, for an even wackier take, she could freak Crankshaft out by taking a surgical pen and beginning to draw on his back, as if marking out cancerous lesions. He tries to look over his shoulder and can’t see, but we can, She’s creating a ‘dot to dot’ of a smiley face or something.
But that would require an artist actually able to pull it off.
You’re absolutely correct, CBH. It’s not this joke per se — gross as it is, with botched delivery — that led me to my Crackpot Theory. It’s this joke and the long history of denigrating the medical profession, with the most egregious example being “Yeah, Lisa, we mixed up your X-rays. You’re basically a walking tumor now. Bill’s in the mail. NEXT PATIENT!” It starts to feel like a hobbyhorse. Maybe I’m reading way too much into it.
And since Crankshaft is built as ‘an asshole with a heart of gold’ it means that when bad things happen to him, we accept it as funny karmic retribution that he probably deserve
Do we, though? In this universe, medical incompetence and rude customer service happen to everyone for no reason, and they just have to accept it. It doesn’t feel like karmic payback for anything. It feels like the creator trashing the medical profession again. Which, as Duck of Death notes, he does a lot. Despite the public holding the medical profession in very high regard since 2020.
I feel like some jokes at the expense of medical professionals are just fair game for comedy, along the same vein as airline food, car mechanics, or the DMV. And you got that weird Funky cataract arc from a few years ago where the medical professionals were all normal and fine and it was FUNKY who was being an asshole.
This joke isn’t a genunine insult against medical professionals any more than any Far Side ‘scientist’ joke was an insult against chemists. But that’s because it’s an exaggerated joke meant to be funny. But Batiuk has salted this bit of comedy earth with his prior transgressions.
The ultimate insult, the disgusting outrage, was the nonsense with the chart mixup in Lisa’s Story. Because that wasn’t supposed to be exaggerated, it wasn’t supposed to be funny, it was in the midst of a very serious story.
Eh, you’re probably right, of all Batiuk’s offenses against good taste this is not worth getting angry about. I’m trying to stop myself from “being a hater just to be a hater”, and you’re good at calling me out on it when I need to be.
‘an asshole with a heart of gold’
“G-O-L-D! That’s a funny way to spell Shit!”
(joke stolen from a 40s Looney Tune)
Crackpot theory erratum: He doesn’t like not being the expert in the room.
Okay, I just can’t hold my tongue.
TB’s latest blog entry, same one BJr6K quoted above (boldface mine):
I think he isn’t interested in knowing the truth.
He wants soo soo soo badly to be unique in what he does. And it’s a impulse I understand at heart.
To tell a dumb CBH story, when I was in second grade we were making clay Christmas ornaments using about six cookie cutters the teacher had. I waited until the very very end, until everyone else had picked, and I asked my teacher which cookie cutter hadn’t been used. Because I wanted my ornament to be different from everyone elses. Easy to see why this became a core memory for me.
If you don’t know exactly how to be superlatively great at what everyone else is doing. If you lack the confidence that you’ll be able to construct something excellently, then going for unique is a good way to get attention.
And if you’re unique enough, then there’s nothing else to judge you against. It you’re on the cutting edge then you’re important, even if your execution leaves a lot to be desired.
I get it. I sympathize. But everything pretty much has been done before. The quest for ‘unique’ is a fool’s errand.
That’s actually a really cute story, CBH. Sounds like something I might’ve done as a little kid, too.
The key is: You were a little kid, not a 76-year-old man. AND your cookie really was unique in that class — you didn’t see another kid’s identical cookie out of the corner of your eye and kinda-sorta ignore it.
That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”?
It has already been in ancient times before us.
And even that was ancient wisdom already when it was written in Ecclesiastes.
I wonder if Tom would discount that 1940s portrayal as being too “clean” and formal as how the era’s standards preferred to do it, since at worst Wilty isn’t keeping up with shaving as an alcoholic and we never actually see him in his drunk/binging moments. That even though it’s a commendable and impressive comic strip narrative for the time, it’s not “real everyday struggles” if your alcoholic’s bottom moment isn’t depicted in full as they pass out in the snow right at the ball-drop moment on New Year’s Day after screwing up their last chance with their spouse like Batiuk did it.
I think it’s more that he doesn’t make an effort to find out than anything else. Like CBH said, he doesn’t look to see if anyone else has done it before, so he can assume he’s the first. (And likely no one cares enough about what Batiuk does to bother calling him out on it, so he remains blissfully ignorant.)
Like, he probably really does believe that no one else changed their comic to age the characters in “real time”, or to go from gag-a-day to handling more serious issues. And as long as he doesn’t pay any attention to what anyone else (like, say, Garry Trudeau) on the comics page does, he won’t know that it was done before (and usually better).
Basically, if he bothered to do any research, he’d know that he’s not the trailblazer he thinks he is. Which is why he doesn’t do that research. He’s not lying, even though he should better educate himself to know the truth, but the fantasy is easier for him to live in.
Okay, you may both may be right that he essentially just doesn’t care to find out, so he assumes he was first. I still count it a lie, because:
1. Isn’t he the big comics expert? I know he’s mainly fixated on comic books, but he has been a newspaper strip writer for over 50 years. He should have a broader expertise on the topic than I, a total non-expert, and yet he consistently displays flagrant ignorance. (He was also “the first” to have his characters age, and “the first” to have a character die. Come on, he had to know he wasn’t, and if he didn’t, surely some editor corrected his misconceptions along the way.)
2. Before you go off half-cocked like he just did, you should do at least a quick 5-second Google search, like I just did, and if he had, he would have found that 1949 Wash Tubbs arc.
3. It’s very difficult to come up with a brand new concept, and knowing that, he should have assumed someone else had gotten there first. Especially since AA was founded in 1935 — yes, in Akron, as he mentioned. AA led to popular awareness of alcoholism as a form of disease. That idea was very much in the mainstream by the postwar period; witness Billy Wilder’s stark The Lost Weekend (1945). Again, none of this is obscure information.
In short, once again, I call bulls#!t, and (if it doesn’t go against the SoSF rules), plain ol’ fibs. Self-aggrandizing fabrications.
GL, speaking of Garry Trudeau, a good 25 years ago I went to a remaindered book sale and found a pair of very beat-up Doonesbury comps from the Bicentennial. (You’re old if you recognize that word) An arc involved a Vietnamese orphan evacuated on the last of the helicopter rescues from the Fall of Saigon. I actually know a guy who was one of those kids, so, feels.
She’s a baby, but of course she thinks in fully formed thoughts. It took me a long while before I caught that her name was Kim.
Who, decades later, would become Mike Doonesbury’s wife. THAT, my friends, is a story arc!
I don’t think that the characters in that strip age in a constant way, but who cares? Walt from Gasoline Alley is like 135 now. Crank hangs from gutters at 110. Also, Tom’s bothered by naming his strip “Funky Winkerbean”? And yet, a strip called “Doonesbury” is still going strong. Which strip won the Pulitzer again?
Take your time answering, Tom. The Semiquincentennial is right around the corner!
Oh, Leroy? Leeeroy? Every time I post a link, without fail, plonk! goes my post into the spam filter.
Sorry Leeroy took so long…Leeeroy was taking a load of corn into the Co-Op.
It often operates with no rhyme or reason. But the filter really hates links. Sometimes. That’s what makes it so vexing.