“When I was in middle school and creating my own comic strips and comic books, I called my comic book “company” Batom Comics which was a play on my name.”
“Back when I was in middle age and doing regular daily posts at SoSF, I called Tom Batiuk “Batyam”, “BatBrain”, “Batty”, “BatHam”, “BanTom”, “Batty-Bat Bat Bat” and “Tommy Two-Shirts”, which were plays on his name.”
How fascinating! Why, I’d never made that connection before! Sigh. If these blog posts of his were any duller, you could use them to spread jam on toast. Just like the vast bulk of his work, it’s difficult to believe that he actually spent time on this post, or put any thought into it at all. He even makes his dearest passions boring.
Son of Stuck Funky 
“When I was in middle school and creating my own comic strips and comic books, I called my comic book “company” Batom Comics which was a play on my name.”
“I’m glad you’re here to tell us these things!” — Han Solo, “The Empire Strikes Back”
The possibilities for blog content like this are limitless.
“When I would draw, I would place the point of the pen on the paper surface, apply pressure, and move my hand and arm, thus leaving ink marks on the paper, ink marks I formed into various shapes”.
“The dialog bubbles were mainly a way to show the reader what the character was saying, and the little pointy arrow part indicated which pictured character was speaking.”
“And I really enjoy talking about comic books, but only in a very specific and insanely mundane way.”
It’s vaguely tempting to go to one of his signings, if only to see if the man is as dull in real life as he is on the page. We know he can’t write … but is it possible he could be even worse in conversation?
He’s always seemed like a decent enough guy, and no one appears to have anything but nice things to say about him, except us, I suppose. But that’s all based on his work, which is indeed pretty freaking boring. Tunnel digging machines have nothing on BatYam’s comic strips. Huge oil fields contain fewer bores. And so forth. His work is boring, is what I’m saying.
I always imagined that at first, it’d be pretty cool to meet him, and talk about FW, even just superficially, but then he’s start trying to talk about “Lisa’s Story”, and it’d get all weird and uncomfortable. Like how it was in the strip. Zing.
I think Tom Batiuk’s good at pretending to be a nice guy, without actually being one. And it’s his boring comic strip and his even more boring blog that announce it all to the world.
We know how dishonest he is about his own work; how poorly he takes criticism; how desperate he is for recognition; how incapable he is of letting go of any slight; how he blames his own failures on everybody but himself; how petty and litigious he is; how snippy and demanding he is that every single thing be done exactly the way he wants it; how little he thinks of his readers; and how pushy he is about making them buy those worthless Lisa’s Story books.
Then there’s the Funkyverse itself. It’s a world of random, pointless, smirking cruelty for most people. And it’s a Judge Parker-like fantasy for all his Mary Sue characters to get famous, win awards, find priceless comic books all over the place, and enjoy his hobbies “correctly.”
This quote came up in a sports story I read today, but it applies here too. “People tell you who they are. Listen.”
THANK YOU. I don’t know the guy personally, obviously, and I claim no inside knowledge. But based on the verifiable, publicly available facts, there’s no real evidence that he’s a “nice guy.” I find a number of facts seem to indicate the opposite:
1. Battles with syndicates in which, by his own description, his behavior comes off as rather petty and vindictive.
2. A general score-settling tone in his comic, starting in Act II and really ramping up in Act III. I admit this is more of an impression than a fact, but for me, it’s a very strong impression.
3. The aforementioned apparent lack of collegiality with fellow comic strip artists. He’s a late-middle-aged white guy from the Midwest; he should fit right in. After 50 years, and all the convention lanyards he’s collected and proudly displays on his blog, wouldn’t you think he’d have friends all over the industry?
4. The very weird and conspicuous lack of any celebration from anyone over the 50th anniversary. 50 years with the same creator is a remarkable feat. It’s even more remarkable when it ticks by unnoticed, even by strips he’s done crossovers with, such as Hi & Lois and Dick Tracy…
4a. … and apparently with zilch press coverage. Why? I can only make a wild guess. Perhaps press outlets had been burned before with his storylines that petered out to a depressing, damp-squib ending. (eg, Bull/CTE, Lisa/cancer).
5. Getting butthurt when he’s corrected. Every human being makes mistakes. It’s just as easy to be lighthearted, to say, “Believe it or not, my crack proofreading staff missed something! I’ve reduced their gruel allowance accordingly,” and then fix it. If someone’s finding mistakes, it means they’re reading your work carefully. You should be grateful. Getting pissy when your mistakes are pointed out shows an unfortunate level of self-delusion and a lack of humility that belies the “nice guy” façade.
6. Worst of all, in my eyes, his habit of not giving credit to other creators. It honestly shocked me when I found out that for years he signed his own name only to art that Ayers had done. Then there’s the reprinting of DC property/logos without proper legal credit. But to me the capper was when he used some child’s drawing of a superhero that he’d gotten off his local comic store’s wall without any credit at all. I actually thought Davis had done it and I was impressed at how well he could imitate that lively, loose pre-adolescent style.
IMO, that was a sh!tty, low move, especially for someone who never shúts up about his own childhood superhero fan drawings. Yet he never for a second considered how that child would feel about having his drawing stolen — yes, it was stolen, TB made money from someone else’s work — with no credit. And then he blogged about it proudly, still not crediting the actual artist. I don’t know which is worse — did he consider the feelings of the kid and just shrug them off with a “who cares,” or did he not even register that the young artist is a human being with feelings and desires of his own?
I’m sorry this turned into a manifesto, but it’s been a LONG time brewing and BJr6K’s post just made the dam burst.
I think 3 and 4 offer a clue–Batiuk really has no interest in comic strips and consider them beneath his talents. He therefore doesn’t pal around with the people who make them.
His focus is on comic books and that arena, he seems to have several friends (Tony Isabella, eg) and connections he can call upon (the Starbuck Jones covers, a Stan Lee introduction).
Comic books are the literary works of the age. Comic strips are those stupid things that dumb people read. You can see which one holds his interest.
I thank you, Duck, for illustrating the things I merely asserted. I would add one detail to #1: as much as he talks about his battles with the syndicate, he never tells you what the outcomes of those battles were. In addition to being bad storytelling, it looks like he’s trying to hide the fact that he lost. He doesn’t even given us a “we settled out of court.” Which happens 90% of the time, and usually comes with the built-in excuse of not being able to disclose terms. I wonder if he just got laughed out of court.
I’m sure Batiuk is superficially cordial. But his own writings reveal him to be a nasty piece of work.
The flagrant libeling of Hal Foster also warrants a mention under #6. To call another creator a thief, and to do so using art that Batiuk himself copied from said “thief”, takes some serious gall. (Especially since he seems to have actually admired Foster. What was he even trying to say there? How did he think this story was going to be received?)
(To a lesser extent, we also have Timemop “nudging” Ken Keeley with the Eradicator helmet design. It’s not as bad as the Foster example, since he had Foster knowingly using someone else’s art with permission or attribution, but Batiuk was still giving credit for someone else’s work to one of his characters, rather than the real-world person whose work he claims to admire.)
As for #2… he’s friends with and has procured the services of John Byrne. As much as it may seem like Batiuk was engaging in some petty score-settling, he still has nothing on Byrne. The guy’s legendary on that front. It may be a bit “guilt by association”, and it certainly doesn’t prove that Batiuk was doing it… but it doesn’t do a whole lot to disprove it, that’s for sure…
His focus is on comic books and that arena, he seems to have several friends (Tony Isabella, eg) and connections he can call upon (the Starbuck Jones covers, a Stan Lee introduction).
He’s also only interested in friends who can give him things he wants. Do you ever hear of Tom Batiuk being a mentor to a young comic strip artist? Or encouraging a child, even that child whose artwork he used in the strip? No. It’s all take, take, take, and never give.
You read my mind, BJr6K. I was gonna add something about the apparent lack of mentoring, but I figured that we don’t know for sure whether he has mentored or encouraged younger talent, so I left it out.
But I think we can say that we haven’t seen any evidence of it. No younger cartoonists talking about it; no correspondence with younger fans or aspiring cartoonists; no stories from conventions.
The use of the young superhero fan’s art without attribution is another bit of evidence. It would have been so nice to have called that kid out on his blog. It would have made that kid’s life if he’d thrown a hundred bucks their way, and told them, “Hey, you just earned your first hundred in the comic biz! You’re off to a great start!”
Think about the greats, whoever you consider those to be. Say, Schulz, Watterson, Kelly, that level. Can you imagine them using someone else’s art at all, let alone without paying them and giving them proper attribution, especially if it was a child’s art?
we don’t know for sure whether he has mentored or encouraged younger talent, so I left it out. But I think we can say that we haven’t seen any evidence of it.
I find it hard to give Batiuk the benefit of the doubt, because he’s the kind of guy who wouldn’t sort his recyclables without writing a press release for Good Morning America. He wins an award 25 other people also won at the same ceremony and he gushes about it. If any cartoonist had ever given him the tiniest amount of thanks, we’d all know about it. Case in point: the letter he got from Charles Schulz.
About #3 above, I too have always been curious about Batiuk’s relationship with other cartoonists.
There’s a somewhat famous event in comic strip history titled The Comic Strip Switcheroo
Scores of comic strips participated. Conspicuous in its absence is the name of one Thomas Martin Batiuk. 1997 was smack dab in the middle of Funky Winkerbean‘s 50 year long run.
Some people will notice the strips involved were humor strips. Funky Winkerbean, at the time, might not have qualified as a humor comic strip. But what about Crankshaft? Wasn’t Crankshaft a humor strip (at the time)?
What the hell happened, TB? Inquiring minds want to know.
A.) TB couldn’t find a dance partner to swap with. Did no one want to swap with TB? Did TB have a reputation of “not playing well with others”? Did other cartoonists like TB, but not his comic strips? Did other cartoonists like his comic strips, but not him? Did the other cartoonists not trust Batiuk to keep the secret plan from the editors? Did TB’s invitation get lost in the mail?
B.) Even if TB couldn’t find someone to swap, couldn’t he have done something equally humorous, such as drawing the strip with his opposite hand? Pulling a Billy Keane and having his son draw the comic strip for a day? Wouldn’t that have been fun for young Brian?
C.) TB didn’t want any other cartoonists messing with his babies.
D.) Did TB think the whole idea was utter nonsense and refused to participate?
E.) All of the above.
F.) None of the above.
G.) Vodka.
I would suspect that those cartoonists who knew of Batiuk’s work thought that he did long-form stories, and an interruption in one of those might be off-putting to readers. Maybe. I don’t know what FW was doing in 1997 and honestly don’t care.
I would also like to mention that the Reubens are awarded based on a vote by National Cartoonist Society members, i.e. his peers.
Could this explain why TB has never won one?
You’re right, of course. That letter from Schulz is typically gracious, what you would expect of a creator who was loved and admired by fans and peers alike. It was mentioned here before and someone commented on the line, “I look forward, someday, to a good conversation. Maybe at next year’s Reuben Dinner.” Kind, yet vague and arm’s-length. Well played, Sparky.
I think the best evidence is that afaik, Bats has never mentioned an aspiring young talent on his blog, let alone showcased their art. My armchair-psychologist take: He is threatened by up-and-coming talent. Perhaps he’s jealous of them, feeling as he does that he never got his chance as a young man and was deprived of his rightful place helming Spider-Man.
On the other hand, newspaper comics, and even superhero comic books, are a moribund business. I know many of us on this site read them, but an industry needs to bring in lots of young consumers or it eventually dies out. My son is 17 and no one in his peer group cares about superhero comic books, and this is in a high school that specializes in art and has an entire curriculum for cartooning.
So perhaps we’re being too harsh; perhaps there just isn’t anyone out there any more who wants mentoring from a newspaper cartoonist/comic book artist manqué.
Schulz also wrote letters to anyone who sent him one. Showing yours off is like bragging about being selected for a timeshare presentation.
To jump on the defender wagon for a bit. Batiuk did get to do a Dick Tracey crossover during Act III, so that was some cross promotion with people who are a pretty big deal in the comic strip scene.
And he got feted at Comic Con last year more than the current interest in his strip would have warranted, all to celebrate his 50 years. I don’t know what his reputation in the strip biz is, but nothing stands out as making him a Dilbert level pariah.
Does Batiuk seem to have some traits of ego-tripping, unwarranted self importance, and a nasty little vice of making himself seem better by building imaginary strawmen to stand next to? Yes. But I think, in our heart of hearts, we all know people we love who have those same flaws.
I honestly believe that a nice person, capable of generosity, kindness, and selflessness, can create insufferable art when put on a soap box. There are people in my life that I love very dearly that, if given a chance to preach to the masses on whatever they wanted would give the cringiest, most bull-headed diatribes’.
I know I also have a nasty little ego streak. When you all were talking about your middle school and elementary school creations, I was thinking of how I still hoard mine, and in my most self-obsessed and preening moments I still imagine they’re early signs of genius. And they weren’t anywhere near as complex as the whatever BTS had cooked up.
If I ever meet Batiuk, I think I’d get a better sense on if his ‘nice guy’ persona is an actual front, or genuine. But until then, I stand by my assertion that he seems fundamentally decent. And even if he is really a narcissistic ego monster, we don’t know of anything heinous he’s done apart from his crimes against fiction. I wish him nothing but the best.
@Harriet That’s all fair. I’ve just seen enough of the man to know I don’t want to see any more, beyond how fascinatingly awful the man is. And I’m sure he wants to meet me even less.
Since I’m unlikely to ever be in Akron or a comic book store, I’ll probably never get the chance anyway. The journalist part of me would love to interview him, but I don’t think I’d get any honest answers. And I wouldn’t exactly be an impartial participant.
I do think it says at least a little something about him that he doesn’t seem to be particularly good friends with anyone else in the comic strip industry. I notice that, outside of Terri Libenson’s contribution to Volume 7, it appears that none of the Complete Funky Winkerbean forewards have been written by other comic strip creators or contributors.
I was thinking of Terri Libenson too. She was a fellow Ohioan cartoonist. She probably saw TB at numerous conventions before she retired.
I could swear I read something flattering she had written about Batiuk, but other than the foreward you mentioned above, I can’t find anything.
A deleted tweet?
TB’s “proofreader” made another boo-boo.
As you commented, Terri Libenson wrote the foreward to The Complete Funky Winkerbean, Volume 7.
In his blog, Batiuk states Terri Libenson wrote the foreword for Volume 8 of The Complete Funky Winkerbean.
Wrong dishwater breath! Do not Pass Go. Do not collect $200.
The foreward to The Complete Funky Winkerbean, Volume 8 was written by Dennis Diken.
Jeez, TB. If you’re going to write a salute to a special friend who’s retiring and happen to mention a favor they did you in the past, at least get your facts straight. He makes it seem like it wasn’t that big of a deal.
TB: It was one of the volumes. (dismissive wave)
Dennis Diken? The drummer for the Smithereens? Hunh. Okay.
A Komix Thoughts blog post mentions her participating in the Dead Lisa Run in 2015:
https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/lisas-legacy-run-wrap-up/
In another post you probably found already, he laments the end of her comic strip:
And the strips remaining on the comics page can ill afford the loss of a competitor of this caliber (and if you don’t think Terri is a competitor, ask her to show you the medal she won at a past Lisa’s Legacy run).
Oh, fuck you, Tom. In the middle of a sentence praising a friend’s work, he’s got to slam on the brakes and change the subject to Lisa.
Yeah, sure, Tom. She wears the medal every day. It’s her prize possession. /S
Terri: (proud) Tom Batiuk gave me this medal.
I don’t think so.
I just can’t bring myself to go. I would feel like a phony.
I’m actually surprised I haven’t bumped into him casually as Akron is a small community. I’ve seen Chrissie Hynde in the grocery store and at a restaurant. ( Her mom still lives in the area.)
I guess if I really want to see Batty, I need to go to Luigi’s.
He may not be an obvious sight but still haven’t noticed him there on my last few visits to Luigi’s.
Dunno if I would actually act on his “feel free to walk up and say I” invitation he once said somewhere when talking about borrowing the place.
I ran across an interview with him on one of our PBS channels the other day, and based on that he’s probably just as dull in person. (I think it was an episode of Comic Culture, if anyone is curious.)
We had a blog post about that interview awhile back. I was going to transcribe it, but honestly the whole thing was so boring I couldn’t complete it. I just focused on the “Simpsons” part of it, because it was so dishonest.
I really struggle to get through his interviews as well, and the few I’ve managed to endure to the end all end up being boilerplate anyway. It’s not worth it for me.
You probably don’t care anymore, but PBS has a transcript of it.
ga.video.cdn.pbs.org/captions/comic-culture/30a256d2-ff0b-4782-8ac6-0d235e050d66/captions/jTK7dK_caption_en.txt
I do, actually, That would have been a big help. Thanks.
I can identify with TB here in that I did these same kinds of things in middle school. I covered reams of paper with an uncountable number of fictional creations, from comics to sports leagues to consumer products companies to nations. I made up a video game console called “System X” and outlined the games I imagined would be released for it.
Where I differ here is that I don’t pretend any of this is inherently interesting to anyone who isn’t 13 year old me, and haven’t done so since I was 13 year old me.
I had two fictional characters I used to draw. One was Conrad, a skateboarding, marijuana-smoking, denim jacket-wearing duck, who loved heavy metal and despised geese. The second was Blue Manure, a superhero who only fought crime in bowling alleys. I was a troubled youngster, sure. What of it?
Somewhere in storage I’ve got two giant volumes of comics I drew in middle and high school. My friends found them amusing, but I have no illusions that they’re evidence of undiscovered genius. Besides, the creatures that live in Nostalgia seldom survive very long after being removed from their native land.
In seventh grade, my best friend and I set up an our own publishing house – “Foonman & Zelmo LLC.”
We were inspired by the content and style of many of the luscious-looking Penguin paperbacks of the time.
We had it all figured out, too, minus the content and artwork.
Were you Foonman or Zelmo?
The names represented our fundamental disagreements about the direction we should take.
I was thinking our approach should be like Bennett Cerf’s (Random House – random interests) or the Lane brothers (Penguin – “classic lit at the price of a pack of cig gives”). Ken wanted us to be more Dick Simon and Max Schuster (“Little Golden Books” – cheap books for kids).
In the long run, our publishing house (a spiral notebook) was acquired by the home-room teacher in a hostile takeover.
That’s actually a charming little story. Thank you.
I’ve got binders and binders from Middle School of rip-off Redwall fanfic, detailed fantasy settings, and notes for what I was sure would be the next Lord of the Rings masterpiece.
Unlike all you sane and reasonable people, I was a self-obsessed troll child, and thought they were a sign I was the second coming of C.S Lewis…and that by now I would be JK Rowling levels of famous.
Now?
*gestures to empty shelves full of non existent books*
All of you, with your childhood nonsense. Pics or it didn’t happen.
Yet for a long time his website was credited to Bantom, not Batom! Why doesn’t he explain the mystery of that “n”? The sheer enigma keeps me from getting a decent night’s sleep!
pics or it didn’t happen
Between this, how the last “Annotated Funky” post read, and the fact that half his darn posts are just excerpts from the volume introductions gives off a very lazziez-faire (to put it kindly) approach to blogging. Especially when blogs are past their prime in the social media era, something with more substance and insight would be more interesting to read rather than observations that feel rather obvious or repetitious to people already interested in the work (which let’s face it, we are all if we’re all still here, even if it’s not for the “right” reasons).
So here’s a blog-like observation. As this blog post as-ever plugs the “Komix Korner” section of Tom’s website, I click on over there out of boredom, and it’s cute to note that this seems to be where most of the money in “unique” coding for his current website went as far as digital “simulations” of the coveted spinner racks. Though the trick seems to be more in JPG orientation since while there is a cute hexagonal 3D grid for each rack’s sign and comics, and there’s layers to the comics to resemble the racks’ typical shelf heights, that’s as far as it goes since there’s no imagery for the racks themselves, metal bars and all.
And of course clicking the comics themselves only links to a showcase page for their covers and the art process behind them since there’s never a full story to go with them (a shame, I’d at least like to see some effort taken with Starbuck Jones’s robot buddy, as seen on the No. 7 cover and more famously from the “Funky hallucinates jogging with a robot” week). I’m not writing a deep dive so I’m not checking them all, but at least some of them have some prose about how they came to be, as Starbuck #7 talks about being the beginning of Tom’s original-cover commissioning and the avalanche of his own comic book/publisher lore. Mentions too that the artist for it, Joe Staton, came up with most of the ideas for the covers and featured characters, and apparently enjoyed working Batiuk enough that he helped arrange the Dick tracy crossover, which he illustrates. (So we have him to credit for an indirect connection between the Funkyverse and DC comics due to some sly hinting of one of Tracy’s villains was the Penguin’s brother. Yeah, imagine Westview being hit by the Anti-Life Equation, fun times.)
The moment I saw the new, terribly designed page, I realized it had been done for one purpose only: To put a “spinner rack” on it so he could fulfill his childhood fantasy of the Batom comics on a spinner rack.
Yet for some reason the Holy Spinner Rack isn’t even highlighted on the splash page.
And in the process of uselessly and ineptly redesigning the web page, he made it near-impossible to read his blog entries in order. Instead, after you read the latest, you’re served 3 random entries from the blog’s history.
Just a lousy user experience all around.
The spinner rack must have been a custom build, because no other person on earth would want that on their website. It has its charms as a unique design element, but its real problem is the same as the comic book covers themselves: they’re an elaborate display of nothing.
You can’t buy the comic book, you can’t buy the artwork, you can’t read a story about how it figures into the Funkyverse, you can’t do anything with it. It’s a comic book cover that exists to be a comic book cover. Which makes it a good metaphor for Funky Winkerbean itself.
The belief that something amazingly obvious is actually a mind-blowing revelation that no one could have ever foreseen is not the worst of it. The belief that being told that he just told is ‘Dog bites man” is his being bullied is.
When I read this entry, I had the feeling that he was trying to brag, that even in childhood he showed greatness. But all children create their own comic strips and so this says nothing.
And the logos he created, while realistic, are something that anyone could have come up with.
I also noticed Batom and Bantom being used. I suppose we could email him and ask.
I also think he needs a better web developer. His page is quirky and doesn’t render quite right on my iPad. Batty would probably say “good, use a desktop and not a fruit device”.
Here’s my question: why doesn’t he finish the Batom Comics backstory he started writing and never finished? It was something he had no reason to write, indulged his overly narrow interests about as well as anything could, and he still lost interest in it. But he wants to keep talking about it, so we get this weaksauce declaration. If it’s possible to be lazy and obsessed at the same time, this is what it looks like.
That Batom Comics backstory is probably the most interesting thing TB wrote/made available for public consumption in the last decade of FW. It’s nothing amazing, but it is competently stitched together and it is clear that he put some thought into it when creating the characters that serve his fictional history. That never really came through when he dropped bits of that Batom Comics history as “flashbacks” into FW. First they were awkwardly used as the daydreams of Pete and Durwood as they procrastinated at their Hollywood jobs, and later they were (briefly) used to convey no new information whatsoever about Flash and Phil. The latter was especially egregious as, like his recent blog post, all those strips ever really said was that “Batom Comics and these old farts existed”.
This is the problem with presenting stuff you created as a kid simply as is. TB’s childhood comic ideas don’t spark nostalgia in anyone but himself. Outside of a hard-to-parse view of what he found interesting during his childhood and what may have influenced his adult work, these lightly-developed ideas offer nothing to anyone other than the author. With a small number of exceptions, he presents his childhood comic ideas without commentary. They aren’t parody and there is so little to most of them that only Starbuck Jones might rise to the level of genuine pastiche, and only because we were told just enough about it to get that it is a Flash Gordon wannabe.
I mentioned earlier that I created a fictional video game console when I was a kid called “System X”. Digging those old drawings out and having a professional artist recreate them with talent and polish would not make them interesting in the same way that TB presenting his Batom Comics ideas via Sunday strip comic book covers is not interesting. They mean something to me, but all they would tell anyone else is that video games existed when I was a kid and I thought it would be cool if they looked like this.
However, these ideas can be the foundation of something interesting to others, but you have to expand on them and find a focus and purpose for them. As an adult who likes to fill up sketchbooks, I took my interest in the video games of my youth and created a console called “◆32” that stands as a pastiche of several (mostly failed) video game consoles of the mid-90s. ◆32 exists in my sketchbooks through a series of print ad rough drafts, all intended to parody the trendy game ideas (a football title called Bernie Kosar’s Under Center, for example) earnestly corny ad copy (the console’s slogan is “Get Bit!”, lampooning the time’s dopey aggressive parlance and the silly obsession with how many “bits” a console had) of the mid-90s video game scene. I still wouldn’t claim any of this stuff I’ve done is worth sharing beyond what I’m saying here, but I can claim that I put thought behind it beyond “this exists”.
I thought the Batom Comics backstory flirted with being good. It had a strong setup: starting with the end of the story and then flashing back to the beginning as the the staff members joined years before. Then it just… stopped. Did he lose interest in it? No, because he’s constantly talking about his fictional comic book company. It’s another classic Batiuk paradox. Or maybe it’s another case of Batiuk writing himself into a story he lacked the ability to write himself out of.
My take: He likes the idea of all this stuff, but when the boring reality sets in — which means doing a bunch of work for free, since he doesn’t get paid for blogging — the thrill wears off.
He’s in an odd half-world. He doesn’t have enough interest to complete work like this — it’s clear that his own fantasy world isn’t compelling enough, even to him, to bother fleshing out.
Yet he also doesn’t register that he’s writing for an audience, and so he doesn’t feel compelled to “make good” on the premise he’s started, if only for his readers’ sake.
The best description I can think of for these excitedly started, then lackadaisically dropped threads is: Adolescent.
And even that is probably too generous.
It’s a bizarre mental wall between inspiration and execution, a wall that, for all intents and purposes, shouldn’t exist for an artist of any kind, as, you know, executing ideas that inspired them is kind of what they do. BatKnob has no trouble being inspired by things, but when he tries to do something with it, he loses interest halfway through. I’ve never seen anything like it.
I sincerely believe his best course of action would have been to just bag the stupid comic strips, and focus on bringing his fictional comic book characters to life, for real. Not “real” real, but pretend real. I am, of course, referring to Batiuk’s one truly brilliant idea…”Rip Tide-Scuba Cop”, which had limitless potential. “The Rock, as Rip Tide”…it’d have been a license to print money. Such a blown opportunity.
He’s an “idea guy.” He thinks once he has an idea, that’s the end of it. Ideas are cheap; execution is expensive. I don’t know if he loses interest or runs out of talent halfway through. But he sure does, every time.
To put it mildly, he is not a professional-caliber writer. At least not for the heavy drama he’s been trying to do for the last 30 years. Sometimes you have to get things completed and get them out the door, even if you’re not totally satisfied with them. When you’re dealing with customers and deadlines, sometimes “good enough” is good enough.
Batiuk has no concept of that. He thinks everything he does is precious precious art that has to be whittled to perfection with no regard to timeframe, or to anyone’s concerns but his own. Which is also why Les Moore can’t possibly have written the Lisa’s Story that supposedly exists in his world. Then everything we see them write is shit anyway.
His problem is that he was an adequate gag-a-day writer, and he’s not really equipped for any other kind of writing. All his other writings reflect this–his blog entries are basically “Here’s something I saw” with no context or explanation of why it should be interesting to the reader. He can’t write beyond the surface. That works if you’re writing jokes or puns (the reader “gets it” and moves on) but doesn’t work for any other kind of writing.
Imagine Henny Youngman trying to write a serious, tragic novel and you’ll get a very good picture of Tom Batiuk, Dramatist.
@Beckoningchasm Yup. That Pulitzer nomination absolutely ruined Tom Batiuk as an artist. Personally, I think it was a token nomination so they could justify giving the “editorial cartooning” prize to Berke Breathed, which was a major break from tradition at the time. But that’s another thread.
The Pulitzer nomination rewarded Batiuk for his worst work, in a way that aligned perfectly with his (heretofore unknown) ego. It inspired him to turn his nose at his best skill, and embrace his worst one. And nobody ever told him to stop.
Speaking for myself that all sounds pretty interesting actually and i would love if you posted more (pix plz?). How do you pronounce it—“Black Diamond 32”?
I’ll see if I can find the sketchbook I devoted to it and put up a photo or two. It’s not great artwork or anything.
I believe I intended for the pronunciation to be “Diamond Thirty-Two”, just always written as ◆32. The 32 was pretty overtly borrowed from Sega’s 32X (as were the big chunky cartridges I depicted it using) while the ◆ was taken from the 3DO logo. The name seemed like it fit alongside the consoles it was mocking: the 32X, 3DO, CDi, Atari Jaguar, and such.
As I say super-interesting! I don’t really have the experience growing up with them to think of a console itself as an outlet for creativity; although I do daydream up various comic books, video games, rpg supplements or similar things in my spare moments.
As for vidya I’m ride or die with Sony–although I’m still running a PS3. X O □ ∆
“Bernie Kosar’s Under Center” made me laugh a lot more than perhaps it should have.
“Kurt Bevacqua’s Batter Up!”
“Trevor Berbick’s Knock-Down!
“The Honky Tonk Man’s Wrestling Mania!”
Those are better than most of the sports titles I cam up with, though I did go into full-on Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf parody with “Jim Courier’s Menacing Tennis” and a golf title called “Corey Pavin’s Mean Eighteen”.
Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge was a real game? Holy cow. The Nintendo era was crazy.
“Greg Norman’s Masters Challenge!”
“Ben Johnson’s Olympic Glory!
“Lenny Dykstra’s Home Run Derby!”
“The Ivan Lendl Tennis Simulator”
On the Blog entry featuring the origin of the “Batom” name, Batiuk’s art looks like a poor man’s Fletcher Hanks.
Are you broadcasting from your tubular spacial?
Crankshaft makes zero sense for the second day in a row. “I used to chase your bus when my daughter rode it.” “Is this your granddaughter?” “Yes, I’ve been grandmothered into duty.” It’s an awkward pun on “grandfather clause” that has nothing to do with the setup, and wouldn’t work even if it did. Batiuk obviously thought of the punchline first, and just filled the first two panels with whatever words to get there.
This whole week has been a pointless conversation that makes the whole bus later and later for school while this little girl and her grandmother stand outside in the rain.
On top of all that, no one was naming their daughter “Cindy” in 2015. Is this little girl some branch of the Summers family tree? You think Tom would avoid that like the plague, given how much he thinks Cindy’s sister was his worst character.
Yesterday’s strip had a nice puddle reflection effect, which made no sense given where the characters are. Crankshaft’s face is somehow reflected in an outside puddle when he’s five feet inside the bus, from the perspective of someone who’s practically standing in the puddle.
Banana Jr. 6000:
Batton Lash’s last storyline for *Supernatural Law* made fine use of the “grandfather clause” and ghosts.
These *Crankshaft* panels take me back to William Butler Yeats, who made the case poetically why should not old men be mad.
Maybe “Cindy Johnson” was named that because her mother’s favorite TV show growing up was re-runs of “The Brady Brunch” and she has sisters named Marcia and Jan (because Mr. Batiuk has forgotten his own Marcia and Jan) and a brother named Greg (nobody here has five siblings).
There should be Justice for Kirsty, but there will never be Sympathy for Sadie (or Mercy for Mercedes)
Or not until Cindy remembers that she wanted to be known as “Cynthia,” because she’d reached a certain age. (As she declared at a reunion which had not merely loomed but come and gone.)