Pop quiz! What’s happening in this panel?
A. They’re reacting to one of Ed’s awful puns.
B. They’re reacting to Ed doing $80,000 worth of damage to their house.
C. A stranger just asked them if they’ve ever heard of Lisa’s Story.
D. Something about comic books that everyone just instinctively knows.
E. The grocery store is out of those exotic English muffins they like.
F. The last Walkman on earth just broke.
G. They’re deeply in love with each other, and just re-lived a major moment in their lives together down to the last detail.
Apparently, the answer is G. Emphasis on “apparently.”
This week in Crankshaft has been what I call a Yesterday and Today arc. Which is defined as any strip or series of strips where a current event is juxtaposed with a sepia-toned version of the same event happening in the past, but no other explanation or context is given.
We’re never told why it’s relevant that Pam and Jeff went to a Chad and Jeremy concert in 2024. Nor did we see this event happen the first time, in the Funkyverse’s now 52-year history. (Or maybe we did see it, but it’s too obscure for most readers to remember.)
On top of that, we just had a Yesterday & Today story a month ago: Eugene’s pointless, still-unresolved boat trip. Also, Inner Child stories tend to be Y&T stories. Tom Batiuk loves equating the present with the past because… I don’t have a clue. And Lord knows he’s not going to tell you. He just puts these panels together, as if the mere placement of something next to something else reveals some profound universal truth. It’s like the Family Circus‘ “Sunday dotted line adventures”, except there’s no explanatory text.
I could pile on the many inaccuracies in this week’s story, but posters at The Comics Curmudgeon already did that:
- “I’m impressed that the pizza box guy did an onstage walk-on when Chad & Jeremy played Ohio way back when.” — Tom T.
- “Unlike the elderly boomers (Jeff is) supposed to represent, he probably wasn’t even born, let alone in college, during the British Invasion when Chad & Jeremy were culturally relevant. To be fair, neither was this album, which as far as I can tell is based on the “Essential” compilation album that was released in 2016, which itself is pretty embarrassing on multiple levels. You’d think it would be fairly difficult to completely screw up a simple “Remember back in the day when music was good? [smirk]” concept, but leave it to Tom Batiuk to find many ways.” — jroggs
- “No self-respecting high school or college age girl of that era would be caught dead buying one of their albums. Chad and Jeremy appealed mostly to the pre-teen crowd, like the disposable boy bands of today that twelve year old girls squeal over.” — Guillermo el Chiclero
- “Tom Batiuk is really pushing it when he has Jeff get all nostalgic about Chad & Jeremy, an act that peaked in the early 60s and is now 50% dead. He could have picked the Rolling Stones, who are actually touring right now and whose heyday covers a good sixty years or so, which provides a nice fat target for whatever Jeff’s college years were.” — Dr. Larry Enhardt
- “It’s not even Chad & Jeremy! It’s ‘Jeremy and some other guy because Chad died four years ago’!
I wonder if Batiuk had committed to this silent week of “Jeff goes to a concert for a nostalgia act, is taken back to his happy past thanks to them” before (duplicating) all the posters and album covers and tickets, or if he purposefully picked an act that can’t be the same as Jeff remembers because they had to replace half the act, yet he chose to have Jeff not react to it!” — Anonymous - “Seems strange to arrive at the concert in the middle of the performance.” — taig
- “AC/DC are performing at the Gund Arena that same weekend and this is the best you can come up with?” — Guillermo el Chiclero
- “In case you’re wondering if there was ever a time when Jeff was not a douchebag, the answer is, obviously, no.” — Cleveland Mocks
- Well, technically this strip hasn’t screwed up the storyline any further than it already was. But seeing Chad & Jeremy looking young in the flashback certainly destroys the theory I was developing that the sepia panels actually depict Pam and Jeff getting dressed up in retro gear to attend the 2015 reunion tour, having discovering the duo’s records in some hipster vinyl shop while they were in college in the 1990s. This not only gets the characters’ ages to work, it even explains how they’re singing a song Jeremy wrote in 2014 (which he did sing during the tour). Sorry, Batty, I tried to find a way your story makes sense, but nope! – Horace Broon
- Nostalgia is deadly serious business for Batiuk, so he’s incapable of making an intentional joke about it. Fortunately(?), he’s histrionic about it, which gives us parodic moments like this or the rowboat sequence. — taig
- It’s really frustrating how close this week is to a genuinely great joke about misremembered nostalgia. All the elements are there, it’s just that today’s amusing conclusion is a beautiful accident of ineptitude rather than a deliberately crafted punchline. — jroggs
I want to focus on that bit about misremembered nostalgia. Jeff initially remembers Chad & Jeremy, and then finds online tickets to Peter and Jeremy, never acknowledging that this isn’t the same thing. (Not even to Pam, when re-creating their experience was the entire point.) The difference is glossed over in Thursday’s and Friday’s strip, and then ignored because it’s Saturday and Batiuk is done for the week. In a world obsessed with “tell Lisa’s story correctly” and preserving every last detail of silver age comic books, how does this story even work?
I agree with jroggs: this story had potential to be interesting, if Batiuk would have acknowledged the difference between nostalgia and reality. I loved hair metal bands during my late-1980s childhood, and I’ve gone to a few 21st century concerts. You’re lucky if you get half the original lineup. And that’s okay!
I’ve paid money to see the likes of Warrant and Firehouse in concert, decades after they, or even their genre of music, had any relevance. Also, half of the band members had changed. I had a blast anyway! It was fun! It fulfilled its goal of indulging nostalgia. It made me think back to 1988, when I would have killed to be at a Warrant/Firehouse concert.
That’s what Batiuk misses. The things about nostalgia that make it ring true for you. Warrant and Firehouse weren’t great bands, but they reminded me of a time in my life. Going to see them again rekindled that feeling, even if they technically weren’t the same group. Batiuk seems to have no concept of this. He notes that Chad and Jeremy don’t exist anymore because one of them died, but it doesn’t interrupt Jeff’s nostalgia trip one way or the other.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Lynn Johnston suffers from the same deficiency in her thought process: both know what they mean and experience our honest confusion as a smart-alecky attempt at bullying them into doing something redundant.
Tom Batiuk has completely abandoned the idea of “readers” and is basically just using his (one remaining–for now) strip to wax nostalgic about himself.
I’m honestly shocked he didn’t have Batton Thomas as the main person here. Would it have made any difference?
At least Tommy Wiseau has some camp appeal. And apparently he’s aware of his fans and is nice to them.
Batiuk could learn a lot from Wiseau. They’re both anti-auteurs, but the similarities end there. Wiseau is hard-working, passionate, eager to please, and actually grew up a little ferom the whole experience. Batiuk is lazy, boring, condescending, and refuses to change himself one iota.
Honestly, the idea that they obviously can’t see Chad & Jeremy, so have to “settle” for Peter Asher & Jeremy Clyde is perfectly fine. It’s the closest you can get to C&J, so that’s what they go to. Except that Batiuk DOESN’T ACKNOWLEDGE IT AT ALL. He treats PA&JC as if they were the same as C&J, or, probably more to the point, as if the readers are supposed to instinctively KNOW what the deal with Jeremy Clyde nowadays is. Which, I’ll be honest… I didn’t. I don’t think I had even heard of C&J before this week, so I certainly wouldn’t have known about Clyde passing away and Jeremy performing with Asher had it not been for commenters here and on GoComics. Heck, I might have just assumed Batiuk made up C&J (as some kind of FleaBayesque take on, like, Simon & Garfunkel or Jan & Dean or whoever?), which would have REALLY confused me seeing the PA&JC signs.
Of course, this is one of Batiuk’s main shortcomings: he expects readers to always know certain things, and thus presents them without explanation or even adequate context to figure them out. But things that are usually blindingly obvious will be explained as if his readers are complete imbeciles, or he’ll give the dreaded exposition zeppelins for things that just don’t matter. (“Well, if it isn’t Batton Thomas Creator Of The Comic Strip Three O’Clock High! What brings?”)
Like most Crankshaft fare, while there’s plenty to snark about and it’s obvious Batiuk is writing another of his real-life experiences into the strip again, its ultimately a harmless series of strips that isn’t worth the biggest furor. Yet being this deep in the “Dangerous” Dan Davis era there’s so much off with the copy-paste artstyle and Funkyverse tropes that it becomes incredibly snarkable. Between a Chad & Jeremy album whose cover didn’t exist until the 2010s shown in the 60s (the photo of which is literally copy-pasted all over the week alongside traces of the artists performing and their modern-day concert poster), the fact that old Jeff literally never changes his face from some variant of a damn smirk (he and Pam literally have one other time they have different expressions across the eras) and that you can still see the rampant retracing throughout the week on our mains just continues to distract in how lazy the current strip feels like. Like man, can we get to the Burnings already, regardless of how big or small it is?
Also the GC comments this week have been a particularly eventful word zone. With the emphasis on sweet, sweet nostalgia, the more earnest fans have been vocal in both speaking up in their love of the arc and also telling snarkers to “Go away already you miserable prunes, if you don’t like it don’t read it!”. A positive one even made it to “Featured Comment”. today. That someone’s also been prose-ifying each strip is also something of a dedicated effort to beef up the story, reminds me of the person on Twitter whose talking about making earnest FW fanfics.
Furthermore, someone in the comments showed up on Tuesday claiming to be Peter Asher himself from Peter and Gordon, part of the throwback act with Jeremy, and if legit he seems to have enjoyed this week’s strip. Only replied to people in the Tuesday comments tho and doesn’t have any other activity on GC, so it could easily be a bored internet faker, who knows.
The most fun comments are the ones sincerely praising the AI-generated “prose” version of the story.
Yeah I found that whole exchange very interesting. I need to learn more about AI, but it is clear that ChatGPT is a better writer than Tom.
Tom, of course, can’t be bothered to learn anything new and that is really sad. The boomers I know are still learning and still enjoying life.
I’m pretty sure the guy posting the ChatGPT stories over at GoComics is in on the joke, because a couple days ago I suggested the “Pmm discovers Jff making out in the alley with his old college flame” thing should end in a three way. He posted what ChatGPT said when he suggested that; it was the funniest post of the entire “story.”
What offends me is the complete pointlessness and selfishness of it. “Here’s a story band I like, which no one under 65 has ever heard of. The story has no words, because if you had the correct opinions you’d already know the story. The end.” We’re supposed to fill in the blanks, though this story contradicts Batiuk’s usual “tell Lisa’s story correctly” ethos.
Did Batiuk he not realize Chad was dead until after he started the story? You’d think the 11-month lead time would catch this, but no. Or, what the hell, it’s a fictional world: why can’t Chad be alive in the Funkyverse? Why couldn’t this week have happened 10 years ago, when Chad really was alive? Batiuk’s violated the timeline for a lot less. Why can’t Timemop have made it happen?
As for Peter Asher, the official Chad & Jeremy Facebook page has this post where Peter saw the comic strip, and alerted his compadres to it. So his enjoyment seems legit.
My cynical suspicion is that Asher thought “Any publicity is good publicity” and was simply pleased to see himself mentioned.
I’m sure he did. Which begs the question: why do we not regularly see public comments from people who have being depicted in the Funkyverse? The strip routinely features real people like Mark Evanier, real places from Tom Batiuk’s past, overly-specific background characters that must represent some real person, and that kid whose art he stole. If I’d ever appeared in the Funkyverse, even if it was to mock me, I’d be proud as hell of it. It doesn’t seem like anyone notices.
This week has just felt boring even for Batiuk standards
I found it almost impossible to snark on the “Jfff goes to see a Pete and Jeremy show” storyline
Tom Batiuk loves equating the present with the past because it panders directly to the strip’s audience – people who are basically exactly like him in terms of their age, tastes, and a persistent insistence that Literally Everything Back Then Was Better, even if it wasn’t.
There was this week, there was Eugene’s week, there was the prior Sunday with Ed getting a newspaper with some god damned Beatles lyrics lining the top, there was the hardware store closure with Ed taking his young great-grandson-which-he-calls-his-actual-grandson Mitch in tow, and these were all recently just this year alone. And without fail, for each of these, a good half of the public comments from the GC side are people who just blankly look at the strip, say “Oh, gee, I feel this too!”, click on the heart icon, and move on. It is vapid low effort pandering which in many cases like this week literally says nothing, and that is perfectly good enough for half of the audience in general, and 100% of the audience that Tom cares about.
Despite those several problems, they would be easy enough to ignore on the surface, which is really what those supporters do. Boomer writes MemberBerry pap which the Boomer MemberBerry crowd eats up – no surprises there. It’s only upon further analysis, such as what ages Pam and Jeff actually are, where the real issues are made bare. These real issues wouldn’t be there if Tom Batiuk would stop being Tom Batiuk, but that’s not happening.
As with Funky Winkerbean, he could have written a nice ending story that tied up loose ends and thanked his readers, but no, just more mundane crap that is of interest only to him.
And here we go again with Crankshaft, these flashbacks could make for a touching ending to the strip, but instead we get his nonlinear storyline that jumps around. Why can’t he just finish one flashback before moving on?
Funny that we don’t see Ed reminiscing, I mean he is only the titular character. But no, it has to be all about Tom all the time.
This week’s nostalgia trip was pretty inoffensive… it even almost seemed like it had something to say about how shared experiences build strong relationships. But there is nothing unartistic about being clear about your point, of having fun with it, or just having a point at all (“this happened” is the entirety of TB’s MO in most of these nostalgia plays).
I have a comic I drew in an old sketchbook somewhere where a bunch of ne’er do well teenagers piled into the back of pick up truck are imploring a friend of theirs to hop in… because they are going to raise hell by going down to Walmart to steal keys off the Smith Corona typewriters on display. It’s dumb, but that’s the point. I have an oddly strong memory of going to Walmart as a kid and seeing those cheap typewriters on display with half the keys missing and I concocted a ridiculous premise for why that was the case (rather than the likely reality that the culprits were bored and poorly supervised children). While I cannot say I succeeded, I will say that I made an effort to find some level of broad humor in a rather narrow and specific piece of nostalgia for me. A memory is not a story if it never goes anywhere.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
ha ha it’s funny because Crankshaft is still not over World War II (I think)
Meanwhile in Big Nate: Nate humiliates himself by saying “Bay Pall” instead of “Play Ball”
Howdy, I hope folks are having a pleasant Sunday.
Sometime last month I wrote that if TB had stayed on course with Funky Winkerbean being a slice-of-life gag-a-day comic strip featuring high schoolers, his and FW’s reputation might have been viewed in a similar manner as Russell Myers and Broomhilda.
Both titles would have been gag-a-day strip created by a singular cartoonist who had both written and illustrated their strips from day one. Both comics at one time used humor and satire to address and comment on societal issues. Both strips featured strong, distinct characters who drove the narrative. Both comics employed a relatively straightforward visual style. Both strips included a degree of social commentary.
Guess what? Russell Myers, by unanimous vote of the National Cartoonists Society (NCS) Board of Directors, will be the recipient of their Gold Key Award which enters him into the NCS Hall of Fame. Check out some of those names who have been previously honored.
TB could have been a Gold Key Award winner. Instead he had delusions of grandeur that he was a writer/storyteller who would venture where allegedly no cartoonist had ever gone before. TB lacked the skills and hubris to realize he was a mediocre storyteller at best, often relying on laying misery down upon his characters.
Instead of being honored like Russell Myers, TB’s present body of work is mocked in multiple discussions. It’s possible TB could have been a legend too. Comic strip readers nostalgically remember ACT I Funky Winkerbean. The remaining FW arcs are remembered for his award chasing and exercises in self-indulgence.
Too bad.
A Man’s Got to Know His Limitations.
I think the car blowing up is a decent analogy of TB’s reputation after ACT I.
“TB lacked the skills and hubris”
I agree with half of that. But I don’t see “Lack of Hubris” as being one of Tommy Boy’s problems! There are bunches of Greek gods saying “I swear, if he whines about the Pulitzer again, comparing himself to Hemingway while calling Schulz ‘over-rated’…Lightning strike!”
TOM: “It was unfair that Schulz got the Pulitzer, unless he didn’t, but that would take me a whole 3 seconds to check–” ZAP!! (It wouldn’t be from Zeus, it’d be from Broom-Hilda. Zeus got better shit to do)
Has he ever said anything positive about another comic strip?
Dadgummit! I meant lack of humility. This is what usually happens when I overedit.
Has TB ever said anything positive about another comic strip? Sure. Peanuts and some comic strips from fifty years ago. I haven’t seen TB mention that he likes anything created by anyone younger than him. Certainly nothing current.
I wonder what the National Cartoonists Society thinks of him. He is a member.
He still hasn’t gotten his Gold T-Square Award. Or any other award beyond the Inkpot. Which I think says it all.
The insult towards TB doesn’t stop there. Batuik has his own NCS member page, but he isn’t listed in the NCS Members Directory. 🤔 Oops.
Did TB forget to pay his membership dues? Did the NCS revoke his membership? Did he offend the person(s) responsible for content on the NCS website?
Strange. Coincidental oversight or is there some kind of friction going on between TB and the NCS?
—————–
FWIW, Bill Hinds, of Tank McNamara fame, recently received his Gold T-Square Award.
I wonder how many cartoonists with 50+ years on the same title have NOT received a Gold T-Square Award.
BWOEH:
He was listed in the directory in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and August 2023, which is the most recent archive on web.archive.org.
Such web pages tend to be dynamically generated from a database or other stored data. OTOH, Tom Armstrong is listed in the directory, but there is no link to his page, even though that page does exist.
I think it’s more likely to be bad web programming than an intentional slight.
Banana Jr. 6000:
???
What the hell?! 😦😕
You’re the biggest critic of Batiuk here. I try to join in on the fun, and you go miles out of your way to tromp all over my post? You checked out FIVE years of the internet archive and used a different cartoonist for comparison? That seems like going above and beyond to me. Ow!
Batty’s biggest critic turns into his defender? Dude! Pick a lane!😂
I sense I have offended. I’m sorry BWOEH, I see that response was a little excessive.
I’m harsh on Batiuk, but that doesn’t mean I’m unfair. The situation looks like bad web programming, not an intentional effort to exclude Batiuk. The above URL has the organization’s by-laws, including a section on removing members and why it is done. Batiuk is unlikely to have offended the society this much, unless his dues are badly in arrears.
Was there some kind of confusion? What was that all about? My post was intended to be playful jabs at TB’s expense. The questions in my post were rhetorical. Meant to be humorous jokes, not fact-based accusations. Why did you feel the need to make a concentrated effort to present a counterpoint? Because I was unfair? I’m sorry if I offended you somewhere along the line. Who besides you even cared?
Or did you think I was being too harsh on TB? I thought that was part of what we do here.
A few months ago, I felt sympathy for Batiuk because I thought the SoSF discussion was, at times, unfairly critical. I sarcastically joked this website’s tagline should be changed to “Son of Stuck Funky · The web’s premiere source for F̵u̵n̵k̵y̵ ̵W̵i̵n̵k̵e̵r̵b̵e̵a̵n̵ ̵s̵n̵a̵r̵k̵ Tom Batiuk Hate.”
After being driven away in disgust from GoComics Crankshaft a couple of months ago, my attitude towards TB changed considerably. What he’s done to Crankshaft is unfair to the readers. He gets no more sympathy from me. TB gets what he deserves. Open fire.
Here I am being educated for not playing fair. How ironic.
Oh, well. You’re the host. Your rules. My mistake. My apologies.
Honestly, yes, I was confused. I couldn’t tell if you were geniunely hurt, or poking fun at me. So I erred on the side of the former. I’m trying to be more careful about what I say and how I say it, and feared I may have gone too far. Then I guess I went too far again with my follow-up. I’m not offended, we’re friends, and I enjoy your comments a great deal. I’d never open fire on you. Cheers.
Nah. Don’t change your approach on my account. You’re the host.
I’ve been feeling down since Saturday. When I’m depressed I can be overly sarcastic and glib. Communication with me goes out the window. Sorry about that.
We’re good. 👍✌
Depression is one of those things like Jason Vorhees that’s always around and always ready to strike. Hope you get to be Final Girl soon.
Kind of reminds me of this strip that Batiuk did at the end of the whole “Introduce Cliff Anger” sequence.
It was such a ridiculous, obscure thing to write an entire strip around. It’s so insular and up-his-own-ass that here I am, eight years later and I immediately remember it.
There was no real significance to this thing, which, for those unfamiliar was the official Starbuck Jones Decoder Ring, which was a reference to the Secret Decoder Ring in the Little Orphan Annie radio show from 1934. And if the thing didn’t appear in A Christmas Story in a hilariously cynical subplot, I would not have been able to figure out what the hell the thing was.
So here this dumb thing is, being the central focus of a strip, and it’s something that we’ve never seen before and we have no idea the significance of. So, it had been be the start a big honkin’ deal if Batiuk’s going to focus on it like this. But no, it was just some dumb gimmick that led to some ludicrously absurd and unrealistic developments later in the endless Starbuck Jones saga. And it wasn’t necessary to those developments, it was just like an accessory to them.
So anyway, yeah, Batiuk’s been crawling up his own ass over insignificant ephemera for a while (eight years for this!), and he’d love for us to join him. Wonder why it doesn’t…
Tom Batiuk’s decoder ring story is almost a rebuttal to Christmas Story. “No, decoder rings really do work! There really are important messages to decode! There really are adventures to go on! You’ll go to Cleveland where there will be stars of the very specific old movies you like! You’ll miss out if you don’t go!” It’s like Batiuk spelled out “remember to drink your Ovaltine” and completely missed the fucking point.
The decoder-ring scene in Christmas Story rings true, because most of us had an experience like that. We got our hopes up for some dumb cereal-box toy that didn’t live up to its outrageous promises (though our own imaginations deserve most of the blame for that). And we learned a little about life as a result. This plot even showed up in Calvin & Hobbes, with the propeller beanie.
In the Funkyverse, all Batiuk’s stories are like this one. They insist the world *is* the way his 8-year-old self wants it to be. For the rest of us who eventually grew up, nostalgia comes from the difference between how we once saw the world, and how we see it now. We wish we could return to our younger, less burdened selves, and have the priorities we now see as silly. So rock on, Warrant.
I agree with jroggs: this story had potential to be interesting, if Batiuk would have acknowledged the difference between nostalgia and reality.
I think that applies to all of Act III of Funky Winkerbean
Oh good dear god. Batton and Skip are back. Please make the hurting stop.
I knew it smelled like a long-term ramble of an arc! I guess it just had to be paused a week for the Chad & Jeremy nostalgia; one indulgence to another.
Were they just talking non-stop about the deep Three-O’Clock High lore for the rest of that first meeting? Was it the one about the week where all six dailies were a woman slowly taking a letter from the NHL upstairs to open it and get the vague bad news about not getting their dental insurance coverage?
Today’s Funky Winkerbean
my reaction on seeing these two bores (Batton and Skip) again:
Jesus, even the man’s Gary Stus are duller than dishwater. I guess this is the culmination of his fantasies now: That a backwater town’s tiny newspaper would notice him and care to ask him a few questions.
“So you’re a cartoonist?” “Yes, thanks for noticing! I am a cartoonist. A humble, lovable, small-town aw-shucks cartoonist.” “You certainly are. That’s you all right.”
At first I thought this might be a vehicle for Thomas Batton to announce that it’s “time to retire,” thus heralding the end of the Crankshaftiverse. But now I suspect it’s gonna be more of the same: Silver Age comix, “immortal wound,” faux-humility, “rearranged my molecules,” and the like.
Drake of life! Drake of life! Oh, how I have missed you. Welcome back.
You forgot the most important part: Skippy is paying for the pizza! Well, at least for the Montoni’s… and the coffee that people in the Batiukverse seem to think is pizza’s perfect accompaniment.
Today’s strip confirms it, this week is officially in The Flash #123 week territory, that of the “immortal wound” infamy.
late to the party of course but judging from the strip one their meds have kicked in in a big way and two they are leaving before the concert ended.
And as others have mentioned if they were 18 or in the 60s they would be in their 70’s now not the vague mid 50s or so they are shown as. Time has marched on. Hell the first Ramones set at CBGBs was 50 years ago this month for Petes sake. I’ll admit that made me feel old
It’s not the Funkyverse: parents in comic strips are simultaneously way too old and way too young. They act like Generation X 50-somethings, but they have boomer-plus tastes and opinions. Curtis’ dad is a good example. Somehow he hates rap, despite being the working-age father of a 11-year-old. Anyone born after 1960 would have grown up with rap.
They want it to be set in the present day but they want the adults to have their taste in pop culture.
It was explained that Curtis’s dad backed the wrong horse and got run over by Grandmaster Flash’s steel wheels.
As Comics Curmudgeon likes to point out, The Lockhorns are Millennials.
Yeah, but I don’t know that I buy that. The implied age of the characters would make them millennials in 2024, but the Lockhorns world is very 1965. It occasionally references modern technology and attitudes, but everything else is out of the first Odd Couple movie. It’s a weird juxtaposition.
I think this phenomenon shows how newspaper comics have badly outlived their usefulness. They insist on describing a world that’s long gone.
Yesterday the Daily Cartoonist featured an article on Batiuk and an upcoming Crankshaft story arc. Tom Batiuk to Launch Book Banning Series in Crankshaft Comic Strip.
I just wanted to give those of you who still read Crankshaft a heads up. Enjoy.
Oh no. No no no no no no.
The Burnings story will include both Les AND Skip.
This is gonna hurt. Bad.
Oh my sweet Holtron, the Burnings is aiming to be so Very Special Episode that we’re getting a full PR run from Tom! Tackling book banning and related attacks on literature… man that ain’t going to make the comment sections pretty. I’ll give credit, it’s not an issue to write off with how the polarized state of affairs is, there is pressure going on, but from a glance I don’t see Tom approaching it beyond the old-hat matters of certain “think-of-the-children” groups being too skittish about certain subject matters. The likes of Maus and Fahrenheit 451 being ban subjects feels like peanuts compared to more topical ban waves.
But that’s not the bollocks we come for: The preview is showing us a lot that I don’t doubt will be picked apart by an upcoming blog post proper. Including the true hearld of Lisadom: Run for the hills, Les Moore’s return is imminent! And such snarkable statements like “Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft deal with schools”; Boy do we have enough senior citizen/boomer issue strips to outbalance that claim!
It can’t be said often enough, though I don’t think TB will ever get it:
Banned
is not the same as
not stocked by a given bookstore
is not the same as
not stocked by a given school library
is not the same as
not on a school’s recommended reading list.
And conflating these different things trivializes a serious issue.
And none of those things are the same as
not knowing how to read
But here it is!
I’d forgotten about how I had broached this topic in the past. In Funky, I’d had the comic shop taken to court over some of the comics found in his store. And in Crankshaft, I revealed how not knowing how to read had derailed Ed’s major league baseball ambitions.
What.
What a pleasant surprise. Good to see you. It’s been a while.
Oh lord. Here we go. These arcs bug the hell out of me as well I keep using the T Roosevelt quote about Taft “He means well feebly.” I suspect he’ll come out against book banning not because of the underlying autocratic urge to control thought that motivates it, but because it isn’t ‘nice’ the arc will sputter to an end and there will be smirks.
bah.
Hell come out against it because it doesn’t give the writer full 100.0% control over all aspects of the writer’s creation. Evidence of this is already there in the one strip that is shown in the article.
“I wonder why Farenheit 451 is on the school board’s “not approved” reading list?” asks Kayla, who has worked at that school for her entire adult life and should already know the answer to that question.
“Because some people think that its themes are too adult for the student” responds Les, without saying anything that actually answers the question or indicates that he has even read the book himself.
While here, if I may address Drake’s comment: The terms are conflated by the populace, media, and retailers alike regardless, so such distinctions are sadly irrelevant for this discussion. The Sunday 08/27/2023 Crankshaft shown in the article is further evidence of it: The Alchemist is on that table. Where is The Alchemist banned? Iran. Why? Because Iran banned all work by its author, Paulo Coehlo. Why? Iran’s Ministry Of Culture did not provide an explanation. That’s it. The end. Regardless, there it is in that strip.
Regardless, here we have The Burnings, and here we see how Tom will handle it with the 09/03/2024 strip, as he has done so many other times on these arcs which the media reports upon: He’ll address the topic without actually saying anything about it, and take all the credit.
Wow, it turns out Tom Batiuk interviewed himself twice this week.
Of all the Tom Batiuks in the world, Tom Batiuk being interviewed is the Tom Batiukiest.
That story is a gold mine of TB and (to a lesser extent) Davis moments. My favorites:
The burnings originally being intended to a climage damate reference… 99.999% confirmed!
Davis, meanwhile, got to photoshop Bernie Silver in a skirt while Cayla advocates for student access to Rolanda’s Playboys.
Yeah, that “floods” caught my eye too. In fact, it invalidates the entire story. 500 words about how important books are to Tom, and then “I changed ‘floods’ to ‘burnings’ at the last second.” Wait, what? Was Roberta Blackburn planning to drown the books?
The question now is if Lillian were get her robot replacement during this arc.
Tom would protest it may be too soon, but I counter that between Holtron still being semi-treated as sentient and the cinema that was Paulie getting a robot partner in Rocky 4, it’s totally fair game for this strip.
The worst part about the upcoming “Book Banning Series” is that Dick Facey makes his debut in Post-Timemop Crankshaft
I’m beginning to suspect “The Burnings,” will just be the heartburn Skip and Batton get from eating too much of Montoni’s crappy pizza.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
cs walks up to Skip, and puts a plate of nachos (that he sneezed on) on the table, and then throws a green pitcher at him
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
(a Montoni’s waiter walks up to Skip and Batton, and gives them a pack of smokes)
Depressed Waiter (in the most hoarse voice ever): Here you go.
Skip: Jesus christ, how much do you smoke?
Depressed Waiter: I smoke three hundred packs a day.
Batton: How the hell are you even ALIVE!?
Depressed Waiter: I’ve been trying to kill myself, but I can’t. The whole world is nothing put misery and humanity is doomed and all effort is wasted and nothing ever matters. Have a atrocious day, you motherfuckers.
(the waiter leaves)
In one of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter novels, there’s an observation set out prominently in the narrative:
“You fall in love with the Bureau, but the Bureau doesn’t fall in love with you.”
It reminds me of a conversation Robert E. Lee Prewitt (“Prew” to you) has with his girlfriend Alma in the 1953 “From Here to Eternity”:
Prew dies trying to return to his outfit after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He would understand his fate and not blame the Army for it.
Batton Thomas (and as I go through my collection of *Supernatural Law* books, I hate realizing that he shares his first name with Batton Lash, who was one of the kindest and nicest men in comics, to say nothing of one of the most talented) gives me the impression that if comics hadn’t loved him back, he wouldn’t have gone looking for something that would.
He would have turned into Tom Batiuk’s Eugene rather than Crazy Joe and the Variable Speed Band’s Eugene.
(Who would take girls to party at Louie’s Pizza, not Montoni’s.)
Come to think of it, Batiuk’s Eugene went onto the Army because he thought Lucy didn’t love him back, didn’t he?
Take it away, Mr. Kipling:
We’re poor little lambs who’ve lost our way,
Baa! Baa! Baa!
We’re little black sheep who’ve gone astray,
Baa—aa—aa!
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha’ mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!
I think Eugene went to war because he wanted to die and he knew Lillian sabotaged the letter to Lucy
But if he knew Lillian stole the letter, wouldn’t he try to talk to Lucy himself to clear everything up?
No, wait, that’s something a rational human being would do, and he’s a Tom Batiuk character. Never mind, forget I asked.
I think Eugene went to war because there was a world war going on and America was involved. As I understand it, joining the military was the normal thing to do for an able-bodied man of Eugene’s age to do in that era. The only issue was whether he was going to enlist with or without getting a response to his proposal to Lucy, or even potentially marrying her quickly before leaving for the army. Wanting to die most likely didn’t figure into it.
I think that when Eugene didn’t get a response from Lucy, Eugene went through the Despair Event Horizon
As usual, the story was inconsistent. In the first retelling, the letter said he’d already joined the Army. In a later retelling, Lillian said Eugene joined the Army in response to Lucy’s apparent rejection. As if this story couldn’t get any more stupid.
That’s Tom Batiuk’s superpower: the ability to always — even when it seems utterly impossible — make his writing more stupid.
Hey, kids! I got a GC comment deleted!
Apparently they didn’t like the not-word “Tomsturbation.”
At approx 115AM EDT, I plan to post on GC:
“Gosh, Dad! Where do babies come from?”
“Sometimes, a man and a woman love each other very much, and something happens that’s magical and natural!”
“Jeepers! And where do baby Toms come from?”
(shudders) “Sometimes, a Tom avatar loves a Tom avatar very much, and something HORRIBLE and UNnatural happens! A vast ego born from…Tomsturbation!”
“Golly, Dad! I’m NEVER going to Tomsturbate!”
I wonder how long it will be there.
Well, mine didn’t last! Same-day removals are rare, but apparently they can still happen. At least I was able to confirm how many strips have more followers than Crankshaft (answer: the grand majority of them except Mother Goose & Grimm for some reason, even Geech has three times as many as CS despite Jerry Bittle having been dead for 21 years now). I hope you saw that before it died!
Mine was gone hours later. Someone’s seemingly has a Tom up their ass.