An Engaging Response.

65 thoughts on “An Engaging Response.”

1. CBH,
   You know TB better than almost all of us. Why does he set up an interesting arc like “my 2 dads” and then drop it like a hot potato? It doesn’t make any sense. He has characters and storylines than can be interesting. Then it collapses in the least fascinating way. If I remember FW correctly, what started promising on Monday, quickly deflated into boredom by Wednesday. It makes me think that he devoted his writing and plots just to end a story on a smirk.
   Have a grand weekend.

   1. Hey SP,
      I don’t know if I know TB better than everyone here, but I’ll give my top few reasons that all work in tandem to neuter dramatic potential.

      1.) Too many rotating plotlines. The rotating plotline gimmick is useful for stories that are going to take a while to tell and benefit from the letting weeks or months seem to pass in strip. But Batiuk had too many balls in the air in 2009/2010. You had Wally coming home, Les writing and publishing Lisa’s Story, Cayla and Les and Susan love triangle, Cory Winkerbean the delinquent, the Montoni’s pizza empire collapsing, Summer basketball and driver’s ed nonsense, introducing the Owen and Cody freshman class, on top of many one week arcs of highschool gags of various types.

      2.) Batiuk prioritizes his characters not based on dramatic potential, but by how much HE personally identifies with them and enjoys writing for them. So Les Moore, with his love triangle, parenting of Summer, and book deals takes up massive amounts of time. Moreover he introduces Owen and Cody, and spends time on them, in a cast already bloated with plotlines, because he loves his two nerdy besties pet trope and couldn’t get it from Summer’s class of female nepobabies.

      3.) Batiuk is generally adverse to dramatic confrontation between ‘good’ characters. He puts people in conflict, but usually never actually has them shout things out. Instead they mope, accept, and quietly angst. Maybe Funky yells at Cory for being a delinquent, but Batiuk has a hard time with grey zone drama where you have multiple ‘good’ characters with cause to be really mad at each other. The only real exception I can recall is the Funky and Cindy divorce, which was decently thought through and presented. But that’s because showing the grey divorce of people growing apart WAS the goal he knew he wanted to go for.

      4.) The only parent/child relationships Batiuk sustains any interest in long term are Summer and Les, and sometimes Funky/Holly and Cory. Every other parent child relationship either is a nostalgia vehicle with no drama at all ala Maddie/Crazy, or is an anemic appendix of an idea.

      5.) Lisa’s Story is decreed the emotional and dramatic apex of the Funkyverse. Every other plotline, no matter how much more angst there should be on paper, cannot dare to approach the DRAMA and EMOTION of Les crying in the rain in New York while scattering Lisa’s ashes.

      1. Thank you, CBH. Great answer!
         “2.) Batiuk prioritizes his characters not based on dramatic potential, but by how much HE personally identifies with them and enjoys writing for them.”
         I really think you hit the nail on the head. Batton Thomas really stands out. If the character is a stand-in for the author, then whatever the character does, must be fascinating and therefore worthy of space. Even if it’s just sweating on a treadmill in an office where he does not work.

      2. That over-the-top scene gets bashed a lot here, and not without reason.

         However, I maintain that it was one of the few scenes in FW history in which someone showed an appropriate emotion. Les is basically an emo kid who’s the star of the drama in his head. His young wife died and left him the single parent of a very young child. He’s revisiting a place where they had happy times, now scattering her ashes there. Weeping and drama are not inappropriate, given Les’ very non-stoic personality. At least we didn’t get smirks, wry remarks, blue cats, and/or pissy, arm-crossed pouting.

         Admittedly, the rain was a bit over-the-top. Couldn’t Lestoil have waited till the rain stopped or at least died down a bit? Oh well; at least in the pelting downpour he was less likely to be spotted by cops. Disposing of human remains on public property is a big no-no. Nobody wants to inhale bits of Dead St Lisa as they wheel their toddler to the nearby playground, Les. Gross.

         1. Les scattered Lisa’s ashes so many times there shouldn’t be any of her left in the urn. Whatever emotional weight scenes like this might have had, Batiuk destroyed it by making Les repeat them over and over and over and over for 15 years (plus the 10 he skipped). Saying goodbye to a lost loved one is a powerful moment – once. When the character just keeps doing it, it becomes a sign of a problem that other characters should react to. Which of course no one does.

            1. This is one of those weird, very specific Act II-III obsessions Bats keeps returning to: The dramatic scattering of ashes.

               Along with:
               Missing left arms.
               Shocking discoveries of gem mint Golden Age comics.
               Damsels in distress being carried by studly men (usually Les).
               Running through fire.

               I know I’m missing some obvious ones. Add on if you think of more.

            2. This is so true, and it isn’t just Les (though he is the biggest and best example in TB’s work). The big problem when TB actually does something half-decent is that he’s poisoned the well with nearly all of his characters. We don’t care that Les is reacting realistically and understandably because we hate him. This was true to some extent when the strip was first printed but became undeniably true as Les’ performative grief took over early Act III.

               Or for another example, the infamous “Pm n Jff” story. I know you have commented before about how it is not terribly becoming or appropriate that Fred Fairgood’s impaired speech became this site’s mocking nicknames for the Murdoch parents, something I am inclined to agree with you about now. However, it is easy to understand why so many folks on here, myself included, were very comfortable using TB’s spelling of Fred’s impaired speech in such a way… TB made us hate pretty much everyone involved in that story, including FRED! TB had established (for no especially good reason) years earlier when Fred was stricken with a stroke that his marriage with Ann was loveless and awful and that a 1972 throwaway gag he wrote about the football coach kidnapping his daughter so he would pass Bull was actually a reference to a daughter from a previous marriage that he had pretty much abandoned. I’m still floored by all that. The guy can’t seem to help himself!

            3. I know I’m missing some obvious ones. Add on if you think of more.

               – You said one in the last thread: score-settling. Especially scores from high school.

               – Being published, and winning awards. There are more award-winning published authors in Westview than there are characters in most comic strips.

               – The comic book cover creation process. How many weeks did Batiuk spend setting up comic book covers that had no purpose in the story? And didn’t have a comic book attached?

      3. And he doesn’t rotate plotlines when he should. Holly’s broken ankle was a perfect example of a story that should have been put in the background for six weeks, because broken bones take time to heal. Nope! He just plows through it, but still has Holly showing on crutches much later when she should have been healed.

         In light of today’s Crankshaft, where the characters are waiting for the bus to arrive after days of them conversing with bus the driver, clearly I’m asking too much of the man.

      4. I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: trying to go ‘real time’ with this dramafest left far too little time for each plot before kids aged out. If he’d left it all as vague high-school time, he could have done more with each one, even with this overstuffed (band) turkey.

      5. “But Batiuk had too many balls in the air in 2009/2010.”

         Yes. You can pretty much divide Act III into two parts. You had early Act III, where BatYam was still riding his “Lisa’s Story” euphoria for all it was worth, then late Act III, where he just stopped trying altogether. Les marrying Cayla was the dividing line. Writing himself into a corner like that seemed to demoralize him, and he more or less stopped caring about his long-term story arcs and character continuity.

      6. It’s funny how you talk about how Batiuk has so many stories he’s juggling that he doesn’t get back to them in a timely manner, but then subsequently talk about how he loves Les and so his stories get shunted to the front of the line. This is because the first story that I thought of when thinking about screwing up timelines was about how the production company that first optioned Lisa’s Story gave Les literally three years to write the script for them. And then the script he submitted was completely unacceptable so there was an entire sequence about them bringing him out to rewrite it, which, of course, Les provided no help to whatsoever. It was simply a story to bash Hollywood for not being as genuine and tasteful as Les.

         1. Which, of course, led to Mason getting the part of Starbuck Jones, which took another three years before it was finished.

2. There is also the problem of Batiuk not wanting to let Wally off the hook for his youthful indiscretions. For years on end, it looked as if he’d let Bull and Les move on from high school but the CTE thing proved that no, high school defined them.

3. 1. I’n not susbscribing to Batiuk’s spam, either.

   2. How did they open the door with a mattress in front of it?

4. Today’s Crankshaft (Fri. 15) is… well… baffling.

   After spending the week with what I pray was not supposed to be flirtatious banter between Crank & Grandma, we seem to be back to a moment before the school bus arrived.

   Plot: Little Cindy says, “Here comes the school bus!” Granny suggestively hikes up her frumpy bathrobe over her spindly knee. Cindy says, “Grandma! What are you doing?” With a resigned, hard-bitten grimace, Grandma replies, “Listen… Do you want to get to school or not?”

   So apparently Batiuk has chosen this plotline for some experiments in nonlinear storytelling, à la “Pulp Fiction” or “Memento.”

   And apparently in Centerville, you need to offer sê𝗑üal favors to the bus driver in order for him to pick up your kid. Well, that certainly solves the mystery of why most parents prefer to drive their kid to school.

   1. I wonder if they changed the order of this week’s strips to distance today’s strip from the Danny Masterson news. Which makes the whole story make no sense, because it’s out of order. She’s trying to get Crankshaft to stop the bus after he’s already stopped there and talked to her. If that’s true, the strip should have been thrown out entirely, if not the whole week.

      1. And if they did, it adds a whole new subtext to that puddle shot. Is Crankshaft trying to see up her robe?

      2. Batiuk has never pulled or delayed strips that (by coincidence) reflect current natural disasters, so I doubt he would do so in the Masterson thing. It’s more likely a “no one cares” scenario.

         1. Did we ever figure out the week with two different sets of Crankshaft strips being published in different papers.

            1. I didn’t. I sent an email to the syndicate and never got a reply.

   2. Maybe it’s another day?

   3. Meh. Claudette Colbert did it better in “It Happened One Night.”

5. 

6. Did you know Tom has an email newsletter?

   OK, so I believe you 100% on this, CBH, really I do… I just… I feel like this is just impossibly un-TB, like a world where this is true shouldn’t exist given what I know about the guy.

   Anyways, thank you for your service.

7. Re. TB’s “spoiler alert” e-mail: Are you kidding? Because the “engagement tiger” arc ended with a visit to a wheelchair-bound Crankshaft the entire story and all references to the events get timemopped out of existence and we now have to go through it again? At this rate we’ll be “lucky” if Mindy and Mopey’s wedding occurs before the strip’s 50th anniversary and conclusion. Just unbelievable.

   1. But they also got engaged before Montoni’s closed, which Lillian has referred to as having already happened (when she got her lamp back at the auction). Only the Shining Twins were in high school at that point, but they’re back to their Crankshaft-era ages, so… yeah.

      Basically, Batiuk wants it both ways: it’s post-Funky time, but also pre-Funky-Act III time skip. Or maybe it’s during the time skip, or during Act III but before the finale. When is Crankshaft taking place? There’s a span of at least THIRTY-TWO YEARS it could be happening.

      But at least Batiuk came up with an elegant solution to all the contradictions.

8. The “Annotated FW Finale” is actually kind of hilarious, when you brush aside the frustration of not having any of your questions answered. What we all want to know: What happened with Summer’s book? When it “sparked others to build on it to create a science of behavioral-patterned algorithms that allowed us to recognize humanity as our nation,” what exactly did that look like? What exactly were the burnings that destroyed nearly all bookstores, and how do they fit into this happy-clappy robot-staffed utopia? Why are these books a surprising discovery and not holy writ, taught in schools, mandated for every right-thinking household? And for the love of Lisa, where does “Strike Four” fit into the post-Summer Utopia’s canon?

   Instead, we get a turgid enumeration of the objects we’re looking at.

   1. “Sparked others to build on it to create a science of behavioral-patterned algorithms that allowed us to recognize humanity as our nation”

      That sentence is a perfect reminder of what an awful, awful writer TomBan really is. That ending was a bigger pile of shit than season six of “Lost”. At least “Lost” had the good sense to (spoiler alert) include a cute dog in the last scene. Batiuk though, he gave his tens of loyal readers a smoldering bag of dog shit he didn’t even light on fire correctly. He should have “annotated” that mess straight into the fireplace and just ended the f*cking thing in Montoni’s like a normal, sane writer would have done.

9. When it “sparked others to build on it to create a science of behavioral-patterned algorithms that allowed us to recognize humanity as our nation,” what exactly did that look like?

   I’d settle for an explanation of what the hell that even means. It sounds like a project the pointy-haired boss would make Dilbert and Wally do.

   1. My guess is it means “recognize our common humanity” but of course that phrase has been used countless times in the past. Like, Batiuk can’t use someone else’s words, man.

      1. The whole Mopman Prophecy is a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a greasy, rat-nibbled Montoni’s pizza box wrapped in a dumpster enveloped in flames.

         However, the most puzzling phrase is “behavioral-patterned algorithms.” There is simply no way to parse this phrase in English. It doesn’t work grammatically or conceptually.

         Prove me wrong.

         1. “behavioral” and “patterned” are both adjectives, trying to modify each other. “Behavior-patterned” would have made a lot more sense. It fails on a basic grammar level.

            1. Yes, and now that you’ve made it make sense grammatically:

               What the ever-lovin’ fork is a “behavior-patterned algorithm”?

               What is an [anything]-patterned algorithm, for that matter?

               Does Bats even know what an algorithm is?

         2. I’d explain it to you, but clearly you haven’t yet recognized humanity as your nation.

            That’s okay, I’ll wait! Once completed, this nation-recognition process will realign your personal passport paradigm, and you will realize some concepts are beyond the flimsy constraints of conventional grammar and language!

            But do not fear! What once seemed out-of-synch will become Annotated for your deeper understanding. With diligent reading of the Annotations (and a mind freed of the expectations of ‘logic’ or ‘plausibility’ or ‘entertainment value’) you may then experience the wonder and majesty of regenerative book burnings. You will thereafter be able to both smell and taste behavioral-patterned algorithms as you bend time, science and the janitorial arts themselves to create Elegant Solutions™ to self-created micro-problems!

         3. It’s the product of “surface thinking.” The reader is supposed to look at it, think “Huh, that sounds smart,” and move on to the next comic. Like everything else Batiuk writes, he thinks it makes him look intelligent but it has the opposite effect.

            1. What makes it sadder is that that particular strip was literally the wrap-up of the whole FW saga. The punchline, the money shot. The whole 50 years of laughs, tears, yawns, and all the rest was leading up to this:

               Everything that had happened was nudged into occurring by the Time-Mop. And he had to do that nudging in order to bring about a Novus Ordo Seclorum, a New Golden Age of Mankind.

               And how was that Golden Age to be brought about? By Summer’s book. And how exactly did Summer’s book do that? Why, it

               “sparked others to build on it to create a science of behavioral-patterned algorithms that allowed us to recognize humanity as our nation.”

               And that was the raison d’etre for the lives and deaths of everyone in Westview. Les, Lisa, Harry, Bull — every person, every event for the last half-century: It was all leading up to this big reveal.

               And that big reveal was complete gibberish.

               And that’s why that sentence matters.

            2. It’s almost like he’s going for a Noodle Incident, where we’re supposed to imagine the thing. It doesn’t work, because it’s incoherent gobbledygook. And because the Funky Winkerbean world is so dull and poorly fleshed out, there’s nothing to fuel our imagination.

            3. I mean, gobbledygook aside, the idea that you had a character in-universe writing a story about all these people, and life in this ordinary small town, and how it meant something to you/them, and you sort of pan out to realize that’s the story you’ve been reading all this time, and maybe you learned something from it… that could work.

               I thought that’s what he was going for but whether he got there, well, ymmv.

            4. It’s not as if there weren’t some examples to build on

               #calvin and Hobbes

10. Another Flash Fridays, another peculiar dig against Cary Bates. This time, he’s “again making use of the outdated tropes that he absorbed as a young comic book reader.”

    Dude, those “outdated tropes” are what YOU used as the in-world reason for Atomik Komix’s existence. Their comics were (allegedly) appealing specifically because they were done in the Silver Age style that YOU can’t seem to praise enough. But you seem to be dismissing Bates’ writing entirely because he’s using those tropes un-ironically, the way the comics you (claim to) like did?

    Like, seriously, what is it that Batiuk has against Cary Bates? A writer doing Flash stories in the 1980s that use the same tropes as the 1950s sounds like something Batiuk should have loved, so… what’s the deal?

    1. Great googly-moogly, how I despise his plot rundowns of comic books. Plot is the weakest point of 99% of comic books. The point is the art, the action, the characters, the design, the color, the light and shade, the dynamic line, the dialogue, etc etc.

       I can’t understand why someone who cares this deeply about granular plot details isn’t reading spy novels, mysteries, or legal procedurals instead of comic books aimed at preteens.

       1. Because he’s emotionally stunted, lazy, incapable of intellectual growth, and possibly dealing with undiagnosed autism?

    2. Green Luthor:

       It could be because in addition to writing *The Flash,* Cary Bates also got to share adventures with the Fastest Man Alive, once as a hero (*Flash* #228) and once as a villain (*JLA* #123-24).

       In contrast, Tom Batiuk has come no closer to his favorite character than having Pete and Darrin go to the Flash Museum and meet an unnamed Dexter Myles.

       Or maybe it’s because Bates killed Iris West Allen before he killed Lisa Crawford Moore and did much more with it.

11. Man, that pie-throwing sequence of strips is pretty brutal. First, Batiuk totally emasculates John, then throws Wally’s bio-dad status right in his face, then leaves the poor schmuck standing there, just like Becky’s mom on that scissor lift. Pretty cold.

    And check out poor, war-torn Wally, who can only express his love for his daughter by needlessly ruining a fun charity event. The day freaking Rana is too good to be pelted by a pie is the day Phil Holt rises from the dead, uh, again. It’s a totally bizarre thing to do, and BatYam plays it like a tender father-daughter moment.

    Then he sledgehammers that bit of character development by showing Wally packing heat and flashing his piece all over the strip. He was in the midst of a pretty heavy prestige arc addiction back then, and by “heavy” I mean whopping. And as we all know, the only way out of prestige arc addiction is through gag-a-day hi-jinx therapy, and he wasn’t putting himself through that hell again.

    1. Like many of you, I suspect my access to FW fluctuated over the years depending on where I lived or the whims of my local paper of the time. I hadn’t read the Cory/pow/marital betrayal arc until CBH’s retrospectives. I can’t tell you how repulsive I find them. I served stateside in the Army during Vietnam, and have many former students and friends who served in subsequent wars. That this poor guy would be treated so poorly is almost libelous (not you, Buddy—who’s a good dog?). And what could that bag of goo DSH have really offered? Any speculation would violate the Miller test. I consider it to be a more egregious sidestep than Summer’s growing up.

12. I can imagine Wally finding out why John married Beck and confronting John, only for John to go into hysterical bawling/screaming

    Pedoskunk John: Wally, you dont deserve Beck! She was mine from the very beginning!

    Wally: She wasnt. You married her IMMEDIATELY after I was reported KIA in Iraq.

    John: (hysterical screaming at the top of his lungs) DONT START WITH THE “OH BOO HOO I SUFFERED BECAUSE BECKY REJECTED ME” BULL SHIT! YOU-

    Wally: I served in Afghanistan and Iraq, ended up with PTSD and was declared KIA twice, and yet I dont whine how much my life sucks, unlike Les.

    Les: I HEARD THAT! I GUESS SOME CHILDREN WERE LEFT BEHIND! (storms off, but ends up splattered by Crankshaft driving at 130 MPH)

13. “SDCC (that’s cool code for people who don’t want to write out San Diego Comic-Con)”

    Ok this man has to be writing for people his age, or just assuming his audience is full of non-comic fans that are nevertheless intrigued at his digressions, if he finds humor in hyping up an acronym as “cool code”. I’d be glad to know that this relationships finally moving forward, but “officially” proposing after this long where we thought it was a done deal doesn’t help his case.

    Most of the strips in this period are a decent attempt at moving the complexities of John and Wally’s co-fathership scenario forward, and in an ideal timeline would at least start to salvage the fiasco of Wally’s homecoming, but the fact the latter is left to fight rent and PTSD on his own of course leads his story to get more distracted with the “rich drama” of traditional traumatized soldier stories. Yet as we’ve said before there’s so much more that Wally’s 10-year-imprisonment that could’ve been milked for a unique story (confinement trauma, culture shock of missing a decade of changes, facets of American life he had long forgotten, paparazzi prodding) that are glossed over for “quarter-inch” reality to keep things more straight and “relatable” (also perhaps a way to sidestep the question of why FW and Crankshaft still stick to the modern day world in spite of the skip because “it’s a comic strip”).

    Also goddamn Owen and Cody’s debut Sunday strip is groan-worthy. “Ah dumb teen” takes about Wonder Woman that I bet Tom is gleeful to have overheard at his local comic shop one time that he just finds so dang cute that Crazy and DSH have the most insufferably large and long smirks in reaction to it. This is going beyond being amused at the darnest thing kids say, it’s like they’re proud of the wise old geeks who are superior to the younger generation and get to properly inform them with a week of preaching about the definition of “comic” is strangling good drama and yet how Speedball “used” to be the model of how “good” comics should be carefree and fun and not melodramatic.

    1. but “officially” proposing after this long where we thought it was a done deal doesn’t help his case.

       This is what Billytheskink was talking about. Batiuk poisons his own well. He undermines his own characters and stories so hard that he defeats himself. Just from what we can see of Pete and Mindy, it’s clear they’re in an unhealthy relationship.

       He couldn’t even propose to her properly, and he’s doing it now after what, half a decade? During which time he never upgraded her ring, continued living in squalor despite making well into six figures; took her nowhere but to comic book shows; white knight her; take credit (and payment) for her creations; and emotionally work his way to up to maybe almost holding hands.

       These are both severely stunted people… which could be interesting, if the story would ever acknowledge it. No, we’re just told this is perfectly normal and we’re supposed to be rooting for them like some royal couple.

       It’s weird how much like late-era For Better Or For Worse this all is. Except that FBOFW still had a fan base, and was coherent enough that fans could explain what was wrong with it. Anthony was not an appealing husband, or even a good person. Therese wasn’t the bad guy; she’d been bullied into the whole situation, and abandoned by Anthony. Liz threw her altruism, career growth, and the rest of her life away to marry this worthless schlub. All because it was what Lynn Johnst– er, “Elly” wanted.

       And so it is with the Funkyverse. You know why Becky really chose John Howard over Wally? Because he’s the comic book guy. The comic book guy always gets the girl in the Funkyverse, no matter how little he does. And the characters who did “bad” things in high school, like Wally and Bull Bushka, get cruelly punished for life despite the huge steps they took to atone. He’s still settling high school scores. It’s just as self-indulgent as Johnston’s “child of the 1950s” horseshit.

14. Yeah, sorry, it’s a GC comment of mine reprinted here about CS 9/16, pre-deletion:

    “Umm…So… WTH? Mon to Thu was all one day, with the hurricane downpour, and now Fri to Sat is another day? After Granny flashed her se-xay varicosed veiny leg to hit on the bus driver, because that’s the only way to get this pervert to take your grandchild TO SCHOOL, and now Mawmaw’s gonna kink shame him, via a CHILD? That she’s…putting on the BUS ALONE with him? I’ve given up asking you Crankers why you think this is funny (you never can say why)—You think this is normal? This is your idea of a normal comic strip? Someone insisted yesterday that y’all want me to take a vacation. Where am I gonna go that’s farther from reality than y’all are?”

    …what is TB trying to do here? Is it “Make Crank creepy AF” or not? Because…The “NOT” ain’t working for me here.
    (there was a comment suggesting that I vacation “someplace miserable,” which is either burning for an eternity in Hell, or talking to a Crankie stan in a Dale Evans)

    1. Yeah the commenters there are all worked up again. None can answer the simple question of what they like about the strip.

       1. On the one hand… no one is obliged to explain why they like anything.

          On the other hand, no one is obliged to like something, either, and if a critique písses you off, there are two sensible ways to respond:

          1. Ignore it. That’s the sanest thing to do. Not everyone is gonna like the same thing. Who cáres?

          2. Respond with a rebuttal to the critique and/or a defense of the thing in question.

          Some certainly choose 1, and we don’t hear from them. No one seems to ever choose 2, though. They choose 3:

          3. Sputtering, clenched-fist playground insults.

          Doesn’t speak well for Puffy’s remaining unironic fans, does it?

          1. I’m either the most unpopular person in the GC comments or the most popular, given how much energy they’re expending on me. I’m there for the high level of discourse, which seems to be “Shut up and go away!” Some people say “I like the strip because I like it” which is a perfect response. I remember when I worked at Sam Goody 30 years ago, and bought “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This”. Coworker: “Why are you listening to this crap?!” Me: “I’m not buying it for you.”
             Trump likes to slather everything in ketchup. *shrugs* Who cares, I’m not eating it.
             Now I’ve got this Dawn somebody lying that we had a dust-up and I was super offensive. I guess the idea is to frighten me off, as I’ve never seen this person’s name before. There is also one or more people coming here to downvote me. And Eve and JJ, and that’s about it, and always when we repost GC comments. So they’re googling usernames just to come here, which is a super normal thing to do. But “If you don’t like the strip, don’t read it!” Yeah, don’t read the comments if you don’t like them, rather than commenting on the comments and then coming here, stalker freak.

             I put it up to the vote: Should I quit stirring the pot there? My quixotic quest to get banned doesn’t seem to doing anything besides raising the blood pressure of easily offended geezers.

             1. I wouldn’t say quit, but just keep everything squeaky clean. The fact that people get personally vindictive and malicious over even light hearted snark is just one more bizarre facet to the Batiuk ecosystem.

                Batiuk is a documented adolescent hypocrite. Crankshaft is designed to be an asshole. A fish rots from the head down. But yet nobody is allowed to say anything that has the faintest bit of criticism of the content.

                Let them bitch, and let them figure out how to practice what they preach.

          2. Sure they don’t have to explain why, but since they took the time to criticize someone else’s comment, it seems fair to ask them to explain themselves.

          3. Doesn’t speak well for Puffy’s remaining unironic fans, does it?

             Or maybe it speaks perfectly for them. They mindlessly defend Crankshaft, with no regard to whether it’s worth defending, or whether it’s even being attacked. Exactly the fans Batiuk wants! They have to protect Lisa!

15. … And today’s Crankshaft shows that, just as I feared, there’s supposed to be some nonagenerian romance brewing between granny (now known as “Mrs J”) and Crankshaft.

    It’s clearly a different day; no rain, and Mrs J is actually wearing outdoor clothes like a non-insane person. Crankshaft smiles that she looks good; Cindy angrily snaps, “No hitting on my grandma!”

    As an aside: Wonder what Cindy, who appears to be about first-grade age, has been exposed to that led her to believe that one very old person telling another that she looks good is an attempt to get over on her sê𝗑üally. Knowing about “hitting on someone” at a very young age might be a marker of inappropriate behavior towards children in the home, or outright abuse. It’s supposed to be funny but IRL kids shouldn’t know about these things.

    1. Humor comes from a subversion of expectations. On its surface, today’s and yesterday’s CS strips do deliver on that subversion – a grandmother normally doesn’t make some risque exposure of skin to compel a school bus to stop, and a 10 year old doesn’t tell a senior aged man to not hit on her grandmother.

       But for TB’s strips, the well is poisoned. Given that the truth of the world, and what is “serious” and what is “not serious” subject matter, are all subject to change at any given moment, and given that TB has no problem snarking on other creators for using outdated tropes (referring to the Friday Flash contents of 09/15/2023 and the prior week), the interpretation of what should be simple jokes becomes muddied. What should be easily parsed as humorously absurd is lost because TB has to be TB.

       As a personal aside, what I didn’t like about 09/16/2023 CS is that it relies on the mentality in assuming that all men who compliment women are only doing so because the men want to fuck the women. If you look for it, there’s a lot of online discussion about why it is that men generally feel emotionally detached from the world and why it is that it seems like men so very rarely can give genuine compliments to anyone’s physical appearance. Then there’s also as much discussion about “the male gaze” and how there are people who look for transgressions committed by “the patriarchy” at large where every male interaction with a female is indeed assumed to have a sexually aggressive undertone. So at once, some people wonder why men seemingly never say anything genuinely nice to anyone else, and some other people assume that men are all sex crazed animals. Amid this social backdrop, today’s CS comes to exist.

       1. Yes, [0], you’re so right. In the hands of another creator, one with a lighter touch, one who hadn’t already poisoned the well, there might be some humor here. IMO, Cindy’s expression would be funnier if it was deadpan, not angry. And yesterday’s would have been funnier if Granny’s expression had been hopeful or some attempt at “së𝗑y,” instead of the grim expression of a resigned truck-stop høoker.

          Pursuant to your comment about “the male gaze” — it’s complicated, and subtle. And obviously no one expects complexity and subtlety from a newspaper comic. However, in this case, we just saw this superannuated slattern hiking up her skirt to “entice” Crankshaft. You can’t blame him for reading her signals and responding in kind. As a side note, ew.

          As another side note, TB has not only poisoned the well by oscillating between super-serious Pulitzer bait and alleged gags that clearly take place in a completely unrealistic world.

          He’s also poisoned the specific “old folks’ dating” well with several gross missteps — Crankshaft telling Lillian she’s too old & ugly to get râpéd, and then the whole “hørndog Mort sure is aggressively handsy with the ladies, ha-ha-ha” storyline.

          Also: Ew.

          1. there might be some humor here. IMO, Cindy’s expression would be funnier if it was deadpan, not angry. And yesterday’s would have been funnier if Granny’s expression had been hopeful or some attempt at “së𝗑y,” instead of the grim expression of a resigned truck-stop høoker.

             The tone of everything is always wrong. Not just wrong, but confusing and self-contradictory. It’s all supposed to be a joke (I guess?), but the child and the grandmother are taking it way too seriously.

    2. Cindy’s face is hilarious.

       Cindy: I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I acquired last year in Kindergarten. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you stop hitting on my grandmother now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

       1. Crankshaft needs a Mr. Microphone.

          Ed: Hey, good looking. We’ll be back to pick you up later.

          1. That was a real thing too? Holy cow, I missed a lot of early Simpsons gags.

             1. Unfortunately all too real. You must be a lot younger than me.

                Back in the late 1970s, there was a company named Ronco that produced products like Mr. Microphone. The other products I can remember are the Pocket Fisherman and the Veg-O-Matic. Each Ronco product was featured in an obnoxiously loud and lengthy commercial.

                Remember this was back in the days before remote controls with a mute button. VCRs weren’t prevalent so you couldn’t fast-forward past the commercial. You had to sit there and endure the horror.

                I watched these commercials so many times they’re seared into my permanent memory.

16. i think the expression in on DSH John’s face on the second strip where Owen and Cody appear in the Komix Korner suggests that John’s going to something really horrific to Owen and Cody

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