It’s time for another installment in the TBTropes series, where we come up with TVTropes-style descriptions of the writing techniques used in the Funkyverse and nowhere else. So far we’ve seen:
Story Asserting: The tendency of Tom Batiuk to advance every story where he wants it to go, with no regard to logic, realistic human behavior, the characters having motivations of their own, or making any sense.
Schrodinger’s Continuity: Continuity exists in a perpetually unknown state, its outcome influenced by events we cannot comprehend. Like Schrodinger’s Cat, Tony Montoni can be both dead and alive, until the story reveals which he is.
Tonelessness: The tendency of a work to convey no exposition at all, or any information about the author’s intent.
Today we’ll talk about a particular type of Tonelessness. A sub-trope, if you will:
Pseudoexposition: conversations between characters that resemble exposition, but perform none of the narrative functions of exposition.
I’ve previously said stories in Funky Winkerbean “convey no exposition at all.” This is true, but you wouldn’t know that from reading it. The Funkyverse seems to be loaded with exposition, where characters are constantly rehashing where they are and what they’re doing. How can these both be true? Because it’s pseudoexposition. The characters are constantly rehashing the story not to give the audience information, but for Tom Batiuk’s self-serving reasons, which we’ll get to.
First, though, I want to clarify that the lack of exposition also isn’t any of these things:
- The lack of exposition isn’t meaningful in itself. Sometimes an understated reaction, or a character not knowing something they should, can reveal information the audience needs to know. Famous example: in The Godfather Part II, Fredo initially says he doesn’t know Johnny Ola, but later accidentally reveals that he does. This clues Michael Corleone into the nature of the conspiracy against him.
- It’s not an intentional mislead. In some kinds of stories, especially murder mysteries, the writer purposefully withholds information from the audience to maximize emotional impact. Returning again to The Godfather Part II: Kay’s miscarriage turns out to be an abortion, but the audience doesn’t learn this until Michael Corleone does. (SPOILER ALERT: The Godfather movies are 50 years old, they’re fantastic, and you really should have seen them by now.)
- It’s not a character- or world-building moment. The first Godfather movie begins with Bonasera asking Don Corleone’s help to get vengeance on the goons who brutalized his daughter. This turns out to be irrelevant to the three-hour story. But this scene is a goldmine of information about who Don Corleone is, and the world he inhabits.
- It doesn’t give us information that becomes relevant in an unexpected way. Bonasera is told that the Don may someday need a favor from him in in return. Later in the movie, he does, but it’s not what you were led to expect. A similar thing happens to Enzo the baker, in the sequel.
- It’s not “playing with a trope.” Tropes can be employed in all kinds of ways other than straightforwardly. TVTropes.com lists about 30 variations. “It was all just a dream” is a lame trope, but there’s a million ways it could be played with, and thus used more creatively. The exposition in Funky Winkerbean isn’t doing any of these things.
- There is no meta meaning. The pointless exposition isn’t a parody of exposition-heavy stories; it’s not an allegory for something; it isn’t a commentary on the nature of storytelling; it isn’t symbolic of anything; it isn’t a satire of anything.
So why does pseudoexposition exist in the Funkyverse?
- To fill space. This is probably the #1 reason. According to his own blog, Tom Batiuk’s writing has to meet a lot of pointless and unproductive rules. One of those rules is that all story arcs must be exactly 1-3 weeks long. This results in a lot of strips that serve no purpose other than padding the story out to its needful length.
My very first post was one of these. Kitch Swoon announces she’s going to Atomik Komix, even though we’d met her by then, and her very first appearance did a better job of getting to the point. The infamous “Linda spends a week opening an letter” arc was another example. - To talk about the things Batiuk wants to talk about. Batiuk loves having his characters drone on about his favorite topics, when it has nothing do with the story. Every sideways panel fits this category, including the Sunday comic book covers. Especially the Sunday comic book covers.
- To steer the story where Batiuk wants it to go. This is the Story Asserting I mentioned above. I previously wrote a whole post about this, and the five ways he does it, so I won’t repeat it here.
- To serve as the premise for a joke. Many Funkyverse strips use a template I call Characters Restating The Premise At Each Other. Somebody restates a standard Funkyverse trope, like “Ed Crankshaft makes the students and their parents chase his school bus,” and then the characters talk about a time where that happened. It duplicates the setup-punchline format of a gag, without actually being a gag.
Imagine Charlie Brown walking into panel one and saying “oh, Lucy’s going to pull the football away again.” Every single time. For 30 years. And you never actually get to see it happen. - It’s exposition for stories that never materialize. Sometimes the story goes into compelling details, but abandons them to explore something far less interesting. This can happen in storytelling; sometimes the audience wishes the story had explored a minor or deleted plot point, instead of what it did. The Funkyverse makes this an art form.
My favorite was the conflict between Holly and her mother. Melinda bullied Holly into doing a cheerleading show, where she broke her ankle. It was never mentioned again. In fact, I don’t think Melinda appeared in Funky Winkerbean ever again. Too bad: a parent-child conflict when the parent and child are 90 and 65 is an interesting and rarely-explored kind of family conflict. - For reasons known only to Tom Batiuk. Like I said, Batiuk makes his writing adhere to a lot of pointless and unproductive rules. In 2023 Crankshaft, one of them seems to be “Funky Winkerbean characters must be introduced into Crankshaft by an existing Crankshaft character.” Pete had to introduce the Pizza Box Monster and then Funky when they first appeared in Crankshaft, even though Funky only appeared in a cutaway gag. But it’s revealing that he forced Funky Winkerbean‘s title character into Crankshaft when he had no reason to be there.
Son of Stuck Funky 
The rules did have a point back when Funky Winkerbean was a mildly downbeat gag-a-day strip about a third tier high school in suburban Ohio. The problem is that he sticks to them even though they do him no good any longer.
💎It’s exposition for stories that never materialize.💎
How many times do we see TB start a story on Monday, and it has petered out by Wednesday. Take today’s Crankshaft 11/09/2023. We find now the Sentinel has an evening AND a morning edition. What is happening in Crank’s town that requires a daily paper? Whose only employee is a one armed septuagenarian. Then by calling it the evening Sentinel, that implies that there are TWO daily editions. Otherwise, he would state that the Sentinel sometimes is delivered in the evening.
But the true test is why do we have arcs whose main character is Skip and the Sentinel? What purpose does he fulfill? How does he generate a storyline? Is he and the paper just filler until Crank drives his bus again. Will there be a follow up arc to Ed delivering the paper? That will never materialize.
why do we have arcs whose main character is Skip and the Sentinel? What purpose does he fulfill?
Skip fulfills the very important purpose of talking about things Tom Batiuk wants to talk about.” He wants to tell a story why hedge funds should not be allowed to own newspapers. And anyone who lives in the town should have the right to simply commandeer them, so they can be operated correctly. Even though Skip is clearly flailing at the task of running the newspaper.
This seems to be a theme in the Funkyverse. The “right” people need to be empowered to do things the “right” way. Even when they’re incomptent.
This seems to be a theme in the Funkyverse. The “right” people need to be empowered to do things the “right” way. Even when they’re incompetent.
This is the indisputable arc of Batiuk’s entire real-life career. Of course he believes in this theme to his core.
[Citizen Kane applause gif goes here]
Brilliant analysis as usual, BJr6K. It’s remarkable somehow that the very worst work can support as much analysis as the very best, and yet here we are.
You touch on one of the most remarkable qualities of Batty’s work with your section on exposition for stories that never materialize. I’d add a trope to that: Tantalizing Topic Tease — the glancing, one-off mention of something incredibly interesting bobbing in a sea of mediocre plotsam.
It’s nearly unique to Bats, too. Think of Ed Wood, perhaps the most mocked storyteller there is. Wood may not be skilled, but he does make his intriguing ideas central to the film. Plan 9? Grave robbers from outer space are the centerpiece of the film, not a tossed-off comment. Glen or Glenda? The whole film is about Glen becoming Glenda. Glenda doesn’t pop her head into the frame for a second and say, “Hi, remember me? Used to be Glen, now I’m Glenda! Bye!”
I’m not the Funky historian many of you are, but here’s a list, just off the top of my head, of the fascinating developments that got a line or two, maybe a few strips, and then were dropped in favor of more Komix Korner Klatsches.
— Roland, the macho, rebellious ladies’ man, becoming Rolanda
— As you mentioned, a 65-year-old woman being bullied by her vicious mother into trying the same cheerleading routine she did at 17, being humiliated and suffering a serious orthopedic injury of the foot, ankle, and/or leg, depending on which strip you were looking at. Yes, this was followed up but the interesting aspects were dropped: What does this say about Holly, Melinda, and their relationship? Does it change anything? And how does it affect Holly to be brought to the abrupt, painful realization that she is now officially old and fragile?
— Mitchell Knox not only cherished the weapon used to murder his hero, he also has the autopsy photos
and, of course, our favorite,
— A talking, sharpshooting, alcoholic chimp murdered a rival for his owner’s affections
Even the worst, the dregs, of other strips never had this tic. Imagine if For Better or For Worse had shown one panel in one strip depicting John Patterson shirtless in a gay bar, making out with a burly leatherman, and then never alluded to it again. That’s tantamount to what TB does with regularity.
Citizen Kane slow applause gif. Part of any well-stocked Gif library.
Goes with…
Which reminds me of…
Okay, I’m getting goofy. Time to log off.
Tantalizing Topic Tease — the glancing, one-off mention of something incredibly interesting bobbing in a sea of mediocre plotsam.
This is great, and I want to incorporate it into the article.
Batiuk simply doesn’t have the tools to develop stories of any length. That’s why we get “state the premise,” followed day after day by “repeat the premise.”
This is because he’s still writing gag-a-day. He’s just swapped the meaning of “gag.”
That’s also because I don’t think he knows how to write an actual story. Writing comic strips just taught him out to write quips. When he tried to write something more substantial than quips, all it ended up being was “this happened and then that happened, and then this happened and then she died of cancer”, or something. He had a minimal understanding of cause and effect, but theme and more complex concepts were foreign to him.
Speaking of hobbyhorses that the man just can’t put back into the stable, here’s the opening to his bio in the alumni section of the Kent State website.
Whoopsie-doodle. I hope it’s clear that the actual quote ends after “…some of his own.”
Been there. Done that (a hundred times). Those pesky close tags.
I kinda figured that’s what happened, but it’s also hilarious to imagine that’s the actual KSU bio for him.
I wonder what Kent State’s alumni relations people really think of this man. Imagine you work for a below-average university, and you’re in the business of collecting testimonials from past alumni to prepare your sales pitch to high school seniors. And your most recognizable name tells you the life story of his comic books.
This shouldn’t be on a university website. It should have gone straight in the trash, along with Batiuk’s contact information. If anyone asks, I’d just say “oh, the Funky Winkerbean guy? Yeah, he went here. Have I mentioned our great history in football?”
Well, we know what he thinks of Kent State…
Yeah, it’s another one of his backhanded product placements. When he needs to represent a good college, he trots out the generic “Enormous Midwestern University”. When he needs a college for the dumbest student from the dumbest school in the dumbest town in Ohio, it’s Kent State. Which is another reason KSU should have denounced him long ago.
The only plausible explanation is that Batiuk has noticed his waning relevance and makes significant donations to the university.
I’ve witnessed Batiuk’s waning relevance somewhat firsthand. My older brother graduated from Kent State in the early 1980s. He knows who Tom Batiuk is and what he does. When he graduated, Tom Batiuk was somewhat of a local celebrity.
In 2019, when I was helping my younger brother find a memory care facility for our father, one of the facilities was located in Kent, Ohio. The staff member who gave us the tour told us she was a recent graduate of Kent State. I was in my first year as a Funky Winkerbean snarker and couldn’t resist asking her if she had heard of Tom Batiuk or Funky Winkerbean. She said no. She didn’t know who Bill Watterson was but had heard of Calvin and Hobbes. The same results with a young nurse’s assistant who walked by.
My niece graduated from Kent State in the mid-2000s. Since she’s between my brother and the tour guide in terms of age, I would like to know her opinion about the subject. Not surprisingly, the subject of Tom Batiuk never comes up when we talk.
Has Kent State ever invited Batiuk to be a commencement speaker?
————————–
Speaking of alumni relations, the F.B.I. ought to hire Ohio State’s to find missing fugitives. I’ve moved eight times since graduation, and they locate me every single time. Several times a year, they send mailings requesting a donation to the university.
—————————-
Were you being sarcastic about Kent State Football? Poor Golden Flashes.
Kent State had a chance to almost double their win total this year when they played against their arch-rivals, the equally hapless Akron Zips. They were leading 27-10, but things took a turn for the worse in the fourth quarter as they gave up three touchdowns, eventually losing the game 31-27. The University of Akron took home the coveted wagon wheel trophy this year.
Something strange caught my attention, though. This game was played on November 1st. Isn’t it unusual for the Mid-American Conference to schedule football games on Wednesday nights?
I got my PhD at one Ohio MAC school, and was on the faculty of another for six years. I also have known several colleagues in my area on the Kent faculty. It is, academically and athletically, a “mid-major.” Not Ivy League or AAU, but there are many, many schools that are weaker than Kent.
Kent State and the University of Akron were within ten miles of where I grew up. Neither school offered me a scholarship. Ohio State did, even if it only paid for textbooks. I decided to go there because it was a more prestigious school. Besides, I wanted some independence from my family.
My old folks weren’t happy with my decision to go to Ohio State. They still paid my tuition, but room and board was on me.
First, I hope this is actually a reply to the proper message—yay, message boards!
I had a similar reaction to college attendance. I grew up 15 miles from UC Berkeley, and two of the top programs in my area of interest were within 45 miles. But, I also wanted to get way, so went to a school 165 miles away. I did hedge my bet—the city was part of my dad’s sales territory, so I knew I would get a decent meal 2-3 times a year 🙂
Another “yay message boards” comment/query—not sure if your comment about Jaws was directed at me or someone else? I don’t think I’ve ever expressed any opinion about the movie (although I did enjoy performances by Robert Shaw in lots of films)🤔
It was directed at you, Gabby. CONFESS!
Me:
Gabby:
One of my favorite Robert Shaw roles was as Col. Hessler in Battle of the Bulge. What does it take to kill this guy?!
OOPS. I didn’t remember. Must have been that 2d (or was it 4th?) glass of wine ?? ________________________________
Wait! You went to tOSU? BOOO. 🙂
Dude! First, you poo-poo Wallace the Brave. Then you boo my Chiefs. Now you’re booing my Buckeyes?
Are you trying to become my arch nemesis or something? 😂
I would never want to be thought of as your nemesis, dear BWEOH.
Well, the Raiders abandoned us in Oakland twice, so go (sort of) Chiefs.
Sorry about Wallace. Our Gannett minion paper dropped it. I never did get a handle on the characters, or on lobster fishing.
I was actually accepted into the PhD program at tOSU (went to Ohio U—“Ohio’s First University”—because it was a better fit). But, spent several months in Columbus doing dissertation research, and dated a fellow grad student for a while who moved to Columbus. Actually have a number of friends and colleagues from tOSU. Went to the NCAA a basketball finals when Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, et al, won the championship
BUT—proud son of the west coast who was conditioned to hate the Big 10, and Woody Hayes. I later lived in BG, 60 minutes from Ann Arbor. And UF and tOSU have had some memorable football and basketball games in the last decade (most of which we won 🤭)
🏳️
… and another thing, you poo-pooed my mention of Jaws as a great movie last month.
Over-the-top acting? It’s the conflict between the main actors that makes Jaws a great film. Three perfectly cast actors in three fantastic roles. From the old sea dog Quint (Robert Shaw) to the over-eager Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and the ocean-phobic cop Chief Brody (Roy Scheider).
John Williams’ iconic score was simple yet so effective. Those recurring notes have become pop culture’s theme tune of impending doom. With such a terrific musical reference to the shark it didn’t matter so much that Spielberg’s robot shark malfunctioned constantly. You only needed to hear those notes to know something monstrous was lurking. Spielberg masterfully inferred the shark’s existence through various film techniques.
It was the first blockbuster film. Ever.
IMDB: 8.1
Rotten Tomatoes:
Tomatometer: 97%,
Audience score: 90%
——————-
You can’t please everyone, I guess. I read an article where some snot-nose punk called the special effects in the original Star Wars trilogy “cheesy”.
It’s actually extremely usual for MAC schools to schedule late-season games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays–it’s a specific strategy to forgo some in-stadium attendance for greatly increased television exposure. Gotta love that midweek MACtion!
(Tom Batiuk is incapable of conceiving or depicting MACtion.)
I get it now. Raise a few bucks and get some exposure on ESPN. MAC games are broadcast on Tuesdays and Wednesdays because the bigger programs fill the TV schedule on Saturdays.
I guess it makes sense. It’s not uncommon for college basketball games on weeknights.
Were you being sarcastic about Kent State Football? Poor Golden Flashes.
The attempted joke was “we’re so embarrassed about Tom Batiuk that we’d rather focus your attention on our notoriously bad football history.”
My older brother says whenever Kent State hires a decent head coach, they seem to be lured away by more prestigious programs. Not to mention firing the underperforming head coaches every few years and continually having to start over with an unproven head coach.
The University of Akron is only ten miles away. That might affect recruiting. Akron’s football program also hasn’t been competitive since they joined the same conference. My little brother, a U of A grad, blames their lack of performance on being a “commuter school.”
One of Kent State’s greatest players was Julian Edelman, who was starting quarterback for three years.
Of course, he became one of the New England Patriots’ greatest slot receivers (along with Wes Welker and Danny Amendola) during the Tom Brady era.
(Ed. Note: I’m from Connecticut, so if you’re ever bored, ask me about CT’s one-time ownership of Ohio. Western Reserve FTW!)
The KSU alumni page on Wikipedia includes several notable individuals, such as Michael Keaton, Joe Walsh, and Chrissy Hynde; however, none of them actually graduated from KSU.
I remember seeing a Patriot’s game where Edelman threw a touchdown pass. Was it during one of the Super Bowls? I wonder why he didn’t do it more often.
A New Englandah, eh? I have a couple distant cousins who live in Vernon, Connecticut.
The Western Reserve name is still in use in Ohio. Mainly by schools and hospitals. I haven’t lived in Ohio in 35 years, but I still have family there and feel some affection for the area. I might take you up on your offer sometime.
Back in the late 80’s there was a lot of Batty’s art around campus, I think some of it was even used in the old student handbooks, etc.
I suspect that is all gone now. KSU is actually a decent college for some majors. As I was an engineering major, I ended up at The University of Akron but I had many friends who went to KSU.
One of my brothers told me either their Kent State schedule of classes or course catalog had a number of Funky Winkerbean comic strips interspersed.
If I mention Kent State to someone where I live now, their usual response will sadly be the lyric “Four dead in Ohio”.
I have read U of A is a good engineering school.
@beware
Yes, I received a great engineering education there. I have had a long and successful career thanks to the skills I developed at UA.
be ware of eve hill asked: Has Kent State ever invited Batiuk to be a commencement speaker?
If he were the speaker at my commencement, I think I’d give the degree back.
Tom’s like 3 dogs when you give them a peanut. None of them want it, but they want to make sure no else gets it!
Did that sound profound? Then explain it to me, because I don’t know why I said it. “PIGEON of a chance!” Ha…ha?
(No, I will never let go of that…joke-like object)
Speaking of Inexplicable Objects, can someone parse today’s joke? No one in GC comments seems to know. I thought it was “We’re delivering so late that we’ll just rename the paper!” Like “Mussolini made the trains run on time!” No, he just made the railroads lie: The 3PM train to Rome is still on the same schedule, but he made it like 3:45PM, so if it got there at 3:44 you’d be happy. “Train’s early today!” It’s done by takeout places. Say “It’ll be ready in 20 minutes!” when it’ll be ready in 15. Because if it’s ready in 19 minutes, you’d feel lucky. You’d think Tom might know that, but it’s not like he obsesses over pizza places.
I gave up on newspapers before the web. My paper”boy” was in his late 30s, obviously as an income supplement before his “real” job. I was working a standard retail mgmt schedule, 3 opens and 2 closes. Dude figured out when I worked, and would not deliver on days when I went in late or had it off…Because you can’t get credit for a missing paper after 10AM. So–Good job, Skippy! You just lost every customer! I suppose you could write for your local “Patch,” but only for exposure.
Read on Not Always Right not long ago: Clerk: “Would you like an extended warranty?” Customer: “I’m in my late 80s! I don’t even buy green bananas!” Tom…there’s a nice farm upstate where you can live…
That’s how I understood it too.
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What’s worse than his incomplete stories are his complete ones. I, of course, refer to the wrong-headed, rocks-fall-everyone-dies-because-they’re-too-stupid-to-live grand tragic romance of everyone involved having the IQ of a slab of Formica. Lucy was stupid. Lillian is stupid, Eugene was stupid. Making a bleak, doomed romance out of numbskulls who can’t brain was almost as stupid as “Great guitarist takes a puff on a joint and ends up getting lobotomized.”
As Crankshaft is on about the newspaper industry this week, I stumbled upon this blog about folks who once worked for the Akron Beacon-Journal… and this wonderful header graphic they made when Chuck Ayers stopped drawing Crankshaft!
Today’s strip makes it even clearer that, by Batiuk’s own description, the Centerville Sentinel is incredibly poorly run, spottily distrbuted, financially insolvent, and focused on the very things it shouldn’t be — viz., comic strips versus “speaking truth to power,” which was the original thrust of the Sentinel story when we saw Skip steal it from the Mordor hedge fund.
All for this.
All so Skip could skip the muckraking and focus on getting those comics into the paper, for the lucky ones whose grandkids are on Crankshaft’s bus route so they actually get delivery.
FWIW, I checked Grandpa Google and neither the Medina nor the Akron papers are daily any more. The paper in Medina, Bats’ town, publishes 4x/week; the Akron paper, 6 days. The Sentinel, though, apparently has at least 12 editions a week, since we learned yesterday that they have a morning and evening edition, presumably at least for weekdays.
Remarkable, really, because I’m not aware of any paper in the US that still has morning and evening editions. Certainly none in NYC do.
And once again, a Winnepeg Blue Bombers shirt is visible, worn by Jff. I’d say I wonder what the significance of this team is, but I really don’t care. I do find it interesting that Puff Batty displays an incredible talent for answering thousands of questions no one asked, while virtually never answering the questions people actually have.
When I last wrote about the TB ecosystem I did forget one other part to it which also greatly irritates me, and this reminds me of it. The icing to the cake about TB’s world is how relentlessly ungrateful he is for the success that he has achieved with his work.
Jff’s wearing a Winnipeg Blue Bombers jersey. TB received a Winnipeg Blue Bombers jersey for something Crankshaft related. He took a picture and posted it on his blog – without a single word of explanation as to why he even received that consideration. Not a word. Let’s recall that last buildup for that “Dinkle in the Rose Bowl parade” thing from last year. A few posts with off-center pictures of the float base and such beforehand, some mention that it happened afterward, no names stated for who helped make it possible, no further statement on his behalf for what it meant to him in the context of his 50 year career, nothing. I commented on the last time that he addressed having his work featured in some AA product and his appreciation expressed there was more of an afterthought than anything heartfelt.
This ties in with the comment about his KSU bio earlier. Tom Batiuk will use any opportunity to voice his grievances, no matter how many decades have passed since they have occurred. But outside of scant mention at the time or their reveal, there’s sparse expression of gratitude for a lifetime of achievement and recognition which a million artists would die to have and will never obtain.
So incredibly true. The Dinkle Rose Bowl was really egregious in its lack of graciousness and context. Any normal person would have made some points about what an honor it was, and how wonderful the band, float engineers, organizers, and audience were, etc. You’ll find this same solipsism whenever he talks about anything he’s part of.
He even stole and published some little kid’s artwork with no appropriate thanks, let alone credit, let alone payment, and that one incident alone convinced me, personally, that he’s not the “good guy” many of us like to believe he is.
For an instructive contrast, look at Charles Schulz’s words in his final Peanuts strip.
He acknowledges his good fortune; he expresses sincere regret that he cannot continue; he is grateful to his editors and fans for loyalty and support; and he ends with an affectionate farewell to his characters.
Nothing there about any hardships or headwinds he had to deal with, or wrongs committed against him.
No crazy retconning, Charlie Brown remembered long after his death, Linus playing with murder-weapon toys, or Lucy writing a book about how everything we thought we knew about the world of Peanuts was wrong all along. He ended with the kids just living their life as they always had, and that’s how his fans remember them.
I maintain that the whole Dinkle Rose Bowl episode — one of the saddest displays I’ve ever witnessed — was a real-time chronicle of Tom falling hard for a sales pitch, and not quite realizing he’d been had until the very end. Mind you, it was hard to feel sorry for him, as the parade’s sales pitch to buy their banners was a transparent appeal to his ego, and he got suckered in solely on the basis of his own vanity. (Well, and also his gullibility and his inability to read people, I suppose. But his vanity and ego were the cornerstone to the whole grift.)
Still, even a clod like Tom Batiuk knows (eventually) when he’s been fleeced and humiliated. I can see why he didn’t graciously gush about the whole thing once it dawned on him that he’d been taken.
I wasn’t aware that TB was made to pay for his own banners, nor that he was somehow grifted. From what I heard, the banners were actually carried in the parade — just shown only very glancingly on TV.
How did you find out this info? Or is this just standard practice when someone is honored, or “honored,” in a parade?
This sounds like delicious dirt. Spill!
Oh yes, the banners are not a freebie. Though Tom didn’t post about it, the banners are a sponsorship premium … i.e., fork over enough cash to help sponsor the event, and you get banners. Details were on the parade website. I can’t remember how much they cost … in the hundreds, I think. But they’re not provided to an honoree for nothin’. You want the show, you better pony up the dough.
So, Tom got caught up in the hype of being an honoree. Which he wasn’t, really … the float had nothing to do with him, as the character it portrayed was not Harry Dinkle. But somehow, his ego took over. And for only an extra several hundred dollars, he could have Harry Dinkle banners made up that would be seen on national TV! What a promotional opportunity!
Well, of course, as we saw, it clearly wasn’t. The banners were shown as a bit of fairly indistinct background material for a matter of maybe two seconds. If you weren’t actively looking for them, you’d never spot them. And they weren’t mentioned, discussed or referenced in any way by the parade announcers.
Was it a grift? Well, by the letter of the deal, Tom got exactly what he paid for. The banners themselves are probably reasonably well made — good enough to last the length of a parade, anyway. And they WERE presented in the parade, exactly as promised. The deal itself wouldn’t promise TV exposure, or a dedicated announcement. (I mean, you COULD get a deal that promised a TV announcement — “This float brought to you by the good people at Amalgamated Arsenic!” — but that would cost a LOT more money. And the sponsorship deal on the parade site mentioned only that the banners would be in the parade.)
Tom was clearly expecting that his purchase of the banners would lead to a TV bit about the Tom Batiuk float, and a loving minute or two spent on the wonders of the long-running (50 years!) comic strip that featured the world’s greatest band director, Harry Dinkle. But because TV broadcasting is one of the many, many things Tom Batiuk doesn’t understand, that’s not what he got.
Ultimately, he paid however-many-hundred-dollars to have some people on the parade route idly wonder for a few seconds “Huh, how come I’ve never heard of that comic strip?” And to have no-one watching the broadcast even realize there was any connection to a comic strip whatsoever.
Out of curiosity, I tried to find a reason in Batiuk’s archives for his love of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. There are two blogs listed in the search results. But when I open the blogs, it’s just the blog title with the date. There’s no content.
Perhaps I should count my blessings.
Remarkable, really, because I’m not aware of any paper in the US that still has morning and evening editions.
To say nothing of how this doubles Skip’s workload. Two editions a day, every day, all made by one person, with one arm? Ridiculous.
Not really. Skip has help.
I interpreted the “joke” in that strip to mean they changed the newspaper from “morning” edition to “evening” edition to give the delivery people more time to deliver the papers, so they wouldn’t be publishing both editions, they just push the deadlines forward.
Yes, this is the “joke,” not that there are two separate editions
I can hear Rodney Dangerfield doing this joke as ” I don’t get no respect. My paper boy delivers my morning paper so late in the day it’s now the evening edition.”
Except Rodney would make it funny.
Leroy….?
LEROOOOOYYYYYYYYYYYY!!
Apologies to all, Leroy was busy putting Bag Balm on butt blisters from bouncing around bean fields on the tractor all day and half the night.
Someday…Leroy hopes again for lazy evenings of doing nothing but pouring over tomes of Funky Winkerbean to find something mundane to bitch about.
Remember when we complained about the strips where Funky endlessly rambled on in front of an audience, his AA group? We thought nothing could ever be more boring? Well, rest easy, Funky. Skip Rawlings has become the most boring speaker in the entire Batiukverse. Easily topping the likes of Marianne Winters before the academy and Lisa before congress. The crown of most boring speaker belongs exclusively to Skip Rawlings*.
Everyone, how about a round of applause for Skip Rawlings! Are you clapping? I can’t hear you!
* Mr. Batiuk. Please make it stop!
Funky and his AA group are more entertaining than Skip Rawlings (and his fucking shitty “jokes” that are at the expense of others) ever will be
Skip: Hi. My name is Skip Rawlings, and I-
Funky’s AA group: GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!! WE WANT FAT MAN WINKERBEAN (Funky) BACK!!!!
Good ol’ Skip.
Paragon of old-fashioned morality, beacon of social justice in a world of greed.
Happy to camp at a table for hours nursing a coffee, then watch his waitress tipped with pennies in an old man’s filthy tube sock.
Proud thief, but it’s all good, because Skip, arbiter of morality, judged the victim to be bad. That makes stealing good.
Alienates one of the few supporters/staff at his failing one-horse-town rag by gratuitously publicly firing, insulting, and humiliating her.
Such a voice for the downtrodden!
There seems to be an issue at Batiuk.com.
No blogs have any content. Did somebody make a boo-boo? Did TB forget to pay the bill? Was he hacked?
Seriously though, best wishes, Tom.
Some of the blog posts come up, but some don’t. There is definitely something going on, unless Batty is selling ads on his page and now requires one to disable their ad blocker in order to view the content.
Batiuk’s blogs are now written in a special ink that takes up no space. You need special Starbuck Jones decoder glasses to read them. Coming soon!
I hope he didn’t take them down in a snit because he read about our opinions here. Sometimes, I think it would take a superhuman effort not to read about what people think of him here.
Tom, please return the blogs. Your “fans” need the snark fodder.
Well, that’s odd. Everything still works fine for me, even the blog archives and the ferkakte spinner rack. FWIW, I’m on a MacMini using Ventura 13.5.5 OS and my browser is Firefox 119.0.
Oh, and I’m running a few ad blockers and tracker blockers, so I’m guessing that isn’t the problem.
Maybe he decided it was a bad idea to call a blog post “Son Of” anything. 🙂
I saw the post when it was available. TB’s reading list is exactly what you’d expect: comic books, books about the making of comic books, and sci-fi writers he’s mentioned before.
I just noticed this too. I really wanted to see Tom’s WINTER READING LIST but the post doesn’t seem to be there. The old “John Darling” strips load just fine, though. Too bad he didn’t just set up a regular normal blog, instead of that monstrosity he went with.
The Winter Reading list also fails to load for me. I am able to see the John Darling strips, though, and to confirm that — at least for the Sunday strips — Tom’s gag-a-day skills were extremely poor. No surprise that papers were cancelling this thing en masse.
Welp, now they’re not loading for me either. I tend to lean toward the “it’s a glitch” explanation more than the “TB ragequit his blog” explanation. I guess we’ll see. Meantime, his Facebook page is still intact, and still running excerpts from his FW collection introductions.
The issue began on Friday evening. It seems as if someone was modifying the website but abruptly stopped working on it at 5:00 PM on Friday.
Batiuk’s Web Guy: It’s 5 O’Clock. I’m outta here.
Tom Batiuk: What about my website? You didn’t finish. People can’t read my blogs.
Batiuk’s Web Guy: I’ll finish up on Monday.
Tom Batiuk: (fumes)
I’ll be curious to see if the issue clears up tomorrow.
Nope.
Those John Darlings will still load, but nothing else.
It loads fine for me. And TB’s Facebook page is pretty active, with the last post being on Nov 9.
“One of those rules is that all story arcs must be exactly 1-3 weeks long.”
I always wondered what he thought would happen if he ever decided to wrap up a story arc on a Wednesday, and begin a new one on Thursday. Did he believe it’d only serve to confuse the readers? Is it another case of TomBan assuming his readers are just too slow-witted to follow a story that doesn’t adhere to his very strict rules re: pacing?
Even weirder is how many stories wrapped with a Saturday strip, which was probably the least viewed strip of the week. And there were at least several examples of Batty rehashing a wrap-up on Sunday, like he knew no one read the Saturday one. But he never deviated from the format with that.
ED:
Did he believe it’d only serve to confuse the readers?
He expects us to be so immersed in his deep lore that we instantly know that the weird unexplained child that manifested from the aether is Pam’s Husband’s childhood doppelganger, who doesn’t remotely look his bio-dad, and without a single in-strip cue to who this goblin is (he’s…imaginary but also carries armfuls of books?), and yet have to be told every frickin’ time (INHALES DEEPLY) “My father, Joh–” Oh, like you don’t know the rest.
There’s no middle ground. To him his audience is composed of Einsteins and the more CTI’d of the Three Stooges.
He expects us to be so immersed in his deep lore
This is actually another topic I want to explore. TB’s problem isn’t exactly his lore (which is bad enough) but how he uses it.