(Working the gas station tonight, but thought I’d give you this bit of nonsense to tide you over.)
(Been loving the comments lately. Even if I haven’t been able to reply to many due to harvest, you guys have all been awesome!)
Stay Spooky!
The Exorcrust!
Son of Stuck Funky 
I love the idea of Pizza Box Monster as an eldritch horror.
That tag line suggests that it’s just some jerk actor who likes bothering Funky.
PBM: I SUMMON THEE CTHULHU SO THE WORLD WILL BE BATHED IN THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT AND THE DAMNED!
“a portal shows up, and instead of Cthulhu, an anthropomorphic blue-furred hedgehog with black sclera and glowing red puplils for eyes (which are permanently bleeding), sharp yellow teeth, and grey shoes with no buckles, and is holding the decapitated head of Lillian McKenzie)
PBM: W-what is that th-thing? You’re not Cthulhu…
Sonic.EXE: Of course i’m not him. I. AM GOD. SOON, ALL OF YOU WILL BE JOINING ME IN MY WORLD.
(the demonic hedgehog then steals Mindy, Pete and the PBM’s souls by ripping them out of their throats)
I was kind of expecting people here to understand what Sonic.EXE is 😔
So, the Pizza Box Monster is Popsicle Pete.
NONE OF YOU ARE SAFE!
Darn, this fake strip would be much more exciting and interesting than any story we’re going to read going forward.
Also, is that a 1984 reference? “Do it to Julia!”
Not a conscious one. And Pete wishes he was as strong, virile, daring and hopeful as Winston.
I was more referencing what apparently is the plot of the critically maligned new Exorcist sequel, which hinges on a dumb Sophie’s Choice dilemma.
Just how far is Westview from Centerville? I would guess they can’t bet too far apart because Crankshaft used to order pizza from Montoni’s. Still, it seems to me that moving at least part of the comic’s action to a neighboring town means further diminishing the focus on its title character. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. And, of course, it could also mean less Lillian — which definitely would be a good thing — except she’ll probably take a part-time job as Montoni’s sassy new waitress.
And now for something completely different… I learned something this week. First, a co-worker’s daughter is studying to become a high-school band director. She has both arms, but is missing an ear.
Second, I discovered the fate of an old crush. She is now a middle-school band director… in OHIO!
I dodged a bullet there, I’d say.
I think Westview City (I like to call Westview like that) is in the middle of Centerville, OH and Westerville, OH
Possibly projecting my own midwestern experiences, I always assumed that Westview and Centerville were like…adjoining county seats. Maybe 20-40 minutes away from each other. Close enough that people would drive from one to the other to eat at a particularly ‘good’ restaurant.
That makes sense. The next county seat over is 30 miles from here and its Dairy Queen is waaaay better.
What non-Euclidean geometry are you using? I can go 30 miles north in CT and I’m in another state! (Assuming I survive the Mass Pike)
My California friend: “Your state is smaller than my county!”
That’s if I go 30 miles to the west. If I go 15 miles east, I’m in another state.
And if i go 45 miles northeast, I’m not only in another state, I can get really good Mexican.
We live in Belgium part of the year. Depending on the direction, it would take us into either France or The Netherlands.
@erdmann are any of those states Sonora or Coahuila?
I think of them as neighboring sad, run-down, dead-end towns, analogous to Springfield and Shelbyville on the Simpsons.
It’s odd, though, that the towns don’t seem to have a rivalry. I guess the very idea that your town could be better than any other town, or that you could have town spirit, is poisonously, intolerably optimistic for the bitter losers of the Westview-Centerville axis.
Westview High’s rival is Big Walnut Tech, I think, though where that is, relative to Westview and Centerville I couldn’t say.
I always thought “Big Walnut” was meant to refer to the “Buckeyes” (ie, Ohio State). But they wouldn’t play a high school. Is there a buckeye-related high school near Akron? Or is “buckeye” such a common name in NE Ohio that there are Buckeye schools/teams all over the place? I defer to the Ohioans on this board. My mother’s side of the family was from Ohio but they didn’t pass much of their Ohioana knowledge down to me.
Or is “buckeye” such a common name in NE Ohio that there are Buckeye schools/teams all over the place?
Probably. There are a lot of high schools called “Gators” in Florida and “Longhorns” in Texas.
Welp, 2 seconds googling “buckeye high school Ohio” and I answered my own question.
There is in fact an actual “Buckeye High School” in Medina, where Batty lives.
It’s odd, though, that (Westview and Centerville) don’t seem to have a rivalry.
Batiuk can’t imagine anything as nuanced as neighboring towns having a high school sports rivalry but otherwise being friends. Even something as banal as a high school sports opponent has to be a straw villain, 100% evil and worthy of lifelong contempt. What a sad place the Funkyverse is.
Yes, and I remember a strip where Dinkle was fundraising in Centerville for the Westview band. I don’t live in the suburbs, but I can’t imagine people wanting to contribute to the neigboring town’s sports team/cheering section. Maybe I’m way off, but experience tells me that if Batiuk doesn’t make sense, it’s usually because he’s writing gibberish and not because I’m misunderstanding.
The endless fundraising solicitations you get from your local high school are obnoxious enough. Getting one from an out-of-town high school – from a teacher, not even a student – is downright insulting. Dinkle would never, ever make a single sale outside of Westview. Throw in the antipathy high school sports rivalries can generate, and he’s lucky not to be shot.
If you order “The Complete Calvin and Hobbes” from Amazon, the box it arrives in makes a great present for your cat. If you’re unlucky enough to live with a cat, that is.
Please tell me that you are also unlucky enough to have pictures or video of Robert the Cat in the Calvin & Hobbes box!
Say, gang, I’ve got a sort of odd question: Is TB expecting readers to believe that Mopey Pete is aware of his “silent partner’s” true identity and is just playing coy for no discernible reason, or that he thinks he’s going into business with an actual Pizza Box Monster (Pete and Durwin did somehow once go to DC’s Flash Museum in Central City, Ohio, after all)? They’re all standing in front of a closed restaurant on an empty city street for a rendezvous that Pete seemed to arrange. There’s no one passing by, so is there some compelling reason PBM cannot remove the head-covering boxes to show Min-dull who he (or she) is and explain why they’re qualified for this business venture?
He’s expecting us to believe in and trust a person who belongs on Masked Singer without getting fussy about who’s wearing the costume.
In a realistic world, Pete must know who his partner is, or at least discover it before the venture gets anywhere.
American banks simply can’t (and don’t) open accounts for fictional characters. Post-9/11 “Know Your Customer” banking laws are pretty strict. Ditto for the state business licensing, and other compliance this venture would require. The nature of the story requires PBM’s identity to be known. There’s no way Pete could start a business with an unknown person in a silly costume.
But I bet that’s exactly what will happen, because Tom Batiuk does this all the time. TB is averse to providing any genuine exposition, so he forces you to make assumptions about the story. Then he violates those assumptions. But not in a way that makes sense, like Charlie Brown’s Kite-Eating Tree. We know the Kite-Eating Tree isn’t really a living, talking creature; it’s a metaphor for Charlie Brown’s frustration with being unable to fly the kite, and a symbol of the perceived enemies that are out to defeat him.
So yeah, we’ll probably get to see Pizza Box Monster cashing checks from Montoni’s, while Pete and everyone tries to guess who he really is. On top of him throwing his comic book career for absolutely no reason. And Mindy going along with all this, after Pete’s been failing to propose to her for 4 years now (and just called her his “girlfriend”).
Batiuk loves to write stupid shit like this, then go back on his blog and talk about how “quarter inch from reality” he is, and that he’s not a gag writer.
Thank you, BJr6K, for expressing what I was too tired, bored, and annoyed to put into words.
It’s the unique combination of boring hard-nosed factual stories (hedge funds take over newspapers; people start restaurants with silent partners) and utterly batsh!t flights of fancy (one-armed Skip steals a hedge fund’s assets without so much as a sternly-worded letter from a lawyer; a walking assortment of pizza boxes is an angel investor who seeks out utterly inexperienced restauranteurs.)
It should result in a Buñuel-esque surrealism or an intriguing magic realism, but it just flops down into a pile of boredom.
Also, I think I know the identity of P(B)M now. The bizarre costumes — love of show biz — wads of money to throw away on demented cráp — light skin — apparent obsession with rapidly putting on and taking off white gloves — it can only be Michael Jackson.
“American banks simply can’t (and don’t) open accounts for fictional characters.”
Or for made-up names. Batiuk should know this, as there was an issue where Spider-man couldn’t cash a check made out to “Spider-Man.”
For some reason, you remind me of the original Crime-Master, introduced in *Amazing Spider-Man* #26.
He revealed his secret identity to the Green Goblin, but when Kurt Busiek looked at the story decades later, we found that Nefarious Norman presented himself to Nick “Lucky” Lewis as J. Jonah Jameson.
Pete should remember that. Unless doing the therapy undid the knowledge.
How did you know I was considering buying that? [Glances around in a panic, terrified he’s being watched]
But seriously, I actually have been thinking about it.
And I’ve long suspected our cat of spying on us for the Illuminati. It explains so much.
Pete has just fully mutated into an author insert. Mindy calls him out on doing something stupid and ill-considered and he whines that he’s being bullied.
Yup – CS 10/30 gives us the Pete that we’ve come to expect: Instantly incensed and childishly petulant over any kind of criticism or response which isn’t unadulterated praise.
This is precisely the type of person who should never enter into the restaurant business, by the way.
Mindy shouldn’t be criticizing this plan; she should be ending this relationship.
On top of the idiocy of it all, Pete has made zero commitment to Mindy, once again failing to propose after she was expecting this earlier in the day. And he introduced her as his “girlfriend.” He’s not going to propose, because he thinks he already has. (Not that Mindy didn’t enable this, but at this point they’re both failing to be clear about what they want from this relationship.)
Worst of all is the implied threat to Mindy’s livelihood. Pete was the “talent” at Atomik Komix, and his loss sinks the whole company. Even if it doesn’t, Mindy was a nepotism hire, and they may have no desire to keep her if he’s not there anymore.
This story is distasteful.
You mean Wayback Wendy and Retro didn’t make her a star of the first magnitude in the comic-book firmament?
Good Lord! Choke!
If they were, Pete would have taken the credit and revenues for them, just like he did for “Stardusters”.
That was disgusting. And Mr. Comic Book Publishing Stories should have known this when he wrote it.
Anonymous Sparrow,
“Good lord, choke!” That sounds deadly.
We will see if the PBM survives to November 1. If he does, I still predict a 30 day time skip til the fantastic reopening, overwhelmingly successful. (Possibly an actual appearance by Funky.)
I am almost finished with *Dubliners*. Next, I will read, “A Movable Feast” by Hemingway. Movable Feast is a wonderful companion to Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris”. They both cover similar ground. The book is already a hit with me. My daughter lives right in the same area Hemingway lived while in Kansas City. He also mentions seeing Picasso’s Young Girl With Basket of Flowers. I had never seen the artwork before.
Then I will tackle and try the beast known as Ulysses. Do you suppose TB actually tried to read the book, and that led to the book club week?
You might appreciate this next part. As I had mentioned before, I had read short stories by Shirley Jackson. Both authors had their own take on short stories. Jackson did not place her characters in the same universe. Totally stood alone by themselves. They were all well defined characters that seemed real in spite of the gothic twist at the end. I thought many of her characters could have benefited from a second story. They made me want to read more about them.
Despite the difficulties in publishing, Joyce invents a world that could easily have a crossover potential. Like Jackson, you feel you know these Irish, and believe you are having a pint with them. They are depicted as a very poor country, which I do not dispute, but everyone always has money to buy rounds of drinks, leave for another pub, and do the same. Joyce writes a tough world with grand actors.
This might interest you, also. I found the magazine that had the article on radio westerns. Because of the article, (good writer by the way!) I will check out Gunsmoke with William Conrad, and see if I can listen to it on YouTube. I have listened to an episode of *the Six Shooter* with James Stewart as Britt Ponset. It was where a church needed a new roof and Britt asks a crook to strong arm his friends to raise the money. The film, “the Goodfellas” shows the more realistic downside to such a request.
Finally in Dubliners, the story ‘Clay’, Maria sings from an opera, a selection called “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls” I downloaded the version by Enya in Shepherd Moons, called Marble Halls. Beautiful melody.
SP:
Shirley Jackson was an answer on the last episode of “University Challenge.” The team didn’t know that she wrote *Hangsaman,* though, and missed the five points. (This is her second novel and bubbles under the surface of the “Shirley” movie with Elisabeth Moss in the title role.)
I have no idea what the Pizza (Box) Monster will do, or whether Montoni’s will fare any better with its new management. (Funky could return: the Monster could see failed management as the best management, as Mason did with the Valentine. Unless Funky and Holly took over for Max and Hannah at Channel One.)
*Dubliners,* along with *Finnegans Wake,* is a Joyce work I’ve only read once As its final story, “The Dead,” became John Huston’s last film (Roger Ebert gave it four stars!) and as I’m still enjoying the pleasure of watching Anjelica Huston as Clara in “Lonesome Dove,” I will have to return to the book one day and see what I’ve forgotten. (My freshman year English professor was Irish and thought “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” was the best story in the book. He was also fond of “Grace,” and his observation that these people were ignorant — “Crux Upon Crux” is not true Latin — stayed with me when I read a biography of Queen Victoria much later. One of the pols in “Ivy Day” says that Edward VII did what his mother didn’t do — visit Ireland — and he’s wrong: she came four times, in 1849, 1853, 1861 and 1900.)
You may be right about Tom Batiuk on *Ulysses.* Perhaps he didn’t make it *Gravity’s Rainbow* because its author was a Tom, too. (Thomas Pynchon, who’s also been referenced on “The Simpsons,” only not with a balloon. Which reminds me of another wrong answer on “University Challenge”: James Baldwin wrote *Notes of a Native Son,* not Richard Wright or William S. Burroughs.) The only thing I remember of the picture of his library was that he had all of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels filed alphabetically, rather than chronologically.
It’s immensely gratifying that you sought out my article on radio Westerns and I will concede your point on “Crisis at Easter Creek”: Red Eye Kirk (I mean…Jones!) would have Wisconsin Billy take back the contributions in a real world. But Britt Ponset’s “trail of well-remembered legends” allows for the possibility of redemption, not only at Easter but at Christmas (as you’ll hear in “Britt Ponset’s Christmas Carol.”)
Jones (not making that mistake again!) is William Conrad, and I’ll be interested in what you make of the radio version of “Gunsmoke.” To my mind, it’s one of those things which lives up to and then surpasses its reputation, along with the Beatles’s *Abbey Road,* Miles Davis’s *Kind of Blue,* the Archers’s “Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” Jean Renoir’s “Grande Illusion” and George Eliot’s *Middlemarch.*
Hemingway also provided a wrong answer on “University Challenge”: the team didn’t know that he took the title *Across the River and into the Trees* from the last words of Stonewall Jackson. It’s probably the most disliked of his full-length works, and I should see read it to see what the animosity is about. (There’s a *New Yorker* parody called “Across the Street and into the Grill.”)
Ditto with Enya, because the song has several interesting allusions. In the third of her *Anne* novels, *Anne of the Island,* L.M. Montgomery has Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe recognize that they’re meant for each other, but that there won’t be “diamond sunbursts and marble halls,” as Gilbert has to complete his medical studies first. Anne, romantic though she is, is willing to wait and take him as he is.
And then there’s George Orwell’s poem in “Why I Write”:
A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago,
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow
But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.
All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.
But girls’ bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.
It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them;
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.
I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;
And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn’t born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?
There’s a good deal more I could say, ranging from post-War Paris to Anjelica Huston’s anti-Clara in “The Grifters,” but as this is already very long, I will content myself with saying two more things:
Thank you for your kind words; and
“Good Lord! Choke!” was a frequent closing panel utterance in EC Comics, where it usually commented on something very deadly indeed.
(Flannery O’Connor reminds us that you can’t be any poorer than dead in *The Violent Bear It Away.*)
Anonymous Sparrow,
Surprisingly, the Pizza Box Monster survives through November 1. I believe that is the only time this has happened. Of course, this IS Crankshaft and not Funky Winkerbean, so the amenities do not have to be observed.
I did not know George Orwell was also a poet. That surprised me. I have read “1984” twice. Once during 7th grade, and the second time while in Ireland back in June 2010. I had my colon cancer surgery back that previous January. I went with my brother and his wife, but I was not up for long walks every day. So, on some days, I would let them go on by themselves, and I would stay behind, rest and read. The place had Orwell. Delightful. Then I would go off for short walks down to Linnane’s Pub right on the Bay and watch the vast number of crabs and pink pan sized jellyfish. Then enjoy the pub. I offered to buy a round for a man during lunch, and he turned me down. I told him that I thought that was illegal in Ireland.
To celebrate Halloween, I watched “Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein” 1948. Great film. I read that it was only the second film that Lugosi played Dracula since 1931. That shocked me. What made the movie great? Instead of putting the monsters in an Abbot and Costello film, they put the comedians into a serious monster film. Brilliant.
Last of all, I am always up for Stonewall Jackson trivia.
SP:
How much poetry Orwell wrote I don’t know: he obviously enjoyed the form, making Gordon Comstock in *Keep the Aspidistra Flying* a would-be poet, and he wrote another poem which wound up in a prestigious anthology:
ON A RUINED FARM NEAR THE HIS MASTER’S VOICE GRAMOPHONE FACTORY
As I stand at the lichened gate
With warring worlds on either hand –
To left the black and budless trees,
The empty sties, the barns that stand
Like tumbling skeletons – and to right
The factory-towers, white and clear
Like distant, glittering cities seen
From a ship’s rail – as I stand here,
I feel, and with a sharper pang,
My mortal sickness; how I give
My heart to weak and stuffless ghosts,
And with the living cannot live.
The acid smoke has soured the fields,
And browned the few and windworn flowers;
But there, where steel and concrete soar
In dizzy, geometric towers –
There, where the tapering cranes sweep round,
And great wheels turn, and trains roar by
Like strong, low-headed brutes of steel –
There is my world, my home; yet why
So alien still? For I can neither
Dwell in that world, nor turn again
To scythe and spade, but only loiter
Among the trees the smoke has slain.
Yet when the trees were young, men still
Could choose their path – the winged soul,
Not cursed with double doubts, could fly,
Arrow-like to a foreseen goal;
And they who planned those soaring towers,
They too have set their spirit free;
To them their glittering world can bring
Faith, and accepted destiny;
But none to me as I stand here
Between two countries, both-ways torn,
And moveless still, like Buridan’s donkey
Between the water and the corn.
It’s as a novelist and and essayist that he’ll best endure, and I hope that he did read George Gissing’s *Born in Exile* before dying in 1950.
(I take exception to his assessment of Yeats’s “Easter 1916,” which I always see as a sequel to “September 1913” and a great poem indeed!)
Pizza (Box) Monster may go the whole three weeks of a “proper” (TB sense of the term) comic-strip art. The real subject for bets is anyone asking “who are you under all that cardboard?” (Well, he called the Indian Tonto and his horse Silver, so…I’m thinking that hombre must be…the Lone Ranger!)
Roderick Kingsley? Ned Leeds? Bart Hamilton? Phil Urich?
The other two Jackson questions involved his nickname and where he got it. The team got “Stonewall” but went with Chancellorsville instead of the First Battle of Bull Run (I wonder whether the host would have accepted “First Manassas”).
What I’d love to see is a question or two about General George Thomas, who was known as “the Sledge of Nashville” and “the Rock of Chickamauga.”
What an excellent reading of “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.” It reminds me of Mel Brooks’s wisdom in making the music for “Young Frankenstein” solemn and beautiful rather than whimsical and raunchy.
For the day after Halloween, I went to a program of Ray Bradbury stories Neil Gaiman (I wonder what Batiuk thinks of him, or whether Pete believes that Gaiman could never have come up with Seismo and Tec-Tonic the way he did…) hosted. Gaiman himself read “Homecoming,” and plunged me completely into the October Country
…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on empty walks sound like rain…
I need to listen again to that greatest of Halloween treats, the 1938 “War of the Worlds” broadcast.
Anonymous Sparrow,
As I read your poetry, I was editing the Book of Isaiah chapter 10. I was listening to Bach’s Orchestral Suite #3. It made a nice background for your poem by Orwell.
Gaiman is high quality comic book writer. I did not like his novels. I could say the same regarding Jim Starlin. But Gaiman’s comics are top notch. I have started his Sandman epic. Also, he re-imagined Kirby’s “the Eternals”. I very much liked it. He makes good use of Puck, and the misery of remaining 9 years old for an eternity. Not unlike the preadolescent girl from “Interview with a Vampire”. The Undead and the tragic fate of dying before puberty commences.
To complement your quoting poetry, may I submit to you a poem by William Haines Lytle. He was a politician from Ohio, brigadier general under Rosecrans at the Battle of Chicamagua, and a famous poet. He died just before Pap Thomas earns his fame and glory as the Rock of Chicamauga. It is entitled “Antony and Cleopatra”.
I am dying, Egypt, dying!
Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast,
And the dark Plutonian shadows
Gather on the evening blast;
Let thine arm, oh Queen, enfold me,
Hush thy sobs and bow thine ear,
Listen to the great heart secrets
Thou, and thou alone, must hear.
Though my scarred and veteran legions
Bear their eagles high no more,
And my wrecked and scattered galleys
Strew dark Actium’s fatal shore;
Though no glittering guards surround me,
Prompt to do their master’s will,
I must perish like a Roman,
Die the great Triumvir still.
Let not Caesar’s servile minions,
Mock the lion thus laid low;
‘Twas no foeman’s arm that felled him,
‘Twas his own that struck the blow —
His who, pillowed on thy bosom,
Turned aside from glory’s ray —
His who, drunk with thy caresses,
Madly threw a world away.
Should the base plebeian rabble
Dare assail my name at Rome,
Where the noble spouse, Octavia,
Weeps within her widowed home,
Seek her; say the gods bear witness, —
Altars, augurs, circling wings, —
That her blood, with mine commingled,
Yet shall mount the thrones of kings.
And for thee, star-eyed Egyptian —
Glorious sorceress of the Nile!
Light the path to Stygian horrors
With the splendors of thy smile;
Give the Caesar crowns and arches,
Let his brow the laurel twine,
I can scorn the senate’s triumphs,
Triumphing in love like thine.
I am dying, Egypt, dying;
Hark! the insulting foeman’s cry;
They are coming; quick, my falchion!
Let me front them ere I die.
Ah, no more amid the battle
Shall my heart exulting swell;
Isis and Osiris guard thee, —
Cleopatra, Rome, farewell!
Til next time…
I agree with CBH, the comments lately have been incredible, especially the Siskel and Elbert discussion. Man Batty carries around a lot of hate, he really should see someone about that.
I’m just back from a long trip to Italy and so I am still catching up on all of my strips, and all of the commentary.
The weird thing about the Siskel/Ebert strip is that he ran it now. 35 years is a long time to carry a grudge about…who knows? What utterly forgotten movie did they not like that Tom did? And he brings it back right as CS whines about constructive criticism. He’s like the creative writing class snotnose who asks for constructive criticism when they only want effusive praise.
Even George “I Made 2 Good Movies Once” Lucas named a monster in Willow “the Eborsisk.” And the names of the incompetent mayor and his toady are named Gene and Roger in that 90s American Godzilla movie (the Ebert one is fat and eats candy HO HO HO). Neither of those are great places to say “Critics suck, look at how good my movie done be!” An even worse place: John Darling. It is quite apropos for the Cranks. Say anything negative on GC and it’s instant personal invective without any reason given why they think saying “pigeon of a chance” is remotely funny. You MUST like what I like, apostate! Burn the heretic!
“Why should anyone care what we think?” says Fauxbert. Kind of ignores the question “And why, Thomas, should we care about yours?”
Man Batty carries around a lot of hate, he really should see someone about that.
He really should. So much pointless anger about non-existent problems. And almost all of it is about how people aren’t making comic books the way he wants, or they’re trying to limit his access to them. I wish he would go see someone about it, so they could snap at him like Billy Crystal in Analyze This.
What’s especially confounding is that it’s not even clear what “comics the way he wants” even is. He’s repeatedly mocked Cary Bates for writing Flash comics in the 80s that used tropes from the 50s and 60s… the very comics that Batiuk claims “saved” him. And then, of course, he’d have us believe Atomik Komix successfully produced comics in a similar vein. So, like… what is it that you even want, Tom? You obviously didn’t like the “darker” turn comics started taking in the late 80s and 90s, but you also didn’t like the comics that didn’t follow that trend and continued to read like your childhood comics because they weren’t following the then-current trends. So which is it, you can’t have it both ways.
(Yeah, I know, the likely answer is that the problem with Cary Bates is that it wasn’t Tom Batiuk writing those comics.)
I was thinking yesterday that if CS ends–and it will–maybe we should rename this place “Lillian’s Book Club!”
Whut
How to read (and finish) Finnegan’s Wake
I like! But shouldn’t it be
“The Village Booksmith Book Coven”
or
“Loathesome Lizard Lil’s Literary League”
or something that conveys the Batiukness of it all?
I am SO downvoting “The Story of Lisa’s Story: The Story.”
Something that conveys that Batiukness of it all? How about “On The Knows”?
I have to give Davis credit. He’s had to trace those bags under Pete’s eyes panel-after-panel this past week and he’s absolutely nailing it!
I think it was remarkably prescient of TF Hackett to add the “Act IV” tab to the SoSF menu for Crankshaft earlier this year.
The Funky Winkerbean invasion is starting to escalate. Things are only going to get worse from here.
Somebody is having trouble with their HTML tags tonight. Go to bed, bwoeh. You’re tired. 🥱
having trouble with their HTML tags tonight
Sorry, apology unaccepted, we all think you’re a big stinky poop now, just like SISKEL AND EBERT!!! “Howard the Duck” was GREAT!
A BIG STINKY POOP?! ALL RIGHT! THAT’S IT! COATS OFF! OUTSIDE!
Put ’em up, put ’em up! Which one of you first? I’ll fight you all together if you want. I’ll fight you with one hand tied behind my back. I’ll fight you standing on one foot. I’ll fight you with my eyes closed…oh, pullin’ an axe on me, eh? Sneaking up on me, eh?
————-
Here’s my contribution to the Siskel and Ebert commentary. After a while, I started going by Ebert’s recommendations alone. There were too many movies where Siskel gave a thumbs down because “the movie has no message.” Dude, it’s a comedy! What message are you looking for?
Snark: Boy, that comedy. I didn’t laugh once, but what a message!
The final nail in Siskel’s coffin was he gave Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade a thumbs down.
Why?
My rebuttal: Because both movies featured Nutzis and holy relics? So what?! Most people think ‘The Last Crusade’ is better than ‘The Temple of Doom’.
My rebuttal: Are you kidding me? Teaming up the very witty and charming Sean Connery with the ruggedly handsome and heroic Harrison Ford? Who cares!
BTW, I saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in a theater before it was featured on At the Movies.
BTW #2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on Rotten Tomatoes.
Tomato Meter: 84% Certified Fresh
Audience Score: 94%
To be honest, when I look up a movie on Rotten Tomatoes, I tend to pay more attention to the ‘Audience Score’. That and the IMDB rating.
BTW #3, the IMDB rating for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is 8.2 out of 10. Currently, #116 on the IMDb Top 250 Movies.
Bite me, Mr. Siskel.
—————————
FYI, I have never seen Howard the Duck, nor do I ever intend to. 😝🤣
I don’t know. I think the italics work…makes that whole last paragraph extra ominous.
As much as I diss The Comics Kingdom, the selectable text formatting (generated an HTML tag pair) available for comments were top-notch.
ŦĦ€ ₣ỮŇҜ¥ ŴƗŇҜ€Řβ€ΔŇ ƗŇVΔŞƗØŇ ƗŞ ŞŦΔŘŦƗŇǤ ŦØ €ŞĆΔŁΔŦ€. ŦĦƗŇǤŞ ΔŘ€ ØŇŁ¥ ǤØƗŇǤ ŦØ Ǥ€Ŧ ŴØŘŞ€ ₣ŘØΜ Ħ€Ř€.
Another thing I liked about commenting in the CK was the ability to edit or delete comments.
*sigh* Not so here working with WordPress.
I wanted to mention that the comment box auto-generates tags, reducing the chances of errors. Just select the appropriate formatting after highlighting your text. Way cool.
10/31:
Pete’s Business Plan: “We NEED to reopen so that we get the repeat business of people who come here once a year! And randomly walk into closed, dusty dumps like this! (Quick, throw a tablecloth over the pile of rat feces!)”
What is this about? Nothing makes any sense, so you know to Tom it’s crystal clear. Is this about him doing only CS? “It’s not the same” without Les and his dumb book? Remember: This was written 11 months ago, or when the Funkpocalypse became obvious. I don’t know! Only He Who Remains does, so maybe he’ll give us a Komix Thots about it, right after he runs a 1985 John Darling Etc about how Tom hates Richard Simmons.
It’s unbelievable what we’re supposed to be emotionally invested in. The strip didn’t devote a single panel to Cory, Rocky, Adeela, Rachel and others all losing their jobs. After it spent weeks marrying the first two. and rescuing Adeela from jail. No, Pete wants to reopen so people can see the stupid pizza box monster. Not because it was the social and employment center of the town.
Maybe Cory and Rocky finally moved to Seattle… and Harley “nudged” their minds so that they moved into Lisa’s old address there.
Nailed it. Tom speaking through his characters again, saying he misses the PM appearing in FW, and it’s not the same when he appears in Crankshaft.
I don’t know what he’s trying to say. He’s clearly setting something up, but I won’t try to guess what it is. Except to say that the PBM is Les if it’s anyone.
Thanks to the posters and commentators for getting me through some dreadful CS strips. Why did TB end Funky if he was only going to bring Funky to CS? How can we miss you if you don’t go away? On second thought, just go away. Even if Pete–and why is Mindy staying with him?–closes the comics business to run the pizza shop, he’ll come back. Nobody escapes comic books! Or anything else in the bleak existence offered by TB’s imagination.
The prevailing theory here at SOSF is that TB did not end Funky by his own volition, being pushed into doing so by either the syndicate refusing to continue buying the strip or by the retirement of Chuck Ayers leaving him without an artist for the strip, possibly a combination of both (the syndicate being unwilling to budget for a new artist). Crankshaft switched syndicates just as Funky ended and has been in more papers than Funky for many years now, so it is easy to speculate that King Features decided to wash their hands of TB completely and that Andrews McMeel was only interested in one of TB’s strips (the one that had more customers and that didn’t need to replace its artist).
Thus, TB is increasingly bringing Funky into Crankshaft because he never wanted to stop writing Funky in the first place. But that’s just a theory…
Makes sense to be sure. I’ve seen it and it generally works for me. He certainly tries to merge the two quite a bit these days, overlooking the time gap he created.
So, what are the odds that Sunday’s ‘Shaft (RIP Richard Roundtree) will be a sideways Atomik Komix cover of “The Pernicious Pizza Box Monster” No. 1?
Hm, let’s see. The Pizza Monster appeared three times, in 2019, 2020, and 2021.
2019: The story ran from Monday, October 28 to Saturday, November 2. Tuesday through Saturday (five strips) were all sideways.
2020: Monday, October 26 to Saturday, October 31. Tuesday through Friday (four strips) were sideways.
2021: Monday, October 25 to Monday, November 1. Amazingly, none were sideways! AND Batiuk had a story ending on a MONDAY, with a new story starting on TUESDAY. Clearly, he was in violation of the Rules.
Sadly, Pizza Monster’s lone appearance in 2022 was the “Lost Finale” Christmas strip, which wasn’t a sideways strip, but we won’t count that, really.
So: of the three Pizza Monster stories, they comprised a total of 20 strips, 9 of which were sideways. 45%, but a whopping 75% of his first two stories.
(I have now done more research on the Pizza Monster than anyone ever should.)
The well beloved Bill Perlman would be proud. 🥲
there’s no way
Is this the year we finally kill the Pizza Box Golem by pulling the jar of marinara sauce out of its chest?
Montoni’s couldn’t afford marinara on their pies. They used ketchup.
To save costs, Funky would sneak into McDonald’s to steal ketchup packets. Darn those thin-crust profit margins!
I’m probably late with this observation, but a lot of comics have been doing Halloween-themed strips for a week (TB did his even longer). Every unnamed character is a group of kids, with a little girl dressed as a pointy-hatted witch, and every boy is Batman. No other superhero. Okay, Monty, never a strip that’s been predictable, did have Spider-Man. With a Batman.
Not a single Inedible Pulp. Or someone dressed in literal food garbage. These Kids Today! No respect for tradition!
That Ebert strip…can any of you do a “ENHANCE SECTOR E5!” on the copyright before the last panel? I’m guessing it was written c.1985, but I want to figure out what movie they thumbs-downed that got him in a such a tizzy. Was it Supergirl? (From 1984, but we all know Tom’s work ethic lets him sit on scripts for a year) Bet it wasn’t The Color Purple or Out of Africa, because that crap didn’t have comical books at all.
The date near the signature seems to indicate October.
ENHANCE SECTOR E5 doesn’t help, but it’s definitely 1987. We can determine this from other clues. The artist is Gerry Shamray, and the strip is dated October 25. 1987 is the only year during Shamray’s run where that day was a Sunday. Also, the year is more legible in the previous and subsequent John Darling blog posts, which must be from the same year because Sunday falls on the same day.
As for what movie he might be objecting to: Michael Keaton’s Batman wasn’t until 1989. Before that, only Superman existed in movie form. So this probably isn’t about comical books.
IMHO the strip is just Batiuk missing the point as usual. People didn’t watch S&E to be told their opinions; they watched it to learn more about upcoming movies before they spent the time and money on seeing them.
We might be overanalyzing this. Roger Ebert was:
— a Midwestern kid who grew up obsessed with an aspect of pop culture
— a beloved and highly successful writer
— acknowledged as clever and witty
— a creator as well as a critic
— someone whose opinions were considered interesting and influential…
AND…
A Pulitzer winner. (1975)
If I didn’t know better — and I don’t know better — I’d say Tommy boy was just plain jellus.
This tracks.
Maybe somebody–anybody– said something negative about his work, so he just lashed out at critics his readers might have heard of. He does seem to be a mite petty.
Today’s Crankshaft:
So Mindy finally got her proposal, in the least romantic way possible. At least she admits to herself that she must be out of her damn mínd to accept.
More to the point, it feels like TB is rushing things, again spending days or weeks on boring, irrelevant cràp, only to then cram a bunch of important plot points into a few strips.
A symptom of CS drawing to a close, or just business as usual for Tom Batiuk? You be the judge!
It’s business as usual for Tom Batiuk
Classic Batiuk: it’s “romantic” for Mindull to realize accepting MoPete’s proposal is a crazy (and not the good kind of “crazy”) idea. Actually giving thought to the realities of spending the rest of your life with the other person… that’s not “being in love” in his little comic-book mind. And notice how she’s clearly impressed by the ring he picked out for her without any consultation on her part. A quarter-inch away from the Batiukverse, witnesses to this proposal/acceptance would be making bets about whether the marriage will last six months or a year.
Makes me wonder: did Batiuk ever admit to reading romance komix when he was a kid?
The marriage will last forever. As soon as she says “I do” she turns into a doormat.
Mindy turns into a doormat, Mopey McMopester cheats on somebody (or Mindy mistakes that he did when Pete was just talking to Jessica or Chien) the marriage turns shitty, or they just die
(not related to FW or CS, but i cant help but think that Sonic.exe (the original story) is like FW and Crankshaft (the og sonic.exe story was poorly written, just like Crankshaft and FW,) while JCTheHyena (the creator of Sonic.exe) threw a hissy fit over Sonic.exe being removed from the Creepypasta wiki))
As if 8 days of “we’re going start our new life together jumping off the alleged-sinking ship of the comic industry to run a pizzaria!” wasn’t enough of a weird baggage on the marriage proposal, Davis’s art just makes the happy moment worse with the stilted posing where his copy-paste referencing is blatantly obvious and just makes the whole moment awkward.
Will say that from the times Arcmax/GoComics gets the uncolored strips, Davis’s effort at least look better by being disguised as lineart only. Colors just bring out the Clipart aesthetic to his linework.
Astute observation about Davis’ art today. Mopey haphazardly sorta thrüsts the ring in Mindy’s general direction, the way a carpenter would hand a coworker a screwdriver.
Minty hugs him, screaming “YESSS!” with a dumb, vaguely maniacal grin, but she doesn’t look at him or kiss him, or even close her eyes in bliss. Instead, she directs her wide-eyed, crazy smile at someone somewhere off-panel. We are not given a hint of who she’s looking at. Whoever it is, P(B)M doesn’t mention them as he horns in to blurt out an idiotic “funny” comment, ruining the moment even further.
“Start as you intend to go on” is a great motto. It portends great ill for this marriage.
And I agree that the totally inappropriate art is most likely the result of Davis, or his poorly compensated intern, cutting and pasting with a complete lack of interest in what’s happening in the script.
My favorite part is you can literally flip back to yesterday and Pete’s “proposal” pose is a mirror swap of one used in the prior strip, just with added arm (a trace of Pete I’ve been eyeing a lot since it was used for him cosplaying Quicksilver back in the SDCC arc last summer)
Ooh, great catch!
Also, look how Pete is holding the ring box. He looks like a police officer showing his badge to a citizen. A ring box has thickness, but it looks absolutely flat here. You can’t hold a ring box by the top with your thumb like that. If he did, the bottom half would be flipped 270 degrees back towards himself. Then it would slam shut on his thumb.
What an exciting and fascinating fellow this P(B)M is!
He changes like a chameleon. Not since Rorschach has any costumed hero altered his appearance so quickly and radically!
P(B)M went from brown boxes/Caucasian hands — to white boxes/white-gloved hands — to brown boxes/Caucasian hands again — to white boxes/Caucasian hands, and all in the space of a few days!
Incredible!
Not to mention that the number of boxes composing his head and arms varies most delightfully from panel to panel! What merriment!
Tom Batiuk, you’ve done it again!
Tom Batiuk, you’ve done it again!
No. It’s “Tom’s editor must be the easiest not-job in the world! They must be the same editors that Cracked.com doesn’t seem to have anymore!”
Unless it’s the colorist. Usually, these non-Sunday colorists don’t really read the strips. I remember a political strip that was as equally obsessed with old-time comics. The Pantsless Duck drew Green Lantern firing his power ring. The colorist made the ray from it yellow. Like that time Original Green Lantern beat Solomon Grundy to extra-death with a fireplace log. Incompetence or subtle protest?
It’s like if Batman decided to make his personal crusade killing every kid’s parents.