Today’s TBTrope is about power dynamics. This is a subject I’ve wanted to explore for awhile now.
All fiction runs on Like Reality, Unless Noted. When we are consuming a story, we assume that the story’s world is like our own, unless the story says otherwise. We use our own knowledge to fill in the gaps about how things work. When we’re watching a rom-com, Emma Stone doesn’t turn to turn to the camera to explain to the audience how dating works. We all know how it works, from our own lives. And so it is with interpersonal dynamics.
In a story, one character may hold power over another. In the funny pages, the mechanics of this are often very simple. Adult/child, boss/subordinate, older sibling/younger sibling, aggressive person/timid person, and so on.
Funky Winkerbean used to understand this. In Act I, Bull was a bully and Les was his victim. Harry Dinkle was a hyper-demanding band director, whose students had no power to resist his orders. The characters made sense, even in the comically exaggerated world of Act I. We recognized these situations from our own lives. We understood the power dynamics in play.
By Act III, though, a new paradigm had emerged. I call it By The Power Of Batiuk. “The character in control of any situation is the character Tom Batiuk thinks should be in control of it, not the character who actually would be.”
This is a major problem with the Funkyverse. It violates Like Reality, Unless Noted. Tom Batiuk frequently builds stories that don’t make any sense, because they go against our understanding of interpersonal relationships. Here’s an example.
Mason Jarre is the Ryan Reynolds of this world. He’s an A-list leading man. Movie people will meet with him just to shake his hand. And yet… they’re both deferring to Les? Why? In Hollywood, screenwriters are like garbagemen. They’re low-paid and smelly, but you understand they have an essential job to do. And Les isn’t even the screenwriter! He’s only the author of the source material, because he failed so badly at scriptwriting the first time that Mason found someone else to do it.
But they’re deferring to Les, because that’s how Batiuk wants the story to work. Batiuk wants Les in complete control of the movie. All of Lisa’s Story runs on the (unjustified) assumption that he is. Batiuk wants everybody to be so on eggshells because Lisa died, so they’ll give Les everything he wants without him even asking for it, or even explaining what he wants. To put it mildly, this is not how reality works. Panel 2 makes sense if Cassidy Kerr has just learned about the personal nature of the movie’s plot. But she’s not going to hand him oversight of a $10 million project. Especially not after he’s already abused this position once!
Here’s another example. I hate to lean on Crankshaft, but it’s so perfect:
Hey, Pam! It’s your house! Tell Ed to get his crap off your doorstep!
These are the two flavors of By The Power Of Batiuk:
- Primary characters are treated as if they have power they don’t have.
- Secondary characters don’t exercise power they do have.
Les is the biggest beneficiary of #1, and Ed Crankshaft is the biggest beneficiary of #2. But there are other examples of both:
In both cases, Funky is being a jackass to people who have every right to tell him to sit down and shut up. He’s pointlessly disrupting a financial services seminar, and hijacking an Alcoholics Anonymous-style meeting to tell meandering stories about his Walkman. A seminar presenter would be trained to handle disruptive attendees, and recovery meetings have etiquette they expect attendees to follow. Both would also find Funky rude and insulting. The financial presenter would have ejected him, and his “Arid AA” leadership role would have been revoked after they got complaints about him wasting the attendees’ time.
Ditto with Act III Dinkle. Tom Batiuk’s elegant solution to keeping Dinkle involved in the strip was to transfer his behavior to St. Spires’ church choir. But it just doesn’t work:
This is Dinkle’s key shtick, but it depends on power dynamics that aren’t present anymore. High school students in 1975 are more or less at the whim of their overseers; adults in 2020 are not. Adults have legal protections, and know how to seek help when they need it. Dinkle doesn’t have the absolute power his behavior requires. He’s an employee, and has people he must answer to. Act I could gloss over this, but Act III can’t.
Just as we inherently understand how Emma Stone’s romcom works, we inherently understand how Dinkle’s church choir doesn’t work. The singers wouldn’t be begging Dinkle for shorter practices. They’d be complaining to the pastor about him, and Dinkle would be promptly terminated once they find out what he’s up to. But Tom Batiuk’s story needs them to beg Dinkle, so here we are. It claims to be “a quarter inch from reality”, but we know better. It has nothing in common with our reality.
When you look at Tom Batiuk’s realism from this perspective, the Funkyverse collapses on itself. Even Ed Crankshaft, a character who has legit fans, doesn’t work once you realize nobody would tolerate his behavior. “The school bus drivers compete to leave children behind” and “Ed is addicted to online shopping” could be jokes in a comically exaggerated world. But Crankshaft isn’t that world.
Tom Batiuk wants Crankshaft to be realistic, at least some of the time. He wants us to take it seriously when Ed is supporting black baseball players in the early days of integration, or telling stories about dementia. Then it turns around and has Ed launching barbecue grills into space, and letting his friend die so he can set the record for blowing off schoolchildren it’s his entire job to transport.
This gets back into something I mentioned before: tonelessness. The Funkyverse constantly wavers between mean-spirited humor and oh-so-serious drama, with no hint to how we’re supposed to interpret anything. And we can’t rely on our own judgment, because the relationships don’t make any sense.
Son of Stuck Funky 
This seems to be the end result of his still being the spoiled child who sulked because his mother did have better things to do than to wait on an idiot boy as he gobbled down cookies and read gaudy trash.
This also speaks to his not actually seeming to understand what the stakes actually were when he read comic books. His mind congealed into place at an early age and he doesn’t understand why people do what they do.
What’s always amazing to me is that in the early days of the strip, Batiuk understood how to make it readable. Sure, he never even once hit the Peanuts or Doonesbury level of funny or engaging (those being the two most obvious strips to compare it to … early FW is basically a B-level high-school-focused mash-up of the two.) But he seemed to have a basic grasp of humour and character and pacing.
Then he utterly, completely, totally and irrevocably (and very publicly) lost it.
And yet still, somehow, for some reason, he has been allowed to keep cranking out material.
What a monstrous ego this guy must have. There’s no-one in his life who has been able to tell him that it’s time to quit. In fact, I’m guessing that they probably stopped trying years ago….
I can tell you the exact day he lost it: whatever day in 1986 or 1987 he got that Pulitzer nomination. The day he got a tiny bit of recognition for being a Serious Writer, Funky Winkerbean went straight to hell. And we’ve all been living there ever since.
The Pulitzer nom wasn’t until 2008, long after he completely lost it.
Although it was surely the final sign that he was never, ever going to get it back.
He had two nominations, 1987 and 2008. The first one was for the “Lisa pregnancy” story. And so Berke Breathed wouldn’t be the only newpaper comic nominee, when they wanted to break from form and award it to a non-editorial cartoonist.
Ah, didn’t know that!
Then yes, the theory makes perfect sense.
I was unaware that Pulitzer (nominee) Boy was nominated twice (did not win). Nominating the pregnancy arc for ANY award is just a laughable notion, as that was the most predictable, trite, piece of shit imaginable. The eventual outcome, and everything leading up to that outcome, was blatantly obvious from the very first panel, to an intelligence-murdering degree. So much so that I was actually offended by it. Not merely as a FW reader, but as a literate human being. And here I am, still bitching about it. A Pulitzer…LOL!
I’m not finding any evidence Batiuk was nominated for a Pulitzer prior to 2008. In 1987, when Breathed won, it was for Editorial Cartooning — the other nominees in the category were David Horsey, Henry Payne, and Jeff Danzinger. The Pulitzer website, which is quite extensive, lists Batiuk’s only nomination in 2008.
Perhaps you’re thinking of some other award he was nominated for around that time?
This comment pretty much encapsulates why I grew to hate FW so much. It used to be different. There was a particular kind of cynical wit to it back in early Act I. The characters were mostly one-note caricatures, but that was kind of the point. WHS was a battlefield of sorts, and the goal was to survive. Not literally, of course, but in that satirical 1970s ennui kind of way.
Then BatBrain decided he wasn’t being taken seriously enough, so he tried his hand at writing dramedies, and fleshing out the various character’s back stories, and next thing you knew it was thirty years later and Lisa was all over the funny page, bumming everyone out. He’s one of the worst storytellers of all-time, yet not only didn’t anyone notice, but they kept letting him do it for decades on end.
In the movie “Easy A” Emma Stone actually does look at the camera and talk about how things in the movie work. I normally like her in movies but I found it so annoying I quit 5 minutes in!
Thanks for the correction. But holy crap, did I pick a bad example. I don’t know Easy A, was it a Better Off Dead type self-aware spoof? I only picked Emma Stone because I needed a more current name for rom-com actress than Renee Zellwegger.
it’s a take on The Scarlet Letter, so I don’t think it’s an average rom-com really, so I’d say your example still works fine, it was just funny that it immediately reminded me of her talking to the camera.
I enjoyed her breaking the fourth wall. The film is essentially a big love letter to ’80s comedies and her talking to the camera is a callback to Ferris Bueller.
Another perceptive essay, BJr6K. I know that you, like I, have studied improv. One of the benefits of improv scenework is that it forces you to learn the “bones” of how to construct a story.
Power discrepancies between characters are so important that you can make a good improv scene with not much more than that information.
But it only works if it has a thread of realism. Perhaps the character with more power abuses it, or lives in fear of losing it, or slowly starts to realize what it can do for them.
Perhaps the character with less power seethes with resentment, or tries to use guile to manipulate the more powerful character, or identifies so strongly with the powerful character that they become a sycophantic toady.
If the power flip-flops without a struggle or explanation, all realism and tension drains away. As you have aptly pointed out.
Especially if power is bestowed on the character who realistically should have none, and deserves it least.
If the power flip-flops without a struggle or explanation, all realism and tension drains away. As you have aptly pointed out.
In the Funkyverse, power doesn’t flip-flop – it’s misassigned from the very start. The story never even tells you Les has veto power over the whole movie; much less why he has this power. it just assumes you know that, even though it contradicts our understanding of how the world works. And without any justification.
I thought of a great way you could make the second Lisa’s Story movie work, though. A film studio needs to make a money-losing film for tax reasons. So they ask Mason Jarre to go find that weedy little creep from Ohio with the dead wife and let him call the shots. Mason goes along with this, because we know he wants to break out of his “typecasting”, and he gets to star in a heavy drama out of the deal. And Les can still win the Oscar after it’s all done.
“A film studio needs to make a money-losing film for tax reasons. So they ask Mason Jarre to go find that weedy little creep from Ohio with the dead wife and let him call the shots.”
Warner Bros just called. You’re their new CEO!
I already have a job offer from Bialystock and Bloom Theatrical Producers.
Goddag pa dig!
Quick question, BJr.6K: was it ever stated canonically who owns the Crankshaft-Murdoch house? I always assumed it was the house Ed raised his family in and Jfff and Pmm moved in with him, but obviously it could be the other way around. If so, it makes even less sense that Ed ran a watering system through the attic last year that endangered Jfff’s precious Silver Age Spider-Man comics, forcing him to sell them, and why Ed’s always the one removing ice from the gutters.
Not to take it would make you stupid and not a smarty, something akin to not being called Rolf when you were born in Dusseldorf.
Look at the blue skies above, prisoners of love!
Or at Lobster Todd, who is also Woodchuck Todd…
JJ: I recall an “adding a room to the house” arc in Crankshaft, the room being for Ed. This implies that he was added to Pam and Jeff’s home. But who knows, honestly?
J.J. O’Malley:
The house belongs to Pm and Jfff. Batiuk had a month-long sequence about them putting an addition on the house with Jfff wailing about how much it cost to anyone who would listen, and some people who wouldn’t.
He made a whole story out of that. It was really the first time I noticed how much of a self-absorbed boomer douchebag Jfff was. Nothing that’s happened since has nudged me to change my mind in the slightest.
Pmm and Jff seem to have ownership over the house since they paid for the addition and repairs. But a few flashbacks also seem to indicate that the house has also been in the family for years, perhaps even being Crankshaft’s childhood home, with the McKenzie sisters living next door also since childhood.
For a long time Crankshaft actually lived in an apartment above the garage with a bedroom and a bathroom, (I don’t think it had a kitchen) I don’t know if they ever did a proper storyline to move him back in the house or if they just forgot/phased it out gradually.
You thought yesterday’s Crankshaft had set the Cringe-O-Meter to 10? Today it goes to 11.
The bald truth is: Nothing TB does is newsworthy any more. Nobody wants to interview him about his one remaining moribund strip.
Solution? Have his avatar “interview” his other avatar about how it feels to have discontinued his main strip. Spoiler: It’s sad and pathetic. Throw in a shitty “pun” and we’re done.
How can a man be so full of puffery and yet have no pride?
It’s also an admission of what we’ve long speculated: that Funky Winkerbean was cancelled.
It DOES give us the opportunity to imagine Batton Thomas being hit by a truck, so there is something to recommend it.
Holy crap, I just noticed this. In the last strip you included, where he keeps them practicing until 2am, Dinkle is incredibly rude to the ladies. You’ve heard of people referring to someone as a “See You Next Tuesday”. He’s basically calling all of them that in P1!
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
The Most Pathetic Author Avatar Meets Batton Part Three: For The Love Of God Make It Stop
I said back in December that I was watching The Phantom Empire. I declared the first half hour Pretty Good, mainly based on Trick Rider Betsy King Ross, giving her enthusiastic 13-year-old all to her role. She’s “ADORBS!” but I still bet she just smelled like dirty horses. (In 1935, they had yet to discover the concept of “A Daily Shower”)
I’d like to report that after 3 months, I have triumphantly watched–another 30 minutes! Yeah, it’s sloggy.
It’s interesting that TPE is trying to be 2 things at once. A FAST-PACED ACTION ADVENTURE!! that every 5 minutes slogs to “comedy relief.” If you’ve seen as many 30s/40s movies I have, you know only when that comedy ends is there any relief. Why, once again, it’s Mustache Boy and Big Chonk! Mustache slaps Chonk’s harmonica from his hand, and then–Chonk brings out a smaller harmonica! This is certainly a comedical joke that bears repeating every 15 minutes!
So…Utterly Serious, but with pointless bits of comedy that nobody but the creators thought were funny, ruining whatever narrative drive it had. They just cancel each other out, leaving me wondering why that was even in there.
I’m sure this reminds none of us of anybody else’s writing style.
I expect I will finish TPE, but…(does math) at this rate, not this year. And I WILL quit if Betsy gets some kinda horse cancer.
bill, your valiant “Phantom Empire” slog inspired me to see what I could find out about Ms. Ross. Wikipedia lists her as an “actress, anthropologist, and author” (!) but offers few details. Here’s what IMDB had to say: “Her father, J. King Ross, was a superb horse trainer…who was with numerous traveling circuses and shows. Betsy was born on 14 March 1921…She appeared in a few motion pictures but when she was about 13 she decided she did not want to be an actress and her parents honored her wish. She married a road building engineer named Day and lived on a 10,000-acre ranch in South American while her husband was building roads there. The couple had one son, who was born in the USA (as per Betsy’s wish). She and baby returned to the ranch after his birth. Her husband was killed in a landslide, she and baby returned to California where she reentered college.” Sounds like she had a rough life but came out in one piece. Oh, and she died in 1989 at the age of 68. No cause given.
Hold your jokes to the end, please, but I watched the quite fairly maligned Madame Web movie last week… and it is morbidly fascinating in a lot of the same ways TB’s work is. It isn’t really self-satisfied or self-aggrandizing like TB’s writing, but it similarly has ambitions far beyond its capabilities and regularly displays both power of Batiuk and (especially) tonelessness. It’s actually a pretty watchable movie, at least to see once, as it constantly surprises by finding the blandest ways to be bizarre and the most bizarre ways to be bland.
No spoilers (as if anyone cares about Madame Web being spoiled, haha), the microcosm of the entire movie doesn’t require them. Pepsi quite blatantly paid for product placement in the movie (which comes into play in another particularly important and incredibly dumb scene) and there are multiple scenes where Dakota Johnson is handed a can of soda to open while she converses with other characters… but she never opens it. She fiddles incessantly with the can, flicks the tab while holding it sideways, shifts it between hands, and otherwise does things no human being has ever done with a can of soda that they intend to drink.
It is incredibly distracting, not just because of Johnson’s fidgeting itself but because (like so much of the movie) I have no idea what to make of it. Has Johnson never opened a can of soda in her life? Is her character supposed to have never opened a can of soda before? Is this supposed to be some kind of protest or commentary on the debasing nature of product placement? The movie offers few and/or contradictory clues as to how most of it should be interpreted. It’s baffling and not worth being baffled by at the same time, just like…
For some reason, I’m thinking of the references to beer in “Blue Velvet.”
(Come to Lumberton if you ever tire of Ojai, Todd! They genuinely know how much wood the woodchuck chucked.)
We hear of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Heineken and Budweiser.
And I was recently going through sixteen episodes of “The Halls of Ivy,” a 1950s Ronald Colman series which Schlitz (“The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous”) sponsored.
In DC’s *Starman* series, there were frequent discussions over portrayals of Philip Marlowe, the best of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals and favorite Woody Allen movies (nice to see you smiling, Cayla). The Batman’s favorite Allen (admitted grudgingly and after the fact) is “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” while the Floronic Man thought “Interiors” was very funny.
The next time I saw “Interiors,” I tried to see it through Floro’s eyes. Cologne permeating a house is rather risible…
I assume Grodd’s favorite WA movie was “Bananas”?
Reverse Flash’s was “Take the Money and Run”?
Air Wave’s was “Radio Days”?
The Mad Hatter’s was “Alice”?
I’ll stop now.
Mr. bwoeh loves ‘The Critical Drinker’ channel on YouTube. Here’s his take on Madame Web.
Warning: *SPOILERS* and heavy sarcasm.
“Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for today. Go away now.”
“… and otherwise does things no human being has ever done with a can of soda that they intend to drink.”
Suddenly, I’m reminded of those other movies she made a few years back.
Lord. I’m never drinking pop again.
I forgot that Arcamax has CS, but runs it EARLIER!
https://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/crankshaft/
And 2/29 is…WOW. Why’d Marvel not name this guy “Ego the Living Planet”?
Yeah, about that strip:
Harry, you BUMBLING FOOL! you REMOVED that Carmine Infantino-inspired Silver Age Flash statue from its packaging to display it!? Now it’s no longer MINT IN BOX! The retail value has PLUMMETED! DSH John would be well within his rights to fire you on the sport for such an EGREGIOUS disregard of fanboy culture! Pack up your time-travel helmet and NEVER darken the Komix Korner again!!!
But remember, this happened:
https://www.gocomics.com/crankshaft/2023/04/01
John Howard declared Jeff’s comic books “in pretty good condition” despite water damage and smoky smell. Either John’s grotesquely ignorant about how collectible valuation works, or the entire Funkyverse is.
Official Batiukian comic grading guide:
Comics in the possession of people who read them the right way, for the right reasons: that’s an automatic good to near-mint grading.
Other comics: Who cares?
You know, you’re right, EXCEPT for when TB has his fanboy avatars go into lustful, neckbeard reveries about “mint, slabbed” specimens.
Another example of the “tonelessness” BJr6K refers to in the post above.
Are comics for reading and loving, pizza grease fingers be damned?
Or are comics for grading, slabbing, and scrupulously storing in a temperature-controlled lockbox?
Which type of comic buyer is the Virtuous One Who Truly Understands Comics, Unlike Those Other Plebs Who Aren’t Privy to the Great Mysteries?
(Answer: Depends on TB’s whim of the day.)
Ah, but the very Virtuosity of those who Truly Understand Comics acts as a special, mystical non-liquid grease-cutting agent that keeps their anointed fingers pristine, as well as the comics they touch! This, of course, means that these very special people can both read comics AND preserve them in mint-like condition through the very act of reading them.
All part of the benefits of fully embracing The One True Way To Understand Comics.
He’s always throwing around the description “gem mint”, clearly not knowing what it means. If it’s been touched by human hands, it’s not gem mint. Never mind all the handling and damage these characters put comic books through.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
The Most Pathetic Author Avatar Meets Batton Part Four: Let It Go, Let it Do Not Want (which is what Vader’s Big “NO” translated in Backstroke of The West (a bootleg dub for Revenge of the Sith)
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
(csroberto2854 hurls a rock at the window of Komix Korner, and then breathes on a copy of Action Comics #1, and then punches DSH John in the nuts)
Related to The Batiukverse: More Miis of the citizens of the Batiukverse
Jess Darling, Daughter of John Darling, Who Was Murdered
Keisha Williams-Moore
Summer Moore
George Keesterman
Les Moore (Act II)
Frankie Pierce
Wally Winkerbean Jr.
Ally Roberts-Reynolds (In my headcanon, Pete’s family surname is Reisberg)
Heather “Chien” Parks (version 2)
Wally Winkerbean
Rolanda Mathews (version 2)
Something tells me bwoeh is fit to be tied right about now. Her bête noire, Comics Kingdom, has revamped their site so a) nothing loads. It just doesn’t load; b) you can’t get all your favorites on one page any more; and c) the price of an annual subscription has just about tripled, and it was a terrible deal even before that.
I’ve kept my subscription for nearly a decade through thick & thin, and it’s mostly thin with CK. Reading vintage strips like Buz Sawyer, Johnny Hazard, Apartment 3-G, etc, has been the first visit on my browser for many years.
But the site doesn’t even work. I can’t see my comics at all, and if I could, I certainly don’t want to pay a fortune to have to click through each one because they refuse to put them all on one page.
I’m beyond tired of their cutesy web shenanigans. I cancelled my subscription today.
I’ve been accessing CK comics through the Seattle Times web site. I have a google document with all the links for the comics I’m interested in, e.g. https://www.seattletimes.com/comics-king/?feature_id=judge-parker
I did notice this morning that the comics took a ridiculously long time to load (as in click the link and go get a cup of coffee), and the format was different. I hadn’t read the CK comics since Monday, and when the comics page finally did load, it displayed the comic strips from Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
So, though it is slow, I am still able to access the comics without paying the subscription fee.
I’m getting something to load over there but wow, that is some advanced new web 2.0+ layout. Maybe not a great idea when your average consumer retired before the turn of the century.
Was also surprised by how long it took to find a strip i even recognized let alone (used to) follow. Those are some slim pickins indeed.
I’m not web-illiterate or even close to it. It’s more that this website has one simple purpose: Get people to pay to have their favorite comics served up conveniently. As has been pointed out, there are plenty of places to find comics if you don’t mind clicking a whole bunch and maintaining multiple bookmarks. Why would people pay for that privilege?
As much as web neophytes hate complex user interfaces, I think they’re even more annoying to those of us who’ve been online for decades. As a matter of principle, a commercial web site should know what it’s trying to do and do exactly that, as elegantly and intuitively as possible.
CK has chosen precisely the opposite: Losing sight of its mission, and creating a fiasco out of a task so simple that it was being done well 20 years ago.
There is still no website I’m aware of that has replicated the simple joy of reading the comics page of the newspaper with your morning coffee. The more time passes, the further we get from this goal, which I and many others would be willing to pay for.
#FxCKCK
Just from what I’ve seen of BWOEH’s tech support interactions with Comics Kingdom, that place is a complete shitshow. You don’t keep help desk tickets open for years without ever doing anything about them. Even if they had something I wanted to buy, I wouldn’t trust them with my credit card data.
Did I ever tell you I continued to receive an email of my Comics Kingdoms favorites, a premium subscriber perk, for five full months after canceling my account? Not exactly running a tight ship were they?
It’s a small miracle we’ve never read about CK getting hacked for subscriber email addresses, passwords, and credit card info.
Just curious: When you cancelled, did they pro-rate you any of your fee? I ask because if I cancel now, I don’t want to be out of that money. I’d rather run it to the end of my sub so that I can at least use up their bandwidth.
When @The Drake of Life said they canceled, my first thought was they should have waited out the subscription term.
After unsuccessfully haggling the annual subscription price last year, I asked Comics Kingdom Customer Care if I’d get a refund if I canceled my subscription early. They closed the problem ticket without further correspondense. I took that as a hard “No”. That’s why I waited until the last day of my subscription to cancel.
On the final day before my subscription was to renew, I read my comics, canceled my subscription and went on an errand. When I returned home a few hours later, my CK access was gone.
The Comics Kingdom’s setup doesn’t seem to be that sophisticated. I believe if you cancel, your access is deactivated within an hour or two, and you don’t get a refund.
I’d wait if I were you.
It expires next month. I still seem to have access (perhaps because I’d bought the yearly subscription), but all the great vintage strips that were my reason for subscribing are gone, and navigation is a hellish maze of clicks, so I don’t really care if I have access or not. There’s nothing they have that I want any more.
I’ll miss my morning ritual — which I was more than willing to pay for — but I’ll have to find some other non-stressful way to start my day.
Well, I’m sorry for what you’re going through. You’re a lot more patient than me. I canceled my CK subscription last April, the day before it was to be renewed. The CK removed some premium paid perks I enjoyed with the November 2022 “upgrade.” Then wanted to raise my subscription price by 50% to $29.99. I thought it was a typo and contacted Comics Kingdom Customer Care. They steadfastly stated it was the new subscription price, take it or leave it. I refused to resubscribe on principle. I wasn’t about to reward worse service by paying more for it. A 50% price increase was ridiculous.
I am fit to be tied. Not because I’m being denied access but exasperated because what they are doing is an affront to my business sense. I’ve been watching the Comics Kingdom trainwreck of a website rollout in facinated bewilderment. I can’t even start to tell you what they’re doing wrong from a business standpoint. It’s like a master class on how not to run a business. I should hire the Progressive “How not to be like your parents” guy to run it.
Progressive Guy: Welcome to how not to run a comic strip website like The Comics Kingdom. (points to screen) Who can tell me what they’re doing wrong here?
You don’t give the consumer worse service and raise the price. Not unless you have a monopoly, which they don’t. $4.99 a month for full access? $2.99 a month for just one title? YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS! My GoComics subscription is $19.99 for a whole year. For more titles. The value is simply not there.
Has the Comics Kingdom ever heard of focus groups? What did the readers like about the old website? What website functionality would they like to see added? What features don’t they use? What peeves do they have about the old website? Would the readers be willing to participate in beta testing a website reboot?
The Comics Kingdom: Nah, we’re gonna cram in whatever changes we want. Then we’re going to let the readers detect the problems for us. Then we’re going to raise the price.
(headdesk and pounding fist)
Why does the Comics Kingdom continually prioritize bells and whistles, i.e., appearance, over functionality? I guess nobody at the Comics Kingdom is familiar with the K.I.S.S. design principle.
Doesn’t the CK realize the majority of their readers are older folks? Most of whom hate change?
Why does the Comics Kingdom not prioritize paid premium subscribers when installing the reboot? Why are they the last to receive the perks they pay a premium for? Why are so many premium subscribers complaining they can’t see their favorites on one page? Aren’t premium subscribers the readers you want to make happy first? So you don’t lose them?
Doesn’t the CK understand many of their readers are retirees with fixed incomes who don’t want to pay more (if at all)?
Why is the CK making viewing comic strips over a phone a priority? Sorry, my eyes aren’t that good anymore.
So now if you want to make a comment, a window pops up completely obscuring the comic you want to discuss. WTF?
What happened to the “What do you think?” poll? Did they get rid of it because readers were too negative? A lot of readers want to be able to select “Hate”. 😂
It now takes even more clicks to see individual titles? Why? It seems irritating their readers is a CK priority.
What happened to the zoom function?
What the hell happened to the vintage titles? Where’s Vintage Beetle Bailey? Vintage Hi and Lois? Vintage Mark Trail? I guess I’ll never find out if Mark turned his friend in for poaching.
No more Easter color scheme. Whatever happened to the spinning Comics Kingdom crown? 😁
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@bobanero is right. Comics Kingdom content is available on other websites. I read most of my Kings Features on ArcaMax. The Seattle Times offers many other CK titles, like the soap opera strips, that ArcaMax doesn’t. The Washington Post also has Comics Kingdom titles for free.
If there’s a silver lining to this catastrophe it’s that I can read Comics Kingdom comments directly on the Seattle Times website. I can read CK snark from the Seattle Times.
With ArcaMax, the Seattle Times, and the disappearance of my vintage titles, I don’t have to go to the Comics Kingdom website at all anymore.
Very satisfying screed, bwoeh. Thank you for venting all the things we all loathe about that clusterfunk of a site.
One of the things I love about SoSF is that it remains straightforward. Text-heavy sites seem to be going the way of the dodo, but I personally prefer them. The purpose of this site is to write about, and share art and links, relating to the works of Tom Batiuk, and our gracious hosts have had the good sense not to try to reinvent the wheel, but remain focused on their mission.
That shouldn’t be rare, but it is.
Of course, it is utter madness for CK to completely overhaul their site, yet again, with absolutely no testing or consideration for UX. The saddest part is that they have years of FREE feedback, no costly focus groups required, no two-way mirrors and M&Ms and bottled water, no recruiters to pay. All they have to do is read the angry emails from their paying customers. Essentially, people are paying them for the privilege of being beta testers.
We know they don’t read the emails. They sit in an inbox and will sit there till the coating eventually flakes off the dusty, forgotten hard disk, byte by decaying byte.
#FxCKCK
“What the hell happened to the vintage titles?”
What happened to the *current* ones? I really like the recently minted strip Olive and Popeye, but, yeah, no new ones, and all but a couple of days of Feb’s strips left. Gotta be frustrating for that creator.
I know! What’s up with that? Olive and Popeye is one of my few favorites exclusive to the CK. Is it because the title is only twice a week? Why the heck is Olive and Popeye stuck on February 8th when several strips came out afterwards?
Vintage Mark Trail: I guess I’ll never find out if Mark turned in his friend for poaching. Was the animosity between Andy and the wolverine ever resolved?
Vintage Beetle Bailey and Hi & Lois are so much better than the contemporary strips. I’ll miss them.
Why are The Comics Kingdom and GoComics so eager to eliminate the classics and vintage titles? 😡🤬
Where’s my lawyer?
The executives at CK are probably celebrating the relaunch while relaxing on a beach and sipping mai tais, completely detached from the current issues.
BWOEH & the Drake of Life (still miss the Duck)
I have an easier time with the new CK.
I only read Sally Forth, Rex Morgan, Judge Parker, and Mary Worth (that doggone CBH got me hooked!).
The previous site would cut me off if I looked at too many daily strips, and block me with subscription threats. This new one is the exact opposite. It lets me look at strips 2, 3, maybe more weeks in a row. I haven’t tried to push it to see how far back it will let me look. It is NOT as user friendly to go from one title to the other. I have to use their A-Z link. Then hope an icon shows up for the strip that I am looking for.
I find GC still to be more user friendly, especially in how they structure their comments. On CK, I have to press a different button to bring up comments. I do not have a lot of interest in CK comments anyway, so small loss.
Speaking of comments, on GC, there are people who actually like Batton. Sick, sick people! They aren’t even the ones that yell daily at JJ O’Malley and at BilltheSplut. (BWOEH, my understanding is a Splut must be a type of cephalopod, at least from his very cool icon. However, from your several icons, you are 30ish with wind constantly blowing through your hair. But what do I know. I’m just a Longhorn.)
“Splut” is an acronym. No more shall I say.
None more shall be asked. What little power is invested in me, I exercise. I stifle thee, Be Ware of Eve Hill. Thou art forbidden, fair maiden.
I sense compliance in the force.
It’s not something gross or anything. It’s…overly dramatic. If you asked me “What, was this coined by a 14 year old girl?” I would say “Yes, actually. And I wear the name with pride.”
And we are proud of you!
@sorialpromise
Stifle me? Forbid me? Oh, that’s a laugh riot. LOL
You’re a… (reflective pause) special guy.
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@billthesplut
Thanks for the reply, guy. I reply just to defy Mr. SP.
I thought “Bill the Splut” may have been a character from somewhere, but found no mention anywhere. “Splut” makes me think of an onomatopoeia, like the sound of a pie hitting someone in the face. I will inquire no further.
Hmm, Special People Love… what can the “U” be?
I’ll stop! I’ll stop!
I may be going out on a limb, but BilltheSplut and I find you enjoyable.
(But Bill, if you don’t, let’s let that be our secret.)
Oh, for gourd’s sake, I give up, it stands for:
Some People Live Under Tyranny.
To heck with you, I love it and always will. She also gave me 2 other contradictory acronyms, both of which are lost to the mists of time and my foggy memory.
I do love her other warning: “Remember! That’s SPLUT with a P!”
The Comics Kingdom’s max limit restriction was laughable. All you had to do to bypass it was open your browser’s “Privacy and Security” settings and clear your browsing data.
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30ish? Phsaw, not quite. Last night one of the local grocery stores carded me for purchasing wine. Some kind of new store policy. I do have my wallet in hand, but it’s annoying to have to take my driver’s license out. It unecessarily holds up the line. FYI, I’m almost three times the legal age.
I embarrassed the cashier by calling him a flirt and asking him for out for a date. You should have seen him turn red. 😳
Eeeevillll!
It’s right there in the title: Be Ware of Eve Hill!
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
The Adventures of Batton Thomas Part Five: Why Hasn’t This Shit Ended Yet
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
(still incoherent screaming and smashing shit from csroberto who’s still pissed off at the motherfuckers at CK for completly fucking up CK, and then he throws a chair at DSH John)
Why is Batton Thomas (Creator of the Once-Nationally Syndicated Comic Strip “Three O’Clock High”) suddenly spouting nonsense word conflations and incorrect sayings, when he never did that in his past just-as-annoying appearances? Did Batiuk forget which of his characters has those as his traits…the character this very strip is named for? We could have gotten the same level of “humor” if Jff had simply dragged Ed to the Komix Korner, but of course then Batiuk wouldn’t be able to heap praise on himself through his in-strip representative. This HAS to end tomorrow, doesn’t it?
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Batton Thomas/Tom Batiuk: Oh, you mean that shithead who destroys mailboxes for fun.
(Dick Facey, Act II Les, Skppy and Lillian barge right in)
Pedoskunk John: (starts burning alive) MAKE THIS STOP! PLEASE! I CANT TAKE ANY OF THIS ANYMORE!
Darin: What the fuck is going on here? Harry, why is John still here?
John: Not again! I told you that I’m not a pedophile, Darin! MANY TIMES!
Darin: We’ve already seen the videos of you doing that horrific shit to minors.
(Darin grabs a flaming bag of shit and throws it onto John, causing him to burst into flames)
It is never surprising that TB makes an already awful premise devolve into something worse by the end of the week… but it is almost always surprising HOW he does so.
I sure didn’t see this “Batton turns into Crankshaft” bit coming, and I hate it so so much.
Batton Thomas wasn’t on my Top 25 list of expected Funky Winkerbean character appearances in Crankshaft in 2024. I never even considered him. I probably should have seen it coming, though.
Everybody in this strip is turning into everybody else. Everyone’s a published author. Everyone loves comics. Every generic blond girl is every other one.
Pretty soon Ed will be complaining about not getting the Pulitzer Prize in Bus Driving.
Seriously. If Batton and Crank meet–and I think we can call that a given–Ed will now love The Right Comics, and suddenly be a published author. It’s the Invasion of the Eddie Snatchers!
Why does Battonshit talk like Ed, a 102 yr old sociopath with dementia? Did Tom wonder why Crank was more popular, and decide it’s because he talks like he’s having stroke? That’s what CS needs–Funky characters with CTE! (slaps knee! Boy, I’d forgotten how funny Bull’s CTE was!)
I call this Jaws Wars Syndrome. There was no “Summer Blockbuster” concept back until Jaws and Star Wars. Summer before them was where they’d dump their crap movies, expecting everyone to have better things to do in the Summer, besides teenagers in dive-ins making out or getting stoned. 1977: Hamill in Star Wars! 1978: Hamill in Corvette Summer! But Hollywood learned the wrong lesson. Were those movies hits because they had great direction, good writing, likable actors? NO. Because audiences wanted to see people being eaten by fish in Space! So, people-eating fish movies that were awful, followed by the worst ever movies but set in space. They were wrong.
Tom has not learned this lesson. He’s going to take the worst aspects of CS and FW and just slap them together like horrible POGs.