The Armor-Piercing Question is the moment in a story where a character (usually the hero) asks another character (usually the villain) something that unravels their entire world. It exposes the flaw in the villain’s worldview, reveals knowledge of something the villain had tried to hide, shows them the evil of their ways in a way that will hurt them, and so on. Wreck-It Ralph has a great one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW1XX2L7g7Y
The title of this post is my Armor-Piercing Question, for this story. Why is the severity of the protestors’ crime being ignored? Not just by the story, but by the town, and by the main characters. I think this is the linchpin of why this story fails.
Yes, there are stories where the main characters can’t go to the authorities for help, because the authorities are actively helping the villains, or institutionally corrupt. This plot device is as old as Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. And, the police has shown some pretty questionable judgment. Like covering up Bull Bushka’s dubious suicide, and arresting Adeela when they wanted someone else with a similar name. But there’s no evidence of that in this story.
Why are Les and Lillian schlepping Fahrenheit 451 around town like it’s a drug, instead of asking the police to do their jobs? The arson laws in Ohio have a lot of levels, but the offscreen burning of Booksmellers was at least a felony. With an 18-month jail sentence. The burning of Lillian’s house was barely a misdemeanor. But it doesn’t matter why these “protestors” opposed Fahrenheit 451; they committed a crime, destroyed property, and endangered lives. Books aren’t even the real story here. Which leads me to my next Armor-Piercing Question:
Why don’t we know who these protestors are?
The protestors told Skip Rawlings that they committed this felony because “there were things they didn’t want their kids to see” in “a book for their literature course that the school board had banned.” That’s a very narrow qualifier, and it applies only to the parents of Les Moore’s students. Also: they told this to a journalist! Didn’t he get their names?
(Well, at least this answers one question: why Mordor Financial just let Skip walk out the door and proclaim himself owner of the Centerville paper. If they’d already sucked all the money out, and were just going to close it anyway, he’s doing their work for them.)
I’ve got more questions:
Why are the main characters so incurious about the arson?
On top of Skip being a news reporter, Lillian is a nationally-relevant writer of mysteries, and Les once solved a murder. If this story was even at the level of a bad Scooby-Doo episode, this would be a dream team for unmasking the criminals. The criminals would also be smart enough to not give media interviews. Investigating them and handing them over to the police would be far more courageous than whatever the heck Lillian thinks she’s doing here. But that’s not where Tom Batiuk wants the story to go. And there is no force in the universe that is going to push it anywhere else.
How are Lillian’s actions of any relevance, one way or the other?
Les previously announced his 100 IQ plan to circumvent the school board’s “suggestions” by telling students to go pick up the books at this unseen Booksmellers store. After the store was attacked for this very reason, Les’ brilliant strategy is to… have them go pick up the books at another store? Hey, brainiac, I think the people you’re trying to conceal your plan from have figured it out already!
Lillian’s involvement in this scheme accomplishes nothing beneficial, but sets her up for retribution from these implicitly unstoppable protestors. Which, again, is where Tom Batiuk wants the story to go, even though that makes no sense.
Related question: what is Lillian even doing that’s wrong or courageous? The book was called “banned” Saturday, which is a far cry from “can’t be ordered by a high school.” But that’s just Batiuk’s usual ham-handed imprecision. Like how Lillian’s twin bookstore assistants changed ages again Saturday.
Why has nobody noticed that Les is the entire problem here?
Les’s insistence on teaching Fahrenheit 451 been called out by his principal, annoyed protestors, caused two arson attacks, put a friend in danger, and is involved even more of his friends.
Why has it occurred to no one that Les is jousting at windmills here? That maybe this isn’t worth what it’s costing? Maybe he could teach another book, or approach the school board about the matter? But it’s What Les Wants, so all the characters get in line, no matter how stupid it is. Even Principal Nate, who has the authority to fire Les and an ironclad reason to do so, vanishes from the story.
For all we know, the restriction against Fahrenheit 451 is merely an age restriction due to vulgar language, which is reasonable and permissible. We don’t know why Les feels strongly enough to violate it, and the story hasn’t given us a justification for his behavior. The story hasn’t given the protestors a justification for their behavior either. Fahrenheit 451 is a staple of high school literature, and doesn’t even contain anything parents “wouldn’t want their kids to see”, unless they’re extremely narrow-minded.
Like the afore-mentioned bad Scooby-Doo episode, both Les and the protestors are cooking up ridiculous schemes that will just get them both caught. When simply dealing with each other would be a lot easier, and less likely to backfire.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Adeela wasn’t arrested by the Westview Police, it was ICE (i.e., federal agents).
It’s really bizarre how Skip stated unequivocally that the Booksmellers arson was done by the protesters, and then IN THE VERY NEXT STRIP, then says that there’s nothing to connect the two incidents. WHICH IS IT? Are we supposed to think that maybe the arson WASN’T because of Les? But then, why would they say it definitely WAS? And then why would Skip try to obfuscate the issue by saying it might not be? (But That’s Our Tom™: “valiantly” taking a stand and then doing everything possible to make sure you have no idea what that stand is. Bravo, Tom. Maybe you should do more “climate damage” covers for the Subterrarium.)
And I really gotta know: Booksmellers? What it up with that name? Is there some hidden meaning I’m not seeing? Why would you launch your Prestige Arc About Very Important Issues with THAT name? It’s like Batiuk was trying to completely undercut any serious tone to his story right from the start.
Seriously… Booksmellers? (And while we’re at it, HOW is “Village Booksmith” supposed to be a pun?)
I have a theory about Skip, and why he said that, which I’ll cover soon.
“The Village Booksmith” is probably a reference to the poem “The Village Blacksmith” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. (“Under a spreading chestnut-tree / The village smithy stands ….”)
It’s not much of a pun, but there are bookstores with “booksmith” in their names, so I would consider The Village Booksmith to be a relatively normal store name rather than a contrived name.
Adeela wasn’t arrested by the Westview Police, it was ICE (i.e., federal agents).
I corrected it, thank you.
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
we don’t need water, let that motherfucker burn to ashes and cheer at the demise of Lillian The Loathsome
Funny books rotted his brain. Les might as well be wearing a red onesie and running at Ridiculous Speed.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Day Twenty Four of the Byrnings
I knew it
I FUCKING KNEW IT
Lillian’s house couldn’t burn down because she’s a Mary Sue (hurls self out of window)
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Crankshaft (welcome back, Ed): What does this all mean?
Fireman: That there is no god. I mean the fact that Lillian survived the fire that YOU set.
I thought the burning stairs were at least setting up a scenario where the fire trapped Lillian inside. Batiuk couldn’t even put her in THAT much danger.
I immediately thought of you, BJr6K, my fellow improv student, when I saw the fire engine in the very next strip after the fire was shown.
It’s a classic example of not just lowering, but virtually eliminating the stakes.
We’ve all had fellow improvisors who excelled at that.
Improviser A: “Dear God! An enraged grizzly bear broke into the house looking for food, and here we are barricaded in the kitchen! Listen to him roar!”
Improvisor B: “Oh, that’s not a grizzly bear. That’s just the TV.”
Yeah, everybody hates that guy. And TB is the world’s greatest at never letting his characters face any peril or drama without backing away at lightning speed in the next strip, if not sooner.
Yes, and the characters who are supposed to suffer, suffer to ridiculous amounts. Go back and look at how huge the Point Dume fire was depicted to be. It would have consumed the entire Los Angeles metro area. But that was secondary to the important business of Les coming to terms with letting Marianne Winter watch those damned VHS tapes.
First appearance of Ed Crankshaft since August 25th.
And yesterday was probably Ed’s last non-appearance for awhile, since he has to blather about his illiteracy now.
In real life (as opposed to in a FW/CS plot that’s one looooong quarter-inch from real life), there’s no reason to assume that the arsonist is someone who was loudly protesting the book.
In fact, a smart investigator wouldn’t even assume off the bat that the fires are related. There could be two different arsonists with two different motives. Perhaps the two bookstore owners know each other, and the first set a fire to cash in on insurance. Then the second, after talking to the first, decided to do the same, knowing that this would make both fires look like the work of a serial arsonist. Things like this do happen in real life, and if you’re investigating these fires, you better have something better for the DA than, “Sue Strawman told Skipperdee she didn’t want her kids learning F451. Then there were fires at these bookstores. Indict!”
Even if the fires were done in response to F451 — and why should we assume that when no one has claimed responsibility or issued any threats? — the arsonist may not have been a protestor. Protesting is a normal and sane activity, and a socially and legally acceptable way to express your opinion, though Bats clearly thinks otherwise. Arson is none of those things. The activities are probably performed by different types of people.
Holy Highsmith, Batman! Criss Cross!
Yes, BJr6K, wouldn’t it have been nice if TB had Les explain why F451 is worth enraging the parents, the school board, the principal, and (presumably?) a violent, dangerous felon? He never even made his case to any of the involved parties.
As many here have mentioned, TB has no need or desire to give any rationale. LES SAID SO is sufficient rationale.
Years ago, I was driving through the south and I heard a jaunty song on a religious station. The lyric was “God said it, I believe it, that settles it for me.” Substitute LES for god (lowercase because of relative unimportance) and you have the ethos of the Crankerbeaniverse.
I think Batiuk’s simple minded reason for using F451 is so he/Les can make some fatuous statement that “It’s ironic that someone wants to burn books, because F451 shows why burning books is how we get oppression and fear.”
(Now, it has been years since I last read F451, but my recollection is that the society presented therein is a fairly happy one. People are content with their wall-sized TVs and their comic books, and it’s only a few rare individuals who think books should be preserved. Relying on dim memory, but the society in F451 was not a dystopia like 1984. Or at least it wasn’t to the people who lived there.)
Oh, I’m sure you’re right. Puff Batty likes thoughts that take 1.67 seconds to complete, and refuses to think any further than that even if the 1.67 second thought doesn’t make any sense or is full of contradictions.
“Book burning is bad. There are lots of bad people in this country, and all of them happen to disagree with me. And since they’re bad, they probably burn books.
“I know! I’ll do a strip that comes out against bad people. That’ll reaffirm how good a person I am, and I should certainly get awards for being a good person.
“Fahrenheit 451 is about book burning, or so I’m told. I’ll have the book burners burn that. What a twist!
[holds up mirror to face] “You’re one of the good ones, Tommy! Yessir, a good one. That’s you, Tom! Here’s your Pulitzer, Tom, and sorry it took so long!”
It’s the same kind of cheap irony that gave us the amputated music prodigy, the deaf conductor, and the fumbled ashes at the one yard line. But he never does anything with it. This ironic situation exists, and that’s it. He doesn’t even try.
My post mentioned Wreck-It Ralph. The scene where Vanellope gives Ralph the medal was gut-wrenching. She just handed Ralph what he’d been chasing the whole movie. Not just a medal, but a real one, for genuinely becoming a good guy. When he has to destroy it all, and become the bad guy again. Maybe that’s cheap irony too, but it’s well-written and executed.
That’s odd. When I clicked on your WIR link, it showed Ralph torturing some cough medicine. Could be that YouTube’s hyper-aggressive ad policy is causing some glitches.
No, that link was for the scene I meant in the OP, as an example of Armor Piercing Question. The medal thing was a different scene.
I think society was generally happy, but mind numbingly so. It has also been a while since I’ve read the book, but I seem to recall Guy Montag’s wife doing nothing all day except watching whatever was on their giant screens in their house. And when people visited, they just all sat around and talked about what was on the screens. In that society, most people probably didn’t care about books or what was in them. But the ones who still owned books or dared to even quote from them got their houses burned down. That part is definitely dystopian-maybe not as much 1984 but it’s up there!
Happiness is subjective. The people in F451 were happy because they didn’t have to think, and that made them feel free from duty, or oppression. They had a reality that calmed them and made them feel important.
Much like the people one might see today who wander from aisle to aisle staring at their phones.
I didn’t say it was a good reality, or an ideal reality, but it was a reality in which its denizens were content.
That’s not always a good thing, mind…but we’ve extended beyond Batiuk’s thought processes so I’m going to say good night. And thank you for your thoughts.
Maybe Les should have looked to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, in which Lenina Crowne* tells Bernard Marx that “everybody’s happy nowadays.”**
That has women delighted to be called “pneumatic” and free love, with people born in test tubes. Oh, my, would that be more apt to create controversy than the pleasure Guy Montag initially took in seeing paper burn.***
*
There’s a 1980 TV version of the book. Lenina’s last name is “Disney” in it. I don’t remember thinking much of it.
The “CBS Radio Workshop” did an excellent adaptation of it in 1956, which the author providing the narration.
Aldous Huxley died on November 22, 1963, as did John Kennedy and C.S. Lewis. Friends and family called Kennedy and Lewis “Jack,” but the only nickname I can find for Huxley was “Ogie,” which was short for “Ogre.” (The nickname for poet Robert Lowell was “Cal.” That derived from Caligula, the third Roman Emperor, and from Caliban of Shakespeare’s *Tempest.*)
**
Which gave Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks the inspiration for the song “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays.”
***
While Samuel Butler’s *Erewhon Revisited* is a sequel to his earlier *Erewhon,* Huxley’s *Brave New World Revisited* is not a sequel to his earlier work. Rather, it’s an essay saying that things have gotten worse in quarter century since the publication of *Brave New World,* and that we might not have to wait until 632 A.F. to begin reaching for the soma.
I appreciate your thoughts as well! Your comparison to people today wandering with their eyes on their phones is an example of why F451 still resonates with me. Some of the book’s ideas are still relevant, which Les could have mentioned if he truly wanted to defend his choice of teaching an unapproved text.
Well, Montag’s wife does attempt suicide by an overdose, so the happiness is implied to be superficial at best and a facade at worst.
Sort of like “that old-time religion,” which is good enough for Les Moore, and it’s good enough for me…
Mrs. O’Leary’s cow must’ve moved east.
Mrs. O’Leary’s cow was actually Superboy’s dog Krypto, a victim of Red Kryptonite.
Some may say we’re no closer to knowing who the arsonist is. Ah, but Puff Batty is a master of the arcane literary art known as “foreshadowing.”
Ladies and gents, the firebug:
Possibly with a partner; we never did figure out if the Subterrarium was trying to stop the fire or if he caused it, after all:
Good point. If you rip up a working oil refinery, you’re gonna cause one hell of a fire. Thanks for nothing, Slaughteranian.
And did we ever figure out whether the “Bowles of the Earth” referred to Sally Bowles, the character from Cabaret, or Paul Bowles, the author of The Sheltering Sky? That wacky Batty and his obscure references!
To everyone’s non-surprise, the fireman revived in record time because Ed’s street is under his constant watch. Bad planning on the arsonist(s) part, didn’t know where or who they were dealing with.
Also correct me if I’m wrong, but is that the Crankshaft’s somewhat-stuck up neighbors the Lamberts making a cameo in the first panel today… except the syndicate colorists had no frame of reference for them and assumed they were a different ethnicity entirely? That’s a pretty big blunder unless we want to assume that retroactive skin tone change is game for the strip now. This could count for the Continuity Snarl bingo square!
Oh, as I was double-checking the neighbor’s names, seems like we finally DO have a Funkyverse wiki in the making! Seems that csroberto2854 has been laying the groundwork for a proper database for things; wonder how far it’ll bloom.
I would say the Shining Twins already filled in the Continuity Snarl box; have they EVER appeared at their Funky ages in Crankshaft before? Either way, the last time we saw them (which wasn’t that long ago), they were still their pre-Act III ages, so… yeah, I’d say it counts.
Well, CauCayla went from black to… ? … to white, and Davis has restored her original skin color, though not her afro.
It’s tempting to attribute CauCayla’s Caucasiafication to racism — “I got my back-pats for Les romancing a black woman, now I can slowly make her white and no one will be the wiser, bwah-ha-ha-ha.” But I think it was more just a case of regression to the mean — the mean in this case being a Bland Potato Woman. Every female in the strip slowly turned into stocky, boring Holly Winkerbean. Adeela wasn’t immune either. At least she didn’t get disappeared like Roland and Junebug.
(The only one to escape Bland Potato Woman syndrome was, of course, Ms Forever 21 herself, the ageless Cindy Winkerbeane-Jarre.)
RE: Wednesday’s word balloon “…You’re lucky that you happen to live next to your neighbor Ed Crankshaft!”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t most–if not all–people live next to their neighbors? It may be an adjoining house or apartment, it may be another farm a quarter-mile down the road, but that’s what makes them neighbors! Wouldn’t a simple “You’re lucky that you live next door to Ed Crankshaft” have sufficed?
What, being considered “lucky” to live next door to Ed Crankshaft isn’t enough of an anomaly for you?
But this being Batiuk, I suppose we should be thankful we didn’t get “You’re lucky that you happen to live next to your neighbor standing right there named Ed Crankshaft, a local bus driver who is noted for blowing up his gas grill a lot, which is why we know him so well! Us being firemen and all.”
OMG this arc is so, so dumb.
It’s obvious that, while Tom Batiuk no doubt thinks Fahrenheit 451 is a brilliantly ironic choice of book to be the focus of his “book banning” storyline, he can’t actually imagine a specific reason anyone could give for wanting to ban it, nor can he imagine a type of person who could be driven to incendiary outrage by the thought of high school kids reading it. This is why, though we’ve been told the book is on the school’s “not approved” list, we haven’t been given any inkling as to why it’s “not approved”, nor have we been shown any of the presumed opposition to Les’s scheme. Skip Rawlings has told us in the vaguest possible way that there are some protesters protesting somewhere, but we don’t actually get to see them or hear what they’re saying. No angry pundits ranting on the news, no vicious social media posts, no concerned parents screaming “PROTECT OUR KIDS FROM THIS FILTH”, none of the stuff that would be front and centre in any remotely plausible story whose aim was to show how outrage over students being exposed to a controversial book could eventually escalate to people setting fires.
What Batiuk has done here is to create a straw man so flimsy that he won’t even let us see it; he’s keeping the straw man locked up in a cupboard, so to speak, and telling us “there’s a terrible, fierce bad guy in that cupboard!”
Of course this is typical of Batiuk’s approach whenever he decides to tackle a “controversial” issue – by being so mealy-mouthed and evasive about the actual nature of the controversy itself that his treatment of it becomes pointless. We had the “gay kids go to the prom as a couple” storyline where the gay kids themselves were invisible. We had the “racial profiling” storyline where nobody mentioned race. And now we have the “book banning” storyline where we don’t get to hear or see who it is that actually wants to ban the book or why, and it’s all about a book that isn’t even particularly controversial anyway.
To be fair, recent history has show us that you don’t need a “reason” to ban a book from schoolkids or the local library. Hell, our current governor GOT ELECTED promising to ban “woke” books, starting with Toni Morrison… If enough people bitch and moan loudly enough, the local politicians and school boards tend to fold.
Case in point:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/28/virginia-frequent-school-book-challenger-spotsylvania/
Also, in 2024 the Roberta Blackburns of the world cut out the middleman by getting themselves elected to the school board.
Book banning has little to do with actual books; it’s really just a proxy war for the cultural struggle that’s going on. People are trying to impose their ideas of what’s appropriate for our children and what isn’t on everybody else.
The reason that all his “controversial” stories are so weak is because they’re all just presented to show how Batiuk’s “hero” characters are good and pure and fighting the good fight.
The prestige “controversial” arcs could be about raisins on pizza and not one word would have to be changed.
CORRECTION: Arson is and always has been legal in Northern Ahia… The mere fact that Eduard Krankenschaaften remains a free man (Not to mention Holly the flaming baton twirler) is all the proof I need…
Hell, he probably set this fire by using an industrial flamethrower to blow some leaves away or some bullshit…
It amuses me endlessly that Batty has chosen to center his story on what most people would classify as a safe and uncontroversial book. He wants to appear courageous, but as usual he’s not taking any real risks. Weak stand equals weak story. I think readers of that other online community are slowly coming to grips that Batiuk’s tale lacks substance, as well as not making much sense. Alas, Batiuk Defenders, “the Emperor has no clothes”. We’ve been pointing that out for weeks because we knew the product would never match the bluster.
Batty’s “epic for the ages” has been slow to develop. Now that the fire at the Village Booksmith has occurred, I fully expect Batty to start laying it on thick. Probably with a sturdy muck shovel.
———————————
Here’s an idea just for giggles.
The most influential individuals in Westview and Centerville are members of the writing class, meaning those who have either authored a book or have experience in the comic book industry. Notable writers include Best Actress Award Winner Les Moore, Harry Dinkle, Lillian McKenzie, Mopey Pete Reynolds/Roberts, Holly Winkerbean, and many others. Individuals who have not written a book or worked in the comic book industry are treated as second-class citizens.
I suggest Fahrenheit 451 is not approved by the school because it was written by an outsider. Not written by a Westviewian or a Centervillean. Books like Murder at the Bookstore, Drums Along the Sideline, Singed Hair, or even (gag choke) Lisa’s Story are on the “Approved” list. Anything not appearing on the “Approved” list is not approved.
The person setting the fires is one of the communities writing class snobs. I say we give Best Actress Award Winner Les Moore, Harry Dinkle, and Lillian McKenzie the electric chair just to be safe. Let God sort it out.
In actuality, I vote Batty will never reveal who the arsonist was.
I suppose we can include newspaper writers like Skip Rawlings into the writing class. Batty seems to like newspaper writers.
Great angle. Tie the book-burnings into the authorial nature of the Funkyverse.
I’ve enjoyed all the theories as to the arsonist’s identity. I especially enjoyed Drake of Life’s choice of Nate Green because I love the idea that someone is out to get Les. Given that we’ve not actually seen any protesters, and that the only common denominator between the two incidents is Les, it’s quite plausible that this is a personal vendetta against him.
My vote is for Susan Smith-the former Westview teacher last seen not jumping off a bridge after speaking to Crankshaft. As much as I want her well-adjusted and living happily far away from Westview, I’m going to run with this theory for a moment. Banana Jr asks why no one notices that Les is the entire problem. Well, after getting a lot of therapy, Susan realizes exactly that. She resigned over a relatively minor incident, yet Les stood there while she packed her stuff and left. Didn’t stand up for her, didn’t even say a kind word about her the staff. Her own insecurities at the time did not allow her to see Les what he really is. But now it’s clear, and Les must be stopped from another semester of showing contempt for his students and showing self-centered smugness to everyone else around him.
In my head, Susan does not really want to harm books. We don’t really know the extent of the damage of the first store, other than closing for a few days which means it did not burn to the ground. And the second fire was set on the bottom step of a stairwell as opposed to the actual building, so that tells me she’s not intending to do harm. Her message is simple, “I will make fire until you fire that idiot.”
I know, I know, it’s dark, but if we’re going to make it about Les, then let’s really make it about Les!
I love this idea too.
Too bad this can’t be true. If it was Susan Smith, we’d be more likely to see something of Best Actress Award Winner Les Moore’s burn.
Wouldn’t it be great to see BAAW Les Moore leave the school after a long day only to discover his car burnt to an unrecognizable crisp?
You folks seemed to have fun with the villain ideas on the last blog. Here’s one I’m sure nobody ever thought of.
For your consideration, Bernie Silver.
Bernie is upset and out for vengeance because Best Actress Award Winner Les Moore poo-pooed Bernie’s nomination of Fahrenheit 451 as the book to be covered in class last year.
Bernie Silver: I wanted the class to cover ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ a classic science fiction novel last year. Instead, we had to read Mr. Moore’s choice of ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles.’ A social novel. Bleah! Then to pour salt in the wound, he covers the book I wanted the following year. I hate you, Mr. Moore. You @#$% up the whole class for me. If my class wasn’t able to cover ‘Fahrenheit 451’, neither will this class. I will destroy every copy that Mr. Moore orders!
This might also explain why the arsonist only poured gasoline at the base of the stairs. To little Bernie, those gas cans would be heavy!
Cheer up, Bernie. It’s all over now.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Day Twenty Five of the Byrnings/Day Two of Proof That There Is No God
Let’s hope the arsonists come finish what they started and just napalm the fuck out of Lillian’s house and bookstore
Today the gang listlessly recite some sledgehammer-subtle Afterschool Special messaging about Book Burning and Climate Damage Are Bad M’kay.
Not shown:
Pam: “Fascinating palaver, but not a book has been burned in either fire.”
LizLil: “Ah, there’s where you’re wrong! The stairs are made of compressed books, and see there? No, look closer. Right there, see? No, get a little closer — right…. there, that little spot? It was singed. BOOKS HAVE BEEN BURNED OH MY GOD THE NAZIS THEY ARE COMING THEY ARE HERE HELP HELP”
Pam: “Compressed books? I don’t understand. How and why would you make a staircase out of compressed –“
LizLil: “Why my dear, the entire house is made of compressed books! All of our houses are! Even Montoni’s pizza is made of books, shredded books! Montoni’s itself is made from hundreds of thousands of books!”
Les: “I too am made of books!” [Les rips off latex mask and falls into a pile of books mixed with clothes]
Ed: “We are ALL made of books, Pam. Your husband too, he is made of hardback comix omnibuses.”
Jff: “Do not resist, Pam. Look at your hand.”
Pam looks at the palm of her right hand and sees it swimming with 12 point Times New Roman type. As she tries to make out what it says, she sees Ed setting fire to a pile of books a few feet away.
Pam: “What are you doing, Dad? I thought Book Burning Is Bad M’kay!”
Ed: “It’s okay if they’re bad-guys books. We’re the good guys and it’s good if the good guys burn bad-guys books.”
Pam squints at the books and can just barely make out the spine as they burst into flame. The author is a famous politician. A bad-guy one. Pam smiles. These books are dangerous and wicked. It is right to destroy them. She looks at her palm and now she can read the type. It says, “Lisa would have liked this.”
The last story in the last issue of Tales from the Crypt* is Graham Ingels’s “Tatter Up!” Here’s a synopsis:
A man is murdered by a creature made out of old rags in retaliation for killing the woman who was kind to the rag creature.
“I knew she could never love…a ragman!” the creature declares as he murders Tony Barrett.
Well, maybe not this one. DC’s Rory Regan, maybe…
*
Which would have been the first issue of The Crypt of Terror, but not all the power of David Pace Wigransky could keep the CCA from coming in…
Everybody, keep your story and suspect ideas coming. I’m going to compile them into a sort of fanfiction story.
I’ll work in my Bingo board theory, so to speak: It’s all part of Holtron’s grand plan to retake control of the narrative of the future and his own life. Growing vengance against Westview for reducing him to a Montoni’s phone when he was once the life and terror of the party at Westview High, he’s slowly rebuilding himself and aiming to screw with the worst of the town, starting with the most punchable face and his desire to promote books that warn against wasting hours watching 3D reality TV.
And if that doesn’t work, just send a message to his past self in the 80s to sabotage Chester’s comic collection and warn Lisa away from her date rape along with some early cancer screening recommendations.
Jeff has me thinking… just where was Crankshaft on the night the library of Alexandria burned?
Not helping Dave and Horatio try to save it, that’s for sure!*
*
You’ll find the full story in Nexus No. 27 from First Comics. Ja, vootie and I think you spell it klacktovedesteen…
klacktovedesteen?!
Here’s who I think are suspects in the Byrnings
Phil the Forecaster — he has a grudge against books, or anything that reduces TV viewing
Mitchell Knox, the John Darling Who Was Murdered fanboy — is trying to destroy all copies of Fallen Star, which is competition for his upcoming 3-volume John Darling unauthorized bio, Who Really Murdered John Darling, Who Was Murdered?
Funky Winkerbean — Revenge for being written out of the Funkyverse
The Green Pitcher — along with his confederate, Cory’s Rag, has always been a little-suspected malign influence. Gave Lisa cancer, turned Tony Montoni into a ghost, etc. Now sets fires via satanic telekinesis
Holtron — hates dead-tree media, plans to ensure it becomes a thing of the past
Benjamin Moore Paint Company (no relation) — trying to make year-end estimates by making sure various bookstores need just a lick or two of paint to fully restore their “severely burned” entrances
The Robbie — wants to hasten the dawning of the era when he can sit unmoving for decades, one status light flashing endlessly, manning the till in the Village Booksmith, waiting for just one sucker to show interest in Lisa’s Story
…But who are we kidding? We know who is ultimately behind everything that happens:
TimeMop — nudging us all, conflagration by conflagration, into the glorious future wherein he can fully manifest the “science of behavioral-patterned algorithms that will one day allow us to recognize humanity as our nation.” Yes, many will be burned. Yes, the Earth will be scorched from pole to pole. Yes, there will be extinctions. Yes, billions will die in the flames, crying out to their Creator in terror and agony. But you gotta break some eggs to make an omelette.
Jeez, Drake. How ’bout leaving some for the rest of us?
🤣
My money is on Timemop, The Rather Elegant Solution. He needed to set those fires so that history could go in the right direction.
I can’t be that guy. He burned down half of Los Angeles without even trying.
An he’s still chasing that thrill.
Wow… And today there’s only cosmetic damage at best to the stairway and garage door? What kind of half-assed amateur hour arsonist is this? Either Batiuk has zero fucking idea how fire works (as evidenced by that time the apartment above Montoni’s burned, or that other time when everything in Southern California between Santa Barbara and Carlsbad caught on fire and nobody died), **OR** there’s a city ordinance in Centreville that requires all residents to 100% fireproof the exterior of their homes, which is also known as the Krankenschaaften Law…
I would think that living next door to Crankshaft would have prompted Lillian to fireproof her house and bookstore even without a law requiring her to do so. Or, at least, her homeowner’s insurance company would have required her to do so in order to renew her policy.
Or at least upgrade the more flammable parts of her house. Not that it was a problem in this case. Or any of the times Crankshaft started an inferno. Her wood house/unlicensed business next to Crankshaft is completely uninsurable, but that’s not a problem either. She’s got the best insurance of all: being a preferred character in the Funkyverse.
I would like the arsonist to be…every single character Tom Batiuk has ever created. They can all be arrested and thrown in prison where they will stay until they begin rotting.
I like it! Now do that, and combine Seinfeld’s last episode with Survivor (or at least what a show that calls itself Survivor should be) at that point. They’re all thrown in one single cell, and the number of rations decreases by one every day. Last man standing wins.
That’s another great story idea. Survivor: Westview. Les never gets voted off because he has the Immunity Lisa.
As I said on ArcaMax, we at least get to see who wrecks things in For Better Or For Worse…..and the grade schooler gets better crap to ask like why they call it manKIND. What’s more, the Patterson family aren’t looking to cause trouble like Les is. John thinks it’s okay to leave stuff outside on Hell Night because he’s a kid from farm country, not a goof being a law unto himself.
Stay with me here…
Bookstores routinely order and pay for a large quantity of books at a publisher’s discount (typically up to 45% or so), selling them at the publisher’s listed full price to make their profit. They can later return any unsold, undamaged copies to the publisher for a full refund of the discounted price.
Of course, that means that bookstores are, in the end, liable to pay publishers not just for books sold, but also for any books that are stolen, lost, damaged — or even burned — while in the bookstore’s possession.
Follow me closely now. Harry Dinkle’s his own publisher…
Any copies of a book that a bookstore can’t return, for whatever reason? The publisher won’t issue a refund for the unreturned book.
Right. Now, do you really think anybody is buying copies of Harry’s stupid autobiography? But if Harry can get dozens, nay hundreds, of copies of his work into bookstores throughout Ohio, the bookstores will pay for them.
And Harry can keep every dime he’s been paid — if he can then just burn all those books without getting caught….
And what’s more, he has a band mom he hates as a ready-made scapegoat.
So now Lillian refuses to close her bookstore, even though the stairs are damaged from fire and an unknown liquid. If next week is someone falling through and suing Lillian into a ball of dirt, I’ll forgive this arc.
What? A PUBLISHED AUTHOR with BOOK SIGNINGS ALL THE TIME suffering the consequences of their actions? What are you smoking, whatever Pam had 3 spliffs of in 9/20’s last panel? Lillian basically killed her own sister for [reasons] and she just gets rewarded. Les has almost caused 2 women to commit suicide, and he’s God Emperor of Westview.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Day Twenty Six of the Byrnings/Day Three Of Proof That There Is No God
Ed: It’d be a shame if another fire started at your house, Lillian. (holds up gas tank with a sinister grin)
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Lillian is such a tool, she believes that staying open means that no arsonists are going to torch it again
Meanwhile in Marvin
Jeff Miller: Some fat asshole from Centerville taught me to explode grills real good
Just realized that Skipperdee Rawlings seems real hard up for news. Not surprising, since he lives in a town so sleepy that the reminisces of Batton Thomas, which have been approved by the FDA for use as general anesthesia, are considered “newsworthy.”
Setting some fires would be just up his alley:
— make some “news” and then get a “scoop”
— take him back to the good ol’ days of ’68 and all the righteous fun of riots and “burn baby burn”
— make some kind of smug, half-baked point about how people who don’t agree with him about what books are appropriate for kids are all evil, Nazis, etc
— get to smirk as he watches other people suffer
— increase the tension in the town since no one really knows who is setting the fires or why — anxious people consume more news, which means the circulation of the Centerville Sentinel could potentially soar into the three digits
— escape prosecution even if detected because the only actual damage is a little singed grass and smoke-stained stairs
This is part of my afore-mentioned theory about Skip Rawlings’ role in the burnings. (No more capital letters, as the story has proven itself unworthy of proper noun status.)
I just couldn’t resist a little Skip-hate in the morning. Gets the blood going.
THANOS, the Infinity Glove finally complete: “NOW I can make the Universe—BALANCED!” Raises Glove, and with a mighty Smirk, changes the channel. “Oh, ESPN, cool. Canadian football!” He proceeds to eat Cheetos with his Glove, because now he won’t get orange dust on his fingers.
(NEXT DAY) Captain America: “Well, that fight to save the Universe was cool! Too bad we didn’t show it!” (eats Cheetos; smirks) The MCU, as written by Tom.
I deeply apologize for this.
(Hey, if Marvin is going to start making jokes about the fire department having to respond to barbecues, Crankshaft can start doing the scatological jokes, right?)
Batiuk will never reveal the identity of the arsonist. To do so would require him to create a character that thinks differently than he does. And he cannot do that. He cannot conceive of an argument in which there are two sides. Because for him there aren’t two sides. There are the righteous, and there are the unthinking who oppose everything Batiuk holds because that’s all they can do, being puppets.
Nooo, you see? It’s about the enigmatic danger hiding inside everyday America that can never truly be caught, and the identity doesn’t matter of! That’s why we saw the post office bombing of Westview as a vague statement of terrorism against the common man in an ineffectual anti-government move and the suspect was never caught, it doesn’t matter who did it, all that matters is that ignorance and hysteria is being fanned into unjust cruelty upon ourselves and we need to STAND UP and be brave and turn off the pundit radios/podcasts!
/s
Crankshaft (comic strip)
____________
Crankshaft is an American comic strip feature created by Tom Batiuk. The strip itself is about a red-jacketed man (the titular “Crankshaft”) who simply stands there and says nothing while tedious events surround him.
The appeal of the strip is multilayered, in that the audience is invited to marvel not just at the complete superfluousness of the Crankshaft character, but also at the inane and frequently tiresome events at which Crankshaft appears. Cultural critic Yelberton Knott has noted that: “Crankshaft’s unblinking, uncaring, and soulless reactions turn the idea of his superfluousness on its head. He is reacting to the stagnancy of the ‘plot’ he finds himself in with the same contemptuous indifference of the reading audience. By refusing to comment on the idiocy of the emotionally stunted world he lives in, Crankshaft then becomes the comment — and thus the only participant worthy of being the title character.”
Note that there are reports that earlier in the strip’s run, the Crankshaft character was somewhat more active and even spoke dialogue. That was so long ago, however, that no one remembers … and frankly, given the strip’s quality, no-one really wants to go back and check.
So that’s why the strip is called “Crankshaft”! I thought it was some obscure reference to cars that had been lost to time, like the title “Gasoline Alley,” which seldom shows either gasoline or alleys.
I’ll have to keep an eye out for cameos of this “Crankshaft” guy. Maybe we’ll see him again in the coming months. Thanks for the tip!
Today’s thing:
I’m going to keep the safety hazard as a memorial of the arson.
Well, if you ever needed proof that the bitch set the fires herself, Saturday’s strip is it. No real damage, but she gets to look like a tragically oppressed victim, the last sane person in a world gone mad, the only one brave enough to stand up to the Forces of Evil. Come to think of it, isn’t that Skip’s schtick too?
I’m not enjoying this glimpse into what I assume is the darker recesses of TB’s mind.
Tomorrow: LizLil sets up the Centerville Censorship Museum. Come contemplate the horrors of persecution! School discounts available. Tours at 2 and 4 daily. Don’t forget to visit the “gift shoppe” on the way out! It’s just up the Oppression Memorial Staircase and on your right.
So, a fireball that the ISS could probably see from orbit only caused superficial damage to the steps, garage, and sign?
So, there’s no police tape indicating an ongoing investigation into an obvious case of arson? Could none of the firemen smell the accelerant?
So, Lillian knows of at least two cases of arson associated with the assigned book. Does she have no problem handing out the book, knowing she may put the young students in danger?
So, did Best Actress Award Winner Les Moore not mention the Booksmeller arson to his class? Are the students unaware of the Booksmeller fire? Did he explain to his class the reason for the change in the book’s pickup location? Did none of the students wonder why they have to travel to another municipality to pick up the book?
So, are students going to retrieve their copies of ‘Fahrenheit 451’ without asking any questions about what happened to Lillian’s property?
So, knowing the arson damage is related to the book, will students still be willing to take the book home with them?
So, parents are going to let their kids read the book and attend the class despite what has happened?
So, is this Swiss cheese of a story worthy of all of Batty’s hype?
Seems like a lot of “bravery,” negligence, and not a lot of common sense. Batty’s quarter inch from reality may as well be a massive ditch.
DO NOT PASS GO. DO NOT COLLECT $̸2̸0̸0̸ A PULITZER.