So I checked in on the BatBlog, and saw a new “Match To Flame” entry regarding an automobile accident involving our favorite comic strip, uh, writer, I guess. Based on the pics he posted, it looked like a pretty bad one, involving an airbag deployment (those really hurt. On TV it’s a big fluffy cushion of helpful air, but in real life it’s like being socked in the face with a giant cartoon boxing glove) and paramedics and whatnot. And I felt bad for the boring old coot, and genuinely hoped he was OK and all.
Then, however, I got to the part about his PT Cruiser, and I thought wait a minute, BatYam is still driving a PT Cruiser? And I figured OK, I suppose that if anyone still had a PT Cruiser, Batiuk would be a good candidate, because you know. And then he was droning on about his coat, and how months later it still had the indentation from the seat belt, and I realized that he was in fact jabbering about an old car accident he’d had years before.
And apparently, this sequence of events was the inspiration for the now-legendary “black panel” Funky Winkerbean & Cell Phone Girl car crash arc, which led to the creation of Starbuck Jones, which forever altered the course of the Funkyverse in stupid, tiresome ways no one could have possibly foreseen. But, thanks to his unique writing style, it took me a while to ascertain this, as the story could politely be described as “meandering”, at best.
So he wrote a nearly incomprehensible story about a chain of events that led him to focus more on his writing, and, just like always, it was written in a weird, strangely circular, and really annoying way, that made everything less clear than it was before. Some things never change.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Knowing that he writes this way does help to explain certain deficiencies in the story-telling. It takes forever to get to anything like a point and it never occurs to him to notice details that seem obvious to other people.
https://tombatiuk.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Match-to-Flame-4.jpg
I had the same reaction as Epicus did: only when I saw the reference to the PT Cruiser did I realize that Batty’s accident was not recent. His “Match to Flame” posts are basically recycled from the intros he writes for The Complete FW volumes, and usually marked as such, though he didn’t bother doing that here.
I was scratching my head (Batiuk makes me do this a lot) when I read the caption for the images of the wrecked car (“From this point forward, I would be playing with house money”). I guess this is his way of saying he cheated death. Like Epicus, I’m thankful that “the boring old coot” wasn’t more seriously injured. But according to this Plain Dealer article about the crash, he came away with “a broken rib and soft tissue injury to the neck and shoulder.” Not a picnic, to be sure, but he didn’t wind up in an apparent coma like Funky did.
The strips depicting Funky’s crash (and the ensuing time travel episode that it triggered) are collected here (beginning with the June 23, 2010 strip) and here.
What’s really funny to me is how he explains that while being laid up for months after his harrowing, catastrophic, near-death experience, he turned inward and used the time to focus on his writing, and on new ideas. And, just like always, he eventually settled on time travel. It’s always time travel. Starbuck Jones #1, Crazy’s magic locker, the Eliminator helmet, TimeMop, the numerous videotapes, secret diaries, and nostalgic trips back to the past…it’s always time travel with this guy. It’s his default idea.
It’s kind of amazing how his descriptions of his creative process are as boring and baffling as the actual work is. The man is an artist, and tedium is his medium. He somehow manages to do less, with less.
The problem with time travel is that it’s a device of defeatists. The person wants a different world but is too lazy to change himself too.
I really like this statement.
And the Funkyverse is so defeatist, the characters won’t change their lives even WITH time travel.
Remember that arc when they went back in time to meet their younger selves? Adult Lisa was missing, and nobody would even tell young Lisa why. I don’t think anyone even made the conscious choice not to intervene, a la “City on The Edge Of Forever”. If they did, it was way too underplayed.
As usual, Les is the worst offender. When presented with the opportunity to rewrite history, or at least spend some time with his Lost Lenore, Les did what he always does when faced with a tough decision: nothing. He’s the manifestation of “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
Which reveals the dirty little secret of Les and Lisa: they don’t actually love each other. They love their codependent relationship. Les loves that his precious Lisa died (largely from their own inaction) and made him the biggest writing star in the universe. At least until their 30-something basketball-playing undergraduate daughter came along and redefined what it means to be human.
Yes, exactly. The time traveling never amounts to anything. It just is. It’s like he thinks “Eureka! Time traveling!”, then tosses his pen down and starts victory lapping. It’s his default idea.
Maybe now it’s always time travel, but wasn’t this the first case of it? Was this the ground zero that started him down lazy writer lane?
When the “black panel” car crash was referenced in the post, I was thinking of coming down here to ask if anyone had a link to it. But, you’ve already provided it. Thanks!
Reading the strips leading up to the crash, this made me shake my head. Funky gives John his MINT CONDITION issue #1 of Starbucks Jones that is of course worth about $1,000,000,000. John is excited and of course the first thing he does is he starts LEAFING THROUGH IT WITH HIS GRUBBY HANDS. But I guess you can’t expect a comic book expert to understand how to preserve the mint condition of a comic.
<i> I guess you can’t expect a comic book expert to understand how to preserve the mint condition of a comic.</i>
If there’s one thing that chaps my ass about the comic book stories, it’s this. TB’s always rambling on about “gem mint” , which is a ridiculous standard even brand-new collectibles don’t adhere to. And his characters carelessly manhandle the things.
That early <i>Simpsons</i> episode got this detail right. They read the comic book, but also took great care in handling the pages. Until they started fighting over it, of course.
This is the same schmuck who bought Jeff’s collection despite it being water damaged and smelling of smoke, so… we probably shouldn’t be surprised.
And pointed out how good its condition was despite that! No friggin way. Based on this explanation, I figure it’s 3 or 4 at best. Which is technically “Good/Very Good” but that doesn’t mean much.
I wouldn’t be surprised if John sold the issue and got a measly 2 cents
At first, “Starbuck Jones” was an obscure, short-lived comic book title from the 1970s, which was when the time travel coma story took place. Then, he did the SJ collection arc, and it turned out that there were hundreds of issues. Then, all of a sudden, there was a Cliff Anger, who played SJ in old movie serials from the 1940s. It just kept getting bigger, and older, with each passing reference.
I am also obliged to point out that the Funky car crash occurred immediately after Funky placed his father Morton into long-term care at Bedside Manor, due to his advanced Alzheimer’s. And we all know how that turned out.
What tipped me off was mentioning his wife. I know she died about 4 years ago, but he talks about her in the present tense.
I did not know that Tom’s wife had passed on. While he absolutely has my sympathy, and in no way do I mean to trivialize his loss, this also explains a whole lot about the declining quality of his output.
It also makes it clear (at least to me) that he continues to do this because it’s now all he has. Which is sort of what I thought before … but with the death of his lifetime partner, this really would seem to be ALL he has. Yipes.
It’d be kind of a bittersweet, potentially quasi-inspirational story, actually — if he could actually write something that tapped into his real emotions and experiences. Or, more broadly, If he were any damned good at writing.
I wonder how much influence — indirect or direct — his wife had on the actual strips? Maybe more than Tom would be comfortable admitting?
I was not aware that she had passed on either. Cathy Batiuk was mentioned as if she was still living in several of the news stories about the end of <I>FW</I> in late 2022. Her voter registration appears to still be active today, if Ohio’s public records are to be believed.
UPDATE: I’m wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time. According to https://www.wkyc.com/article/entertainment/akron-tom-batiuk-retire-funky-winkerbean-comic-strip-end-2022/95-bfaacf4c-347e-4aa9-92ed-a9f6fbd6be3b she was alive and still living with him when FW ended in December 2022.
I could have sworn this post https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/happy-new-year/ said that Cathy had passed on, or at least something I interpreted that way. Maybe i misread it.
I am very glad she is still alive. And I genuinely hope that both of them enjoy good health for years to come.
That’s good to hear, as we here at SoSF do not and never have had any issue with BatYam’s personal life on any level. Just his creative output, which speaks for itself.
Yeah, I feel awful about getting this wrong. But in my defense, Tom Batiuk’s writing is so bad that he confuses the reader about basic facts.
Are you sure that’s the blog entry you mean? It says nothing about his wife that I can see.
@BeckoningChasm Yes, that is my recollection. It was something to do with convention badges. Cathy’s badges were visible in the picture, and it contained some text that implied she was no longer part of the picture. Clearly, I’m mis-remembering something.
I also know some blog posts were deleted in the move from funkywinkerbean.com to tombatiuk.com. I can’t find the infamous “I was certain DC would immediately make me the lead of Spider-Man once they saw how good a writer I was” post on the newer site. (The Batman TV show tantrum is still there, because Batiuk’s not good at knowing what things he *should* hide from public eyes.)
But I’ll plead guilty to being a dumbass, because I can’t prove any of this. I even tried a web.archive.org search of the old site.
I think I could say, without fear of contradiction, that DC would have loved to see Batiuk become head writer of Spider-Man.
And I’m, always crashing, in the same car….
(D. Bowie)
“Other than working with the physical therapist who initially came to the house a couple of times a week, I had nothing to do all day but read books, watch TV, and write.”
Given what we’ve seen in the comic strips, I feel so so very sorry for this poor physical therapist.
“Mr. Batiuk, I’m not going to warn you again. No more rib-related wordplay or puns, or I’ll have to cut this physical therapy session short again, do you understand?”
“Sorry. I was just RIBBING you! Get it? Because RIB!”
So what was his pre-catastrophic car accident daily routine? Read books, watch TV, and pick up a large pie for dinner?
It was going to his old high school and sketching for “research.” Ugh.
Yeah, that seems really disruptive, invasive, and pushy. And he shouldn’t need to do this kind of “research”, because he’s been telling these stories for 40 years, and high school had been de-emphasized in FW.
“Middle aged guy hanging around a high school with a sketchbook” sounds like the basis of a TV show with Mariska Hargitay and Ice-T.
Or someone who gets interviewed by Chris Hansen.
In Vera Caspary’s *Laura,* Waldo Lydecker is surprised that Lieutenant Mark McPherson is familiar with his work. Mark explains that while he was recovering from injuries sustained on a case (which earned him the nickname of “the man with the silver shinbone,” although “tibia” is more accurate), there wasn’t a lot to do in the hospital (this is the early 1940s) but read, and he read a great deal of Lydecker before he was discharged.
Perhaps this was the occasion which brought to Tom Batiuk’s mind a book about squirrels, which Harry Dinkle would later reference.
The last time I was in the hospital it was for a dislocated shoulder, and though I had one of Edith Wharton’s later novels (*Hudson River Bracketed*) with me, I was in too much pain to open it.
Grandpa (ugh) says that the accident was in 2008, near the tail end of the PT Cruiser era.
Last year, I borrowed a friend’s old PT Cruiser for a while. It was kind of cool to drive a manual transmission again, but you could also tell why you don’t see too many on the roads these days.
I briefly considered buying a PT Cruiser when they were popular, until a mechanic at an auto dealership told me that their shop worked on a lot of them because the heavy frames were murder on the tires. I liked the semi-retro look of them though.
If I was Tom Batiuk’s editor:
According to Wolfgang Pauli’s exclusionary principle, two objects can’t occupy the same space at the same time. And I learned the hard way that there are painful consequences for those who try.
One day in 2008, I had just finished a workout at my fitness/tennis club, and was anxious to get home for supper. The facility was located on a busy road, and now it was rush hour. I only needed to turn right into traffic, but this was still fraught and time-consuming. Against my better judgement, I zipped into the opening and got up to speed quickly.
My route home took me to another busy road I had to cross. Also, heavy snow had just begun. Being in safety-first mode from the earlier incident, I changed my route so I could cross the street at a stoplight.
I had just gone through the intersection and was rounding a short curve. I saw an oncoming Chevy Trailblazer go off the other side of the road just ahead of me. It overcorrected, crossed back over to my side of the road, and slammed into my PT Cruiser head-on.
I heard a horrendous noise, and everything went black. (You may recognize this as the depiction of Funky’s car crash in 2010.)
When I came to, I was just hanging in my seatbelt harness, and I couldn’t raise my head. I sent a message to my toes to wiggle, and they wiggled back. Good news. A man who witnessed the crash from his home reached in through the broken window, put his palm on my forehead, and held my head up. He stayed with me until EMS workers and state troopers eventually cut me out of the car and transported me to the emergency room. The kindness of strangers.
My wife, Cathy, found me on a gurney, still in my winter coat, with pieces of glass from the windshield beside me on the gurney. (Months later, I would find that winter coat in the closet with the seat harness’s impression still across the front. It had been crushed into the fabric.)
X-rays were taken, blood samples were drawn, and slowly, the most serious outcomes were eliminated. I ended up with a badly bruised leg, and serious trauma and pain in the muscles in my neck and shoulders that pretty much immobilized me. I failed to dodge the Trailblazer, but my PT Cruiser had done its job, and saved me the worst possible consequences of a head-on collision. We left the hospital around four in the morning with me in a neck brace, some pain pills to hold me until I could see my doctor, and looking down the road at a long, slow recovery.
I was relegated to the couch in our family room. It was where I spent my days, and where I slept at night. Other than working with the physical therapist a couple of times a week, I had nothing to do all day but read books, watch TV, and write.
Fortunately, immediate deadlines weren’t a concern. Chuck Ayers and I were ahead by a year with the art on Crankshaft and the penciling on Funky. Reading books and watching TV tended to make me bored and sleepy after awhile. But writing kept me engaged, and I had all day to do it.
So I was able to get strips to Chuck as regularly as I always had. What was missing was the ability to go out and do in-person research, such as dropping by my old high school to sit in class and sketch. It was this missing element, along with a way-too-close-for-comfort-near-disaster, that led me to try something that I had been contemplating for a while.
To the fans on other forums who would respond to my criticsm of Tom Batiuk with “can you do it better?”: this is my answer. I edited his meandering nonsense into an essay that is clearer, more engaging, better organized, has a point, and is 300 words shorter.
All I did was remove irrelevant details and “cruft”, and reorganize the essay. I changed nothing, and added only the sentence: “you may recognize this as the depiction of Funky’s car crash in 2010”, because that’s a crucial point Batiuk overlooked.
It’s called writing.
Please expand this into “Batiuk’s Literary Offenses.” It will make the ghost of Mark Twain smile.
“Things haven’t changed much since I tore into James Fenimore Cooper and got all the facts in with a much shorter version.”
I’ve read that essay about Cooper. It’s hilarious, vicious, and the criticisms are spot-on. I wish I could roast Batiuk half that artfully. Mark Twain was more than a century ahead of his time. He’d fit perfectly into modern internet culture.
Batty loves to use expressions like “ house rules”, “ house money”.
Which obscure 1930’s movie gave him these?
He should be saying he’s since been “living on borrowed time.” At least then he’d be emulating DC’s first Silver Age hero team, The Challengers of the Unknown. The foursome was a co-creation of Jack “King” Kirby and debuted in 1957’s Showcase No. 6, two issues after the introduction of Barry Allen’s Flash.
Oh, and as for Sunday’s (1/28) ‘Shaft side-splitter: Ed has apparently launched multiple grills into space, and they’ll all just sitting in synchronous orbit, defying gravity at about 50-200 feet off the ground. Please tell me this isn’t the start of a week-long grilling arc in January.
The Challengers were Kyle “Ace” Morgan, Matthew “Red” Ryan, Walter Mark “Prof” Haley and Leslie “Rocky” Davis.
Isn’t Les Moore a “Leslie” and not a “Lester”?
Between the Flash and the Challengers, DC tried an issue with *Manhunters,* which was so unsuccessful that it didn’t have a cameo in *Showcase.*
The Fastest Man Alive would return after the Challs in #8, and again after their second appearance in #11-12.
Cushlamochree, why do I know these things?
Clarification:
That should be *Showcase* #100, in which some sixty characters appear.
Also among the absent with *Manhunters*: *Kings of the Wild* (#2), *Frogmen* (#3) and *B’wana Beast* (#66-67).
Since I mention Jimmy Bond elsewhere, I should note here that *Showcase* #43 is an adaptation of “Doctor No,” and 007 also sits out that centennial issue. (Perhaps he was playing canasta with B’wana Beast. Or piquet with M.)
Cave Carson has a cybernetic eye which becomes an interstellar eye.
Say, if Batiuk is still obsessing over this PT Cruiser crash he had several years ago, is it safe to say he’s suffering from PTSD?
Someone please shoot me now.
And so, he trots out that annoying buffoon Dinkle again. Dinkle would be sort of pathetic if he weren’t obnoxious and blind. He wasted his life by being a self-important ass who doesn’t WANT to understand that he’s the tail, not the dog.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Dinkle, shut up. I’m not reading another book because you’re an shithead who treats everyone else that isn’t him like absolute shit
More scenes we’d like to see.
Headline: Self-proclaimed “World’s Greatest Band Director” Harry Dinkle beaten to death by St. Spires choir members with his own book. Smug smirk permanently wiped off his face.
Every time Harry Dinkle shows up in Crankshaft, I am compelled to give him a red trucker cap and blackheads on his nose, and swap his dialogue with that of Ed C. (in this instance, from the 8/19/14 Crankshaft strip).
Not just any letter, but a letter of the sort which Jimmy Bond is prepared to send based on his imminent execution in the 1967 “Casino Royale”:
You do know of course that this means an angry letter to The Times?
Woody Allen was Jimmy Bond (I’m sure that both of Les’s wives know that).
I recall Dinkle selling his (autobiographical?) book door-to-door, just like the band turkeys, only he didn’t (for once) dump this on his band members to do. Probably because he himself could personally autograph copies – and mispell the buyer’s name in the inscription….