The first two weeks of The Burnings have been a puzzle so far.
But poster The Drake of Life said something that got me thinking:
(On Wednesday) it looked like something was actually about to happen, so (Tom Batiuk) had to slam on the brakes and give us his patented, “Look who it is! [Name], the [awkward exposition of character]!” This (is) bringing the momentum leading to a potential interesting action to a dead stop.
The Drake of Life, two days ago
Why would any writer do that? Let’s review what we know so far about the story, from the first two weeks’ strips, or the Cleveland.com article.
- The Burnings story started on August 26, meaning that Dinkle’s 11-part autobiography is canonically a part of The Burnings despite having nothing to do with the story.
- The book at the center of the story is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
- The attack was on an unseen bookstore, not Lillian’s bookstore.
- Lillian will later provide the books, and her own store will be attacked, according to the Daily Cartoonist piece which quotes Batiuk himself.
- Lillian will be the hero of the story.
- The story will also concern Ed Crankshaft’s past illiteracy, which seems tangential to the issue of book burning and censorship. It also ignores Ed’s very active role in preventing children from getting to school, which seems like a much bigger obstacle to reading than some dumb local book ban.
Now, let’s review what we don’t know about the story:
- Why does the school board oppose Fahrenheit 451, a book with very little objectionable content?
- Why is Les defying this ban, other than the fact that he’s a total psychopath?
- Why is Principal Nate allowing Les to defy the ban?
- If he’s not, why isn’t Nate chewing Les out?
- Who are these “protesters”?
- What is their motive?
- Why is their anger focused on the bookstore and not on the clear villain, Les?
- Why they would take such an extreme action over such a minor offense?
- Why they haven’t been charged with any crimes? You can’t just attack a store with fire because you disagree with some of the products they sell.
- Why did the story spend two weeks on an unseen bookstore with an insulting name instead of just having Lillian provide the books in the first place? Keep in mind that the story has already taken us to the Village Booksmith twice. Three times if you count the Sunday comic book cover (because of course there’s one of those) where Lillian is doing yet another book signing in the inset.
- What does any of this have to do with Lillian? Or Dinkle? Or Ed Crankshaft? Or Skip Rawlings?
Finally, some meta facts that I think are relevant to putting The Burnings in context:
- Les and Cayla haven’t been seen since the end of Funky Winkerbean.
- It’s a Westview High School story, something that has been even more rare the past few years.
- The Burnings were preceded by a two-week long interview of “Batton Thomas”, who we learned is a copy of Tom Batiuk in every detail.
- A future week will feature Jeff going to a Winnipeg Blue Bombers game, something Batiuk is also doing in real life. Batiuk has said nothing on his blog about the current Burnings story, despite it being hyped in the media.
- It ties into the ending of Funky Winkerbean.
- The Funkyverse has longstanding habits of revisiting past stories, re-using existing art, and being a vehicle for Batiuk’s self-indulgence.
I know what’s going on here! Pat, I’d like to solve the puzzle. (For verisimilitude, play the below sound cue as you’re scrolling down to it. Multimedia!)
The Burnings are a clip show. It’s as simple as that.
The details of the story don’t matter. Like it doesn’t matter why Captain Picard and Commander Riker are sitting on the holodeck, re-enacting things that happened in past episodes. It’s just a framing device.
Which undermines the need to unravel the many absurdities of this story. Posters Joshua K. and Andrew already did a fantastic job of this in the comments. So I’m focusing on what I think is the real problem: Batiuk’s dishonest representation of the story.
Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with clip shows. They have their uses. Such as recapping past episodes, helping continuity for syndication, and addressing real-world matters that affected the story. TV show Barney Miller had a clip show about the character Nick Yemana, after his actor Jack Soo passed away during production. And yes, clip shows are cheap and easy to produce, making them useful when the production goes over budget or past deadline.
But none of that is the case here. Even worse, the Funkyverse has been running on clip show content for most of Act III. There are very few new stories, and lots of revisiting old stories. How many “Eliminator” rehashings did we have to suffer through at the end of Funky Winkerbean? How many Lisa rehashings? How many “Ed blows something up” stories?
This is just Tom Batiuk playing what he thinks are his greatest hits. (Suddenly that Chad & Jeremy week seems like foreshadowing.) And you’ll notice Tom Batiuk’s greatest hits never include Bull Bushka or Funky Winkerbean himself. But I bet Funky is back on Halloween, to be fooled by the Pizza Box Monster, somehow. That’s his only role at this point.
The Burnings are an insulting bait-and-switch. They set a new record for the distance between what Tom Batiuk proclaims the story is, and what it really is. The death of Bull Bushka tried to be a story, even though it failed miserably. This is more like watching Bull Bushka describe his old game tapes to you. “This is the part where I tried to carry Coach Stropp’s ashes across the goal line… but I fumbled them at the one yard line! Oops!” (smirk)
Batiuk talked a big game in that puff piece about The Burnings. “I could tackle things in the current zeitgeist”… “Lillian’s strength and courage”… “with book bans, things were now reaching a critical mass.”
I was all ready to do a deep and serious month-long dive into matters of censorship, freedom of expression, the appropriateness of adult material for minors, and modern efforts to control school content. But I can already see that there’s no point. By even talking about these things, we give this story more credit than it’s earned. It hasn’t risen to the level of needing to be talked about. It’s the frame for a clip show. The end. Tom Batiuk sure fooled me. I thought he’d at least try.
Another common reason for clip shows is to wrap up a series and say goodbye to the fans. Is that what’s really happening here?
Son of Stuck Funky 
Thanks for the hat tip, CBH. And I agree with everything you said, including your surprise that TB has no shame about promoting this arc as some brave, iconoclastic creative outburst Speaking Truth to Power — and then giving us a limp, wet, leftover slice of nothing whatsoever, garnished with clip-art smirks.
I supposed we shouldn’t be surprised that the chasm between what TB thinks he’s doing and what he’s actually doing grows ever wider.
What does genuinely surprise me is that, time after time, he gets editors to run these puff pieces about his fearless advocacy for the cause du jour. Haven’t they realized that the promise is never paid off? Wasn’t the Bull/CTE anticlimax embarrassing enough?
Meanwhile, just for sh!ts and giggles, I googled book bannings. The top results were about a fierce conflict between Muslim parents and the Dearborn, MI, school board. The Muslim-led contingent wanted to remove LGBT-themed materials and books from the school and curriculum.
This is an actual, recent conflict that made national news. Gee whiz, isn’t it interesting that Tom “Gay Prom” Batiuk isn’t taking a stand on this one?
Drake of Life,
You wrote yesterday,
“Think of the most repressive regime you can imagine. Soviet Russia? Nazi Germany? North Korea? Mao’s China?
Even in those regimes, they didn’t ban ALL books willy-nilly. There were certain books that were approved, if not effectively required.”
A weird story from the Dutch that was carried by CBSNews in 2004: *the Diary of Anne Frank* was read and taught all throughout North Korea.🇰🇵
I don’t think they got the message. 🤨
At least the New York Times didn’t fall for the PR pitch this time around, unlike Bull’s CTE.
Dearborn is predominantly Muslim/Arab. It’s an interesting case of how “community standards” can be a difficult metric.
I mean… if the past, oh, twenty years were any indication, you really shouldn’t have gotten your hopes up on that one…
The clip show theory is an interesting one — although with the work of Batiuk & Davis, how could you tell the difference? Still, the theory fits the evidence….
But as for Tom wrapping it up and saying goodbye to his fans? I’m of the opinion he will produce scripts for comics obsessively for as long as the syndicate (and his health) lets him. And that as long as the strip is generating enough revenue (and there’s no indication from a strictly commercial perspective that it isn’t), Crankshaft will continue indefinitely.
For those GC commenters who claim this is some Very Important Arc—If Tom had written F451, it would be 2 pages of things happening, and all the rest just having that described. Why didn’t Tom do 1984? “It was a bright cold day in April, and all the clocks LOVED BIG BROTHER!” His Avengers movies would be 5 minutes of Captain Rogers saying “—And then, Tony DID something CRAZY! You should’da been there.” He’s not addressing this subject, he’s DISMISSING it.
Mainly because Davis only uses clipart now. He’s still waiting for that Pulitzer he’s never going to get. This arc isn’t about book banning, it’s just how Tom is a begging for prizes.
“But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Lisa.”
Related to the Batiukverse: a week of Act II FW strips from 2003
Les: Why do I even bother with these dumbasses?
Funky-Lookalike Student: You were absent that day, Mooch.
Les then goes apeshit and starts smashing everything in the room, causing him to get fired
Darin: Dude, how old WERE those?
Mooch: I think I’ve had them since middle school.
Chien rushes to get a bucket for Pete to puke in
That last strip may be the most Funky Winkerbean strip ever: a character proclaiming the visual appeal of something happening offscreen.
In fairness, the thing happening off panel was somebody vomiting. If ever there were an appropriate opportunity to “tell, not show,” that strip would be a good example.
Eh, good point. I withdraw the criticism.
One of the few times that “tell, don’t show” works is in the 1936 “Show Boat” where Cap’n Andy recounts the performance that the audience doesn’t get to see on the Cotton Palace because of the backwoodsmen’s antics.
He does it so thrillingly that I’m sure that no one asked for their money back.
“Egbert, aware that he won’t win by fair means, resorts to foul…”
Another instance: Robert Marmaduke Sangster Hightower’s report on a dynamited waterhole in “3 Godfathers,” killing off everyone except a woman who’s going to have a baby now.
But, for the rest, I keep hearing John D. MacDonald’s editor directing him not to tell the reader that X was an evil man. but to show X doing an evil thing and not to say that Y was a clumsy woman but to write a scene in which she fell down a flight of steps and wound up with her head in a goldfish bowl.
Appreciate the shoutout, BJ! Probably could’ve cleaned up the post a bit more, left a fair few spelling errors, but happy with the essay-length words I got together overall. Fun fact I found reviewing is that the 2018 attempted ban of F451 supposedly had some group of kids actually want to affirm a second ban attempt. That’s bemusing though humorous in its own way.
An interesting perspective, “greatest hits.” The arc is still fairly early, but certainly isn’t too new, especially with the first week making a prologue out of Dinkle and Les indulging in their book loving. I’ve mentioned the gay prom arc a lot, and that does still standout as the last time the Very Special Episode style storyline tackled anger of the masses, and of course that flubbed in multiple directions (I still love this image that was drawn for it that complexly misleads how the “resistance” to the anti-gay busybodies went down). Really the only thing this arc has going for it was the future-period implication that this was some world-changing affair worth calling a buzzword, and yet knowing the serial nature and that at least one “special” daily life arc is in the can, if it is that serious then the possible mass-destruction of booksellers/related businesses will somehow can come and go without changing the status quo, or that we have some snapback along the lines of something like Sledge Hammer coming back from a season finale nuke with a prequel season.
Or alternatively, this all is a big fuss over nothing that somehow was kept to NE Ohio and is just an amusing factoid related to Lillian’s bookshop when Summer Jr. Jr. introduces it to Summer Jr. Jr. Jr.
Gotta love how even in that Gay Prom image, the actual Gay Guys are shoved off into the back like they’re an afterthought to the entire thing. At least that part was accurate.
That picture is the only time we see their faces, isn’t it? The sequence shows a pair of hands and offers a word balloon, but that’s all. It’s up to Roberta Blackburn to register her stern disapproval.
As for names, forget it. Given the “Gay Old Time” signs, I’m tempted to call them “Fred” and “Barney,” but those were also the names of some nasty dogs in Watchmen, so I won’t.
“There’s no justice, there’s just us…”
Which is what I think will happen here. These “protesters” are of no importance to the story. They’re an “excuse plot” for talk smirk talk smirk talk smirk, which is all Tom Batiuk wants to do. The actual antagonists are secondary to Lillian (and probably Les) being the heroes of literacy.
Of course they were relegated to the back of the image. They were just people Batty climbed over to try and get his Pulitzer. He used Adeela similarly.
I bet it never crossed your mind to add “Skip Rawlings makes goo-goo eyes at Lillian” on your Burnings Bingo Board.
Indeed. I’m not the kind of writer who dreams of slash fics, so that sort of thing slips my mind a lot.
Slash fic? Whoa there.
Skip and Lillian aren’t the same sex. At least I don’t think TB intended them to be.
While I enjoyed your recap/critique of The Burnings to date, BJR6K, I have to play “that guy” for one little correction. You have the names reversed in your “Barney Miller” mention; Jack Soo was the actor who played Sgt. Nick Yemana on the show (and believe me, you haven’t lived until you hear Soo perform “Don’t Marry Me” in the 1961 film musical “Flower Drum Song.”
I corrected it. Thanks.
I checked it out.
Cushlamochree, you’re absolutely right!
Depending on on which site I check, I believe your comment refers to *Flower Drum Song*. Very enjoyable film. Great actors like Jack Soo.
Back then, I watched a talk or variety show. I think the comedian was Shecky Green. He said he was caught in a traffic jam, and it was hot. He rolled down his windows, and began belting out, “I Enjoy Being a Girl”. He glanced to his left and right. Everyone was listening and staring.
SP:
You’re correct: I was referring to Jack Soo’s performance of “Don’t Marry Me” in “Flower Drum Song.”
I don’t know the performance of “I Enjoy Being a Girl” to which you allude, but I can imagine Jack Lemmon as Daphne singing it in “Some Like It Hot” if the movie was set in 1959 instead of in 1929.
And if it were set in 1969, he would sing the Who’s “I’m a Boy.”
Anonymous Sparrow,
I did try to find the tale by the comedian, yet failed. But I did come across this tidbit: it was Christine Jorgensen’s closing song in her nightclub act.
Admittedly, I like the song, but I try to be very careful about who hears me🤪.
SP:
Christine Jorgensen went to Copenhagen for her operation. I wonder if this is why an author whose name I won’t mention (in a book whose title I won’t divulge) has a similar operation occur in Amsterdam. Denmark might have spoiled the surprise, while the Netherlands allowed for greater impact.
In 1993, Dar Williams put out The Honesty Room, whose lead-off track is “When I Was a Boy.”
That same year, Jane Siberry put out When I Was a Boy, which doesn’t contain a song with that title.
“Still I know what I am and I’m glad I’m a man and so is Lola…”
(Like Tom Batiuk, I can quote the Kinks!)
Anonymous Sparrow,
“…You really got me going…”
Wikipedia says *Lola* was banned by the BBC. That does not surprise me at all. But the reason does. They used the term, coca-cola, in the song, and apparently that was a bridge too far for the Beeb.
SP:
So that’s why I sometimes hear “Lola” with “Cherry Cola.”
(C-O-L-A, Cola)
As I recall, Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” became a hit in the U.K. because the programmers didn’t understand what “she never lost her head/even when she was giving head” meant.
“Take it away, colored girls…”
In addition to his beloved Winnipeg Blue Bombers, BatYam is a huge Mexican baseball fan, and takes in a Olmecas de Tabascos game or two whenever he finds himself south of the border. Batiuk, or “El Gringo Aburrido” as he’s affectionately known down there, is something of a folk hero in Mexico, with several shrines erected in his honor. Apparently, he’s the patron saint of Tylenol PM, which was no doubt an organic phenomenon.
One thing I know for sure about The Burnings is that it’ll be impossibly anticlimactic to an astounding, incomprehensible degree that will leave readers stunned, and baffled too. You know, like always. I did find it interesting that he mentioned he’ll be doing a Blue Bombers story arc NEXT YEAR, which means he’s already written 2025 and has it in the can, ready to go. Ugh.
The Bombers have an interesting backstory that Batiuk would probably get all turned around. Back in 2003, one of their placekickers referred to fans of the Saskatchewan Roughriders as banjo-playing inbreds. When asked to apologize, he said that nobody there could play the banjo and he felt real bad about lumping banjo-playing inbreds in with Rider Nation.
Thus was born the Banjo Bowl played on the Saturday after Labor Day.
I wondered where “Banjo Bowl” came from. Great bit of malicious compliance there.
The same man has a long-standing feud with a guy who played defensive tackle for the Als. (Montreal Alouettes). He’s what we used to call a shit disturber back in the day.
RE: Sunday 9/8’s Funkycrank Winkershaft:
So, rather than have the character this strip is frackin’ named for and supposed to be about make even a token Sunday appearance, Batiuk felt it was more important to show Skip Bittman and Lillian the Lizard smirking at one another while spewing more lame wordplay. Good to know.
The way Lillian is drawn in the 2nd last panel reminds me of those politically incorrect drawings of chinamen that were popular in the 30’s and 40’s. Just dreadful. What was the point of this exchange? Skip is a terrible reporter.
And leave it to Batty to make a strip about his goofy interests. The Winnipeg blue bombers? Who cares. Batty has a unique ability to drain anything interesting from any subject.
Little-known fact: LIllian used to moonlight in the ’30s-’70s in her own one-panel comic under the name “Ching Chow.”
That is exactly what I thought of when seeing that panel.
It could have worked has Lillian taken it up a notch. “Yes, Skip, we bookstores find puns to be very disarming. They’re the chinks in our armor. You have to hand it to us. You left us nothing. Thanks for you good work, I want to give you a hand. You’re all right, Skip. Hey, you’re missing an arm, asshat!”
Today’s Sunday strip does nothing to move “The Burnings” story along. If Batty is going to do a strip about wordplay, why not use the character in the strip who’s famous for it, Ed Crankshaft. Unlike Ed’s wordplay, Lillian and Skip’s wordplay is not even humorous. It’s cringe worthy.
Batty flips the double-bird to the readers hoping to see Ed Crankshaft for a change.
Instead of an Ed one-off, Batty features Lillian and Skip-to-My-Lou making goo-goo eyes at one another. Who the hell, besides Batty, wanted to see that?
The last two and a half weeks have done nothing to move “The Burnings” story along. Three and a half if you count the future week Ed will spend yammering about his illiteracy. Four and a half if you think the story will stop for another week of the Batton Thomas interview, like I do.
When I subscribed to the Comics Kingdom a couple of years ago, I added several soap opera strips to justify the cost of my subscription. These strips were mostly unenjoyable because the stories moved at a glacial pace, reused art, had unsatisfactory endings, and left oodles of unanswered questions and loose ends. As soon as my subscription ended, those titles were removed from my reading list. I’m talking about serial strips such as Mary Worth, Judge Parker, and Rex Morgan M.D.
To be fair, don’t most of Batty’s prestige arcs move at a glacial pace, reuse art, have unsatisfactory endings, and leave oodles of unanswered questions and loose ends?
I take back what I’ve said in the past. Tom Batiuk is perfectly suited to write something other than a gag-a-day comic strip. He seems to be following the style of a soap opera strip perfectly. Batiuk just tops off his efforts with lame puns and punchable smirks.
You’re right about Ed’s role in Batty’s current floundering prestige arc. In addition to discussing his illiteracy, Ed will undoubtably mention how key Lillian was in helping him overcome it by opening her bookstore next door. Books are great. Book bannings/burnings are bad. Support your local bookstore, blah blah blah.
Unfortunately, you’re probably also right about the Batton Thomas interview. Batiuk will take a break from this sordid tale to remind the award committees how great he thinks his career has been through the use of his blatantly obvious avatar.
I don’t know why FW didn’t just transition into a soap opera strip, since that’s what it was anyway. Could have done so perfectly at the end of Act I. But Batiuk knew he couldn’t carry that tune either.
Banana Jr. 6000
We knew it. Did he? I wonder if he ever did. The Batton Thomas interviews read like TB thinks there’s been a travesty of justice because he hasn’t received more recognition.
ACT III FW read like a snit, not a soap opera. Batiuk didn’t get the recognition he wanted, so he entered a period of self-indulgence. He continually foisted his narrow interests upon the readers. Some interests only he knew of or cared about. For example, Lisa’s Story.
ACT IV is reading like Batiuk is trying (and failing) to convince everyone how wonderful FW was.
Batiuk has turned Crankshaft into Funky Winkerbean because he’s no longer is capable of writing a humor strip.
Speaking of indulging in narrow self-interests. An upcoming story arc about the Winnipeg Blue Bombers? Are you frickin’ kidding me? I wonder how many Blue Bombers fans read Crankshaft? Two?
Winnipeg Blue Bomber Fan: They mentioned us in Crankshaft! Whoo!
I think on some level, Batiuk knows he’s a fraud. But he’s also good at putting on a front, so maybe he thinks he can do it again. He thinks if he calls The Burnings an amazing story hard enough, people will buy it.
Not only are they a cheap framing device, they’re an example of an idiotic overreaction to criticism. Every time we don’t see something, it’s because Saint Dead Usa got caught in an explosion.
And now the story is denying its own existence.
“We don’t know if there’s any connection between the protestors and the fire, and I don’t want to conflate the two.” YOU JUST DID EXACTLY THAT, SKIP. You went to Lillian’s house at night and asked her questions based on this presumption. Your exact words YESTERDAY were “the bookstore in Westview had come under attack from some protestors.”
This is like that SCP-style “Emergency Alert scenario” video where Asia disappears and never existed. (WARNING: Uses authentic alarm tones. Freaky as hell.)
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Day Fourteen of the Byrnings
Two old fucks smirk at each other just because a bookstore was burned
Meanwhile in Garfield:
Garfield: Jon, if you dont stop Odie fucking with the remote, I will
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
I’m really sick and tired of that old sack of bones that calls herself Lillian McKenzie, I just want to watch her burn alive like this edit I made
And people say *I’m* dark.
Throw Les in and the strip would be perfect.
Once again, Puff Batty tiptoes to the brink of something actually happening, peeks shyly over the edge, and then gathers his skirts and runs away screaming to the safety of talk, smirk, talk, smirk, talk.
A bookstore was burned last night in the next small town over. This event was so boring that Lizard Lil didn’t even hear about it till the next day.
Even the idea that it had to do with some vague protests (which we know nothing about) had to be walked back today, lest something actually happen in the strip.
Still not answered: Why would you burn down an entire bookstore because of one book? Especially when that book is sold by virtually every bookstore in the country? Even the kookiest of religious nuts must realize that there would be copies of the Bible, the Koran, and other religious texts in that bookstore that they’d be burning as well.
But of course, Tom is not going to make the protestors religious nuts. He might try to subtly imply that they’re evangelical Christians, but I doubt he has the guts even to do that. He’ll probably just show us the patented Twisted Face of Hate that Denotes Evil, and that’ll be all the specifics we get about the matter. Burning books is bad, m’kay? QED.
[Personal to the Pulitzer Committee: Please send prize to Tom Batiuk, c/o Andrews-McMeel Syndicate.]
Fully in agreement. TB can’t quite take aim at who he clearly wants to take shots at. “Climate damage.” Same sex couple at the prom but let’s make sure they don’t reveal themselves. He won’t actually offer any real hints at who he wants the bad guys to be while ignoring the true villain–the guy who lives on taxpayer funds while thumbing his nose at the rules their elected represenatives set.
When Batiuk’s characters make reference to “climate damage,” he isn’t positioning himself neutrally on this issue. Rather, he, through his characters, is expressing concern about climate change but showing that he isn’t paying enough attention to the issue to know what it is actually called.
My personal explanation: It’s Tom hedging his bets. If you battle only straw men, no one gets offended, because no one identifies with straw men.
Climate change, actual racism, Muslim parents vs LGBT materials in schools — these are real and very controversial topics. They need to be researched and their nuances handled sensitively. That’s way too much work for Puff Batty, and besides, no matter what you say about topics like this, someone somewhere is gonna get pissed off and say you’re WRONG.
But Tom Batiuk is never wrong about anything. And to keep it that way, he never takes a stand against anything real.
Perhaps bookstore burnings in Westview are simply “a fact of life,” to borrow an expression from the junior Senator from Ohio.
With what’s been expected my expectations were made flat calm about seeing action, so a long series of strips for Skip just clarifying he’s just speculating about arson motive and then talking puns definitely feels like standard Funky fare. Like man you could squash this dialogue and just make it a daily that fits in 3 strips, they’re padding due to being short on ideas for the Sundays.
9/8: So…maybe the Burnings aren’t…the Burnings? This guy he thinks he deserves a Pulitzer? Look at some of those old strips csroberto reprints. Some of them are good! Why, they have things like “a beginning,” “a middle,” and “an end”! Tom can’t tell a coherent story any more. Talking Murder Monkey was more interesting than the Burnings.
Does he loudly say jokes at parties that begin with “A priest, a rabbi, and Elvis walk into a bar”? Now that he has the room’s attention, he smirks and walks away without a word. Everyone nods, “No, he should get the NOBEL!”
Not much advancement for Monday sadly, besides Lillian having a hint of fear. And particularly blatant panel reused now with today’s first panel being nigh-exactly the same last the final panel for last night’s strip.
I wonder if anyone will notice 30 years from now when “The Complete Crankshaft” volumes are being edited and all this tracing is laid out in much more obvious pretenses.
Boy, hasn’t this been some insightful interviewing by Skip Bittman? He started out last week saying he wanted a quote regarding the fire from Lillian (and got “Oh, my!” for his troubles), and all he’s done since is offer her his own sub-par puns and “muddled aphorisms”…you know, the sort of things a certain red-jacketed school bus driver used to do in this strip.
How does this clown ever get a paper published? He spends gigantic amounts of time doing useless interviews of Batton Thomas, the world’s most boring person, and Lillian, who owns a type of business where something bad might have happened in another town.
The only way this arc can be redeemed for me is if we learn that the arsonist is secretly Mooch Meyers.
My bet’s on the Post Office Bomber.
(Which, actually, would be a Batiuk thing to do. Wanton destruction that can be blamed on right-wing rhetoric (POB by the Rush Limbaugh-type radio host, and now the anti-F451 protesters), and it would allow Batiuk to pretend it wasn’t a plot thread he forgot about back in 1996 and had always intended to revisit. Plus, he can work in Dead Saint Lisa, and you know he can’t pass THAT up.)
(Bonus points if it turns out to be Zanzibar The Talking Murder Chimp, but that might just be wishful thinking.)
It makes sense. Beyond Mooch’s history of arson, Les never had a student who loathed him or loathed reading more than Mooch did.
It makes so much sense that TB would never do it… something indicated today by the reveal that childless nonagenarian Lillian recently took out a 30 year mortgage on a store she built several years ago in the attic of her own home’s garage.
Her own home that she’s already sold and rebought once. And what does think happens if her somehow freshly-mortgaged house burns down? That’s what homeowners’ insurance is for. And if you have a mortgage, you’re probably required to have homeowners’ insurance.
Another example of Tom Batiuk just filling the word balloons with any damned thing he thinks of, to get to the smirks and excessive exposition. He needs to learn how to wrote “carrots and peas” that don’t interfere with the overall narrative.
Guys. Apparently the incredible subtlety of TomBa’s dry wit has escaped your comprehension.
Skipperdee: “Worrying is only borrowing trouble.”
LizLil: “Too late… I’ve just taken out a thirty-year mortgage.”
See, she is borrowing. Borrowing trouble. Borrowing, metaphorically, a very large amount of trouble, analogous to the amount of money you borrow when you take out a thirty-year mortgage.
In Heaven’s Algonquin Round Table, Robert Benchley is crying on Dorothy Parker’s shoulder as Harold Ross pats his back consolingly. “Why didn’t I think of that?” he weeps. “There, there,” says Dorothy. “He’s wittier than all of us. Just watch from up here and enjoy as the tale unfolds.”
“It’s called writing,” Ross adds.
My faith that Mooch will be spearheading the burnings has certainly been restored.
If the “Burner” turns out to be an existing Funkyverse character, that character will instantly become the most beloved Funkyverse character.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Day Fifteen of the Byrnings
You should be afraid, Lillian, because the book burners are coming after YOU!
…eventually.
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Let’s just skip to the part where Lillian’s bookstore bursts into flames because this is just nothing
You mean where someone informs someone else that Lillian’s bookstore bursts into flames.
We’re not gonna see flame one unless Davis’ intern can repurpose something from the Great LA Fire or Post Office Bombing arcs.
Except we already know her store is “one of the few to survive The Burnings”, so… we can’t even hold onto the hope of seeing Lillian getting immolated in her store.
(I mean, it’s not like anyone was going to be invested in this codswallop in the first place, but… we already know definitively that the Village Booksmith will be just fine, so… there’s really no sense of dramatic tension to this whatsoever, is there?)
Anonymous Sparrow,
The others have done such a nice job of portraying “the Burnings” as all tell and never show. This amazes me when TB has absolutely no time restrictions other than 6 strips a week and a Sunday. All he had to do was post one panel of the BookSmeller Store burning followed by a panel of Skip smirking.
Here is one more example. Feel free to respond. On your recommendation I checked out *the 18th Brumaire* by Karl Marx. He is a good writer. Very educated. Well read. Lots of references to other writers, both ancient and modern including the Bible. (That surprised me!) He relates the struggles in the political process of anointing Napoleon III becoming emperor of France. But what surprised me was he did not support his thesis of “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.”
I didn’t read from Marx any examples of the Emperor being farcical. His opponents could not read the room to save their lives, but he seemed patient and allowed his opponents to cut their own political throats. What little I have read, his regime seemed to run France well until the Franco-Prussian War. Bismarck could read a room. An aside: Napoleon III developed kidney stones too early. Within a few years it became manageable by physicians.
One last thing to honor you. Where else in the world can you go, except to an American library and freely return a book by Karl Marx and then check out a book of his complete works by Kahil Gibran. (Apparently not Westview!) By the way, I believe it was Be Ware of Eve Hill that told me she is related to Kahil Gibran. Small world. But it is SOSF that proves America is the greatest country on the face of the Earth.
🔴Free expression now! Free expression tomorrow! Free expression forever!🟣🇺🇸
Well, until we get that science of behavioral-patterened algorithms that will one day allow us to recognize humanity as our nation, of course.
But until then, we can remember the words of one Les Moore: “USA!”
Green Luthor,
Your humor is spot on. You tie everything back to Batty so well.🤪 I applaud you! USA! USA!
“Applause is the only appreciated interruption.”
Arnold Glasow. So true.
SP:
I don’t think that Karl Marx thought that Napoleon III was farcical, merely that the circumstances which brought him to power in 1851 were, as compared to those of his uncle’s coup in 1799, which were tragic.
This is rather like the complaint of Victor Hugo, who looked at Louis Napoleon and asked whether France, simply because she had had Napoleon le Grand (the Great) now had to have Napoleon le Petit (the Small).
Hugo went into exile with this 18th Brumaire and while on the island of Guernsey published three books: *Les Miserables,* *The Toilers of the Sea* and *The Man Who Laughs.* Maybe we should thank l’Empereur for that!
(The last novel became a silent picture with Conrad Veidt and his appearance as Gwynplaine helped inspire the look of the Clown of Crime/Harlequin of Hate we know as the Joker. We can be sure that the Joker didn’t shoot Major Strasser, though, so leave him out of the round up of the usual suspects.)
Napoleon III ruled longer than Napoleon I, and amended France’s constitution to the point that, technically, the Second Empire was a constitutional monarchy by the time it fell in 1870 with the defeat at Sedan.
The first time I saw Marx’s aphorism was in a John le Carre novel called *A Small Town in Germany.* The character who invokes it then says that “it isn’t farce at all.”
That night came Arthur home, and while he climb’d,
All in a death-dumb autumn-dripping gloom,
The stairway to the hall, and look’d and saw
The great Queen’s bower was dark,—about his feet
A voice clung sobbing till he question’d it,
“What art thou?” and the voice about his feet
Sent up an answer, sobbing, “I am thy fool,
And I shall never make thee smile again.”
That’s Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Last Tournament,” the tenth of his *Idylls of the King.*
Kahlil Gibran gets a mention in Maltby & Shire’s “Life Story”:
It was a liberated marriage
We shared the household chores of course
We understood each others feelings
Right down to the day of our sensible divorce
I didn’t ask him for a penny
I’d had my liberated training
So off he went with his hair of bronze
To find a life like Khalil Gibran’s
I got my rest from the drugs he did
He got his quest,
I got the kid…
Vive la Promesse Soriale et Sans Gabelle!
Anonymous Sparrow,
1. I appreciate you clearing up my misunderstanding regarding Marx. As for Conrad Veidt, there is never a bad time to rewatch Casablanca.
2. Your mention of Victor Hugo, got me looking thru my library. Alas, I was confusing Hugo with Gustave Flaubert. I assume they are contemporaries. There is a French comic artist name of Philippe Druilett. He did some graphic novels using Flaubert’s novels and updated them into space novels. I think you would enjoy the art.
From Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer:
“But when she put her fingers into the water and pulled a marble out, it was small by comparison with those still in the glass, and unimportant, too. It was like the difference between what you long for and what you find–the difference, for instance, between Arthur’s image of war and his experience of it.”
UGH, I hate this page, it makes me KNOW stuff! Gonna go read LuAnn comments, them brings brain normal!
billthesplut,
I guess even if is to your detriment, we aim to inform.
I find Luann quite enjoyable. 😁
I like LuAnn! But–
Dude…ever go into the LuAnn comments? Crimeny. Them people are NUTS. I’ve said that before to CS commenters whining about us–“Go to LuAnn, and say ANYTHING.”
billthesplut,
“Dude…ever go into the LuAnn comments?”
No, bill, I am not that brave. I can barely handle the folks you deal with on CS. Discretion is the better part of valor. That’s why I admire you. BilltheSplut can handle anything.
SP:
Victor Hugo (1802-85) and Gustave Flaubert (1821-80) were indeed contemporaries.
If you want an example of how different they were in their approach to fiction, consider this:
Classics Illustrated adapted at least two of Hugo’s works (Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame) but never looked to Flaubert (not even Salammbo).
Apparently they could handle romanticism, but not realism.
I don’t know what Flaubert and Hugo thought of one another, but I know that Flaubert thought highly of Emile Zola and said that the death of Nana was “Michelangelesque.” He also wrote to someone who didn’t like that book as much as he did that “Nana is a colossus — a colossus with dirty feet, perhaps, but a colossus nevertheless.”
You may be there at 6:00, but Captain Renault will be there at 10:00…
(I’m only a poor corrupt official, Ricky.)
(You’re not that poor, Louis, considering that I let you win at roulette.)
Anonymous Sparrow,
“Round up the usual suspects.”
“This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Words just as true in 2024 as they were in 1942.
YES! YES! SAY IT! HE VAS MY BOYFRIEND!!!
At this point, a lot of you are probably thinking to yourselves, “Damn, BWOEH dated a guy who died in 1931? Just how old is she?” Like a Batiukverse character, I’m as old as I need to be to fit the story. Thanks for setting the model, Tom.
R.I.P. James Earl Jones
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
It also works the udder way also. You are just as young in the story as you need to be. In your case, Gibran obviously robbed the cradle. (It has somewhat gone out of style, but when you mix Gibran jokes with cow humor, you’ve got comedy gold!) Gibran horning in on the bull’s style. So, Moo-ve it over, Kahil! Gib-ran, take 2. Take 2, Gib-ran. What did the hoof say? My Khahil is killing me.
R. I. P. James Earl Jones
Wouldn’t it be more effective if the protesters just set fire to Les instead of the book store?
As seen in the beloved film, The Dicker Man.
If Batiuk had done a story like this 20 years ago, he could have portrayed the protesters opposing Fahrenheit 451 because they were confusing it with Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.
Granted, that would be a “strawman” characterization, but I’m not sure we’re going to get a much better explanation of the opposition to the Ray Bradbury book in this storyline.
Would Crankshaft have appeared in the storyline featuring Bowling for Centerville?
RE: Tuesday 9/10’s ‘Shaft: Unseen Panel Four Word Balloons:
“I’m calling 1-800-HAV-JUNK and getting all these controversial banned books out of here! They’re a fire hazard!”
“I’m calling Eugene to see if he can row all my unsold copies of Fahrenheit 451 out to the middle of a lake and dump them!”
“I’m calling that Moore teacher and telling him not to recommend my bookstore to any of his students!”
“I’m calling the book wholesaler and cancelling my orders of Gender/Queer, All Boys Aren’t Blue, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Bluest Eye, And Tango Makes Three, and Tricks! From now on I’m only stocking my murder mysteries, band director autobiographies, and Atomik Komix!”
And Lisa’s Story. You can’t forget Lisa’s Story. Now matter how hard you try.
Based on our evidence, this is just what she did. After the Great Village Booksmith Culling, her stock consisted of mostly Lisa books and Ball Four. Not very brisk sellers, but the Robbie had infinite patience to wait for customers.
Well, at least Jim Bouton’s book has some historical merit… oh, you mean Crankshaft books.
It’s Strike Four!, actually,
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Day Sixteen of the Byrnings
This is the greatest nothingburger of All Time
seriously this storyline sucks
Lillian’s going to do “the right thing”?!
She’s going to throw a trash can through the window of Montoni’s?
OK, now I’m intrigued…
Lillian is calling the Pulitzer Award committee to remind them that this prestige arc is Pulitzer worthy. /s
Lillian is calling the Pulitzer Award committee to remind them that this prestige arc is Pulitzer worthy. /s
I think that the Pulitzer Award Committee would just tell Lillian to fuck off and die
Re: today’s Crankshaft
I’m in total agreement with Lillian … with regard to the statement “I don’t care what Skip says”.
Re: the next day’s Crankshaft
However, I’m 100% opposed to her idea that making any sort of contact with Les Moore is in any conceivable way “the right thing”.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Les: Hey, Lillian! What’s up?
Lillian: THERE ARE ARSONISTS UP AT MY HOUSE! HELP MEEEEEE! (gets set alight)
Les: Tough luck, lizard! It’s not my fault that SOMEone was left behind! (smirk)
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Day Seventeen of the Byrnings
Les, you and Lillian should burn alive
Complete inaction, excessive exposition, a smirk, Les, LES.
Yep, we’re at peak TB in today’s strip.
So, last week Skip Bittman told Lillian that some Westview parents were upset the bookstore was supplying their kids with copies of a tome that the school board had banned (which, by the by, it hadn’t; it was just on the “not approved for class” list). How does she know now which school was involved and which teacher was behind the book ban end run? And why does Batiuk feel the need to explain who Lillian is, since we faithful readers have had nothing but Ms. McKenzie shoved into our faces for the past six days (as opposed to, say, a certain baseball-capped bus driver)?
I call this “Plot Omniscience.” Every character knows everything so they can direct the story where Batiuk wants it to go, even though the characters shouldn’t know these things.
One-armed Skip, who’s a very poor judge of news to start with, shows up at Lillian’s house with an overly vague description of a bookstore attack in another town (which he himself denies the importance of at one point). Somehow Lillian immediately knows it’s really about Les, and something he mentioned offhand two weeks ago. Even though (IIRC) the name of the bookstore wasn’t mentioned by Les or Skip.
One of the all time great phone-related occurrences of Plot Omniscience in this strip was in the Adeela deportation story. Wally knew Adeela was calling him even though her cell phone was “bricked” and confiscated during her apprehension by ICE and she was calling from a phone at the holding facility.
It might be nice to discover how the cartoonist feels about his latest flailing attempt at award relevance. To give his readers some insight as to what is going on, etc.
— There are no current blogs on tombatiuk dot com discussing The Burnings®. There are two blogs about the Winnipeg Blue Bombers story arc that will allegedly happen sometime next year. His latest blogs cover an old John Darling strip, and a two-word blog about an old comic book cover Batiuk thinks is “Ancient cool.” Performing a whole site search on the words “The Burnings” results in No Results Found. The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
— His Facebook page’s primary function seems to be to provide a link to the current day’s Crankshaft strip. There are no comments accompanying the links. Breaking up the monotony is a nice post about his climb up Mount Kilimanjaro with his wife, Cathy. How many years ago did that trip take place?
— The cartoonist created a YouTube channel three months ago. The channel has been dormant since he posted the first two videos. Those two videos were present the day he announced the channel. The videos are publicizing the release of The Complete Funky Winkerbean Volume 13.
— His Twitter account has been dead since the final month of Funky Winkerbean back in 2022.
That’s four channels of social media where Batiuk is not discussing The Burnings®. Wow, talk about running your prestige arc on cruise control. Even Tom Batiuk has lost interest.
For Batty, only traditional media outlets are good enough for him. Anything online is a vile cesspool of muck to be avoided at all costs. Fact is, he has no desire to learn anything new or try a different way of doing things.
That could be. TB’s interviews in print and videos seem to be controlled and well-rehearsed.
He prefers writing his blogs over social media because communication is only one-way.
His interest in social media seems shallow, much like his ersatz Atomik Komix issues.
— His Twitter account has been dead since the final month of Funky Winkerbean back in 2022.
I’m assuming that Batiuk bailed on The Website Formerly Known as Twitter after seeing how chaotic it’s gotten since October 2022
Batty lost interest in his Twitter(X) account rather quickly after initially creating his account. He never deleted his account. It’s still there.
There is some evidence to support your assumption. The Twitter(X) link on tombatiuk dot com has disappeared.
Many people here thought the person manning the account was an intern rather than TB himself, anyway.
Thanks for pointing this out, bwoeh.
Is it weird to say I was kinda relieved to learn he’s working on something that will be coming out next fall? While Crankshaft is a husk of what it was even five years ago, I still didn’t want him to quit before I was done dissecting the past plotlines I’ve been meaning to. I know Banana Jr’s been putting out posts 3-1 for me the last couple months while life’s been hectic, but I still had a lot I wanted to rant about!