Harriet promised you an epic screed from me about this week’s shenanigans. This isn’t that screed, but it’s coming. In part because I want to be 100% sure there’s no second week of this arc. So right now, this is a quick TBTropes entry about the finale of the arc about the festival of Ohio-related books. I refuse to give them any more free advertising space than Tom Batiuk already has.
Most people know the term jumping the shark, meaning the moment a media franchise goes into irrevocable decline. Obviously, this happened to Funky Winkerbean decades ago. In retrospect, I would place it at the end of Act I, with the “Les is Lisa’s lamaze coach” story. Tom Batiuk has said that he realized that he couldn’t go back to high school hijinks after that. He was absolutely right, but he overlooked the real problem. Which is that Batiuk had no ability to write the ambitious dramatic stories he tried to.
As with many TBTropes, the Funkyverse needs a more precise definition than the mainstream term provides. It is:
Jumped The Comic Book – the exact moment in a story when Tom Batiuk abandons all pretense of entertaining his readers so he can talk about comic books instead.
The April 21, 2024 Crankshaft is an excellent example of Jumping The Comic Book. On a personal note; that day was also my mom’s 80th birthday. Happy birthday, mom! Love you! She says “hi.” She’s in good spirits, and is even going to a gym now! I think that’s great.
Do you see how I threw away a promising beginning to fill space with something I felt like talking about, which couldn’t possibly have meant anything to you? It’s annoying, isn’t it? I’m going for a Self-Demonstrating Article here. (In all seriousness, my mom and dad were the best. Sorry Mom, I have to get back to my article now. Don’t worry, these people are my friends. They say “hi” too.)
Tom Batiuk has long hammered us with Sunday comic book covers, but this one is worse than usual. First, it’s not actually a comic book. I guess it’s supposed to be the cover of the next installment of Lillian McKenzie’s “Murder In The Blank” series. But it doesn’t look like a novel cover. He toned down his usual tendencies, but it still looks very amateurish.
Sue Grafton’s “Letter Is For Blank” series is probably the closest real-world parallel to Lillian’s own collection of cozy mysteries. And look at the covers of those. None of them featured a store-brand Mystery Machine as the lead suspect. Which could actually have been funny, if the story explored it. But alas.
As with most things, Batiuk simultaneously went too far, and didn’t go far enough. If you want to make a comic book cover of this story, make it the comic bookiest comic book that ever comic booked. Or, make a realistic cover. This probably wouldn’t set up the joke well enough, but that’s my point. Going over-the-top was the only way to make this joke work. (SEE ALSO: Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. Serious question: other than Jim Carrey, how on earth was that movie supposed to work?)
Second: it’s in Crankshaft. I’ve said that the first comic book cover in Crankshaft would be a traditional jump-the-shark moment for the strip. And, here it is. Tom Batiuk took Pete and Mindy away from Atomix Komix, retired Ruby Lith, and wrote everyone else out of the Funkyverse… and he still found a way to make a comic book cover. In a place that makes even less sense.
Third: he abandoned the story to do this, even though he could have done both things. I’ll let poster Beware Of Eve Hill take it from here:
As with most snark, she raises a valid point. Why isn’t the white chalk outline of Dinkle?
The story, to the extent there ever was a story, is that Lillian became annoyed with Dinkle’s out-of-control ego. The previous day was her basically saying “I’ve created a monster.” It would have been a perfect ending for Lillian to create a character based on Dinkle, and make him this book’s murder victim. Or at least, Davis could have drawn the chalk outline to include the victim was wearing Dinkle’s trademark epaulets and hat. That would have been a great visual gag. (This is a character based on Dinkle, so she could also exaggerate his traits.)
This development would have easily fueled at another week of strips. Maybe Dinkle doesn’t brook this insubordination, and sentences Lillian to extra-extra-extra-late choir practice. Maybe Dinkle responds by making Lillian the villain of his interminable Claude Barlow book. Maybe Dinkle’s ego is so huge that he loves it, and makes it a part of his identity. Maybe he’ll legally change his name to “Harry Dinkle, World’s Greatest Band Director And Murder Victim!”
There are so many ways this story could have gone while still drawing his damned comic book cover. Batiuk ignored them all. He must be a real card in person.
Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?
A. Comic books.
Q. A priest, a rabbi, and a–
A. Comic books.
Q. Mr. Batiuk, thank you for appearing on the “Fiction Inspired By Real Events” panel. How do you-
A. Comic books, comic books, comic books.
Ugh.
(UPDATE: The book festival is officially over, and a new arc begins with… Jumping The Comic Book again. Sometimes it happens in the very first panel.)
Son of Stuck Funky 
Not only is this week going to be a colossal bore, it’s going to be a reminder of a defect in Batiuk that has only gotten worse because of the years it’s been allowed to fester: the belief that there is only one way to enjoy his favorite genre of comics and that everyone else is deliberately doing it wrong to bully him and make him feel bad.
Never is the realization that he’s in the wrong or doesn’t actually understand what’s happening around him. We got a metric ton of that biz with Dick Facey, the World’s Most Punchable Man.
What’s even worse is Batiuk’s insane belief that anybody on earth cares how you’re supposed to read comic books. Like it’s some kind of Swifties vs. Kitty Kats thing. It just freaking isn’t. You’d think Batiuk would be delighted comic books are accepted media now. But he continues to fight the battle that only exists in only his bizarre little head.
He reminds me of a saying I heard long ago. I don’t remember who said it but likening Tom to a boy who says that there’s a dragon in the bathtub because he doesn’t want to take a bath seems on point. Admitting that he’s wasted his life on a battle no one else is fighting is not something he’d probably be interested in.
Great post BJ, and congratulations to your mother, she, like my father of 84, are great role models for how to age.
Oh and Eve is beautiful too! It is always fun when she gets the GC board fired up. I know I only read Crankshaft for the snarky comments and to see just how low Batty can go.
I have a feeling Batty is getting ready to fully retire. I would have said he needs to go out at the top, but like you said, it’s been downhill after act 1.
I wish the syndicate would make him fully retire. They really should have learned something from the sad end of Apartment 3-G.
In hindsight, what he should have done was a year-long, double-epic FW/Crankshaft crossover story arc that culminated with Crankshaft causing some sort of catastrophic explosion that wiped Westview and Centerville off the map. A huge, spectacular self-immolation, where everyone dies and it all cuts to black. The end of everything.
But, because he’s a lazy, wishy-washy hack, he decided to keep Crankshaft going, and ended FW with Summer wandering aimlessly around town, melting guns into spaceships or something. It’s all fuzzy now, like a nightmare you can’t quite recall, so I might not have all the details exactly right. What a typically Batiukian blunder, though. All of Act III was just wasted opportunity after wasted opportunity.
I don’t know if Batiuk is bad at planning, or just gets distracted by comic books at some point. Either way, it doesn’t help. When he does try to plan a story, like Bull Bushka’s death, it’s just as clumsy, rushed, and packed with filler as everything else he writes.
The Burnings are going to be fantastic.
He had a golden opportunity to to the most prestigious prestige arc of them all, an arc where EVERYONE dies. He could have obliterated everyone, from both strips, and it would have been the culmination of all his sick, warped dreams. But it would have meant a lot of work, and, well, you know.
Oh, Rusty, you flatter me.😊 Compared to some of the snarkers on Crankshaft, I’m just a part-timer. J.J. O’Malley, billsplut and wherescrankshaft often get the featured comment. The featured comment is primarily based on the number of replies. The bitching and moaning of the finger-waggers only helps them achieve it. I love the irony.
I often ponder over why Batiuk hasn’t retired yet. At 77, he’s well beyond the typical age of retirement. From what I’ve gathered, he and his wife reside in a spacious property located in rural Medina. By all indications, they seem to be well-to-do.
Why not retire? What’s in it for Batiuk nowadays?
The pay? Many cartoonists find it difficult to make a living from the syndicates’ pay and have to take up additional jobs. Some cartoonists have even moved on from comic strips to write children’s books or design greeting cards as it is more lucrative. Batiuk was fortunate to have started his career at the right time when the profession was far more profitable.
Batiuk seems to be running on ego, but what is left for him to attain? Achieving 50 years didn’t result in much fanfare. Aside from the odd promotion of his narrow interests like the OMEA, the OBF and his love of comic books, there doesn’t seem to be much passion in his work. In its final years Funky Winkerbean was snark fodder. With the Winkervasion, Crankshaft has been ruined. His longevity is the only reason why Crankshaft still has a place in newspapers. He’s destroyed much of his legacy.
He ought to retire Crankshaft and find a part time job in a comic book store like Rubber City Comics. Like a real-life Crazy Harry, he could talk all day about comic books with the customers and staff. He could still write his blog. He doesn’t blog much about Crankshaft anyway.
——————
If I remember correctly, you live in the Akron area. I hope you had a chance to witness the total solar eclipse. My younger brother watched it from a friend’s house in Cuyahoga Falls. Despite nonending rain over the weekend that extended into Monday morning, he said there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky that afternoon. The backyard was so damp the legs of their lawn chairs sank about two inches into the ground.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire, with a dash of… is that self-awareness? TB noting that Jeff and Batton look alike is a legitimate surprise to me. If only it actually improved anything about the strip.
Given that murder mysteries featuring cats and bookmobiles actually exist in real life, I’ll pin Sunday’s disaster on Davis as much as TB, though TB should know better than to hatch such an already dopey idea with Davis instead of a guest artist.
(The bookstore that sells that cat bookmobile murder mystery linked above, Murder By The Book, is actually located about 100 yards away from Houston’s Brazos Bookstore, which Les visited on a book tour back in December 2010.)
Great post BJ6K! That demonstration joke about your mother was absolutely inspired. Got me in the first half, not gonna lie.
Today’s Crankshaft strip solidified in my mind my personal insane delusion that Batiuk reads this blog and is trolling us in general and me in particular.
I know he has an insane lead time on these strips, but I had made a joke about how Jeff and Batton are both identical Batiuk self-inserts in February.
I remember thinking that during the long-ago Frankie Date-Rape Mega Arc, when they found the secret Lisa journal. “He’s got to be f*cking with us here, no question”. I don’t think he was, though. I think it’s more of a case of us just understanding him too well is all.
Another most enjoyable blog, Banana Jr. 6000. You and Comic Book Harriet have a gift for writing.
The necessary components for a captivating story are always present in Batiuk’s work. However, it is perplexing how he consistently misses them. I wonder if he sought advice from other writers at the book festival on how to create more engaging stories.
Last week, Hannibal’s Lectern researched the Ohioana Book Festival and outlined a few requirements and restrictions. One requirement was authors were required to display their books on half of an eight-foot-long table. As per information provided by the festival program, Tom Batiuk paired with Raul Ramos y Sanchez, an award-winning author, at a table during the festival.
https://raulramos.com/author-bio/
What could they have discussed during the quieter moments at the festival? Did the two of them discuss writing? Did Batiuk ask Raul for advice on how to write better stories?
Batiuk: Say Raul, which silver age comic do you consider to be your favorite?
There’s no problem at all with you sharing your mom’s birthday with us, Banana Jr. 6000. I’d love to meet her. There are so many questions I’d like to ask her about you.😂😁
be ware of eve hill wrote: “I wonder if he sought advice from other writers at the book festival on how to create more engaging stories.”
I suspect Tom Batiuk sees himself as a giver of advice, not a receiver. He was on a panel, telling others how to write Fiction Inspired by True Events.
You’re right. It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. Especially when they’re set in their ways and well past their best.
Raul Ramos y Sanchez is a top ten bestseller on Amazon. TB’s books are often rated in the upper six figures. I hope the length of Raul Ramos y Sanchez’s line at the festival didn’t embarrass Batiuk. Not to mention Raul Ramos y Sanchez is quite handsome. Raul, call me.🤙😍
I wonder which of his stories Batiuk mentioned during the ‘Fiction Inspired by True Events panel.’ Was it Lisa’s Story? Bull’s CTE? Pam and Jeff at the Kent State shootings? All of these?
“I was in a car accident one time, so I had my main character also get into a car accident. Then he traveled back in time and told his younger self to buy a comic book!”
*Audience members look through program guides to see what other panels are happening*
She’d just tell you I was a boring, high-strung nerd. Thanks though. 🙂
(Entering Mom mode) As long as she’s there for you and still cares, that’s what’s important.
Today’s Crankshaft.
Another Komix Korner arc featuring Jeff Murdoch and Batton Thomas? Ugh, it’s like he’s maintaining some form of unfathomable artistic integrity by creating a comic strip that no one can enjoy. I sometimes wonder if he still enjoys producing a comic strip or if he’s just bitter.
We’ve gone from the boorish Harry Dinkle to the insipid Batton Thomas. Contemporary characters in the Batiukverse are limited to two types: the overbearing and unlikeable characters like Harry Dinkle and the vapid and dull characters like Batton Thomas. In other words, there are no characters with a well-rounded personality. They are either annoying or incredibly bland. 😝😒
“there are no characters with a well-rounded personality”
Wrong! After 50 years, some of them now like Silver Age MARVEL comics!
(And didn’t Crazy find a perfect copy of Spidey’s first appearance in some time travel arc? That had been on a Rexall spinner rack for decades? See, he’s branching out from obsessing only about Flash 123!)
I didn’t realize we were utilizing the “Batiuk” definition of a well-rounded character. I merrily reject your definition and resubstitute my own. Admittedly, there were some characters in latter-day FW with perfectly round heads, such as Funky.
Yeah, I remember that time travel story arc. Up until that point, I actually liked Crazy Harry. He had a chance to prevent Lisa’s death and, by extension, ‘Lisa’s Story.’ Unfortunately, he failed by coming across as a total perv and got the bum rush off school property by school security. It was a tragic tale. Damn you, Harry Klinghorn! (shakes fist)
Yeah, that drugstore had a time-travelling spinner rack or something. Crazy Harry absent-mindedly left that Spidey comic on a park bench only to be “found” by pre-DSH prepubescent John Howard.
Prepubescent John Howard: (castrato voice) Look what I found!
You didn’t find nuthin’. Batiuk handed it to you.
Crazy Harry, failed to prevent ‘Lisa’s Story’ and forgot a classic comic book in the past. (bwoeh forms an “L” on her forehead using the thumb and index finger of her right hand. She stands up straight and angrily declares in a loud bass) LOOOOOOSER!!!
Today’s Funky Winkerbean-I mean Batton Bullshit Bullpen/The 50 Year Old Manchild Meets /Funky Crankerbean:
It looks like this week is gonna be horrible
That you had this post written out before Monday’s CS was made public is astounding.
To continue this trajectory and to tie it in with TVTropes articles which currently exist, maybe there should be some further development on how this specifically builds upon tropes like “Author Appeal” and “Creator’s Favorite”.
Oh, the Funkyverse absolutely runs on Author Appeal and Creator’s Favorite, and similarly self-indulgent tropes like Character Shilling and Author Filibuster. In cases like these, TVTropes already has a great definition for what they mean, so I just link to it and move on.
My aim with the TBTropes series is to identify tropes that are unique to the Tom Batiuk’s writing style, and would never apply to anyone else’s work. Oftentimes, a trope exists, but it needs to be applied a little differently to capture a uniquely awful trait of the Funkyverse.
Jump The Shark is about the failure point of a franchise; Jump The Comic Book is about the failure point of an arc. And because Funkyverse arcs tend to have an indentifiable failure point like franchises do, it made sense to repurpose the existing definition.
Well, that jump over the comic book is getting higher. The Funkyshaft today canonizes that not only did Pam and Jeff’s first apartment model an apartment Batiuk once lived in, the Funkyverse has made it the exact same apartment Batton Thomas once lived in. Just now are we learning that Child-Self-Imaginer is a few Bacon Numbers closer to his favorite strip author, who apparently never paid to fix the outlines he got from spraying fixatives on his comics on the wall.
At least it would be mildly amusing to just dig into Batton’s work and see how reflective it really is. Did Three O’Clock high follow a cast that “aged” too? Did he write his nerd character into an aspiring, nobly-suffering author whose wife died tragically into something he could get rich by writing about? Did he briefly write a strip parodying John Darling that paralleled his death, accidently or not? Does his 2nd strip cover a cranky bus driver or some other senior?
So, does that wall spraying mean that Batton never got his damage deposit back?
It’s already Tuesday, and we have yet to have anything even joke-adjacent in this this third Komix Korner arc of 2024. Yesterday was the four men-children acknowledging each other, and now Jff is playing a hilarious “You left something valuable behind when you moved! Just joshing!” prank on his idol. The Dale Evans Breakfast Club, at least, usually has something like a pun in their musings.
Also, does anyone know if Jff’s apartment story here is even canonical? I always assumed Mr. Thomas was purely an FW character and never even brought up in CS until the 2023 merger.
It’s going to be a long week.
I like how DSH is going goggle eyes of horror over Jeff’s “joke” when he himself (along with Durwood) pulled the exact same joke on Pete back in 2008. Same Spider-Man issue and everything!
It… has not improved with age.
This being the Batiukverse, not only did Batton Thomas get his security deposit back, the landlord waived his last month’s rent in return for his leaving this “historic” fixative and tape residue on the walls. That “Three O’Clock High” detritus is going to be valuable someday!
That both Pam and Jeff Murdoch and Ann and Fred Fairgood lived in the same apartment house based on the real life apartment house on 425 West Avenue in Elyria that Batiuk and his wife lived in was established waaaaay back in the famous ‘Pmm and Jff’ days.
Now Batton lived there too. Apparently all Batiuk author-insert clones emerged from this hovel at some point. Can’t wait to see how Batiuk explains how Batton and Jeff both had the same childhood home.
https://sonofstuckfunky.com/2023/01/17/a-stroke-of-luck/
Tom Batiuk has said that he realized that he couldn’t go back to high school hijinks after that. He was absolutely right, but he overlooked the real problem. Which is that Batiuk had no ability to write the ambitious dramatic stories he tried to.
This really nails the problem with the post Act I FW. Act I was funny but that was all the cartoonist had to offer. A gag artist can’t easily make such a switch to sensitive topics. Imagin Don Martin taking on Alzheimer’s or Ernie Bushmiller exploring clinical depression. TB went into territory he had no business venturing into.
I don’t fault him for trying, though. There’s no shame in trying something ambitious, even if you fail at it. Failing sometimes means you’re pushing your boundaries. And there was no reason to think he couldn’t do it.
Batiuk’s drama stuff was passable into early Act III. It was overwrought, schmaltzy, and too reliant on gut-punches and straw villains. But FW wasn’t demonstrably worse than the Mary Worths and Judge Parkers of the world.
But it just got too overwhelming. Batiuk’s sloppy writing, random tone, directionless misery, and inability to rethink anything he was doing pushed away anyone who was left. It mimicked all the worst traits of the last days of FBOFW, only for many more years and with far more Anthony Caines.
I don’t fault him for trying. I don’t fault him for failing. I fault him for not learning from, or apparently even being aware of, his mistakes. No matter how bad his writing gets, he seems convinced it is up there with Hemingway and Shakespeare, and anybody who complains is just a beady-eyed nitpicker.
In this he reminds me of Ed Wood, a director of (very) limited talent and budget, but equipped with great ambition and (perhaps most important of all) infinite self-confidence. “Plan 9” fascinates not because it is awful and amateurish (there is no shortage of awful and amateurish films in the world) but because of its aspirations of High Art and its director’s apparent cluelessness about his own inabilities.
I remember attending a management self-improvement thing back in the early ’90s. One of the things we watched was a family therapist working with a lazy teenager, patiently explaining that the first step toward his ambition of designing amusement park rides was to pick up his laundry. The therapist working with the kid then explained to the audience that it’s all about self-esteem–if you have enough self-esteem, you can accomplish anything. I practically bit my tongue off at this. No amount of self-esteem is going to replace actual knowledge and ability. Believing in yourself is not going to magically make you able to design things that other people can trust with their lives! And yet… everyone in the room nods. Self-esteem is the magic sauce.
Sigh… and no amount of self-esteem is going to turn a gag-a-day comic strip writer into a dramatic novelist. That takes practice, work, and above all else the ability to realize that what you just wrote sucks the big waheenie. I do not see that in Tom. Everything he writes is golden and award-worthy, at least in his eyes.
Batiuk seems extremely hostile to any suggestion that he makes mistakes. No matter how correct it is, or how diplomatically he is informed about it.
I wonder if this is why Batiuk never got another editor after Jay Kennedy died. I wonder if the syndicate was just sick of his prima donna attitude, or if no one felt like banging against his impenetrable ego wall. They put him on emeritus status and said, “fuck it, do whatever you want.” Then they assigned him @Teaberryblue, whose primary task was to praise him on Twitter.
Kennedy’s biography suggests that he lot of effort into developing his talent. Whih clearly had zero impact on Batiuk. The only thing Batiuk remembers about Jay Kennedy is that he wrote him a “please give me a Pulitzer” letter. Which he showed off on his blog like a newborn grandchild. And that he liked comic books.
I think this is why Lisa’s inevitable death dragged on so long. It was because Kennedy wouldn’t let Batiuk do the 10-year time skip. Kennedy had the wisdom to give such good advice, and had the clout to enforce it. He drowned in March 2007 7 months later, Les was praising teenage Summer on the Dead Lisa Memorial Bench.
I honestly don’t know if Jay Kennedy kept Batiuk from doing the second time skip. It was in Batiuk’s contract that the syndicate couldn’t make any changes to Batiuk’s comics (provided they wouldn’t get the syndicate sued). In Batiuk’s words, he had “complete and absolute editorial control”.
Of course, it’s certainly possible that Kennedy told Batiuk he didn’t think it was a good idea, and was able to convince Batiuk to not do it. And that after Kennedy died, Batiuk decided to take absolutely none of his suggestions to heart and went ahead and did it anyway. It’s certainly not something I would put past him, at least.
(You can find the story of Batiuk’s contract here: https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/match-to-flame-79/ )
@Green Luthor A plausible scenario. Batiuk probably didn’t want to show up Kennedy by overtly rejecting his advice. After Kennedy died, Batiuk was free to do what he wanted, and it wouldn’t disrespect the feelings of anyone he cared about.
Today’s Batiuk Boredom Express/Funky Crankerbean:
Crazy Harry: I went back in time and tried to take a copy of “Amazing Fantasy #15”, but I forgot to bring it with me!
Fat Bastard Pedophile Johnny: AND IT BELONGS TO ME! YOU’LL NEVER TAKE IT FROM ME!
(Both Batton and Jeff run away and get mowed down by Dick Facey, who gets blown up by Dick Tracy)
I commented that today’s (4/23) Crankshaft is a master class in how to blow a perfectly serviceable premise for a week’s worth of jokes. Consider how it might have worked if all the dialog, including the “you left this valuable comic behind” (drastically cut, of course–the stuff about damage to the walls really doesn’t go anywhere), had been in the first panel, and the second panel had just been everyone else staring blankly, trying to process what Jff said. He could have gone on to tease them for the next couple days about what he did with the comic, how much he eventually got when he sold it, what he did with the money… and then hit a punchline for the week on Friday, when Ed wanders in and accidentally reveals Jff’s been kidding the whole time. Then, for a Saturday coda, there might be some “don’t ever do that to us again” toward Jff, ending with DSH muttering something about an incredibly valuable book he found in the stuff Jff dropped off during his “I’m getting rid of my comics” phase.
That would have been a week of actual comedy. Instead, the whole premise is blown today. The second panel is almost a hologram, with everything everywhere all at once. Because Jff says both “you left this valuable comic behind” and “just kidding” in the same panel, your eye is drawn to the words before it sees the shocked reactions. This is not a premature climax; it is a climax before things even get started.
BTW: re Jff’s “I’m getting rid of my comics collection, then immediately buying them all back in the form of omnibus collections” thing… does that somehow sound like Batty saying, “I’ve stopped writing my long-running comic strip, but I’m bringing it all out in omnibus collections you should buy”?