Last Sunday’s Crankshaft, the one that ended last week’s divergence, raised discussion in its own right.
Here’s the strip. The scene is Lillian’s bookstore, with a table of books labeled “Banned Books – Get Them Before They’re Burned!” Visible book covers include 1984, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Maus. In the comments, some of you argued that the threat of banned books is overblown; that being banned actually makes them best-sellers; and other thoughtful takes. All while being respectful and honoring the no-politics rule. This is a great crowd.
While the strip’s premise was good, the overall strip was dreadful, for a reason nobody mentioned. And it’s dreadful for reasons that are common to the Funkyverse. To put it in context, I want to respond to a comment by Bill The Splut:
I will give Tom points for putting it in a new way. The Shining Twins don’t even notice. Book bannings mean Back to School now.
https://sonofstuckfunky.com/2023/08/24/the-kat-el-reflections/#comment-164555
In the strip, one of the two twin girls says “Gee, it’s hard to believe it’s almost time for school to start!” Which certainly could be interpreted as Bill suggests; that the sign’s message had no impact on them. The art supports this theory:
But the art also starts to reveal the problem. These girls look like they’re 9 or 10 years old. Are children this young concerned about book censorship? Should they be? “Oh, this reminds me we have to go back to school” is a perfectly reasonable observation for a couple of soon-to-be fifth graders.
But that’s not the worst part of it. It’s this:
What in the hell is this face? What emotion is Lillian trying to convey here? What emotion are Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis trying to convey to the reader? I’d love to show that picture to 100 people and ask them what they think is being expressed here. My guess is “accidentally farted a little and is looking to see if anyone noticed.”
This is a book store Lillian owns. It’s implied that she set up this “banned books” display. So she must feel strongly about the matter. When her own helpers, probably the most book-aware children in town, fail to get the message, she must feel… something other than this! Angry? Disappointed? Sad? Condescending? Socratic, as if this were a great opportunity to educate the next generation?
Instead, we get: smirk.
Smirk is the universal emotion in the Funkyverse. Smirk is the appropriate emotional response to every single stimulus in life, from “I am mildly annoyed by your joke” to “I am painfully dying of cancer.” The champion of the smirk was, of course, Lisa.
The art puts so much effort into showing how gaunt and feeble Lisa is, but her smirk muscles still work! Cancer can’t kill those, apparently. Even though this horribly awkward remark should have cleared the room. If I met my biological mother for the first time and found out she was this fatalistic and self-pitying, it would also be my last visit.
But let’s get back to Lillian. Her expression kills this scene dead, because it sucks all the emotional stakes out of it. It’s another huge failure of If This Is True, What Else Is True. Put it another way: it’s another failure of Batiuk to view a scene from the perspective of his characters. Lillian should have a reaction here, or know not to be too bothered by it. But she doesn’t do either. The strip attempts to raise a serious issue, but Lillian’s wry, bored disinterest in her own cause stops it cold at second base. If she doesn’t care about what’s happening in the strip, why should the reader?
Batiuk has an infamous blog post about breaking the fourth wall, where he says “I would break the fourth wall by having a character do a side-glance to the reader. I stopped doing that because, while it’s funny, you lose the investment and involvement of the audience. They know the characters are going to be just fine, and they don’t really care about their fate. By breaking the fourth wall, I inject myself into the story to wink at the reader as we share the joke.”
But that’s exactly what the smirk does. The character does a side glance to the reader, and kills the investment and involvement of the audience. We know the characters don’t really care about their fate. By breaking the fourth wall, Batiuk injects himself into the story to wink at the reader as we share the joke. Except there’s no joke here either.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I kind of saw Lillian’s expression as heavy-lidded contempt. I didn’t understand it.
Lillian: Cease your witless prattling, younglings. You are in the presence of a literary god! You can’t possibly comprehend the brilliance of my display.
I suppose it could be gas. She can’t help it. She’s old.
Then Lillian’s punching down. She’s judging schoolchildren for having a feeling about books that schoolchildren have. Even so, “exasperated” would have been better than “heavy-lidded contempt.” Punching down is another huge problem in the Funkyverse.
I think Lillian’s expression was a reaction to the original dialogue: “Gee… It’s hard to believe that even Barnes & Noble was doing this two years ago.”
I see some familiar covers on B&N’s banned books webpage, by the by.
The fact that these books are not only sold, but actually touted by Barnes & Noble (and all other big mainstream booksellers) is, ironically, prima facie evidence that they are not banned.
They are the opposite of banned. Several of the books displayed by Lillian are Pulitzer winners.
They include books touted by Oprah. Many of them are commonly found in the curricula of middle schools, high schools, and colleges.
Toni Morrison, author of “Beloved,” won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Several of the books pictured have been made into successful, major Hollywood pictures.
Most authors would kill to be so “banned.”
Speaking of divergence, what happened to cause the personality split between the double mint twins? In Crankshaft, they were presented as identical twins, right down to the cowlicks. They might as well have been clones, finishing each other’s sentences.
In Funky Winkerbean, one was drawn as sugar-and-spice-and everything-nice, whereas the other dyed their hair and was into heavy metal and firearms. I know their names are Emily and Amelia, but I don’t remember which was the “dark” one.
As the note from my Dad read when he found my marijuana pipe, “I’d like to know what this is all about?”
They’re like every other child and minor character in the Funkyverse: their personality is whatever today’s strip needs it to be.
And this why his strips are so flat and dull. Batty thinks he has created this rich tapestry of characters, but they are all just paper dolls with interchangeable outfits.
I was hiding the pipe for a friend. Marijuana usage in high school meant expulsion and getting held back a year. Despite it being in a sealed plastic bag, Dad smelled it anyway. The nose knows. Dad believed me but confiscated the pipe and grounded me for two weeks.
Despite the bad experience, I always loved the phrasing of the question. It has made it into my everyday speech.
Alternatively, the very British, “Oy! What’s all this, then?!”
=================
I wonder how Dad knew what marijuana smelled like? I’d like to know what that was all about? 😂😁
So I assume the gag here is that this old bag’s efforts to take a stand on behalf of book banning (she’s against it) have fallen on the deafened ears of two dimwitted, doltish teens, who only associate icky yucky books with school. My first question was, why would these imbeciles be hanging around in a microscopic book shop in the first place, but then I figured they’re all probably related somehow, and the kids are spending the summer working there or something.
Good ol’ wishy-washy Batom. He takes a firm stand on book banning (he’s against it), but cleverly files the edges down by featuring two characters who don’t give a shit about book banning at all. So, you see, it’s not a pro-anti-book banning statement, but a clever take on how silly it can be when people (especially young ones) don’t care about anything. So when some guy in Kansas writes a letter to the editor of the Wichita Daily Bugle complaining about that Crankshaft comic featuring a bunch of commie gobbledygook about banning books, BatYam can simply say no, it wasn’t “about” that issue at all. And he wouldn’t be lying. In fact, it’s arguable if it was even really “about” anything at all.
I was charitable toward the joke at first, thinking it was a callback to Batiuk’s much earlier much better jokes.
I assumed the girls associated school with drama about book banning, and other such minor educational controversy. Like, “Ugh, adults are complaining about books, school must be starting.”
But upon reflection, I think you guys are probably right. The dundermint twins are dull as dishwater, and the whole thing was one big virtue signal by Batiuk.
Now if he’d stacked that table with REAL controversial books, say…Lolita, Mein Kampf, Rage, and hentai…
A big, cowardly, empty virtue signal. He stands up for To Kill A Mockingbird but not for things that are actually under fire today.
Louis CK, Roseanne Barr, Dave Chapelle all love to scream “I’VE BEEN CANCELLED! Watch it all on my latest talk show appearances and Netflix special!”
As the saying goes, “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?” You can’t claim that you’ve been shut up when you make millions claiming that you’ve been shut up.
The problem is that their target audience buys the okeydoke. They always buy the bullshit if it makes them feel important.
The worst of it is that when you try to get the poor dodo to see that when he ain’t shooting himself in the foot, he’s painting himself into a corner, he gets as defensive and vindictive as the bus manager when you offer her bowling lessons. The worst thing you can do to an inept fool is help, you see.
Today, Cranky sings a Willie Nelson song. Tomorrow, he runs into Keesterman’s mailbox like an idiot.
Today’s strip has Crankshaft sing a Willie Nelson song. Tomorrow, we get reminded that he couldn’t avoid smashing into Keesterman’s mail box if he were driving Mitch’s pedal car.
Can someone clear this up for me? You think that authors say “I’m gonna make so much money when my book is BANNED, OMG!”
They’re not making money. Most of them are DEAD. I do not see this as a successful long term economic strategy. I’m pretty sure that when I die, I’m not going to hope my wealth impresses the worms eating me.b
Apropos of nothing, I decided to include an homage to Tom Batiuk in my latest project. Still frame below–can YOU spot the Batiuk Touch?
Poorly taped signs from my nightmares?
The tape! It is glorious!
I love Batiuk’s dedication to untimeliness. Banned Books Week is Oct 1-7 this year. Had he done this strip in a month, it would at least have a chance of resonating with (or even beyond) the 5 non-ironic fans that read Crankshaft anymore.
And with the later revelation that he’s planning a story about the burnings, it’s even more of a waste. “You know that social issue yesterday’s strip talked about, which is also a major plot point in the gotterdammerung of this 50-year storytelling world? I’m going to explore it in 11 months! Right now we’re all just going to smirk about it.”
Fuck, he couldn’t even make this a moment of foreshadowing? Not even George Lucas-level foreshadowing that practically winks at the audience? “Why I do think you’re going to be the death of me?” Because every person on earth watching Episode II has already seen Episode IV. Yuk yuk.
Ignoring the many problems with the set-up line for the moment, a response from Lillian like “that attitude will get us all killed” could have been powerful.
The Funkyverse Smirk (TM) is a lukewarm standardized attempt showcasing whenever the strip gets back into the attempt at punchline endings, trying to fill the hole of the fourth-wall aside glance that Mr. Serious wants to avoid now that he wants the strip to retain “investment” (obvious protip: A good narrative can do both and still be gripping, take a tip from the pope and play Undertale, for one). But what he never gets is that there’s a thin line between “fun smirk” and “smug smirk”, and with respect to Ayers, Davis, and the other artists over the years in this regard, their drawing of the smirk lines were so often nebulous that it just fuels our negative perceptions of the likes of Les, dying Lisa, DSH John and the rest when their snark comes off as condescending smugness rather than the wry humor of senior citizens with a lifetime of cancer misery to complain. He thinks it comes off as self-conscious, in-universe humor of righteously-suffering people who’ve dealt with a lot over the years, but it still does what the aside glances did in lampshading the jokes to a distracting degree, but instead of acknowledging that the wordplay or whatever joke is lame, it just comes off as patting oneself on the back at being “good” examples of his funny paper jokes in the off-time before more “earnest” storylines.
I still can’t help but think of last November when most of the comics pages were running tribute strips on Charles Schultz’s birthday, and the most Batiuk could think of was running a Crankshaft gag where Pam and Jeff talk about “Charlie Brown snowflakes” with two of his Funkyverse Smirks (TM) signing it off, not even a “happy birthday” message with it. By that point FW itself had technically lasted longer than Peanuts itself and with their final weeks upon it could’ve easily afforded a funnier diversion in tribute to Sparky, and in any case Crankshaft had already nonchalantly crossovered with Hi & Lois as it is, but he was too busy deeply explaining Timemop lore to bother with anything fun like that (come to think of it, the same thing happened too when a whole Sunday strip was just Les and Summer watching Charlie Brown Christmas while quote-smirking all the way through).
What does it say about Tom Batiuk that he couldn’t put together a decent comic strip to honor Charles Schulz? Most of the Schulz tribute strips were incredibly sweet, touching, and sincere. It’s like Batiuk knew he had to do one, but he couldn’t think of anything nice to say about Schulz. Not even on a professional level, when Peanuts was the foundation all modern comic strips are built on.
And even though Batiuk was bulding on the Failure Hero dynamic that Charlie Brown exemplified. As you point out, Batiuk made a world of always-suffering Everymen, but he couldn’t make any of them likable. Any time Les or Lisa’s plight might have earned them a little sympathy, they immediately killed it with their own smugness, laziness, rudeness, condescension, and disinterest. Or Batiuk killed it with his misaimed tone, and his need to make everything about comic books.
According to the BattyBlog, The Burnings will be a featured Crankshaft storyline in more than a year, Fall 2024.
Is the final Funkypocalypse, the Crankening…at hand?
https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/the-annotated-funky-funkys-last-week-2/
Batiuk has had it in for his elders forever. Old people wanted to send all the young people to Vietnam to die. Old people wanted to drop nucular bombs on everyone. Old people outlived their usefulness because they wanted to not be blamed for comic books.
Old people fail to realize that they now are the old people who want to do bad things to everyone else.
That’s the thing, isn’t it? Batiuk might complain about his body getting old but he doesn’t understand that he himself is old. It repulses him that he’s thought of as the old fossil holding up progress.
Oh goody, I cannot wait.
I wonder if Batiuk has already been told Crankshaft won’t be renewed after 2024.
I would tend to think so, yes. Thus, the Byrnings (horrible pun intended).
If it’s true, then I’m glad. It’s clear the end of Funky Winkerbean snuck up on TB, and he didn’t have time to wrap everything up. He had two months to end a 50-year strip, right after he spent three weeks marrying Cory and Rocky, and another month on John Darling. He must not have known FW’s days were numbered when he made those story choices.
And just so I’m clear: I think Funky Winkerbean deserved to go out on its own terms. It ran for 50 years, and will probably be the last comic strip that ever does so.
Yes, it absolutely deserved to be cancelled (in the traditional “we choose not to renew our subscription” sense). And yes, it absolutely was cancelled, despite Batiuk’s spin that it was his decision. But FW should have been given a enough time for a satisfying ending. Not that Batiuk could write one, but he deserved a chance.
BJr6K;
If I may play devil’s advocate for a second, there are a few strips which, rightly or wrongly, have a shot at reaching their golden anniversary (either because the creators/syndicate want it for artistic or licensing reasons). E.G.:
Hagar the Horrible (46 years to date)
Garfield (45 years)
Marvin (41 years of potty training jokes)
Sally Forth (41 as well)
There are probably more, but these were the first ones at least 40 years old that came to mind. Anyone else out there know of any?
He did, though, at least according to John Byrne, who said on his blog that he had (IIRC) about 11 months of lead time.
We discussed it a few months ago when Byrne’s blog came up.
I still find it hard to believe, but it’s even harder to believe Byrne would lie about it if he’d been given a last-second rush job to do.
Anyway, calling it here: Lillian bravely stands against the Forces of Censorship even as the Evil Ones burn all the other book store.
In other words: Award bait, award bait, and more award bait.
@JJO’Malley I forgot about Garfield, but I would make a decent underdog bet that none of the others reach 50. Newspapers and newspaper comics are dying very slowly; in the near future, they’ll die all at once.
At least he explains that the “Village Booksmith” seen in the last week of Funky was the same Village Booksmith that Lillian runs. Thanks, Tom, never would have figured that one out on my own!
(And that’s all he has to say about the second strip. They’re at Lillian’s bookstore, and you’ll have to wait a year to find out what The Burnings are. Very informative blog post there, Tom, thank you, very helpful. The Pulitzer people will be on their way any day now.)
I literally cannot believe he’s going there. I mean i have my own expectations of societal collapse centered on that timeframe but i cannot believe TB is anywhere near as black-pilled as i am.
Let’s just say by next Fall i doubt anyone is going to be worrying about how many copies of The Alchemist are available.
Great news! I was able to read a Batiuk blog all the way through on my first attempt without my mind wandering. All TB had to do was keep the text down to 89 words and add some pictures to break up the monotony of the commentary.
I hope the “burning” involves Ed Crankshaft burning down the Village Booksmith with his flamethrower.
Crankshaft: Oops! Sorry, Lillian. I was trying to get that rabbit that was in my garden.
Lillian: You old fool. You’ve damaged my property for the last time. I’m calling the authorities and having you committed!
(Crankshaft turns the flamethrower on Lillian)
FWOOOOOOSSSSSHHHH
Lillian: (on fire) YAHHHHHH!!!!
bwoeh stares out the window with a smile on her face and lets out a contented sigh. 😊
—————————————–
Just curious, how many people write “book store” instead of “bookstore”?
I still haven’t gotten over the fact that the Space Scooter or whatever it’s called, supposedly named after “Skyler”, is very clearly labeled “SKYLAR” in the strip.
Broom-Hilda is not only over 50 years old, but actually funny! It just hit the Guinness Book for the longest running comic strip done by one creator! I hope no one took that personally, TOM!
How does being smug about holding up traffic turn into being the smug idiot who burns all the books in America? That’s what’s going to happen next year: Ed does something stupid so Batiuk can make an awkward, incoherent statement about how old people had outlived their usefulness once they killed Hitler.
The Alchemist was banned? I had to look it up. It was banned in Iran. OK. If we’re going international then a zillion books have been banned somewhere.
Right, and this is a point that Duck was getting at in this post and the prior one here. The Alchemist has no history of controversy in the US but there it is in the banned list and this comic getting what’s essentially free marketing. Meanwhile, if you were to look up what the book is even about, you can easily find several people who deride it as being a novel form of a 14 year old’s inspirational Tumblr post.
While here, I did want to state that I found Bill’s post about the girls only caring about school starting in response to be a keen observation and nobody else seemed to carry it any further. It seems like subsequent comments about children not wanting to read anything longer than a tweet* would have been easy to make but I didn’t see it.
Also, Lillian’s expression there might actually accurately reflect the faces of the people involved in the creation of the image, if it can be assumed that neither Batuik or Davis ever read any of those books outside of a school assignment. That’s the look of someone who is doing something with zero conviction behind the action. “Yeah, I guess I should try to sell some books. Yeah, I guess they’re ‘banned’ in some way, that’s what the list said. Whatever. It’s not like I read any of these things. These girls don’t give a shit either. Who really does, honestly. Who cares about anything.”
While here, I did want to state that I found Bill’s post about the girls only caring about school starting in response to be a keen observation and nobody else seemed to carry it any further.
I completely agree. It was a great observation. I took the angle that the strip’s art contradicts its own premise. The girls only care about school starting. But because they’re only entering 5th grade, you wouldn’t beat them up for that.
This response really needed to come from a high schooler or college student. Lillian could then react with appropriate anger/sadness/fear for the future. And take the moment to educate the speaker about the importance of freedom of expression. (On a side note: this is supposed to be a bookstore for the public. A character responding to a sales sign could have been LITERALLY ANYONE.)
There’s three interwoven problems with the strip.
1. Lillian’s reaction is wrong.
2. The setup line is coming from the wrong character.
3. The setup line needs to be clearer. It’s aiming for Comically Missing The Point, but it’s such a minor comment that it doesn’t feel like she actually missed the point. It feels like she was reminded of something unrelated.
All of the above comments: Yes, absolutely.
And I would add that referring to “The Alchemist” and such as “banned” trivializes actual book bannings, which have been common throughout history. For people in other times, or in oppressive regimes today, owning or distributing a banned book could mean prison or worse. To even suggest that Toni Morrison’s reception in the US is analogous to a “banning” is an insult to all the people who have risked their lives to distribute forbidden literature in the Soviet Union and North Korea, among other places.
As for the Shining Twins, I read their response differently.
Lizard Lil: Blah blah handwringing, blah blah Tom saw a segment on 60 Minutes and thought he’d troll for some “Cartoonist Bravely Takes On Book-Burners” puff pieces.
The Shining Twins: Oh, it’s school time already? That means we’ll have to once again listen to a bunch of moaning from adults telling us there’s no future, everyone is evil, and the world’s going to hell in a handbasket. They’re the ones who made the world this way, so why don’t they cut out the doom and gloom and let us have some hope for the future? What a massive, metastatic bummer that whole generation turned out to be.
Well said. I would add that Batiuk’s choice of titles also trivializes the real reasons books are banned in the United States in 2023. To honor the “no politics” rule, I won’t say what those reasons are, but they’re easy to infer from any list you could find on the internet. Like this one.
I guess I’m just agog at the idea that “pulled from some school library/libraries somewhere” now equals “banned.” The books at your link are readily available at Amazon, B&N, and any other mainstream book seller.
“Banned” to me equals “not allowed to be published or distributed.”
Are any books actually banned in this country, other than pr0n featuring certain illegal acts?
I can think of a few that are effectively banned — in that they are virtually impossible to acquire. You certainly won’t find them on Amazon, eBay, B&N, etc. They are (sorry for necessary but brief mention of politics) often far-right books, as noted above by CBH — eg, “The Turner Diaries,” “My Awakening” by David Duke, and similar.
However, even those aren’t actually banned. You wouldn’t be arrested just for selling or buying a copy… though I guess you might be put on a list somewhere.
You’re absolutely right that “pulled from some school library/libraries somewhere” does not equal “banned.” But I think school libraries, and what can/should be read there, are such a cultural war zone in 2023 that it’s reasonable to equate this activity to banning. Especially when the tactic and intended result are so similar. But that’s a political point, and I’ll say no more about it.
More importantly to this blog: you illuminate more layers of how cheap, lazy, and dishonest Batiuk’s social commentary is. There are no “banned books” in America, in several different ways:
1. They’re still widely available;
2. The bans don’t extend to personal consumption;
3. There’s no consequence to reading them anyway;
4. Whatever enforceable “bans” exist are mostly about school libraries;
5. most of the books he’s standing up for haven’t been controversial in decades; and
6. Book restrictions tend to be local or state-level at worst, not national-level like in countries that actually ban books. Not to mention that such countries restrict your ability to go to places where you can avoid the ban, which the USA does not.
So Batiuk is being ludicrously overbroad, in an attempt to make something look like more of crisis than it actually is.
Batiuk is trolling for awards. It what he does. It’s all he does. He can’t be bargained with. He can’t be reasoned with. He doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear, unless you’re going to stab a coloring book. And he absolutely will not stop…ever, until you give him the prizes he feels he so richly deserves. And yes, the sequels are going to get worse.
Just for fun, do an image search for “Kansas City Public Library.” You’ll find photos of a large library with a wonderful, clever façade designed to look like a bookshelf. On this huge “shelf” can be found two of the books that Lil lists as “banned” and in danger of being burned.
If Tom did the slightest amount of research, he might find out some of the fascinating stuff we learn while researching our own comments and reading other people’s comments. But I guess for him it’s more fun to have his own self-righteousness stroked and his preconceptions coddled and, as beckoningchasm notes, to gun for awards like the implacable Terminator.
“I’ll be back.” (Never comes back; is found a hundred years later with a drained battery in a pile of The Flash comic books)
I checked, and you can go on Amazon and buy Mein Kampf. I don’t recommend you buy it, but if you find one, read it. I have. It is the most fucking boring go-cry-Emo-kid thing you have ever read.
And here we go again with no one sitting her down and explaining that she needs to follow a recipe properly. Oh, wait. She gets all defensive and vindictive when she’s told she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s Batiuk being oblivious to his own description.
Today’s Crankshaft: Lena serves brownies “loaded with sea salt and sprinkles.” The men are horrified at the prospect.
Women be cooking, but ineptly, amirite?
Okay, real talk. Although sprinkles are a somewhat uncommon addition to brownies, there’s nothing odd about adding them. They would work quite well in a brownie.
And sea salt? Brownies need salt to punch up the flavor and add that touch of savory to the sweetness.
Chocolate and salt are a classic combo, so much so that at high-end bakeries it’s common to have chocolate cookies, brownies, etc, visibly sprinkled with Malden sea salt (a very flaky, pungent salt). And “sea salt” chocolate bars are common to fancy chocolate brands.
As with gardening, Puff Batty goes off half cocked and gets everything wrong. He’s obviously never baked, and holds bakers in contempt. (That’s the kind of girl stuff beloved by mean anti-comic-book moms! And being girls, they can’t even get their own girl stuff right! LOL)
Batiuk is always going to be that dumb-ass kid sitting on his ass letting his brain atrophy as he turns up his nose at a flavor combo he never thought of lest he end up liking it. His mother didn’t need Wertham to absolve her of ineptitude because she didn’t have anything to work with.
It could work, if Lena established that she’s following a trendy recipe she seen in magazines or online, but, of course, gets it horribly, horribly wrong. A little sea salt in sweets is amazing, but in the hands of a historically bad cook…
If this strip was still in the hands of an artist willing to draw, you could get a great face on a character who has eaten a mouth puckering salt lick of a brownie. Maybe some joke about the brownie being salty enough to kill a snail.
I don’t mind the concept of the running jokes in Crankshaft: Lena’s horrible cooking and food, Keesterman’s mailbox, etc. I can think of strips using both gags that have made me chuckle.
To me, trying to ‘logic’ them is like trying to ‘logic’ why Dagwood hasn’t been fired, or Beetle Bailey hasn’t been court marshalled, or why anyone goes to Zoidberg for medical advice.
But the joy of those running jokes it to make the repeated part either the set up OR the punchline and add some new permutation to the opposite.
It’s like ‘Your momma’s so fat…’ jokes. The real joke isn’t that your momma is fat. It’s HOW fat IS she?
Today’s strip…is not that. It’s just, “Your momma is fat, lol.”
This old strip, however….
Agreed on the running jokes. They are a staple of all newspaper comics.
My improv teacher used to sidecoach, “Explore and heighten!” Meaning, take your idea, and expand on it, and exaggerate it.
Today’s strip could have worked, as you say, if she had frugally substituted sea water for sea salt, or if Lena had said, “they said to sprinkle the salt on top, but I found it easier just to dip the brownies in it,” or something. But what they’re describing actually sounds delicious, so the joke falls completely flat.
The strip you pasted above, though, is actually funny. That’s because it not only heightens the horribleness of the cookies, but it subverts expectations twice.
You expect the second panel to be something like “…and eat them later.” And then you expect the third panel to be something like birds pecking at crumbled cookies.
And it makes Crankshaft the victim of these horrible cookies, not a jerk who complains every time some typical stupid female tries to do something nice for him.
AND the punchline is visual, with no mangled words to suck the life out of it.
I’ve asked this question before: What happened to make TB forget the mechanics of joke-writing? Award-chasing doesn’t explain this particular anomaly; neither does the a*tism theory. He used to know how a joke should be structured, and he doesn’t seem to any more.
The strip I posted isn’t even really that old, in the grand scheme of things. It’s 2015. Funky Winkerbean was already flooded in nonsense by then.
I think the loss of Ayers, who actually seemed to care about Crankshaft, was a blow. I mean, that silent last panel wouldn’t work without a tolerable artist. You’d have to work hard to stitch together that joke from old strips.
But Batiuk doesn’t seem to be taking his time with his joke ideas any more. I think the germ of this joke was that Lena was trying something new/trendy with her brownies, but to Crankshaft they’re the same old nightmare bricks.
There’s something there, in that idea, to work into a tolerable enough strip. But Batiuk either has lost a sounding board that helped him polish, or isn’t even taking the barest amount of time to think things through like he used to.
The old Cranky funny ratio of 2015 was around 15% God Awful, 10% genuinely funny, 30% tolerable, and the rest dishwater to meh. We’ve gotten to 10% tolerable levels this year. And I lay most of that at the feet of Batiuk needing a new vehicle for comic flavored Batiuksruabatory nonsense.
You know, you’re really onto something there. If he did that joke today, without Ayers and with Señor Cut N. Paste at the drawing board, he’d have to tell, not show, the punchline.
It’d be all dialog, with all 3 panels showing the bus drivers sitting at a table discussing how hard Lena’s cookies are. It would be as funny as acute appendicitis.
I’ve been reading through the GoComics Crankshaft archive. Mostly out of frustration from reading the current, subpar version of the
comicstrip. The comic strip was SO much better back then.Check out this week of strips from early August 2003. There are actual laugh out loud moments.
I agree, Duck. What the hell happened? Did Batiuk get a humorectomy?
Very good point. I think it’s just atrophy, brought on by lack of editorial control over the years.
Most of us have had a job we stopped giving a shit about. Or had coworkers who did. When it goes too far, workplaces need to have a mechanism to whip employees back to shape, get rid of them, or at least give them an empty title and make them pretend to work. Not let them hang around forever and get paid to do whatever they want all day.
That’s Batiuk’s problem. He’s a formerly good employee whose misbehavior was never addressed by management. And now his skills have atrophied past useless, into counterproductive.
i think Lillian’s expression on her face in 8/27 is that of severe constipation and diarrhea she’s constantly holding in
“I’ve asked this question before: What happened to make TB forget the mechanics of joke-writing? Award-chasing doesn’t explain this particular anomaly”
I remain convinced that it does explain it. In Batiuk’s mind, awards are given to serious drama about how life is futile and giving up is the best option (see: Lisa’s Story). Jokes don’t win awards, jokes don’t win anything. (We’re talking TB’s mindset. not mine.)
The Pilitzer nom was for Lisa’s death. That broke him. He turned away from joke-making to pursue awards–and everything became grim, grimmer, torn from today’s headlines. You can’t make jokes when the fate of the world rests in your hands.
Awards have some very bad aspects. They pull people toward them. “I was gonna do some strips on Oddest Odd Rods, but this advertising magazine has a prize for people who write about Wacky Packages, I’m gonna go for that!”
Also, I’m fairly certain that Crankshaft was largely written by the artists (aside from the terrible wordplay). When FW ended, TB turned his baleful eye upon this other, half-forgotten world and thought, I bet I could grow some award trees on this ground.
To his way of thinking, a nomination is a physical, tangible thing he can hang on his wall. He can point to it and tout himself through it. On the other hand, someone comes up to him and says “Your comic strip made me laugh.” What good is that? It was here and now it’s gone. If you want proof that this guy laughed at your work, you’re going to have to ask him “Hey, would you mind writing that down?”
And the sad thing is that he doesn’t realize that he doesn’t NEED a thing on his mantelpiece to be someone. Let’s hope he realizes this before he’s someone on his mantelpiece.