On April 18 – almost two months ago now – ComicBookHarriet promised you I would deliver a “screed of epic proportions” about the two and a half weeks of book signings that happened from April 17 to May 4. I referenced this promise on April 22 and May 25, but haven’t delivered yet. It’s about time I did. But I’m going to move the goalposts a little.
Most of what was intended for that screed ended up in other posts. Especially the May 25 post, where I outlined how book signings are just a symptom of a much larger problem. Which is: Tom Batiuk uses his comic strip to indulge his “I’m a famous writer” fantasies. And after Funky Winkerbean ended, Batiuk started using Crankshaft for this purpose – even more than it was already.
What I will give you instead is the single meanest thing I have ever said about Tom Batiuk. So it won’t be long, but I’m upping the Scoville units. Here it is.
This 17 consecutive days of book signings was so bad it brought Son Of Stuck Funky out of retirement.
Because we were ready to ride off into the sunset. We were ready to move on, and leave Tom Batiuk alone. Don’t believe me? Look at December 2022 again. We all took turns saying our goodbyes to this wonderful world:
I’m really going to miss this. the days of hilarious, scathing and insightful daily FW content are over for me. Within a few months, words and phrases like “pinned-up sleeve”, “band box”, “green pitcher”, “Boy Lisa”, and “Dick Facey” will disappear from my lexicon, and I’ll be poorer for it. 10:30PM eastern time will never be the same.
Epicus Doomus
I’m so glad we had this time together, just to tell a joke or sing a song. Seems we just got started and before you know it, comes the time we have to say, “so long”.
BananaJr6000 (channeling Carol Burnett)
The hosts, the guest hosts and the commentors have been absolutely wonderful companions on this forage through the train wreck, and as we’ve sifted through the wreckage we’ve found some wonderful artefacts and some poor-grade sewage. Such it is on a journey like this, and I could not have asked for better companions.
BeckoningChasm
I don’t know how I feel about it. Because the part of me that is the nicest to Batiuk of our general crew. The part of me who confessed on a video chat with at least 10 other Batiuk haters, that a Crankshaft strip had made me cry. The part of me that chuckled at Vintage FW. That sappy part of me wants something better for the end, something to put a penlight (not a spotlight) on the B+ material this strip was occasionally capable of.
ComicBookHarriet
“It’s time to retire,” all right. I’ve had a month and a half to prepare for Funky Winkerbean‘s finale, but I never imagined I’d feel anything besides relief that it’s coming to an end. It’s been incredibly gratifying to read in the comments how much it’s meant to many of you to have this forum; I’m happy to have been a part of bringing it to you.
TFHackett
We were done. We weren’t going to trouble Tom Batiuk anymore. We were prepared to go our separate ways, our purpose for uniting removed. All he had to do was keep running Crankshaft the same way he did for 30 years, and he could have had a life free of criticism. We were going to leave it alone. We were revulsed by the idea of devoting space to it. Comics Curmudgeon stopped commenting on it too.
All he had to do was walk away. And he couldn’t do it.
Whatever qualities made late-day Funky Winkerbean so bothersome to so many people, Tom Batiuk bent over backwards to install them into Crankshaft. Dinkle is back, and more obnoxious and entitled than ever. The pandering to Ohio Music Educators Association, The Ohioana Book Fair, and Luigi’s is back. Montoni’s is back, in ways that don’t make a drop of sense. The Pizza Box Monster is back, but not in the ways he used to be fun. Starbuck Jones is back. Mason Jarre is back. Cindy Summers is pregnant at age 72, for some reason. Atomik Komix is back, even though Pete and Mindy supposedly left it. Inner Child is back. We’ve seen our first Sunday book cover. A trip to Comic Con is inevitable.
All of these things suck, and none of them have any business being in Crankshaft. So we’re back, baby. Our mandate was to document the sins of the Funkyverse, and Batiuk gave us a reason to keep doing it. He forced our Mandatory Unretirement. Like Rick Deckard, Ellen Ripley, Jack Bauer, most of the Star Wars main cast, and most characters played by Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, or Kurt Russell…. we had to do one last job. And we will keep doing it until Crankshaft is cancelled. Or until it goes forth and sins no more.
Whenever I visit this site and the “bathroom wall of the asylum” or “stunted individuals standing on the shoulders of celebrities” cracks appear on the rotating banner, I get insulted. They betray Batiuk’s lack of insight into why other people do what they do. Well, I just spelled it out for you. We do what we do because the Funkyverse is so bad it needs to be documented. If it was better, we’d leave it alone. There’s also a major logical flaw in one of those arguments:
Tom Batiuk is not a celebrity.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I have to admit, I didn’t think it’d be this way. When he blogged about maybe having some FW characters pop up again here and there, I assumed it’d be cameo appearances at best, if that. By late 2022, it was pretty clear that Batiuk had mostly lost interest in FW anyhow, as evidenced by that weird arc where Montoni’s just suddenly closed with almost no fanfare, or when the entire final arc centered around Summer, who hadn’t been a strip regular for ten years by that point. He was reaching for story content so hard that he actually resorted to bringing back the gun used to murder John Darling (Jessica’s father) in leiu of, you know thinking of something better.
Then, some time later, I stop by my beloved old blog to see what CBH and Banana are cooking, and lo and behold, Pete is buying f*cking Montoni’s for some reason, Cindy is preggers, and f*cking Dinkle is f*cking all over the f*cking place. And I think the common thread here is how lazy BatYam has gotten, and how he’s more or less just pulling stories out of a hat now. And that makes me wonder why he kept Crankshaft going in the first place, as opposed to just really retiring for good.
And the answer is, of course, that’s he’s a weird, low-key hack who’s impossible to predict in any meaningful way, as he’s a totally unique kind of hack, who operates on a frequency no other human can even comprehend, much less understand. I suppose it’s what makes him so compelling, albeit in a really boring kind of way. TomBan is like a whole bunch of carefully wrapped, glittering empty boxes under the tree on Christmas morning, and you open them all anyway even though you know they’re all empty, and you can’t help but wonder what kind of person would wrap empty boxes, and what kind of person would open them despite knowing they’re empty. It’s like what George Mallory supposedly said about Mt. Everest. “Because it’s there”.
The kicker is that he has no idea how unpalatable and stupid his ideal world is.
Has anybody ever tried to tell him? Has any editor, colleague, or friend ever said “Look, Tom… not everyone sees comic books the exact same way you do. And not everyone has a book to sign. Or wants to see <i>The Phantom Empire</i>. This isn’t as relatable as you think it is.”
I would imagine that Batiuk has carefully structured his world over time so that he doesn’t ever have to hear this.
Oh, but in the event that he somehow does come across some criticism? Well, it’s clearly an anomaly — no doubt perpetrated by some jealous, beady-eyed nitpicker always trying to attack a famous celebrity.
”Book signings are only going to attract people who want to see your book. Interactions with fans are going to be positive.”
Well judging by the book signing arcs in both of his strips, he seems annoyed by anyone who asks him a question. Then he goes home and whines to his wife about what a tiring ordeal it all was.
It would be great to see the OMEA deny his application for booth space at their next conference. Nah, we don’t want your money, this is a music educators conference, not a comic-con, besides nobody here even reads your strip.
OMEA will happily take his money.
They won’t take ANYONE’S money … there will be guidelines about not renting space to someone trying to hawk harmful merchandise, hateful/racist/sexual material, etc. But you want to try to interest people in your collections of G-to-PG rated newspaper-published comics that sometimes feature a band leader? And you’ve got $1200 in cash, VISA, Paypal or certified money order? Welcome aboard!
ALSO: I’m genuinely curious … do the autograph seekers in Batiuk’s book signing arcs ever give actual specific criticism of the book’s writing? In my memory, remarks are limited to mostly praise-which-the-author-finds-insufficient, dumb comments about the cover, or to other easily-dismissed commentary that doesn’t really relate to to actual work in question as published. But there are those out there who know the Funkyverse much better than I do, and will know if actual criticism has ever been leveled at a Funkyverse author at a book signing…. (This may be a project for CBH or BJr6K.)
We get a lot of that with his kind. I remember when the pompous ass who does 9 Chickweed Lane couldn’t admit that a way station and a weigh station weren’t the same thing. People trying to keep him from making a fool of himself insisting that he knew better were the beefwits he had to enlighten. His blog vanished shortly after his wife clued him in. Anything to avoid admitting ignorance.
We had a poster recently say his son went to a Batiuk book signing, and said he was the only person who interacted with Batiuk at all.
As Y. Knott said, the OMEA has no incentive to turn him away. If he wants to rent a booth to sell books nobody wants, it’s no bother to them.
What I don’t understand is why Kent State lets him do book signings in the university bookstore. That’s not a sales venue that’s open for public use. It’s where students buy necessities for their education. It’s very, very rude.
@Banana Jr.: It looks like the last two signings Batiuk held at the Kent State bookstore were held on a May 1 and a November 30 — that is, late in the semester, when students probably aren’t buying books. I doubt that interferes with students’ use of the store.
Well observed, Joshua!
At a guess, the Kent State bookstore probably has a deal with the Kent State University Press — if it’s a traditionally slow time of the year for the bookstore, ANY KSU Press author can book a spot for a signing. This works out well for all parties: for pretty much zero cost, the author gets an event to publicize, a few books are sold, and everyone involved makes a little dough.
The bookstore is probably surprised (and by now maybe a little embarrassed) that Batiuk keeps taking them up on the offer.
@Joshua K: True, but nobody’s buying anything from a college bookstore at all on those days. They’re not even football game days, where you might get people looking for team gear. If he’s not bothering anyone, then it’s not a productive day for him to be there at all. Which may be the case: Batiuk clearly doesn’t do these signings to make money.
@Y. Knott: If such an offer exists, it seems uniquely tailored to how Batiuk’s business practices. Most university press books aren’t what you’d call “mass market.” They tend to be tightly focused non-fiction, of interest mainly to academics and researchers. And these aren’t the kind of readers who care about personally autographed versions.
A stuffy professer sitting in an empty bookstore offering autotraphed versions of his treatise on John Kenneth Galbraith would be more sad than anything else. It would make wonder what kind of colossal ego this man must have. Which is exactly what I wonder about Batiuk.
It seems to me that Dinkleberg with his massive ego and even more massive inability to understand that to most people, he would be laughable were he not pathetic is what Batty is now.
As a child, well, the BBC used to get fan mail about a kid’s sci-fi show that led to one employee wishing that the Daleks would exterminate Peter C from Glasgow. Capaldi grew up. Batiuk hasn’t.
Go look at the actual KSU Press site. They publish LOTS of non-stuffy, non-academic volumes. They’ve got mysteries, fiction, popular culture — a whole range of material.
As a former bookstore employee, and a published university press textbook author, I’m gonna stand by my guess. The KSU bookstore and the KSU Press have most likely worked out a deal where authors can book the store at certain times for book launches, book signings, etc. Authors aren’t obliged to do so, of course, and many probably don’t — it’s not exactly a featured slot at the entrance of the Manhattan Barnes & Noble. But it’s available to those who want it. It costs the KSU bookstore nothing (and maybe gets a few extra people in on a slow day), it costs KSU Press nothing, and it probably fits the needs of a certain percentage of the KSU Press authors.
Of course, there’s no question that Batiuk books the signing times solely to feed his ego, rather than as a savvy business decision … and that in his case, it can’t be a huge moneymaker for him OR for the bookstore.
And it’s a nice way to repay someone who at least tries to promote the school.
I did look at the actual KSU Press site. There were books about LeBron James and NFL teams, but most of it seemed narrow, as I said.
However, you clearly know more about this than I do, so I defer to your expertise. The idea of university press authors getting signing space doesn’t square with my experience as a student visiting university bookstores. (I probably would have been bullied into buying an overpriced copy, and been bitter aboute it.) But I see the merit of the existence of such an arrangement.
💎“We do what we do because the Funkyverse is so bad it needs to be documented. If it was better, we’d leave it alone.”💎
[TB could ruin: It was a dark and stormy night!]
I stay because where else can I meet such interesting people, and have such joyous conversations. It’s the topics we cover. The research made. Schnikes! This stuff is good.
Truthfully, SOSF has justified my existence. It made me do something I never thought I would ever do. I sent ComicBookHarriet a Star Wars related video. My first and only. Why? When I saw it, I thought of her.
To paraphrase Johnny Ringo: “SOSF has my blood. It has my soul. SOSF has them both right now!” (And I have never been happier.)
Does this mean daily Crapshat posts like it was in the halcyon days of the 2010s and early ‘20s?
No, posts about Crankshaft will be once a week on Saturdays, and otherwise as needed. Lookbacks and other retrospective pieces will also continue to appear. We seem to have fallen into a Wednesday/Saturday routine for updates, so this will probably continue.
Not only does it never occur to him why people behave the way they do, the same gloomy stick in the mud with the idiotically rigid criteria by which things may be enjoyed and the howling about being bullied makes zero effort to see how he’s perceived. You see, we are fungus people in basements for seeing Inner Child as being what happens when being a pathetic no-hoper has a baby with being a clueless monomaniac.
I think that Batiuk would want to keep doing comic strips because its probably all he knows
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Pete: It sold for 400 pounds. (510 U.S. Dollars)
Jeff: SPEAK ENGLISH, YOU FUCKING MOPE!
I get that Phil’s supposed to be a grumpy grumbler and all that… but $20 in July 1954 (which is when Starbuck Jones debuted, according to the god of Batiukverse himself, and I’m assuming the page in the omnibus is now valuable because it is particularly old and rare) is worth over $230 in today’s money. Maybe not high end collectible money, but certainly well within the higher end of the range indie comic book artists are paid per page if Reddit and various comic book industry websites are to be believed.
Would an experienced and well-known artist at a big publisher like Marvel or DC earn more per page? Quite likely, but that is not what Phil Holt was in 1954 (he was working freelance, apparently in Cleveland) and that’s not what Batom Comics was in 1954 (or ever, but especially in 1954 as Starbuck Jones was their very first title).
Back to the inflationary analysis of Phil’s $20 per page rate… A single, standard 22 page comic book at $20 per page would have grossed over $5,000 in today’s money for Phil. And shortly after Starbuck Jones was successful, Phil was also getting paid to draw Mr. Sponge. Sounds like a decent gig to me and my creditors.
Or is Phil talking about how he sold the original artwork of that page to a collector for $20 (did he even legally own the original artwork? He left Batom because he couldn’t own his characters, after all.), which has since been sold to another collector for considerably more money? Is he this cheesed off about Durwood auctioning off his work for the Lisa fund after he “died”? Haha, I hope so.
God, I hate the “things used to cost a nickel” trope. As if elderly Americans have no concept of inflation, or anything else about basic economics.
My headcanon: somebody hired The Medic and Merasmus (from Team Fortress 2) to resurrect Phil
I’m assuming Phil unloaded the artwork on to a collector in the distant past (1970s or ’80s, maybe?), since he says “sold” rather than “got paid” $20 (he probably carried off some pages from the Batom Bullpen and peddled them at flea markets or kids’ parties or such). Golden and Silver Age art often made it into the collector’s market back then. I hate to brag–who am I kidding, I love to brag–but I bought a Silver Age “Justice League of America” cover piece for $150 back in 1982 and 25 years later sold it for a five-figure sum…and I’m mad because I could have gotten a lot more now.
I went on a bit of a tear on GC (under my secret identity of Puddleglum1066) on this whole business of “comic creators don’t get to own their characters, oh the terrible injustice of it all whine whine whine.” I told a story from my own life, how back in the 1980s, while working in the telecom R&D business, I came up with an idea, sketched it out on a blackboard, worked with people and got it into our product… which, I was told by management, profited the company by multiple billions of dollars. And how much of that windfall did I receive? Zero. Zip. Nada. Okay, to be absolutely truthful, I received a change of title, a one-time $4000 payment, a private (rather than shared) office (still no door, though–those were for people who got a real promotion) and a framed letter signed by management saying what a good job I had done (made less impressive by the fact that they asked me to write the paragraph explaining just what I had done, as all they really understood was that it had made a lot of money).
This was standard in the tech industry: in return for a regular salary, you gave up the rights to everything you invented or created on company time. And it was not a bad trade: I got a salary sufficient to support a comfortable lifestyle, buy a decent house, take vacations, and I got medical insurance and a pension plan.
My point being, when Philled Hole drew those Starsuck Jones strips (which I assumed was back in the ’30s, like Siegel and Shuster creating Superman), twenty bucks a page was pretty decent pay, especially in the midst of the Depression. Even in the ’50s, as you point out, it’s not a bad gig–suppose Phil took two months to draw an issue and did three a year (in other words, working half time); that’s $15K a year from drawing comics in the ’50s. When I started in the tech business in 1976, my starting salary for a full-time job requiring an engineering degree was less than that, in 1976 dollars.
Sure, if you created something like Superman or Spider-Man, the publishing company made out like a bandit. And it’s easy to see yourself as “exploited” in that situation. But for every Superman there were a dozen or more characters that only lasted a few issues and were never heard from again. I bet the people who wrote and drew them were kinda happy about being paid by the page rather than by the number of copies sold. Just like the thousands of people in my company who weren’t in the right place to have a billion-dollar idea, but just designed circuits and wrote code, were probably pretty happy to be getting those regular paychecks.
So, I guess what I’m saying is there’s a fair amount of horse waste in this whole idea of the “exploited creator.” How many comic book creators work on a strict royalty basis, where they get rich if they create a hit and get nothing if they create a flop? How many of those who demand “ownership” of their creations still expect to be paid for each page drawn?
Oh, and if I worked at AtomiK KomiX I would definitely want to be paid by the page, as I doubt those titles sold more than a few copies.
The real kicker is that three days in and all this meeting of minds between Jeff and comic legends is seeing the old men snark about comic art and their own bottom lines. Is this really what Jeff’s inner child was bursting at the seams to get out of meeting them? I was expecting a lot more relatable nostalgia-pandering this week. This can’t even be that relatable to Tom unless he has some stories about selling his lineart at Akron Comic Con.
(Probably should’ve put a asterix on “his* lineart”, assuming he hasn’t been selling any of his own Act 1/early Act 2 artworks as opposed to the Ayers artworks he helped ink the lines of)
One of Tom Batiuk’s narrow comic book obsessions is the idea of getting rich off them. Even when this makes no sense. An artist getting to paid to create a page is an entirely different matter than the collectible value of it. It’s not something either part would be offended by, or even see the connection of. It’s like the Secretary of the Treasury being bitter they don’t own the GDP, because their signature is on all the dollar bills.
Batiuk seems to have problems distinguishing the scope of things. He loves to put events and locations from his personal life into Funky Winkerbean, but he doesn’t seem to know when something is relevant to one and not the other. “Oh, here’s Summer walking past the first house my wife and I lived in,” when this location was little more than a one-off background that never intersected with Summer’s life.
What a screed!
I guess I was the odd one out, in having any desire to say goodbye to the Funkyverse in 2022. Maybe because I had already jumped into the archive hole so many times, I knew that even if this dead horse had been beaten to a pulp, and we’d held the funeral, there was still so much left to learn from the microanalysis as it decayed.
If TFH and Epicus had told me to stop, I would have. Even to this day, I consider them above me in the chain of command, even if it’s a purely ceremonial position. They’ve let Banana Jr and me steal the show, and I am so grateful.
Daily posts would still be a pretty daunting undertaking, especially since both BJ6K and I tend toward longer, more researched, material, but I hope everyone is still enjoying what we’re putting out!
CBH: to be honest, and speaking just for myself, I really had no idea what to do after FW bit the dust in tedious fashion. I really didn’t want to kill SoSF, but I didn’t really see an alternative, other than (ugh) covering Crankshaft (blech). But, to your everlasting credit(s), you and Banana took the reins, and IMO it’s gone swimmingly since. I’m quite pleased by how things have turned out. And by the way, we only “outrank” you in an official title kind of way. But I really do appreciate the thought, as well as that Midwestern humility.
i’m just glad to be part of the team. Like the “Progressive” commercial goes: we never discussed hierarchy, but I’m not boss material.
I also think that with the community being less focused on a daily strip, daily posts would actually hurt us. Without that specific focus on a daily strip, (and let’s be honest, we’re not having consistent, extended discussions about Crankshaft strips) I don’t think we’d have the kind of sustained discourse that bring most of us back here to participate. The way it goes, and has always gone for the most part, is that a new post pretty much ends the discussion in any previous post. If the discussion instead focuses much more on “what’s happening in today’s Crankshaft”, I probably wouldn’t have anything of interest to say nine days out of ten.
I agree. Daily posts seemed like overkill, for reasons I couldn’t explain but which you just did. It would spread the discussion too thin. Also, there are logistic obstacles to daily posts that make the weekly approach better.
Charles: good point. Just my opinion, but FW sucked in a special, unique way, while Crankshaft just plain sucks. Not to imply that Crankshaft is somehow “better”, as that is most assuredly not the case. It just doesn’t suck in that same daily rage-inducing way FW did. At least for me.
I can’t imagine that we’d even be able to find four or five guest authors to bag on Crankshaft every day. I’m amazed we even have two willing to do it on a weekly/semi-weekly basis. Real team players, that CBH and Banana Jr.
Still Gabby says, I for one am very glad you stuck around–pun semi-intended 🙂
Even if it’s only once or twice, SoSF is one of the parts of the week I eagerly look forward to. Glad y’all are still keeping the trains running on time! I can get on board the CS-hate bandwagon even if I have no interest (at ALL) in the strip. Reading y’all’s snark is worth it. Thanks for helping bring some levity to my day and for letting me be part of one of the cleverest group of people I’ve never met!
I agree, I enjoy reading all of the posts here. What a great community we have here, and it’s all held together because we hate the same things!
The Clip! I love it when the OGs check in!
Oh god I ate my words with today’s strip. Good for Jeff I guess, IMO he hasn’t exactly had Les’s level of Gary Stu-dom success, but that kind of fortune gets remembered, and the continued inner child schtick makes things the opposite of endearing.
How many letters to editors even make it into graphic novels anyways, let alone an omnibus? Seeing as they were more common in the Silver age and likely far more numerous I don’t see that many able to be squeezed into such collections.
Andrew:
The one DC Omnibus volume I’ve seen featured Doctor Fate, and it just offered the stories from *More Fun* #55-98, as DC didn’t have letters columns as a rule until the 1950s. The volume didn’t include the text features comics ran to appease the post office.
(Which letters columns, checklists and “Bullpen Bulletins” basically replaced. I believe there’s a collection of some vintage text stories from a small publisher, and you will believe after reading it that Richard A. Lupoff was right only to read the Jon Jarl stories in *Captain Marvel Adventures.*)
When Russell Cochran reprinted in glorious black-and-white the EC titles of the 1950s, the letters columns and the text features were included (E. Nelson Bridwell was not OK with the pneumatic narrator of *Weird Science* #19’s “Right on the Button,” but not for the same reason as Dr. Wertham); however, I doubt that the *Starbuck Jones* publishers would extend that series the same courtesy.
(As a former letterhack, I shudder to think of what Jeff Murdoch’s LOC said. Perhaps like Eliot Rosewater with Kilgore Trout, he thought Holt or Freeman should be President of the United States.)
Readcomiconline sometimes reprints entire comic-books and sometimes just does the stories (and sometimes omitting the non-super-hero tales in Marvel’s split books: I can read about Giant-Man and the Wasp, but not about “Jasper’s Jalopy”). This bothers me with Alan Moore’s *Swamp Thing,* for I’d like to see the readers’s response to what “The Anatomy Lesson” wrought.
Spa Fon and Squa Tront, everybody!
Some years ago, Marvel put out complete runs of various titles (obviously out of date as those titles continued) on CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. I have a few of them and just browsing through, they contained everything–the letters page, announcements, and all the ads.
beckoningchasm:
I stand not in line, but corrected! Thank you for that.
My image of Jeff’s letter of comment credit is of something fairly routine (“*Starbuck Jones* just keeps getting better and better! I didn’t think you could top last ish, but you proved me wrong!”), but it does remind me of a contest Marvel never made good on: when Black Bolt spoke in *F.F.* #59 and freed the Inhumans, we didn’t see his words, and a reader asked what he had said. (The reader suggested that Irving Forbush might have slipped him a couple of nickels — wooden, of course — to say “Make Mine Marvel!”) Stan Lee invited readers to suggest what the king of the Inhumans had uttered with the winner receiving a No-Prize, but we never saw the winning entry.
I like to think he said: “My people, too long has the negative zone imprisoned us! Today, we shall be free!”
Letter columns were mostly gone when I left reading comics, but like Linda with albums in “Singles,” I missed them.
Black Bolt actually said “What brings? I’m going on a solo car date. Good a call!”
You can understand why Stan chose not to put that in the comic.
I am not into comic books, but was wondering the same. Do omnibus editions just include the story or are they full reprints of an old comic book?
PS: I have nothing against comic books either, I’m more curious to see if this is another little detail that Batty screwed up on while he was busy patting himself on the back.
It is Batiuk making Jeff, once again, his avatar. Batiuk as a kid had a letter to Marvel printed in a comic book in their little ‘letters from the fans’ sections they had.
https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/flash-fridays-the-flash-119/
https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/flash-fridays-the-flash-119-2/
https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/flash-fridays-the-flash-121/
Talking about winning a comic contest as a child on his blog in the context of his love for comics, sure? As someone who mentioned meeting Mark Hamill at a convention (did I mention I met Mark Hamill at a convention?) I’m not throwing stones.
But taking the time, more than 60 years later, to have his ‘artist’ clip together a comic with no punchline where his avatar mentions winning a comic contest, and his hero asks him for an autograph?
It’s like a certain recently released comic creator choosing in their 40’s to draw an issue where Sonichu wins a 1000 dollar Sega video game spree.
Also according to the reddit r/omnibuscollectors, which I’m guessing is where Batiuk spends most of his time now, some Marvel Omnibuses of the Silver/Bronze age do reprint the letters section.
I had two letters published back in the day. One was in an issue of DC’s “Star Trek.” I praised the book and expressed fondness for an actress who probably old enough to be my mom. Eww. In my defense, she was cute and funny and I was a 20-something college guy.
The other was in one of the last letter pages to appear in “Action Comics” (or was it “Superman?”). In a comment taken from DC’s message boards, I pointed out their depiction of prison security (allowing Clark and Jimmy to wander around freely and unescorted) was unrealistic. Hilariously, the editor seemed to think I knew this because I was an ex-con. [Insert clip of Raul Julia as Gomez Addams shouting “Acquitted!” here.]
I can see where reprinting the letters pages could be interesting to completists, especially if there are responses from famous editors. I would think reprinting the original ads from the first run of comic book issues would probably be more interesting to collectors, though.
I don’t have any great fond memories of reading letters in the comic books I consumed as a kid, but maybe that’s because I read a lot of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. Half the letters that ever got printed in those books were from seemingly professional comic book letter writer Joe Torcivia, who now has a very active blog if I ever feel the need to revisit his thoughts on Gladstone Gander or Romano Scarpa.
Scratch that, I have one fond memory of a letter where some beady-eyed nitpicker noticed the an Easter egg where the word “anthrax” appeared in the background of a TaleSpin comic, which led to the wonderfully ridiculous true story about how TaleSpin villain Don Karnage was originally supposed to be named “Anthrax” but Disney’s legal department made the creators change it because Anthrax was/is the name of a popular metal band (of course, the word would later become well known to Americans for higher-profile and more disturbing reasons than thrash metal).
There days, there’s also the problem of inadvertently doxxing people. Someone who wrote a letter to a comic book in the 1980s is probably still alive and employed. And “what is your hometown” is a standard recover-your-password question.
The 2024 version of Press Your Luck (with Elizabeth Banks) doesn’t even say the contestants’ full names anymore. Even though the winners round is very personalized, and they bring the contestants’ friends/family into the rooting section a la Deal or No Deal.
So I bet a lot of omnibuses (omnibii?) don’t bother with the letters, or they’re highly redacted. They’re of little value anyway.
I’m sure how many still do, but a lot of the earlier Marvel omnibi had letters pages along with some house ads and the “Bullpen Bulletins” pages. It was a very nice bonus that let you follow the evolution of Marvel fandom. One shudders to think, however, what the letters page to an issue of “Starbuck Jones” looked like (“Dear Batom: Could Starbuck Jones beat up Tarzan? I say yes, but my friends say no.”)
“Dear Batom: Could Starbuck Jones beat up Tarzan? I say yes, but my friends say no.”
Batom: “If you knew how to read comic books correctly, you’d already know the answer to that question. Please complete the enclosed homework assignments before asking any more questions.”
Stay Funky,
Tom (age 48)
Mark Evanier has written about his experiences with comic book letter columns. He was excited to have a letter published in Aquaman when he was 14. But things changed:
“I was proud for a while to be a lettercol “regular” but even before I got into the industry, the pride diminished. A number of my letters when they saw print had been edited or rewritten to say things I had not said, once even turning a negative letter into a positive one. One time, my name was on a letter I had not authored at all. At least twice, remarks meant as jokes came out as serious points after editorial meddling.
“When I got into comics, I understood why they did that…and why I shouldn’t have been as proud as I was to be so often-published in letter pages. Most of the letters comics then received — I’d say at least 80% of them — were unprintable. They were figuratively (sometimes, literally) in crayon and they said things like, “I love Green Lantern” or “Can you send me a drawing?”
“My letters had been rewritten by some poor slob who was handed a pile of mail like that and expected to cobble up a two-page text feature that was interesting and made the readers sound like they were over the age of nine. …”
https://www.newsfromme.com/2014/07/16/letters-we-dont-get-letters/
Thanks CBH, I kind of remembered that Batty had a letter published, and that is fine. It just doesn’t make for a good newspaper comic strip.
My only omnibus–wait, wasn’t that a Transformer? It was a Decepticon school bus that ran old ladies down, then made sure no one could get to their funerals on time?–
I guess I should start from the beginning, as recommended in the GC comments.
(So?)
I have Not Brand Ecch, Marvel’s utterly weird self-parody from the late 60s. I was worried. Was it worth $55 for something I could read in a day?
Every PANEL has more jokes than the Funkyverse has had in two decades. I’ll be finishing up this book as they’re pulling the plugs on my life support. “No!” I shall cry. “One more hour! The Inedible Bulk is fighting Prince No-More the Sunk Mariner!”
Relevant to our interests: Did Thomas and Mighty Marie Severin invent the first Word Zeppelin joke?
I’d say yes.
Mark Evanier also had something to do with the creation of the six Marvel ranks. I always regretted that “J.H.C.” (“Junior Howling Commando”) never became official, although even at my most comics-enthusiastic, I could never see Stan Lee as “M.E.O.” (“Marvel’s Earthbound Odin”).
Most stop before I start writing about Grace Bedell and Abraham Lincoln.
CBH: Thanks for the links to BattyBlog. Those were actually some nice blog entries. He told a real story that was interesting, and got to the point. Very nice.
But again, putting this in a comic strip doesn’t work, because it is all about him, there is nothing for the reader to connect to.
I could see a story like this working in Calvin and Hobbes.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
WAIT A SECOND DID FLASH JUST RESPOND TO RICTUS HOMLULUS
(some skibidi toilet drops in)
Skibidi Toilet: Skibidi bop bop dop dop yes yes skibidi GYATT GYATT!
(Cs shoots the Skibidi toilet and then throws the corpse at Rictus)
And we’ve got some amazing art today. How the hell is Flash holding that book? The cut-and-pasting from two different sources is obvious.
Also, Inner Child looks like Linus tweaking on meth.
“See, they had to draw my arm like this so they could fit ‘Batiuk & Davis’ on it.”
“Flash, would you like to see a long arm? Flash, would you like to see a very, very long arm?”
Chuck Ayres sees this and facepalms.
Chuck would probably be even more furious at Dan because Dan isn’t even using his own artwork and is instead stealing Chuck’s artwork
billytheskink: I remember seeing an interview with Scott Ian from around 2001-2002 where he was just crestfallen over sharing his band’s name with a deadly bioterrorism weapon. Back in 1983, they just thought it sounded really cool.
It’s way OT but I used to frequent a record store where the Anthrax guys sometimes hung out, and several times I gave Dan Lilker loose change so he didn’t starve to death, which is pretty funny if you know anything about Dan Lilker.
In “Flesh Garden,” the *MAD* parody of *Flash Gordon,* Flesh contemplates using the word balloon over his head as a weapon, so Harvey Kurtzman (with Wally Wood) beat out Roy Thomas and Marie Severin by at least a decade.
As there is nothing new under the sun, according to Ecclesiastes, someone probably used it prior to Kurtzman (although the coloring in the story, I’m sure, was no match for Mirthful Marie’s work at EC).
Tell us how you really feel, Undead Phil.
“This Starsuck Jones Omnibus just shows that if you do good work…”
“…it gets recognized right away, but if you do shit like Starsuck Jones, it could take sixty years before somebody brain damaged enough to think it’s worth re-printing comes along!”
Management regrets that the word Zeppelin wasn’t big enough to hold Philled Hole’s original line.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Phil: you’ll wont get paid while people who make shitty art or use AI to make it get paid MILLIONS!
Meanwhile in Big Nate:
Ha ha its funny because Nate did something to make Francis that traumatized
link to today’s Big Nate: https://www.gocomics.com/bignate/2024/06/15
Not directly related, but… my hypothesis about why Batty so often begins a strip with a recapitulation of the arc’s premise (formulated during the “90-year-old man plays softball” arc, in which every strip seemed to begin by reminding us that Matt is 90 years old–or maybe 92; Batty wasn’t consistent–and playing in a softball league):
I suspect that 75% of his regular every-day readers are hate-reading the strip and making snarky comments. Another 20% are hate-reading the comments and making whiny responses like “if you don’t like it, why do your read it,” or “if you think it’s so bad, why don’t you write your own comic strip,” or “it’s only a comic strip!” (which, I will say as somebody who has written for a paycheck, is probably the cruelest thing you can say to an author–this thing you labored over, it’s just a few seconds of amusement and something to fill the space between the ads. Nothing a snarker can say matches that for cruelty). The remaining 5% are accidental readers who landed on the strip by mistake while looking for Marmaduke or something similar. These people, who are seeing Crankshaft for the first (and probably last) time, is who the daily recaps are for.
That’s my theory and I’m stickin’ with it.