On July 20, thwarted lover Eugene rowed into the middle of a lake for reasons unknown, and hasn’t been seen since.
On August 11, Tom Batiuk explained on his blog what happened to Eugene. It’s called writing. Let’s dissect:
I take flack now and then from fans(?)
I didn’t put that (?) there. Tom Batiuk did. This may be the first time he has acknowledged the idea that his readers might not be “fans” in the traditional sense. Though I think he’s implying that anyone who would question his writing is not actually a fan. All criticism is a mortal offense to Tom Batiuk, and he makes you guess what he’s upset about. No wonder he likes Les so much.
who are perplexed and flummoxed by the fact I deliberately try not to engage in linear storytelling.
I’m mostly perplexed by this sentence. The man is simply incapable of saying anything straightforwardly. Try it with me now: “I consciously avoid linear storytelling.” When your writing is so bad I have to decipher it, it doesn’t matter how linear or non-linear you are.
This whole blog post was already a digression inside a digression. I skipped the first sentence of this post, which was:
Speaking of story arc weaving, if I may be permitted, this teachable moment calls for a major digression.
How non-linear can you get? This was probably part of a longer essay, but I suspect knowing the full context would make it even more confusing.
Nothing that happens in life resolves itself in a linear fashion.
So what? A story is not a court transcript, or a documentary. And even if it was a documentary, it is accepted practice to alter the details of real-life events to create a more entertaining narrative. Even Untergang took a liberty or two.
Batiuk is worshipping at the altar of realism again. He values realism above all else, especially over good storytelling techniques. No wonder he likes Les so much.
A fellow comics pro I was talking with at a convention…
It must not have been anyone or anywhere important. Because Batiuk name-drops everyone and everything he thinks anyone will be impressed by. This is a man who bragged about getting a letter from Charles Schulz. Even though Schulz would reply to anyone who wrote him, and his letter to Batiuk doesn’t seem especially personal.
…said how clever it was that I would turn away from a story without resolving it, only to return to it at a later point. You mean like the way they do in any other form of narrative presentation?
Does Tom Batiuk not know what a subplot is? Because I think that’s what he’s talking about here.
Yes, “turning away from a story without resolving it” happens in many forms of narrative presentation. A few movies, like Pulp Fiction, Memento, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, do non-linear storytelling and do it well. But most movies are chronologically linear, and only move between subplots as needed. Even TV sitcoms have an “A story” and “B story.” Batiuk doesn’t seem to get this distinction. Or he’s not a good enough writer to clarify what he means.
You know what doesn’t have subplots? Silver age comic books. The centerpiece of the comic book education Tom Batiuk is so proud of. Comic books aimed at children tend to consist of multiple single-plot stories, instead of one large, overlapping story. If comic books were the only form of narrative presentation you’d ever read, moving between subplots might seem like a radical new idea. It’s not.
Heck, they even used to do it that way in the old comic strips, and, to illustrate that, I’d like to present a cogent-on-point post from my blog. Please excuse the liberties I take in the writing. It’s not as academic as the material presented here. (May I have a rolling eyes smiley face please, good and gentle editor?)
How non-linear can you get?
Batiuk’s writing doesn’t even do what he says it does. If he turns away from a story, it’s not to return and resolve later. It’s for one of the following reasons:
- he turns away from a story without ever returning to it.
- he interrupts a story for a week and returns to it later, so he can technically adhere to his “stories should not run longer than three weeks” rule. (Even though he often ignores this rule.)
- he returns to a past premise to milk it for a week of stupid jokes, without actually advancing or resolving anything.
For an example of all three, see this site’s archive:
September 13-October 17 (2021)
Holly and her mother Melinda look at old photos and reminisce about Holly’s majorette days. The two decide to organize a performance of the band alumni at the homecoming. Melinda browbeats her daughter as Holly practices her baton routine. Naturally, it’s pouring rain for the event, and Holly slips on the wet turf, breaking her leg. Funky cares for his injured spouse at home.
November 2-7
Holly’s convalescence continues.
Why did this story need to be left and returned to?
Melinda bullied her daughter into doing a stupid performance, where she got seriously injured. This important aspect of the story is dropped; in fact, Melinda was never seen in Funky Winkerbean again. The return week in November didn’t advance the story in any way; it was just one-off gags. The story was already over three weeks, so leaving and returning didn’t even help him adhere to his arbitrary rule. So what was the point?
Worst of all, this was a perfect story for this approach. After you get initial treatment for a broken bone, there’s nothing to do but take pain meds and wait for it to heal. Which was a subplot Batiuk never resolved: Funky went to the store for Holly’s pain meds, but decided to buy expired ice cream instead because he’s just so wacky. All he had to do was leave her out of the strip for six weeks while her leg healed off-panel. He couldn’t even do that right.
However Batiuk defines “turn away from a story without resolving it, only to return to it,” he only does it at random, pointless, or self-serving times.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Why couldn’t we just had a week’s strip of Crankshaft being a dick to Keesterman instead of Jfff and Pm being nostalgic of the sixties?
It is ok to be nostalgic, the problem is that Batty focuses on trivial crap that he likes instead of writing an interesting story for his readers.
Tom just can’t do that, its always gotta be about him and his likes, his experiences….or whatever he thinks will get him an award.
Well, in the manner of what Batiuk calls a “master storyteller“, we do get the “non-linear” follow up to yesterday’s MtF as today presumably prints from both the latest FW book *and* a past blog entry that exemplifies his thesis, in which we’re told about our author was enraptured by the writing talents of Chet Gould for his Dick Tracy story arc where… *checks notes*, the crook is thought to have died at the end of an arc but actually shown to have survived a few months later long enough for a typical shootout. Tom was tantalized for years because his vintage era reprint of the strip ended at the denouement, which his eagle eyes noted slapped “THE END” on in someone else’s handwriting, and it took him half a decade to finally read the true ending thanks to IDW’s reprints (which he helpfully explained in a full sentence what it was to all the non-comic geeks reading his collection books). So by his logic, he’s counting on having enraptured another reader with one of his older story-arcs from one of the pre-Complete books with their questions finally being resolved by buying the newer books, I guess.
Also I’ll give kudos to Gould himself; that is an utterly hilarious plotline for a ghost haunting her killer. Tom may call it “a brilliant stroke“, but as someone who was first exposed to this premise with the MST’ied B-movie Tormented, all I can think of is a clingy neck ghost has nothing on a disembodied head shouting “TOM STEWART KILLED ME!”
My favorite bit in the most recent Match To Flame:
That’s… not a footnote.
And why did he feel the need to explain this? The phrase “IDW Dick Tracy archive” is enough to infer that IDW is the publisher. And Batiuk usually inundates the reader with publishing jargon and never explains anything. Like “running full truck.”
“who are perplexed and flummoxed by the fact I deliberately try not to engage in linear storytelling.“
Wow, that’s a real pile of horseshit right there, even by BatYam’s lofty, Pulitzer nominated standards. While his inability to ever finish or resolve a story may have indeed “flummoxed” the barely-tolerable dullards he calls his “fans”, I have to believe far more people were flummoxed by his “non-linear” premise rehashing, which many times WAS the entire story. And as far as resolution is concerned, if you didn’t catch the Saturday blow-off strip, you were out of luck.
After all these years, he still carries that low-key disdain for his readers, too. They’re flummoxed and baffled and confused by his very organic, realistic approach to storytelling, but much like with Hollywood and The Syndicate, they’re just too stupid and close-minded to understand. That must be it.
These bursts of pomposity always amuse me, because there’s such a massive disconnect between what he’s babbling about and what actually exists. A huge, gaping chasm, some might call it. His decision to spend four days on Linda opening and reading a letter had nothing to do with art, or storytelling. He had 48 blocks on the calendar filled, and he needed four more, so he picked a few arcs to drag out. And we all know it.
And not for nothing, but maybe he could stop airing his grievances now. Just let it go already, and reflect on the good times instead. Like when Lisa died that time. Oh, those were the days all right. Everything was coming up Funky back then.
Roberta Blackburn still on that scissors-lift.
“who are perplexed and flummoxed by the fact I deliberately try not to engage in storytelling. ”
Fixed.
Batiuk hates Stan Lee because he too points out the weaknesses in his technique. It’s a general rule that the worse someone is, the angrier criticism makes them.
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Wasn’t the Eugene story arc told in a linear fashion? Yes, there were two parallel stories, and yes, the strips cut back and forth between them. Story A featured Eugene and Rose boating in the 1930s and Story B featured Eugene, alone, trying to recreate that date in the modern day. Both proceeded linearly from start to finish, it’s just that Story B ended without the reader knowing what became of Eugene after he rowed out onto lake in what was clearly meant to be a poignant scene.
This week’s Crankshaft strips are doing likewise, jumping back and forth between the late 1960s or early ’70s and the modern day, but the parallel stories still proceed from Point A to Point B within themselves.
Any way, this week’s strips again tread a little to close to home. On Tuesday, my wife scored Marshall Tucker tickets. The show isn’t until February and between now and then, we will see Foreigner, Kansas, Steve Miller and ELO. Last year, we saw Toto, Journey, the Beach Boys and the still amazing Pat Benatar.
I am not getting old, dammit. I just have good taste.
erdmann:
Recommended reading:
Lewis Shiner’s “Glimpses,* which deals with Ray Shackleford, a man who can influence recordings. He goes back in time to help the Beach Boys with the *Smile* project.
Ray is initially reluctant to get involved here, because while he likes some Beach Boys material, he’s not a great fan of the group. He mentions this to a friend, and comes to the conclusion that “what I like about the Beach Boys is Brian Wilson, and what I don’t like about the Beach Boys is Mike Love.”
What’s your opinion on that?
Pat Benatar’s contribution to the Harry Chapin Tribute concert is a beautiful version of “Shooting Star.” (She should have left “Wuthering Heights” to Kate Bush, though.)
Anonymous Sparrow,
Personally, I like *Pet Sounds* more, but nothing is better than “Good Vibrations”.
BB were constantly challenged by the Beatles to make music. High Standards for both. My understanding is Brian W took months to get Good V the way he wanted it. Some Reagan cabinet member got fired opposing the BB. He found out too late that Nancy Reagan liked the group.
One item Tom Batiuk has abandoned. He eliminated whimsy from his writing. He had it in Act 1, but then he eschewed it after the time skip. (Be Ware of Eve Hill always tells me that ‘eschewed’ is unfortunately seldom used. This is for her: an early 37th birthday present!) Whimsy is the heart and soul of comic strips. Schultz has it [Snoopy WW1 Flying Ace]. Watterson has it [Hobbes very existence]. Breathed swims in it [Banana Jr. 6000]. The closest TB comes to it is with an assist from SOSF: Les calling USA at the USPO.
Heck! Most of the people commenting on SOSF use whimsy. They might call it something else. Usually, it’s the fun part of the comment.
So long, my friend. Life is good.
SP:
“Eschewed” should figure more frequently in regular speech.
(After writing that, I’m thinking of the King and the Duke in *Huckleberry Finn*: the King is posing as a clergyman and keeps speaking of “funeral orgies.” The Duke, who is playing a deaf mute, slips him a note to the effect that the words is “obsequies.” The King then gets grammatical and explains:
“I say orgies, not because it’s the common term, because it ain’t –obsequies bein’ the common term–but because orgies is the right term. Obsequies ain’t used in England no more now–it’s gone out. We say orgies now in England. Orgies is better, because it means the thing you’re after more exact. It’s a word that’s made up out’n the Greek ORGO, outside, open, abroad; and the Hebrew JEESUM, to plant, cover up; hence inTER. So, you see, funeral orgies is an open er public funeral.”)
Many thanks for sharing your thoughts about the Beach Boys! They were my sister’s group growing up (my brother inclined more towards Southern rock, including, you’ll be glad to know, erdmann, the Marshall Tucker Band) and I mainly knew them through reference books and interviews.
Decades later, at a library sale, I acquired a cassette of *Pet Sounds* and began to get a sense of what all the enthusiasm for Brian Wilson was about, and to think that if Neil Young was hard on the Southern Man to Lynryd Skynryd’s point of view, he was also much more rude with Wilson and the Beach Boys:
Maybe The Beach Boys
have got you now
With those waves
singing “Caroline No”
Rollin’ down
that empty ocean road
Gettin’ to the surf on time.
Alas, it got lost in a harrowing, and my only Beach Boys music at present is Bryan Ferry’s cover of “Don’t Worry Baby” in live and studio versions.
I need to revisit *Pet Sounds* and I shall. (And then I should see whether Wilson’s following Ray Shackleford’s advice about *Smile* paid off.)
“Until you learn to laugh at yourself/you’ll never get anywhere with me,” sang the Kinks, and while may that not be exactly “whimsy,” the creators who can do that are the ones who’ll endure the most. As Oliver Edwards would say:
“I have tried in my time to be a philosopher, but somehow cheerfulness was always breaking in.”
(Leonard Cohen — who could be whimsical in his darkness — attributes this to Ben Jonson, but the Johnson for Edwards was Dr. Samuel.)
Today, SP, is National Relaxation Day! I wish you a day of ease and tranquillity!
AS,
I can think of no better way to relax than to delve into a missive by Anonymous Sparrow. May I suggest a particular way to delve: Begin with Enya’s *Marble Halls, Wild Child, Afer Ventus, Evacuee, Silver Inches*. Close it out with Diane Arkenstone *World Ascending*.
Then as a grande finale, enjoy family and friends.
SP:
In the BBC adaptation of *The Hobbit,* whenever someone sees the Arkenstone, a musical theme plays.
The last music for me on National Relaxation Day was Joni Mitchell’s *Court and Spark,* which followed Genesis’s *Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
Enya’s music I know slightly, Diane Arkenstone (did she ever work with musicians named Orcrist and Glamdring?) not at all.
Thank you for your kind words. May you choose one chest of gold and one chest of silver, as Bilbo Baggins did, and then find that you can carry even more!
Anonymous Sparrow’
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
Other interested commenters,
Just returned from having my heart cath.
Kind of “best of the worst”, or “worst of the best”.
There are blockages, but my lateral arterial descending artery is not one of them. Many smaller arteries have 100% blockages, but have grown their own bypasses. So it’s all good. There are appointments in my future. I am leaning to have the stents instead of open heart surgery.
SP:
In contrast…
I had a CT scan on Wednesday and was told to call the urologist two days later.
So I called on Friday and was told that the doctor wasn’t in.
Should I call next week? I asked,
Um, yes, on Monday or Tuesday.
So I’ll make it Tuesday.
Also:
I was told to arrive an hour early for the procedure, which I did, and it was all over before the actual appointment time.
I was sure I was going to finish Keats’s *Complete Poems* and took a second book to be safe.
(Sorry, Monica Ali.)
The best to you, SP!
Anonymous Sparrow,
And you are loved. So glad the procedure went quickly. If you are looking for longer readings to stretch out a procedure, my son recommends “Wheel of Time” by Robert Jordan. Mr. Jordan did not live to finish his series, but made copious notes. After his death, his wife chose someone from your neck of the woods to finish the last book, Mr. Brandon Sanderson. He finds that he cannot do justice to the book in one novel, and he is allowed to expand it to 3 books.
Here is a nice touch to BJ6000 post: according to my son, Jordan is very non-linear in his writing. One book of a 1000 pages may not be picked up again till 2or 3 books later of equally 1000 pages.
The quest for a good read, is eternal.
For C.S. Lewis, a book couldn’t be too long or a cup of tea too large, and someone found this true when he visited Lewis and found him reading *Bleak House* and drinking a very large cup of tea.
Medical appointments are hard to determine: you may go in and out quickly, or be there far beyond your original projection. I suppose a long book would be a good idea to have with you even if you won’t have the Mike Grell/Dan Jurgens *Green Arrow* scene, in which clearing customs in the U.K. takes a couple from Just Married to a first pregnancy to a family of three children.
I’ve heard of Robert Jordan, but haven’t read him. It always amuses me that he shares his name with the hero of Ernest Hemingway’s *For Whom the Bell Tolls.*
Hemingway always calls him “Robert Jordan,” just as Dashiell Hammett always calls the hero of *The Glass Key* by his full name (Ned Beaumont).
(Weirdly, in the two film versions, Mr. Beaumont’s name is “Ed,” not “Ned.”)
One thing I learned from comic-books is that self-important scripting is not important scripting. The “Peter and Jeremy” storyline teaches that what is meant to be touching is not necessarily touching,
(Jason Fox struggled with this in Bill Amend’s strip. I still feel that Squishy and Squashy, the Talking Roadkill Brothers, got a raw deal…)
I’m glad and relieved to see your correspondence. It seems your health news while not great is relatively good. I hope the catheter wasn’t too much of a traumatic experience.
Sorry for the slow response. I never posted in this thread, so I didn’t get a notification from WordPress. I didn’t notice your mention of my name in your post.
Eschew. Eschew. Gesundheit!
Example: I eschew reading Crankshaft because it tends to piss me off.
37? Ah, yes. That was a very fine year.
Glad you’re okay. 🤟
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
I put your name second. Perhaps that caused the problem. BWOEH should always get top billing!
Love to you!🧡💝❤️
That’s another thing “non-linear storytelling” could be: linear but parallel stories. Like The Godfather Part II, which switched between the Michael Coreleone “current” story, and a “past” story about the rise of young Don Corleone.
Notice that Batiuk doesn’t provide an example of his own non-linear stories. Maybe he does elsewhere in the book this is excerpted from, but that makes this blog post even more useless. Is it an exercise for the reader?
Don’t you see? The blog posts themselves are non-linear storytelling!
(FOOTNOTE: in the Batiukionary, non-linear should be defined as “terrible”.)
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
I think it would be funner that instead of seeing Chad and Jeremy, Jeff and Pam would have to see Lil’ Wayne failing to play the guitar and a singer who’s too drunk to stand still
Here’s something funny. Hippy happy sixties Pam and Jeff never would have heard the wistful song quoted above the artwork in today’s strip. “For A While There” was not a Chad & Jeremy song, it was a Jeremy Clyde solo effort and it was released about 10 years ago (though the duo did indeed play it together in concert before Chad’s passing). For context, Lil Wayne had released 10 studio albums before Jeremy Clyde debuted “For A While There”.
Familiar as I am with Chad & Jeremy due to my nearly lifelong habit of listening to Oldies format radio, I wasn’t around to experience the sixties in any way… but it still seems to me that Pam and Jeff’s hairstyles and outfits suggest a time a bit later in the 1960s than the heyday of Chad & Jeremy. That or them being part of a young hippy-ish later 1960s audience that Chad & Jeremy struggled to connect with (I’m ignoring the fact that both were present during the 1970 Kent State shootings here because we all know how little time means to TB). Already trending downward in 1966, the duo never saw a single or album make Billboard’s top 100 after that year, including a pair of albums that saw them try to pivot to a trendier “psychedelic” sound (and the soundtrack of a weakly-reviewed and largely forgotten sex comedy called Three In The Attic that Quentin Tarantino seems to have some affection for). They broke up in 1968.
He may call it flummoxed if he wants but there are aspects to that day’s post which are simply baffling. Having it lead off with a massive eyeroll emoji with the “Free Emoji Download” alt text is strange, and the entire tone of the article is strange. Is he… angry that someone attempted to give praise to him? Why is he writing in such a passive aggressive manner here?
One of the suggested links from that page went here: https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/match-to-flame-38/ . This is fine! Brief, with an expression of gratitude. Why can’t more of his entries be like this?
Oh, and I did like the opening sentence to the Dick Tracy entry today:
“Chet Gould, the creator of ‘Dick Tracy’ could scare the hell out me knew how to push all of my buttons.“
Because proofreading is for chumps.
It’s all over the place!
It starts with a ludicrously oversized “eyeroll” smiley, immediately conveying Batiuk’s contempt for his audience. Then he turns around and tries to impress that audience with his knowledge of sophisticated writing techniques. But his writing is so bad, he can’t even write ABOUT non-linear stories, much less write one himself. He can’t even give an example, from his own work or from anything else!
Then, just to bring the absurdity full circle, he pleads to his editor to let him use the emoji he’s already used. (Which is kind of non-linear, I guess?) He asks this super-politely, even though the point of the gesture is to insult the readers. Then he has the gall to act like he’s accountable to an editor, when a constant blog theme is his hatred for editors, and insistence on doing everything himself.
It’s an ouroboros of ego, dishonesty, lack of talent, and Dunning-Kruger syndrome.
One is continually amused or maybe frightened by the huge gulf that exists between the comic strip we’re reading and the one that exists in Batiuk’s head. They are nothing alike and it’s been like this for a long long time. Which maybe explain why his interviews sound so off.
And let us add non-linear to the list of words he doesn’t understand
I just wonder: has anybody ever tried to tell him?
Has anybody ever said “Look, Tom, the death of Lisa isn’t the cultural touchstone you think it is. Buying comic book omnibuses and ‘Peter and Jeremy’ tickets aren’t universal experiences the common man can relate to. All of your main characters are detestable pricks, and most of them are Mary Sues. You’ve rewritten your own work’s history so much that it has no history. Most of your readers gave up on you about 15 years ago. And your conversion of Crankshaft into The New Funky Winkerbean is actively driving away the rest.”
I wish I could read Funky Winkerbean the way Batiuk thinks it is. Because it sounds amazing.
Yes it would be a lot more interesting than the one people read.
and one feels obligated to point out that using Chad and Jeremy as his symbol for the 60s shows how utterly whitebread bland Batiuk’s taste is. Especially given the explosion in music that was happening then.
Chad and Jeremy is honestly LESS lame than his other college behavior suggests. This is a man who spent 1966 sitting in a TV room at Kent State, pouting at the Batman TV show. And skipping class to buy comic books.
I’m am sure he has carefully curated his life to ensure he has no (or at least very, very few) encounters with people who would tell him the truth about his work.
In the unlikely event someone does break through the net, he will be able to dismiss their ravings as jealousy, boorishness, lack of intelligence, or a combination of all three.
But he actively invites the public to his book signings, and participated in a q-and-a forum at comic-con he didn’t have complete control over. He must be subjecting himself to a non-zero amount of potential criticism. So he’d have be a teensy bit prepared for it. Or, (more likely in my opinion) capable of shutting it down.
These are calculated risks, but they’re still pretty safe bets. Who’s gonna travel all the way to a book signing for an author they don’t like? Years of experience have shown TB that the book signing crowd is a group that self-selects into people that like the author.
Even the regulars on this site who dislike his work have indicated that if they DID attend a book signing of TB’s, they’d basically be polite and not make trouble. Because why be that guy?
Of course, TB may get the odd person who just happened to be in that bookstore for no particular reason, and who might make a snarky comment. Maybe. But that person would still have to know what the hell Funky Winkerbean is or was, and how meany people does that apply to? No, Tom’s still pretty safe from criticism at a book signing.
Comic-con? Same deal. Are you going to spend travel $, hotel $, and admission $ — we’re looking at maybe a thousand bucks or more — just to go up to TB and say, “Your work stinks”? No. And if you happen to be there for other reasons, are you still going to seek him out — especially when there will be at least a dozen (almost assuredly way more interesting) other events happening elsewhere in the convention centre at the same time? Again, no.
It’s all part of the careful curation. Book signings and comic-cons are low-risk events for Tom, which also allow him to preserve the illusion of maintaining interaction with his public.
You’re probably right. On top of all that, I don’t think Batiuk’s fans exist anymore. Maybe there are a few Crankshaft fans hanging on, but that’s never the book he’s selling. In every photo, he’s got stacks of the overpriced FW compilations and The Dead Lisa Collection.
For the record, if I ever saw Batiuk at a book signing, I’d ignore him and go about my business. I’m pretty critical of him here, but that’s no reason to be a jerk to the man in person. The odds of that happening are insanely low anyway, because I’m never going to San Diego Comic-Con or the state of Ohio. (New York City, maybe, but I’d do something better with my time there.)
A fellow comics pro I was talking with at a convention told me how clever it was that I would turn away from a story without resolving it, only to return to it at a later point. Really? You mean like the way they do in novels, plays, TV shows, movies, and basically any other form of narrative presentation?
I mean, even when someone tries to COMPLIMENT him, he still complains about it. (Well, assuming, of course, that this exchange ever actually happened. The odds that Batiuk made up the entire thing are… let’s just say “non-zero” and leave it at that.)
BJR6K:
Every year I see “2001: A Space Odyssey” on a big screen, and I remember someone’s reaction from 1968:
“I didn’t understand it, but my mind put on a hell of a trip.”
The Batiuk *Funky Winkerbean* does sound like that, or at least like the work of an Ed Wood secure in his delusions.
For now, I’ll have to settle for this:
In the late 1970s, someone wrote to *Rolling Stone* about A Taste of Honey’s “Boogie Oogie Oogie”:
“Am I the only one who thinks that ‘Boogie Oogie Oogie’ is the disco equivalent of ‘Rock Around the Clock’?”
And the editors replied:
“Yes, thank God.”
Batiuk may be Robert Burns in Reverse:
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!
The poem’s called “To a Louse,” by the way.
i like that description of 2001. The “tunnel” sequence drags on way too long, but it’s still an engrossing and trippy movie. And, it painted a surprisingly accurate picture of the future! There’s no Pan Am Airlines in the real future, but you *can* pay for a video call with your credit card.
It’s also one of the few slow movies that works well. Shawshank Redemption is another. I also think Robert Redford’s Quiz Show is underrated, but that’s another rant.
And 2001’s airlock scene, where it goes dead silent because space is a vacuum, is one of the most terrifying things i’ve ever seen in cinema. As much as Tom Batiuk loves his realism, 2001 was a case where realism genuinely made the story better.
the sequel 2010 doesn’t get a lot of love, because it was straightforward and kinda dull. But damn, it had one great moment: the John Lithgow spacewalk scene. We all think Alien was the pinnacle of space horror, but Lithgow leaving the ship with that Russian cosmonaut was some scary shit. It also moved Lithgow into my “damn, this person can act” list.
BJR6K:
Frank M. Robinson wrote a story called “The Reluctant Heroes.” The title characters are a crew based on the Moon: they don’t like it there, but they know how to handle the conditions of the mission, such as checking their oxygen and their proximity to shelter, which is why it’s vital that the unofficial leader of the team stays there another eighteen months.
I understand “2001” a little better each time I see it, but I don’t think I understand why Dave Bowman goes to Frank Poole’s rescue without his space helmet.
An interesting admission about John Lithgow there…did you come out of “The World According to Garp” feeling that his Roberta Muldoon was a case of technique rather than acting? (The rant I’ll spare others is on the acclaim for Hilary Swank as Brandon Teena in “Boys Don’t Cry.” Twenty-five years on and I still think Julianne Moore was robbed at the Oscars.) Or feel that his Sam Burns in “Terms of Endearment” was merely Anthony Caine, the nice guy who wasn’t actually that? (I have no hooome and my wife won’t go on top!)
“Quiz Show” I’ve long felt that I need to seek out, and now that “University Challenge” is back, I most certainly shall. (YouTube offers it.)
Symphony Space is “Celebrating Fifty Years of Stephen King” in November. Thinking of “The Shawshank Redemption” makes me want to make sure I get my ticket soon.
HAL can say “Happy Birthday,” but doesn’t seem to know how to sing it, as he does “Daisy.” Maybe Dr. Langley in Urbana didn’t like the song.
I figure Dave just didn’t think of it. HAL-2001 basically had a nervous breakdown. (This is spelled out more in the sequel 2010.) It put Dave into an unprecedented situation. The computers were portrayed as infallible before that, so it was forgivable that Dave didn’t foresee the need to prep for “the ship’s computer tries to kill us all.”
Kind of a neat little detail. Especially in the 2020s, where we trust AI to curate our search results, and write hilarious pop songs.
And never forget, it was on the “strength” of “Boogie Oogie Oogie” that A Taste of Honey won the 1979 Grammy Award for Best New Artist, defeating The Cars, Elvis Costello, Chris Rea, and Toto.
“Gosh, Tom, you’re not only clever and insightful, you’re also the funniest guy I know! And yet you make it all look so easy!”
“Why, thank you, Tom! You know, you’re pretty amazing yourself, what with your depth and breadth of cultural knowledge!”
“Thanks, Tom. It’s because I take the care to read comics properly, in the right way!”
“Well, that’s pretty obvious, Tom! You can always tell a person who reads comics the right way. And you very clearly do!”
“Right back atcha, Tom! With your intelligence, ready wit, and appealing modesty, I can tell you read them the right way, too.”
“Well, I’m humbled getting a great compliment like that from someone as accomplished as you, Tom! But the awesomeness of who you are is something that we right-reading-comics people can instantly sense about each other.”
“That’s some keen insight there, Tom! Comic book reading — when done the right way — really sharpens all your senses and abilities, doesn’t it?
“So true, Tom! And it all starts with sensing what the right way is –“
“–without ever actually defining it!”
The two laugh uproariously.
OMG! Breaking news about the strip Breaking Cat News! It’s just finished an arc that lasted longer than 3 weeks, and ended it on–a Wednesday! And apparently started a new one on a THURSDAY! Plus, it’s by a female lady girl! Her strip should be titled “Watcha Doin’ Dad?” and feature her washing dishes and mildly smirking at what a Man says!
This violates Tom Law! I am flummoxed to my very core!
(Side note: All political cartoons on GC had their comments shut off weeks ago. I imagine because in this modern excuse for the USA, a common one would involve death threats. For the 1st time in at least a decade, I checked 9 Chickweed, and guess who else has no comments allowed…
I’m sure the political strips had their comment section removed out of fear that conversations in it would get way to out of hand
Why’d they ban the 9 Chickweed ones? Maybe the conversations spent…WAY TOO MUCH IN SOME DUDE’S HANDS?
(because he’s masturbating!)
You either will get this or not care, but I’m sure there’s some page titled “HOT SEXXXY COMICS: THE GUMPS.”
That and also McEldowney’s ego is the size of the sun and yet extremely fragile
While his contempt for his readers couldn’t be clearer. McElnazi impresses me as being a snotty prep school boy who goes on crying jags when people get sick of indulging him.
Gabby says—9CL comments were still active this afternoon (EDT) on ArcaMax—but, my heavens what a disgusting strip
I don’t why McEldowney isn’t facing child pornography charges. I really don’t.
I’ve seen you mention the removal of the comments on GoComics political cartoons a couple of times. GoComics did have a link explaining why at the top of the A-Z listing for a while, but it has since disappeared. GoComics has stated the change is not meant to be permanent. Possibly reinstating the comment sections after the November election. The Daily Cartoonist had a blog on it last month.
Have you checked out the political/editorial section on ArcaMax? There are a ton of new cartoons in that section labeled “NEW”. The comments are turned on. GoComics loss is ArcaMax’s gain. I understand what GoComics is trying to do, but folks want to debate.
9 Chickweed Lane hasn’t had comments on GoComics in over 15 years. McEldowney had them disabled when he was getting too much criticism, and naturally, his justification was how his critics were boorish and stupid and thus their comments were of no value.
Batiuk is very impressed with himself.
Gabby says—suspending and returning to story lines in strips is hardly unique. Luann, Non Sequiter (the title says it all) are but two examples
Sorry I’ve been a bit AFK, had a friend visiting and we went to heckle livestock at the State Fair. Been loving the BJ6K content!
Yeah, there are always going to be a few dim bulbs that can’t catch on to a movie like Memento or Sonic: The Movie. Some just can’t get into the non-linear style.
Those people are the exception.
But you’ll never get the core of your audience to buy into non-linear storytelling if they don’t trust you as a storyteller. If you’ve had a long history of rambling nothingburgers disappearing like so many Klinghorn Kids into the aether…then of course they’re not going to trust you to come back around to the point in a few weeks or months.
Memento was linear. It was just “From Ending to Beginning,” instead of the other way round.
Memento and Eternal Sunshine were non-linear because they were about characters who experienced time in a non-linear way. Which is the flaw in Batiuk’s argument. It’s tough to make non-linearity work as an arbitrary stylistic decision, like Pulp Fiction did. But Pulp Fiction was a decade-defining movie by a genre-busting director.
Which is more proof that Batiuk is talking out of his ass. Creators don’t just choose to be non-linear, unless the story gives them a damn good reason to do so. Memento and Eternal Sunshine had plots that lent themselves to a non-linear approach. Funky Winkerbean does not. It barely has a plot at all.
Batiuk sounds like the suburban dad who just bought his first video camera, and is now talking about mise-en-scene and Dutch angles and other overly specific cinematic concepts. He’s not fooling anyone.
CBH:
I’m sort of reading about Friedrich Nietzsche at the moment, and I have to ask:
“When you heckle the livestock, does the livestock heckle also?”
The theme of the week’s arc could be one of two things. Either Batiuk is stupid enough to think his generation is the only one that has experienced nostalgia or ever will or he’s narrow minded enough to think that only the stuff he’s nostalgic for counts (and only if experienced the right way).
All of Batiuk’s writings are essentially love letters to himself.
And a diss track to everyone else.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Day 5 pf Nostalgic Tomsturbation: I want this week to end so badly because it’s very boring
for some reason, I had a dream that Darin, Mopey Pete, Chien, Matt Miller and Jessica were in the Funky Winkerbean strips of 1997, when they actually debuted in 1998
Speaking of? What is he digressing from? Did he forget to copy the first paragraph? Did I miss something? Is he continuing a point he wanted to make in a blog he started last year?
What blog? Are we supposed to guess? Are we supposed to be mind readers? What happened to the “cogent-on-point post”?
Tom Batiuk, a new type of mystery writer. Whatever point he’s trying to make is a mystery.
Linear or non-linear writing are irrelevant as long as TB continues to produce humorless and self-indulgent schlock. Whatever Crankshaft has devolved into is anything but an example of competent writing. A teachable moment, my heinie. Too bad TB’s talent doesn’t match his ego.
Stick your eye roll emoji and swivel on it.
I just want to throw this in there, apropos of nothing.
You know who’s a good cartoonist working today?
Mark Anderson, of Andertoons (on GoComics).
He doesn’t always hit, but he does pretty regularly and he seems to understand that his job is to amuse the reader. Does he always? No, but you can always see the construction of the joke and how it is shaped to appeal to a reader. That’s appealing.
PS: He’s not a relative or anything, I just think he’s good and he’s been good for a long time.
I never expect any cartoon to hit every day, that is simply not possible. I also like it if it seems that the cartoonist is enjoying their work because it carries over into their work. I see this a lot with Moy and Brigman in Mary Worth. The stories aren’t great but the little details tell me they are having fun.
With Batty it’s just mopiness. This weeks strips could tell a beautiful story if they were tied to a larger story. But he just jumps around too much and then dwells on mundane things.
Thanks for the recommendation, BC. I’m always on the lookout for good comics. I read a few weeks worth and have added Andertoons to my favorites.
If you like one panel comics I heartily recommend Loose Parts by Dave Blazek. If you’re not already reading it.
For the Aug 17 strip, there is a realistic depiction of a person in panel 2. Does anyone know who this is?
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Thank god this week is over
“Thank god this is over!” said no character in a horror movie ever.