Hey folks, time for another spur of the moment, breaking news-type post regarding everyone’s favorite blog, The Komix Thoughts. This time around, TomBan is doing a “deep dive” into FW’s final week (ugh), and the recent (and maybe even still ongoing, I don’t know) Crankshaft arc about that creepy stupid bookstore. As usual, he briefly repeats the obvious, but at the end, he drops this interesting little nugget in there:
“In the second panel of the Funky strip, Lisa’s mother alludes to the “burnings”. This makes reference to a story that will run in the Fall of 2024 in Crankshaft.“
Looks like SOMEONE will be traveling to the future! Now, I don’t read Crankshaft and I’m certainly not starting now, nor will I be starting in (sigh) the fall of 2024. But it is nice to know he’ll still be generating content for us, as that one oughta be a doozy.
Son of Stuck Funky 
You know, Lena and her inedible brownies….
May be a stand-in for a certain cartoonist, and his unawardable writings. Apparently, when Lena is challenged about how she’s doing it all wrong, she gets angry and dismissive.
“It’s called writing baking.”
Epicus, I’m going to attempt to paraphrase you about this whole The Burnings bs. We can reasonably expect three things to be revealed once whenever that Fall 2024 storyline hits:
1) Nobody will be able to fully predict whatever it is.
2) Whatever it is will be far more illogical than anyone can predict.
3) Somehow, whatever it is will also be presented in a manner that makes it far more uninteresting than anyone can predict.
What we now know is that somehow Crankshaft (or a descendant, perhaps) will be involved, some event calls The Burnings happens, and Lillian’s bookstore survives whatever The Burnings is.
Given that Crankshaft burning things is a strip’s trope, and given that Crankshaft lives in direct vicinity of Lillian’s store, it already should be implausible for Crankshaft to be involved in something which society at large calls “The Burnings” and not impact Lillian’s store. So is that a plot hole which can be seen right now? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, whatever happens, it won’t be depicted in the strip itself, but a whole lot of dumb writing will serve as its buildup and denouement. The former has already been occurring.
1) Nobody will be able to fully predict whatever it is.
2) Whatever it is will be far more illogical than anyone can predict.
3) Somehow, whatever it is will also be presented in a manner that makes it far more uninteresting than anyone can predict.
And Holy Cow, did Monday’s Crankshaft hit all of those bullseyes.
I just can’t believe he already has 2024 all mapped out. Then again, he can probably knock out ten years worth of these idiotic stories over the course of one long weekend, given how stupid they are. “The burnings”…man, when Batiuk gets a brainworm, he’s downright unstoppable.
I think he’s already been told there is no 2025.
If he writes almost a year in advance, he would logically have everything already written to lead into The Burnings, at least, since he’d be writing the Fall 2024 strips about now. Really, given his claimed schedule, how could he not have most of 2024 mapped out already?
Still, one has to admire the childlike optimism dwelling in Batiuk’s heart that his strip will still be carried in the Fall of 2024.
Also, given how easily he folded under imagined pressure and offered alternate strips last month lest anyone be offended by his “Ed’s BBQ covers Ohio in smoke and soot” arc, let’s hope there’s not another round of “climate damage”-induced infernos next year, or else we’ll miss the Burnings for TB’s version of Walt Kelly’s 1968 “bunny strips.”
It’s one thing to be against something unpleasant. It’s whole great big other thing to end up making someone or something unpleasant seem reasonable like Batiuk will.
Oh, now it all makes sense. It’s not “burnings,” it’s “Bernings”! There are going to be lots and lots of Bernese Mountain Dogs and everyone will be cuddled to death.
The most adorable apocalypse imaginable.
Maybe Bernie Sanders will be visiting
Absolutely, these are precepts to live by.
While I agree with the Three Precepts of Batiuk, I predict a slightly different turn for the story.
Based on TB’s history of award-chasing and also on the recent foreshadowing in the strip where Lillian’s sign warned customers to buy the “banned” books before they’re burned, I predict another muddled, heavy-handed award-bait arc in which Lil & the gang stand up against straw villians determined to burn books.
What’s Roberta Blackburn up to these days?
Edgy stuff as always, still fighting that John Lithgow character from 1984’s Footloose. We’ll get ‘im this time!
Another wonderful music-themed post title from ED.
Fun story: my freshman dorm had false fire alarms all the time, which we had to take seriously and clear the building. At one particularly ill-timed 1 AM alarm, someone pointed their speakers out the window, cranked the volume, and put that song on. As irritating it was to stand outside and wait for the fire department to resolve it, we all did it with a smile on our faces that time.
Whoever you were in Broward Hall in 1990: that was A+ political comedy, dude.
Thanks BJ6000, it’s the thing I miss most about the daily posts. I LOVE it when the syllables all fit together like that.
BJ6K, No need to reply, but I have to wonder if you were ever one of my students in Weimer
If you were there from Fall 1990 to Spring 1993, there’s a non-zero chance. I was a journalism major so I had some classes in “JM”. Not “WEI” which was Weil Hall.
Wasn’t in JOU, was in what was then Telecom . Been there since 85–I’m now the longest-serving faculty member (not the oldest) in the CJC
I had a lot of classes in that building from 1990 to 1993, including some non-journalism classes. So we probably crossed paths once or twice.
At the beginning of every semester there are students trying to figure out from their schedule if their class is in Williamson (WM), Weimer (WEIM) or Weil (WEI)—right next to each other! One semester, halfway through the first class three students got up to leave and apologized, saying they were supposed to be in a class in a different building.
Oh crap. Crapola. Crap-a-doodle-doo.
What if BJr6K is right and TB has already been told that the strip won’t endure past 2024?
Does this mean Byrne will return for the Burnings/Byrnings? Because it’s clear, no matter what, that TB’s going to somehow tie this in with Lisa’s Fuckin’ Story and Timemop and his sci-fi future in which the Sacred Fruit of St Lisa’s Womb writes her stupid story that
Who would read it, I have no idea. Any nonironic Crankshaft fans are already chafing at the relative lack of Crankshaft in the strip. I can’t imagine they want a heavy-handed dose of the Blessed Mother who founds the Vague Religion of the Future.
Oh well. On the bright side, it’d be great fodder for SoSF. On the non-bright side: YIKES.
If Crankshaft ends in 2024, SOSF is screwed
Yeah, having NO new TB content at all would probably not bode well for SoSF.
Screwed? Perhaps. But what SOSF has done is more than TB has done in his entire career. It has created a community. And it’s certainly possible that this community will survive. Prehaps in a different world, with a different focus, with different goals. But SOSF has proven what TB has not–that there is a life out there, on beyond the bayings of the award committees. Who knows.
I can’t envision a scenario where the syndicator says, “We’re tired of your stupid strip, and it’s not making a profit. So you’re fired … in, like, I dunno, eighteen months?”
– If the strip’s profitable for the syndicate, it continues.
– If it gets dropped by a few papers/sites and the gross revenue generated by the strip goes down? Well, the contract would be set up so that the cartoonist’s net payments go down too, so the syndicate is still making its money. (Maybe not as MUCH money, mind you…)
– If enough papers/sites drop the strip, it wouldn’t be profitable for the syndicate OR the cartoonist to continue production and distribution of the strip — and I suspect that would be a pretty quick decision. Ask Scott Adams. (Admittedly, an extreme case.)
I suspect it’s more that the syndicate will no longer pay Batiuk the ludicrous fees he thinks he deserves. So he’s “choosing to retire.” Then he’ll go on his blog and act like it was all his choice to end the strip, when the real issue is that filler is more cheaply available from other providers. And that Batiuk has squandered whatever audience he had for Crankshaft.
Perhaps you’re aware of something that I’m not. Has Batiuk demonstrated an especially mercenary streak?
He wants complete, unfettered, absolute and unquestioned control over his artistic enterprise — sure, that’s obvious. And he absolutely wants everyone to enjoy comics and nostalgia in only the Batiuk-approved style. The guy has control freak issues, no question.
Oh, and he wants awards. Definitely.
But are there stories of outrageous Batiukian financialdemands? I mean, you could argue that ANY money paid to him is an outrageous overpayment, but is he an “I’m only in this for the money” type?
See, I get the vibe that he does the whole comic strip thing so he can get awards nominations. And invites to Comic-Con. And an opportunity to hire comic-book artists to create Sunday strips, so he can pretend they’re his friends.
I’m sure money isn’t unimportant to Batiuk. But I’d guess the ego issues tied up with his comic strip(s) aren’t as much about money, as they are about other things….
I vaguely remember that Batiuk changed syndicates when FW died because they wanted to cut his fee by a large amount.
That was, if I recall, a guess as to why he changed syndicates, but I don’t believe it was ever known for a fact.
And even if it’s true….it still doesn’t prove Batiuk’s financial demands are absurdly high. I mean, if one syndicate slashed their payments to Batiuk and another syndicate was willing to pay a decent amount, it only makes sense that he’d move over to the syndicate that would allow him to make a living doing the thing he wants to do. And I’ve not heard any of the artists he’s hired over the years indicate that he underpaid them, or was late with payments, or anything of that nature.
Batiuk certainly seems to be a narcissist and a control freak. But — and it’s just my opinion, of course — I don’t think he’s primarily motivated by money, at least not in a way that is abnormally greedy or miserly.
It was never about the money. It was about being valued for doing what he wanted to do. It doesn’t matter if he’s not good at it, he wants to help us see that the world is a serious place and that laughing at a problem is useless and bad.
What this means is that he doesn’t realize it but Lena is also an author avatar.
ED:
so the syndicate is still making its money. (Maybe not as MUCH money, mind you…)
Batgirl.
Any of a number of recent Disney+ productions.
Spend $100 million on something and never show it to anyone? Makes no sense! Until you find out that WB and Disney wrote those off and covered the cost with tax writeoffs.
This is a business, and maybe GC has a really good grasp of the “Sunk Cost Fallacy.”
If you ask the production companies, no movie has ever made a profit in the history of Hollywood. Everyone knows you never agree to a cut of the profits.
Speaking of Scott Adams and Crankshaft, I found this somewhat amusing.
A few months ago, a commenter in the Comics Curmudgeon discussion mentioned that their newspaper replaced the comic strip Dilbert with “Crankshaft” after a reader’s poll. “Crankshaft” won by a huge margin.
Two months later, in a case of buyer’s remorse, the readers complained about “Crankshaft,” and the newspaper replaced the
comicstrip with another feature. 😂🤣It seems Crankshaft has a good reputation… until you get a chance to actually read it.
How much do you want to bet we find a future, aged Les STILL moping Lisa’s death. On top of the 15 years he’s already spent moping, and on top of the 10 years the story skipped.
Why does Bats hate Lena, this character that he created? The worst we’ve seen of her is that her coffee and brownies don’t taste good, and yet she’s never noticed no one eats/drinks them. And these diner free-refill parasites never just go to Dunkin.
Re-read this week’s strips. Who would you rather have living in your town? The sweet if clueless lady who burns the coffee, or a sociopathic 105-year-old bus driver who causes thousands of dollars in property damage monthly, and maybe has run over a child? “It’s just a comic strip!” Yeah, and so Peanuts would be if Snoopy was a serial killer.
Crank is a hate-filled, senile sociopath. Les is a hateful narcissist with no empathy. They’re miserable old bastards who delight in ruining the lives of others who have done nothing to them. And they’re the heroes of each strip.
Ponder that. Bet Tom’s fun at parties!
And it never goes anywhere, either. There are no real redemption arcs, where Crankshaft admits that maybe he goes too far sometimes or where Les realizes he’s not the only person who’s ever suffered a personal loss. Crankshaft is always a jerk, and Les was always a smug, moody dick. There’s never any point to it, it’s just how it is.
If you asked Tom who the most beloved FW character was, he’d probably say Dinkle…the wife-neglecting monster who terrorized his students for his own personal profit and glory. Or he might say Lisa…the woman who opted to treat her cancer with wry platitudes and who took years to depressingly die. These strips are just cavalcades of human misery that feature just enough weary banter to be classified as “comics”.
It’s the same thing with the jokes. Lena is a bad cook, and… that’s it. Crankshaft is a sociopathic bus driver, and… that’s it.
Today’s CS is a perfect example. It haa a premise: the bus drivers are such sociopaths that they have traffic jam-causing contests. That’s actually a funny idea!
But… that’s it. What should be the premise is presented as the punchline. There’s no reason for it, no stakes for winning, no rules they have to follow, no repercussions if they get caught doing it, no personal reasons for wanting to win, no conflicts that arise between the drivers as a result, and so on. Think of the movie Monsters. Inc. It had all those things, and more.
Tom Batiuk’s writing is a raw hamburger patty on a plate. The patty is a good enough idea by itself, but it needs preparation and additional ingredients before it becomes something anyone would want to consume. At a minimum, it needs cooking and a bun. He just puts it on a plate and calls you a beady-eyed nitpicker if you point out the problem.
It’s like dealing with Lynn Johnston: all of this stuff is supposed to be happening in the background only the beefwits and nitpickers can’t see it. It never occurred to her that we can’t see inside her head either.
Of course, “Peanuts” with a serial-killer Snoopy would be a whole lot more fun than anything TB has written. I can see him strafing the neighborhood from his Sopwith Camel doghouse, shredding Lucy’s “Psychiatric Help 5¢” booth with dual machine guns (“The Doctor is IN, all right–IN PIECES!!”)…
It’s already been done:
And yes, those names in the credits are who you think they are.
Love the Travis Bickle Mohawk.
Dedicated to Sam Peckinpah? Yeah, I can totally see that. The hubby and I watched Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid the other night. There seemed to be a shootout every five minutes. Do I need to mention The Wild Bunch?
Rhetorical Question: Why does Batiuk seem to think he and his artistic retinue will be able to keep…er, cranking out Crankshaft until late 2024 if–judging from the Sun. 9/3/23 strip–they have to recycle art from the previous week?
The top half of today’s knee-slapper is simply Thursday’s strip cut-and-pasted (with new paint job on the cars behind the bus) and altered from three panels to two. Now, I’ll grant you that’s pretty economical, but they couldn’t draw a new traffic jam situation? Or is this meant to be a flashback to earlier in the week, carefully crafted to give readers further insight into how the title protagonist is a spiteful and thoughtless b*stard who enjoys making other people suffer?
We can see how easy it was for Tom to be one year ahead of schedule with his strips.
Mary Worth has featured a lot of recycled artwork lately, I think they reuse more art than he does, but they have been employing another Tom’s patented time wasting techniques: the week long letter opening. In Mary Worth they wrapped up the current arc at the end of July, and then spent all of August taking a victory lap.
I just noticed this morning that the “creative team” responsible for “Crankshaft”–Batiuk (writing), Ayers (original art), Davis (clip assembly) abbreviates to “B-A-D.”
How did I miss such an obvious Freudian slip?
Which leads to a question about the teased “Burnings” arc: who’s going to draw the new art that such a story would require? Far as I know, the Crankshaft Repository of Art Properties (yes, go ahead and abbreviate that) contains no “books in flames” reusable graphic assets. Will Ayers return from retirement? Will Byrne be brought back to burn it all down?
Nah… in true Batiuk style, we won’t actually see the Burnings; we’ll just watch characters talking about it before and after it happens…
Re: the BAD creative team: That’s how I felt when I realized that “Tom Batiuk” can be shortened to “Tom B.”, which spells “tomb”.
As Batiuk teases a big award-grabbing “burnings” arc a year from now, in today’s strip Crankshaft–both the strip and the character–are going exactly nowhere. Seems appropriate.
And last Sunday was a strip about book-burning that was completely wasted. Even a disapproving tsk-tsk-tsk look from Lillian, could have supported the larger narrative. Instead we got that meaningless, constipated smirk. Probably because the art already existed.
I think we generally avoid bringing Gocomics commentary here wholesale, and I agree that it should be avoided. In light of the 09/03 Sunday strip and commentary, I just have to mention it here.
There’s a poster “Bippy” who writes comments on the strip nearly every day, and most of it is pretty much direct insults on TB and the strip. Several of his posts become the “featured comment of the day” because they get the most responses. Most of the responses he gets are the usual “why do you post here if you hate CS” or “write your own strip” statements. On 09/02, one such poster who responded to Bippy in that manner is named “jarvisloop”.
On 09/03, Bippy responded to JJOMalley’s analysis with “Why do you read it, then? Write your own strip if you can do better!- Sincerely, jarvisloop”. As of this moment, Bippy’s response is getting responses and likes from the people who normally tell Bippy those responses and that he shouldn’t post. The same people! I am amazed by this whole circumstance. Did those people… not notice anything about it? It seems like it. But how could they? Yet, it seems like they did. It’s just amazing.
I think we should (judiciously) post GC comments here. I’ve posted mine that I knew would be Nuked From Space. (There was a 20-comments long post that was incinerated by 6AM Sunday. As Tom would scream, “OH NO THEY DELETED MY DEATHLESS PROSE!” [pause] “Oh, boy! I still have a Hot Pocket left!”)
9/4: Great book choice for 9 year olds. So…they started reading it at age 6, right after a Peppa Pig cartoon? And I know who the sepalchrul nightmare figure is. I leave it to the casual Crank reader to figure it out. (She’s the manifested ghost of every mother who died chasing Crank’s bus to keep him from ramming their child into a mailbox. And next—THE BURNINGS! Also, maybe a Pulitzer!!)
He’s going to make up for last year’s abrupt ending to FW by…dragging CS’s preordained end out forever, isn’t he? He’s gonna go through the whole Dewey Decimal System book by book, isn’t he? Eh, you all know I’m a jerk who won’t shut up, so here we go:
“About her characters, [Alison] Lurie said: ‘I think it is significant that the only book of mine that got a big literary award [the Pulitzer for Foreign Affairs] was the only one in which I’ve killed off a major character. Somehow tragedy attracts awards and comedy doesn’t.'”
Tom, reading that: “…So, I could be the first cartoonist to KILL EVERY CHARACTER” and then he wins an Emmy somehow.
I think it’s hurricane season on CS. Either nothing’s going to happen for the next year, or everything will.
Today, in the Labor Day edition of “Crankshaft “, the witch Lillian gathers her coven in the guise of a book club. In other words, a witches circle. It’s clear the ever-present twins are Lillian’s familiars.
I swear, if Batiuk makes this a two-week story arc featuring Lillian, I’ll travel to his house and burn
a crossan effigy of the witch Lillian in his front yard. Burn, witch! Burn!And just like that your 09/04 post was taken down with an impressive quickness. I guess we’re not supposed to ask if a 9 year old should or would want to read Ulysses.
…or if 9-year-olds should be store employees to the extent those girls are. Don’t they have parents?
Ironically, the question of which books are appropriate for which age groups is exactly what’s behind those “book bannings” TB deplores. I’d like to say that today’s strip is a wry meta-commentary on his earlier strip, but… nah. I think it’s just a joke about “crazy book-club harpies and their hard books, hurr durr.”
I was up all night looking for the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon on TV (I forgot he passed away), and didn’t get to see Monday’s ‘Shaft until late this afternoon, and a sickening thought struck me: What if last Sunday’s “banned books” gem, Batiuk’s reference to “the burnings” popping up, and now a book club featuring “Ulysses” and the Grandy Twins is all a set-up to some police raid where Lillian gets busted for reading pornography to children after some ex-club member–say, maybe, Becky’s mom–ratted on them? Unfortunately for Lil, DSH John’s lawyer who got him off the hook is, I believe, no longer practicing in the corporeal realm.
“Hello, my name is Lisa. If you’re watching this tape, I am representing a client who has been charged with child pornography for discussing James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ at a book club where children were in attendance.”
In all seriousness, it’s way too ambitious for Batiuk. It also doesn’t let any of his usual put-upon constituents become the victor, like the comic book obscenity arc did. Nobody in the Funkyverse goes to bat for classical literature. Les should, because he’s an English teacher, but he has no interest in any books he didn’t write himself.
Does anyone wonder why Tom doesn’t do holiday strips. Certainly he has done some but I’m surprised he doesn’t take the easy way out do something to reflect the holiday. He certainly supports organized labor but instead we get a strip about Ulysses. And how old are those twins? They seem younger now.
I have a theory about this. TB has over/undershot holidays before, when the holiday is one whose date varies (ie, Thanksgiving).
My theory is: He simply can’t be bothered to look at next year’s calendar, or do a web search for “Labor Day 2023” a year beforehand when he’s writing the strips.
Yes, I agree. It’s a ridiculous theory. Yet we’ve noticed that sane, rational theories never seem to pan out when it comes to the Batiukiverse.
Labor Day? I hope this strip lasts until February 23, 2025!!
The 90 year anniversary of Phantom Empire, duh! How do you not KNOW that?!
No, I don’t know which month Easter is in next year, why do you ask?
This “Ulysses” schtick is here to set up the “BURNINGS” plot, I’m certain. Remember that Ulysses was considered obscene in its time, and was the subject of a case that has my favorite name of all time, “United States v. One Book Called Ulysses” (decided 1933). And my favorite quote from a (truly erudite and well-considered) legal decision: “In respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of his characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring.” In the above, substitute “cancer” for “sex,” “Ohio” for “Celtic”, and for “season Spring” – I dunno, just figure out another word for “despair.” I’ll wager stately plump Buck Mulligan’s razor that the appearance of those weird kids at a reading of Ulysses will be part of this.
I see where you’re coming from, but have my doubts. TomBa is the kind of guy who’s gonna pick up his moral panics whole from NPR or MSNBC or somewhere like that. “Ulysses” just isn’t a current topic of conversation in those venues; all the villains in that case are dead, so no chance to score points for the “good guys.”
He’ll want to focus on something that can show him as the Bravest, Most Tolerant Guy in all of Ohio. And the straw villains will have to be some book-bannin’ hicks all afeared o’ them Gawdless Moozlims or dee-generate pre-vert homos. Or, alternately, glowering, stonefaced, beetlebrowed Nazís who stop just short of flinging their arms up to hail the Führer.
It’s important not to ever offer nuance, or ever show, even glancingly, what the Bad Guys are trying to achieve (other than just being vicious scumbags because they don’t agree with TB). They have to be cardboard cutouts like Roberta Blackburn, who was portrayed as an insane puritan because she didn’t want little children reading hentai. She sure got humiliated in court when John Byrne explained in his helpful, racist way that violent tentacle p0rn is a valid “part of Japanese culture.”
Or those dumb, pig-eyed townsfolk that protested the choice of “W;t” for a school play because… uh, duh, just because it’s like sad ‘n’ stuff!
Tom is incapable of realizing that there’s no thrill in defeating a straw villain with the argument, “We’re right ’cause we’re the good guys and you’re wrong ’cause you’re the bad guys!…. and also because that was no kid buying the hentai! It was a DWARF! I rest my case!”
I expect a replay of those scenarios, only this time with the hamfistedness turned up to 11.
Leroy? Oh, Leeeeeeroy? Another clog in the torso chute, I’m afraid.
Yes, I truly believe that Tom “I skipped class at KSU to buy comic books!” Batuik has read Ulysses. Or any of the “banned books” he’s featured. Okay, maybe as required reading in high school, sure, but I’m gonna go with “nothing but Flash comics from 1962” since then.
“Ulysses is hard!” Write a joke that makes it clear you actually read it, or at least wikied it. That’s a 1990s “And airline food, amirite?” level joke. “Oh, Lillian, you talk as long as a Molly Bloom monologue!” or anything.
Tom, on a banned book: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever. And also Flash is like super fat!”