Allow me to take a tenative step atop the rickety defender soapbox for a moment. Because in my humble opinion, if anyone has earned it, it’s me.
Today I wish to lay out some thoughts about Batiuk and his editors and if/how he takes others constructively criticizing his work.
Tom Batiuk has said, in many interviews and in his book forwards, that getting editorial control was precious to him. He goes on and on and on about how he wanted to be free to pursue his vision of his strip. All of this is undoubtedly true.
“There were times when I would imagine that I lived in a world where cartoonists were free to write about whatever interested them, that their creations would belong to them and no one else, and that the concerns of commerce were not their concerns. In essence, that they were happily free to pursue their art. Then a butterfly would flap its wings and I would find myself back in 1984 (not that 1984, but close) and the vexing realities of the real world would set in. ” Introduction to TCFW Volume 5.
However, I wonder if this has turned into a false narrative of Batiuk as someone entirely unable to take any advice or critique at all. Someone who takes all the credit for every idea for himself alone and is offended by the very concept of editors. Which is undoubtedly false.
In his forwards, Batiuk says things that are meant to characterize him as humble and fallible. Whether or not you believe its genuine is up to you. Maybe this is all a smokescreen, the normal way an egotistical Midwesterner will self-deprecate because humility is its own twisted form of pride. (Looks at self in mirror, shamefaced.) Or maybe it’s truly genuine. As the good cop in the crimes against fiction duo I’ve been playing with Banana Jr 6000 lately, I’m inclined to believe it’s genuine. Never forget, in a work as big as Funky Winkerbean, pride and humility can coexist. Pride for overwrought cancer death and ripped from the headlines preaching, and humility for other failings.
So for all of our edification, some times in his Complete Funky Winkerbean forwards wherein Batiuk acknowledges the assistance of editors, mentors, or outside opinions.
In Volume 1 of TCFW, Batiuk brings up his former art teacher Jim Mateer, who would go on to be a character in the strip. This guy not only refused to let a young Tom draw comics in art class, but he also didn’t really like the later dramatic turn Funky took. As the dedication to Volume 1 reads,
“For Cathy, Always.”
“In memory of Jim Mateer– who always like the earlier funny stuff.”
“When I was his student, he’d never let me work on cartoons in class. He had various explanations for this, but I suspect that the real one was that he intuitively understood that telling me I couldn’t do something was the best possible way to motivate me to do the exact opposite. Along with being an expert practitioner of reverse psychology, Jim was also a great teacher in the best and broadest sesne of the word. Sure, he taught us art, but he also taught us lessons about life.”
Later in the same introduction, he explains his relationship with his very first editor Shannon Kaiser-Jewell, who editied the Teen-Age page of Elyria’s Chronicle-Telegram.
“It always seemed to me that a good editor was one who sought ways to identify what you were doing well and then challenge you to do more of the same, and this is how Shannon operated. She encouraged my best, and I, in turn, was eager to please. I needed that experience, and it became particularly important in my development, because, as it turned out, Shannon, for better or worse, would be the last true editor I would ever have”
Now I can already hear the Bad Cop speaking up, ‘See how Batiuk is saying he only responds well to positive criticism? See how he’s trying to control critique by implying that negative comments would have been detrimental? He’s basically saying, ‘in order to get the best out of me, you have to feed my ego.”
You know what Bad Cop? You’re not wrong. That’s a valid way to look at it. I’m not arguing that Batiuk wouldn’t have been much better served if he’d been able to take the negative. I’m only pointing out that he did accept the guidance and opinions of others. And I take note of the ‘for better or worse’ line especially. He’s at least paying lip service to the idea that he might have benefited from more hands on editors.
We also like to rib on Tom for tearing a rotator cuff patting himself on the back by ‘breaking all the rules’. And he does. And it’s annoying. But he admits in Volume 1 that, for at time at least, he listened when someone laid out some guidelines, and benefited from having them.
When he talked to the manager of the comic art department at the Newspaper Enterprise Association, Flash Fairfield (yup), the guy basically guided him through turning his single panel Rapping Around into Funky Winkerbean.
“Flash was also the perfect guy for a budding young cartoonist to run into. He sat down with me, I showed him my samples, and we spent the rest of the afternoon not only talking about the work I’d brought in but about comics in general and about how a good comic strip was constructed. “
“From the beginning, Flash stressed the importance of having just a few strong characters with distinguishing traits and appearances. Looking back, I’m sure this is why I did things like have the band director always appear in uniform. With his earnestness and genuine interest in my work, Flash made quite and impression on me. In fact, a note he sent reminding me of these points remained taped to my drawing board for a number of years. Eventually it disappeared, and shortly thereafter I began breaking most of Flash’s rules, but at the time it was the advice that I needed to hear, and it helped me build a strong foundation for the work.”
Even the layout of the very first strip of Funky Winkerbean, Batiuk admits to being the suggestion of another. Though in this case it might have been passing the blame.
“At the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate I ran into another gentleman, Henry Raduta, who spent the better part of the morning with me going over my submission in detail. He offered several suggestions, one of which dealt with a way of introducing my characters that eventually became the very first Funky strip.”
Once Funky was accepted by Publisher-Hall for syndication, Batiuk’s lack of editorial oversight is presented more as a quirk of his situation that something he demanded in those early years.
“Publisher-Hall’s editorial stance was extremely laissez-faire when it came to my work. Maybe it was something I said–I don’t know. But Funky was successful, so they left me alone. Other than the obvious things–like the fact that I couldn’t spell banana to save my life (the only reason I did just now was because of the spell checker on my laptop)–there wasn’t really any editing being done on my work. Whenever they saw the word banana, they had carte blanche to fix it, but otherwise, for the first dozen or so years, I was my own de facto editor.”
Later on Batiuk briefly had an editor that soured him on syndicate editors for years. And I think this passage from the introduction of Volume 3 best captures what I’m trying to convey to you all.
“after years of being the de facto shaper of my own work, I suddenly had a brush with the heavy hand of an editor, and not a very good one I’m afraid. He apparently wanted to write a comic strip of his own, and not having one, chose to flex his writing muscles in the strips he was editing. At one point he made an arbitrary change in one of my strips without consulting me. It was neither a good change nor a necessary one. The editorial rewriting took an update I had made to an old trope and reverted it to the tired and shopworn cliche I was trying to avoid. “
“By itself, the incident was small and wasn’t the end of the world, but it felt like it to me, and my spider sense was blaring like a tornado siren in Kansas alerting me to what this might portend for the future. More than the actual change itself, I was completely taken aback by the fact that someone could just arbitrarily make changes in my work and that there was nothing I could do about it. That scared me. I’m not exaggerating for effect here; it truly reached into my soul with chilling effect. “
“These feelings didn’t come from arrogance but from fear. This wasn’t some comic strip I was tossing off just to collect the money. This was my life. These were my thoughts and emotions that I was putting into my character’s word balloons, and the fact that someone felt they could insert their own thoughts and feelings on a whim made me slightly insane.”
“Now, I realize I probably would have benefited from working with a really good editor. In fact, I sometimes wished that could have worked with a truly knowledgeable mentor, someone who could encourage my best work while gently steering me away from my excesses. As I pointed out earlier, I was a freewheeling creating machine at that point, spewing out ideas in every conceivable direction. Having someone to tame and focus that creative energy and help me shape my ideas might have enabled me to tighten the work and find my adult voice sooner than I did. It was the reason I held on to Flash Fairfield’s note for so long.”
“It was also the reason Cathy continued to be such a good sounding board for me and why I still paid close attention to those newspaper articles that continued to slide my way from her side of the breakfast table. And she never cut me any slack when she felt I could improve upon what I was doing. I may have grumbled about it at times, but always in the end attention was paid.”
By the way, Tom does still have an editor. Due to a glitch in the Matrix I was accidently copied on an email between them. She had spelling, grammar, and formatting questions for Tom about an upcoming strip, and also an art continuity question. So while the dreck we’re currently getting is certainly not being edited for plotting, characterization, humor, or audience appeal, it is at least being proofread.
So, what do all y’alls in commenterville think? Would Tom have actually accepted a decent, long term, editor into his life?
Son of Stuck Funky 
He might have…..if he were allowed to think that the needed changes were his own idea.
Batty needs more than an editor and today’s Crankshaft is proof. Why would Batton’s book signing be held in Lilian’s shop, comic book readers aren’t going there. It’s just so dumb.
Batty is a cartoonist, not a novelist.
Why would Batton’s book signing be held in Lilian’s shop, comic book readers aren’t going there.
I have a hypothesis: Batiuk is trying to legitimize (to whom, I’m not sure; maybe himself) that collections of comic strips are in fact literature, just like traditional words-on-a-page novels. This is seen in his insistence on referring to comics as “books” (vs “comic books”) in his word Zeppelins. Having his current author-avatar autograph a collection of Three O’Clock High strips in a Real Bookstore (vs a mere Comic Book Shop) sends the message that his strip collections are indeed worthy of the term “books.”
Reminds me of the Calvin and Hobbes strip:
https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/07/20
Thanks. I think you are right.
In a way, Village Booksmith is a comic book shop, because Pete and Darren once made a big show of moving a spinner rack in there.
But yeah, could be trying to make this point.
I don’t think it is uncommon for cartoonists to sign collections of comic strips at book stores, especially as comic book stores are much less common outlets for comic strip collections than traditional book stores in my experience.
Stephan Pastis was signing books at the little independent bookstore near where I live just a few months ago (it’s the kind of quaint little bookstore TB imagines Lillian’s to be, except it’s in a mid-rent strip center). I wasn’t able to go, alas, but I talked to the staff at the store about the signing and heard he was a real mensch and held court for a wonderful for time for everyone who was there. Apparently he would sign pretty much anything you brought to him, not just the Pearls Before Swine collections he was hawking, and insisted on flipping the store tradition of visiting authors signing the wall of the store by signing the ceiling (complete with a sketch of Rat).
And that’s how I wound up NOT owning a copy of The Complete Funky Winkebean autographed by Stephan Pastis….
Pastis is truly a prince among men…
At the right moment early on, would Tom have accepted an editor? Perhaps. It would have to have been someone who could make Tom feel that the editor’s ideas and guidance were actually coming from Tom himself. And I don’t think ANY editor could have taken Tom’s work from its solid B-to-B-plus apex, and go past that and into the realm of an A.
I think at some point, though, Tom would have inevitably rebelled even against a really good editor. This is a guy who genuinely thought (and still thinks) his laughable story-based writing ‘skills’ should have gotten him a job at Marvel or DC at 23. Unfortunately, he’s not only not a good story writer, he’s not a good enough reader to realize how poor a writer he is. And if you stick around long enough trying to tell stories, that’s going to catch up with you someday…
That’s a good point. He doesn’t even get most of the point of the things he champions. We’re supposed to share Iris’s exasperation when Barry ducks out on her, not grumble in consternation at a dumb GORL who can’t be expected to know something she isn’t supposed to. The notion that her making snarky comments about her boyfriend is seen by The Flash as his greatest SUCCESS eluded him then and it escapes him now.
after years of being the de facto shaper of my own work, I suddenly had a brush with the heavy hand of an editor, and not a very good one I’m afraid. He apparently wanted to write a comic strip of his own, and not having one, chose to flex his writing muscles in the strips he was editing. At one point he made an arbitrary change in one of my strips without consulting me. It was neither a good change nor a necessary one. The editorial rewriting took an update I had made to an old trope and reverted it to the tired and shopworn cliche I was trying to avoid.
This is impossible to evaluate without knowing what the change was, and what it was changed from.
Which is so often the problem with Tom Batiuk’s writing. Everything happens off-screen, and he expects you to just take his word for it. He forces his readers to rely on an unreliable narrator. There are stories where you can do this, but is a book foreword!
Considering the creative decisions Batiuk made himself, he’s not a good judge of what works and what doesn’t. (Sadie Summers, the man in the choir, the “elegant solution”, converting Crankshaft into the new Act III.)
Other than that, Rusty Shackleford and Y. Knott have perfectly captured my feelings. I can believe Tom Batiuk once had a healthy attitude about criticism and editors. But he doesn’t have one now, and hasn’t for a long time. People can change a lot over that many years.
If I had to guess, I would say that the change the editor forced on Tom’s work was undone when it came time to assemble another volume.
It would be interesting to compare the two versions, to see if there existed at one point, a worse writer than Tom Batiuk.
Good point – we can’t even trust Batiuk to describe the disagreement accurately. Maybe the editor just changed Pete Reynolds back into Pete Roberts.
Everyone here has suggested how a particular FW strip could be improved in the telling, and in each case, that version is superior to what Batiuk presented. So, yes, I don’t trust his narrative.
I think the fact that TB has written so much about his experiences with editors and about his intense desire for creative and editorial control indicate that him fitting in with a long-term editor would be a tremendous challenge.
Much like with his intense love for Silver Age comic books and enjoying them the “right” way, TB was impressionable and editable at one time… the formative years of his cartooning career. Once he reached the point where he learned what he believed he needed to, this largely ended. He basically admits this in his own writing. Just as comic books were these great and influential things to explore up until he decided they had reached their pinnacle, TB was eager to learn about cartooning up until he decided that he had learned all he needed to. It was probably always going to happen, regardless of how good any editor who worked with him happened to be.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
and there you go…proof Batty could benefit from an editor.
“You had me at not jabbing me with a pitchfork or running me over with your car, which is the usual reaction I get when people see me approaching…”
He had me at “Booksmith” as well. I had this marvelous, if temporary, vision of a blacksmith’s shop in which Lillian’s cozy mysteries were heated on a forge (fueled by copies of Dead St. Lisa’s Story) and beaten with enormous hammers. Sigh. So disappointing it’s just the name of a bookstore. Almost as disappointing as when I learned “Draft Kings” has nothing to do with beer.
Son of Fan Fan attends Kent State University, and brought this to my attention. I’m not sure what course of action to recommend regarding the prospects of meeting our (anti-?) hero in person.
If you go the right thing to do of course would be to be super nice and just say you’re a long-time reader. Not sure that I’d want to drop $45 retail for vol 13 as a condition of signing, though. All but one of the FW books I’ve gotten on Ebay were signed with a TB cartoon, even though they had not been listed as signed.
For the record, I certainly would not want to do or imply I’d consider anything un-nice. Possible recommendations would only be suggesting Son go or not, and possibly reimbursing him for a purchase.
If you go, be prepared for a line-up…
… to the exit.
More Batty Blog fun:
At the Ohioana book festival, we have a photo of the Funky Winkerbean desk with Tom behind it and nobody in front. People are milling about in front of other desks, but not Tom’s. (There DOES appear to be someone conferring with Tom behind the desk.)
“I seemed to sell more books than usual”, he notes. Well, I guess one is more than zero.
What possible reason in hell would anyone want to see Tom Tom the Ego Bomb in person?
About 20 years ago, I went to a lecture by Bill “Zippy th’ Pinhead” Griffith. He was fascinating, and in front of a filled room. Not a big room, like repertory theater-sized. Yes, I had a book of old strips signed!
Tom just strikes me as either a Quiet Guy, or Guy Who Won’t Shut the Fuck Up Already. Either way, having read his blog posts (here; I’m not soiling my history by going to the source), he’d be soooo booooring.
Will there be a marching band around his table?
He’s like a panhandler, isn’t he? Goes to a public place where people have business to conduct, and puts himself in a situation where it’s easier to give him what he wants so he’ll go away and bother someone else. It’s calculated. He just wants ego-stroking instead of money.
Kent State should put an end to this embarrassment. This picture should be in the marketing materials…. for Cleveland State and Akron. Oh, you’re considering Kent State? This is going to be your life.
I wonder how many people got pestered by this clown and his goddam Funky Winkerbean books, and decided to go to college somewhere else. It’s not the best impression to make. Especially not when the guy boasts about skipping his Kent State classes and going to the fucking comic book store to get his education.
I’m normally sympathetic to universities that fight the commuter/direction/safety school reputation. (I went to one.) But Kent State brings it on itself.
I doubt anyone at KSU would know who he is. Back in the late 80’s his art was everywhere. I believe he even did illustrations for the student handbook. ( They were printed back then.)
Which is another problem: to whatever extent Batiuk was a big shot, he hasn’t been one in a very long time. My university doesn’t host autograph sessions with the guy who sang “Me And You And A Dog Named Boo”.
I get this feeling that Todd asks them if he can do a book signing and they just say go for it.
…in the “memo” field of his check to the university. (And we all know he sends a check, rather than do anything electronically.)
Apropos of nothing, in Tony Isabella’s blog from last week in a post titled, THINGS THAT MADE ME HAPPY IN MARCH, he states, “March 7: The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume 13 2008-2010 by Tom Batiuk includes some of the material I wrote for him. Our writing styles were somewhat different, so I’m curious to see if the fans can figure who did what.”
*I’m curious to see if the fans can figure who did what.*
“Wow! This isn’t a bunch of suck and book signings! Tom got his act together, after HALF A DAMN CENTURY” would influence my guess.
Today’s “Comics can only be enjoyed at their best the way I did when I was six and the people who enjoy them wrong are bullying me because they hate me” nonsense proves that Batiuk’s mind is far too rigid to accept help from an editor.
Ye Gods, but this week’s self-aggrandizing arc is hitting a new low in Thursday’s Funky Crankerbean! Loathsome Lil praising a heretofore unseen “Complete Three O’Clock High” book that just happens to look like another strip’s hardback volumes while Batton Thomas (Creator of…oh, you get the point!) stands there with his “aw shucks” Gary Cooper folksiness? I’d be willing to wager that a camera pan down would show BT with his hands in his pockets while he nudges a cowchip with his foot. Uriah Heep would retch at the forced “humbleness” on display the last couple of days…and there’s at least two more to go!
Also, anyone want to wager that the comic strip syndicate in the Funkyverse made newspapers take a package deal (“If you want to run ‘Blondie’ and ‘Little Orphan Annie,’ you’ve also got to carry ‘Three O’Clock High!’”)?
It’s obvious by now that Tom Batiuk has some severe maturity problems.
It’s not just the phony humility. He buries you in phony humility when there’s nothing to pretend to be humble about. Book signings should be a banal task for a 75-year-old cartoonist.
In yesterday’s strip, “Batton” gushes at the prospect of being invited to do a book signing, as if he’s been invited to join the British royal family. I would say “act like you’ve been there before”, but he has been there before!
Note also that book signings are always done by invitation in the Funkyverse. The story has to show you the invitation, and promote the signing as a life-changing event. Dinkle and Batton can’t just rent an exhibitor table at a book fair, which is how these things normally get done. No, Dinkle has to be “accepted as an author” by the book festival, whatever the fuck that means. And Batton has to be put on a pedestal by two different people so he can deign to favor the peasants with a book signing.
These book signing arcs also have a strong odor of “look how successful I am.” They’re the fantasy of a vengeful 15-year-old, sticking it to all the people who doubted him. This was even a plot point in his Batom Comics backstory; the teenager they hired got to show up his teacher over a class assignment. Yes, there’s satisfaction in becoming successful in a way that all the haters have to acknowledge. But Batiuk should have outgrown this before the Moscow Olympics ended. He will never get this chip off his shoulder.
This is also a theme of those dumb Ripples comic strips he loves so much. Somebody reacts to “the artist” in a way that wasn’t intended to offend, and then that person gets their comeuppance of not getting a valuable autographed artwork!
Finally, Batiuk is stroking his “look at me, I’m a writer” ego again. He thinks he’s the new Sherwood Anderson or something. Nothing makes him happier than sitting at a table and signing autographs for people, and then treating them as his intellectual inferiors. Les does this every book signing. Dinkle did it his book signing. Next week will probably be Batton Thomas doing it.
Sherwood Anderson story:
There was going to be a French translation of one of his books, but it didn’t come out on time, and Anderson grew frustrated. When he was in Paris, he went to the publisher and demanded to speak to someone.
Finally, he saw one of the executives and complained loudly about the firm’s delay in publishing his work. The executive listened patiently and when Anderson gave him a pause, he asked:
“Monsieur Anderson, is this a good book?”
“You’re damn right it’s a good book,” Anderson replied.
“Eh bien! Then it will still be a good book when we publish it. Good day, Monsieur.”
If Tom Batiuk wants to see himself as Sherwood Anderson, he may want to remember the savage parody Ernest Hemingway (whom Anderson mentored) gave him in *The Torrents of Spring.* It may not be the most popular entry in Hemingway’s oeuvre, but it’s a lot easier to find than Anderson’s *Dark Laughter,* which it mocked.
I anticipated this a bit thinking about how meta-fictional Three O’Clock High is as far as reflecting FW in-universe. I’m very interested in how far the parallels go and what kind of lame renames the fictional-fictional counterparts of the characters are. Without a title name is the original lead more simply named Hip Tobysquare? Was the nerd Slim Peckings? How about his three-volume fictional-cancer-victim “tribute” Jane’s Tale?
Actually, here’s an addendum: who wants to bet that if/when Les ever reappears and Batton meets him, Mr Thomas goes as far as saying “Lisa’s Story moved me so much that I did my own story arc in my comics about a beloved character dying from cancer”? That would just be the crowning moment of comic-jumping.
Tom Batiuk will never have a crowning achievement of comic-jumping. or anything else. Nothing is so Batiuk that he can’t make it even more Batiuk. It’s like infinity. It has no end; it just gets to the point where you can’t comprehend it anymore.
Perfect example: Tom Batiuk gives his avatar Les an Oscar for existing, then immediately tops it by having Summer write the book that literally redefines the human race, and attracts the attention of time-traveling uber-beings. All in what Batiuk still insists is a realistic world.
We all saw the Oscar coming. We didn’t see Timemop coming. We didn’t see fourth-generation Lisa coming. Who could have?
And every time, there’s the temptation to think “it can’t possibly get any more ridiculous than this”.
And every time, it gets more ridiculous.
“Fictional-fictional” can be a lot of fun: check out Morley Roberts’s *Private Life of Henry Maitland* and see what he did with the works of George Gissing. I particularly relish *Paternoster Row* for *New Grub Street.*
Not to mention how the name of the heroine of Gissing’s final novel (Veranilda) gets swapped for that of its hero (Basil), and H.G. Wells becomes somebody named “Rivers.”
And today Tom is hawking his collected strip books by telling us how much better comic strips are were in newspapers than in collected form.
Have you ever heard the phrase “mixed message”, Tom?
Today’s Funky Crankerbean/The Day Loathsome Lizard Lillian Meets Bummer Batton:
(cs grabs his ipad, chucks it across the room and into Ohio/Ahia/Cancerdeathville/Wankerville, decapitating Lillian)
OK It’s amazing how this week has gone fast-forward so quickly on its focus; at least 2 to 3 days in a flash of 5 days of strips just to see Batton Thomas get a book signing arranged. Of all the characters to carry over from the Atomix Komix “bullpen” it had to be the guy who mooches their treadmill.
At this rate I’m missing that we’re not getting to see Pete somehow toss a pizza in one hand and write the script for Starbucks Jones 3 in the other.
Today’s thing reminds us that he’s ashamed on some level to have required assistants. This hints that he’s too dim to admit that he needs an editor.
I like how he imagines his biggest fans to be crazy, cat-lady karens. Batty is the Wilbur of the comics page as he imagines himself to be a hero. ( see this week’s Mary Worth, which is just as bad)
It says a lot about him that he thinks this way. He revels in the adulation of people whom he cannot and will not respect.
Comics Curmudgeon and Son of Stuck Funky posters are called “beady-eyed nitpickers” and fans who read his work unironically are depicted as losers who have no lives. Tell me again why Tom Batiuk isn’t America’s most beloved comics creator?
You really start to appreciate the sheer Hell his mother must have had to endure raising the little fink. Obnoxious and whiny is no way to live.
@pj202718nbca He never grew up, did he? Spent his time in college pouting at the Batman TV show, and then getting into academic trouble because he’d rather go the comic book store than class. And he’s PROUD of these things. He’s the kind of college kid whose parents wish he’d just get into alcohol and marijuana. It would have done a lot less long-term damage.
His mother deserves better. There’s no evidence she was abusive, had any serious problems, or even took his comic books away for very long. She just wanted him to grow the hell up. But in doing so, she crossed the rubicon. She got between him and his precious, precious comic books. And the only response to that is damnatio memoriae.
The irritating thing is that he can faithfully recreate the images he sees but is blind to the context. He sees faces looking at him with concern and frustration and not know why. Look at all of the times that Dick Facey stood there inertly as he missed the point of things.
This comic strip fan is also the sexiest woman who’s appeared in the Funkyverse in decades. She’d give Cindy Summers an immediate panic attack. Also checks the boxes for Hot Librarian, Hot Redhead, and is implied to be Shrinking Violet. Mrrrrrow.
If she likes Batty’s books, she has to have issues! But yeah, the hottest girls always go for Les, I mean Batty.
Of course she has issues. Issues of comic books! Like all perfect people.
god have mercy if any female is unlucky enough to even have a conversation with Masone and then Cindy goes apeshit and tries to murder the woman, but is dragged away by someone with enough common sense that Cindy is a asshole
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
This week feels like its almost over and yet it feels like that it just started
Related to The Batiukverse: More fanart of the characters
Heather “Chien” Parks
Marianne Winters
Eric “Mooch” Myers (act III clothing, and with facial hair)
I made some fan art too:
https://www.udio.com/songs/eNU1UryWbZCaysJYTPSkfc
Sorry csroberto, that was supposed to be its own thread.
https://i.postimg.cc/7YjKzsn0/download.gif
Everything about Tom Batiuk’s life and content, from the subject matter (last SDCC arc with Ruby and Chester extolling “character ownership”), to how John Darling ended, to how FW itself ended and his unwillingness to let that die, to how few accolades and acknowledgment he gets from his contemporaries – it all suggests to me that very few people have the patience to deal with the man, and he makes himself insufferable.
I’d bet that whatever edit to the strip was so offensive to him was attempting to do would have been to undo some mangling of the English language or have a character say something an actual human who lives on planet Earth would say (i.e, the opposite of today’s 04/26/24 CS), and to him, it was a genius twist on a trope which the philistine could not comprehend. There as in so many other times, his response is ultimately “if you think you can do better, make it yourself”. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
It’s interesting how he framed it. Some editor, apparently, had dreams of doing his own comic strip, and thought, “Well, I’ll just alter this future Pilitzer Prize winning strip with my own thoughts…and Marvel will immediately want me to write Spider-Man!” It wasn’t an editorial correction or anything mundane, it was some guy wanting to be a comic strip star. By piggy-backing on (of course) the most popular and profound comic strip of the day, Funky Winkerbean.
Instead of, you know, starting his own comic strip. Hey, Mel Lazarus did two comic strips, so it’s not like talent in writing or drawing was a deal-killer.
It was clearly very early when Tom Batiuk’s ego became his driving force.
He’s projecting. He’s accusing others of having his own faults. Most people don’t see the day-to-day tasks of their job as an immediate path to fame, like Batiuk (and everyone in the Funkyverse) does. But Batiuk assigned the editor that motivation.
Not to mention that I’m sure altering a comic strip because you think you’re funnier is a firing offense in the newsroom.
Correcting spelling, changing something libelous, sure. But not a rewrite that’s going to anger a creator.
The fact that Batiuk doesn’t continue to detail how he brought this up with senior management, and thus got his tormentor fired, says a lot. More than likely, it was putting the “a” back in “seperate” or something similarly embarrassing to Batiuk.
Tom Batiuk always launches nukes at the first sign of trouble. If he’d complained to the higher-ups at the syndicate about this editor, he probably would gotten an audience, at least.
And even if he didn’t, other cartoonists have had to deal with editorial restrictions. Bill Watterson, Berke Breathed, Gary Larson, and Scott Larson all had to deal with editors. For the most part, they saw it as a positive they learned from. Not Tom Batiuk. To him, all outside input is to be resisted at all costs. Even though his storytelling choices suggest he jolly well needs some.
4/27:
“Thanks! What did you like the least? The ten-year cancer wallow? The guy with CTE committing suicide? The violinist getting her ARM ripped off??”
Guy: “Umm, yeah, great to meetcha, but—Gotta Go!”
Bottom of the Barrel Thomas follows him: “The teen pregnancy? The DATE RAPE, that was cool right, when I MADE MY DAUGHTER READ ABOUT IT? The LITERAL EXTINCTION OF MOST OF HUMANITY THAT MY DAUGHTER CAUSED?! Oh, OHH, wait until THE BURNINGS!”
(Guy runs screaming)
(TOM slumps in a corner) “Why do no grandmothers put my strips on their fridges?”
This same post over on Comics Kingdom was a great recap for those Crankshaft readers unfamiliar with FW :).
That’s part of why I wrote it. I think a lot of Crank fans never read FW, and I just wanted to fill them in. “Here’s the future of CS, guys! Comic books, signings, and MISERY”
C’mon, Tom. No one ever went to FW because reading it felt like they “were getting a hug.”
I know the Sunday strips aren’t always tied to the weekday ones, but my first thought when I read this one was “Why would Batton Thomas fake a Sousa foreward his book?” And then I realized that this is Dinkle instead. They really are interchangeable at this point.
And next week is probably going to be ANOTHER book signing arc, to coincide with Batiuk’s real-life book signing at Kent State on Wednesday. That’s three different book signings in three weeks. None of them even involving Les.
I’d like to think that the way he ended FW indicates that Les as well as all things Lisa are done and will stay in Westview. The business of Summer’s grandspawn saving the world/pushing the Lisa book one last time seemed to say that the Les/Lisa/Summer’s story is finished. That’s why Batton Thomas wandered over into Crankshaft as the current author avatar instead of Les.
Then again, I could end up being completely wrong if Lillian needs another writer to do a book signing. She already knows Les, so we may yet be re-introduced to him.
It’s hard to say (and not just because Batiuk has proven he can out-insane anyone’s predictions*). The Lisa 2.0 epilogue was what introduced the idea of “The Burnings”, and Batiuk’s threatened… er, promised to explain that plot hook later this year, so… if there’s supposed to be some connection between the Moore clan and The Burnings, there’s a chance we’ll see Dick Facey and/or Girl Les for that. (Probably not Cayla, though.)
*(I mean… even after Zanzibar The Talking Murder Chimp, I think we were all blindsided by The Gun That Murdered John Darling Who Was Murdered, and even after that, no one would have guessed Timemop…)
“When I was his student, he’d never let me work on cartoons in class. He had various explanations for this, but I suspect that the real one was that he intuitively understood that telling me I couldn’t do something was the best possible way to motivate me to do the exact opposite. Along with being an expert practitioner of reverse psychology, Jim was also a great teacher in the best and broadest sesne of the word. Sure, he taught us art, but he also taught us lessons about life.”
I wonder if Jim was actually practicing reverse psychology, or Batty’s projecting because he doesn’t understand the difference between student and practitioner. When you are an art student, you voluntarily surrender the freedom to make whatever you want in order to learn the skills you need to actually create the stuff that exists in your mind.
Batty seems to miss this difference. I think this thing he said is important:
“There were times when I would imagine that I lived in a world where cartoonists were free to write about whatever interested them, that their creations would belong to them and no one else, and that the concerns of commerce were not their concerns. In essence, that they were happily free to pursue their art.”
No, Tom, those people are not “happily free to pursue their art” if they haven’t learned the skills needed to draw the pictures they visualize. They are instead increasingly frustrated producers of second rate images that don’t get the point across to the readers. Sound familiar?