Testimony Of Arson Investigator

77 thoughts on “Testimony Of Arson Investigator”

1. May heaven protect us from those who know all they need to know… about anything.

   But alas, we have not been protected from Tom Batiuk… a matter of considerable theological debate I would think.

   This Robbie Robertson quote might have served this story concept pretty well… had it actually been used to make the point about ignorance it originally did in a Spider-Man comic instead of appearing simply to assign a smirk-eliciting faux profundity to the hobby and profession of TB.

   1. BTS:

      So it is an actual quotation from Stan Lee? The fact that Pete said Spectacular and not Amazing made me have my doubts, as the only Spectacular tales Lee wrote featuring Spidey were in the over-sized 1968 books. The comic-book using that adjective didn’t begin appearing until several years after he’d stopped scripting.

      While others stand in line, I hang my head in shame…and confess that trying to read “Lo, This Monster” early on a Sunday morning is not a good idea.

      (Gerry Conway used this story for a three-parter in Amazing #116-18. It had color. The original story didn’t, so it was odd to find Mary Jane Watson wondering whether whether Richard Raleigh liked brunettes when she’s a redhead everywhere else. Also in that, James predicted a Goldwater landslide, which Gerry Conway would make a Humphrey landslide.)

      For what it’s worth, if Crankshaft runs much longer, I suspect that Lillian will become very knowledgeable about comics. She’ll know about Spider-Man’s battle with the Master Planner, the Swamp Thing’s discovery that he’s an Earth Elemental and not Alec Holland, the growth and decline of MAD and, of course, that Barry Allen journeyed to Earth-Two to meet Jay Garrick in The Flash #123.

      After all who would have thought that she would know about Ray Bradbury?

      1. Correction:

         “James” should be “Jameson,” as in “J Jonah Jameson.”

2. It only makes the sense it does when you remember that Batiuk views himself as being bullied by anyone who disagrees with his superficial understanding of the world.

3. The infamous Batman TV show essay is a textbook example of someone who already knows all they need to know.

   https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/match-to-flame-73/

   Plus the degree of intellectual stuntedness on display here. Stan Lee is the only author two-thirds of the huge cast has ever heard of. Many of them are somehow elite authors themselves, despite having no interest in writing or literature.

   The entire point of Batiuk’s magnum opus was to “tell Lisa’s story correctly”. Which in practice meant “bend over backwards to appease Les, even though he never tells you what correct means, or what you’re doing wrong.” It was a course in Passive-Aggressive Manipulation 101.

   And it’s not just Les. Even the supposed good guys in this story are too blind to see that there might be good reasons to oppose books. These are all church-going Christians, but it never occurs to them that the depiction of Bible burning might offend one of their own. Plus the many more extreme examples others have given.

   1. Out of curiosity, as I rarely look at Tom’s blog… does he ever write anything for it, or are all the entries just reprints of his “book” intros?

      1. Nothing worthwhile, really. Occasionally there’s a bit of intel on an upcoming story, but no hilariously non-self-aware screeds like the Batman one. It’s mostly just John Darling reruns, book promos, and comic book covers.

         1. And the anti-Batman rant was from one of his books.

            1. Yeah, that’s what prompted me to ask.

               There’s something a bit… odd… about his getting so worked up about the Batman TV show. I mean, we’ve all seen movies or TV series made from books we’ve liked, and sometimes thought, yeah, they sure missed the point in the adaptation. And then we get on with our lives. What makes DC Comics’ Batman such a sacred text that turning it into a campy but fun TV series seems to have scarred Batiuk for life?

            2. Because 18-year-old Tom Batiuk already knew everything he needed to know.

            3. This is what puzzles me. My degree in Batmanology is hopelessly out of date, but my sense is that the Batman of the 60’s was the silliest and campiest he has ever been. Why Batiuk expected anything different is a mystery. “Let’s put on a TV show, but–get this–instead of the current Batman craze for the “Rainbow Batman” or the “Zebra Batman”–what if we took him back to his dark roots and put that on prime time?”
               “But Batman never really had dark roots. He was always kind of, well, silly.”
               GLOWER “Indeed, sir! Perhaps we have nothing further to discuss! In the meantime, fetch me that chair–my back is extremely delicate today.”

            4. Lord knows Batiuk won’t tell you why he hated that Batman TV show so much. He drones on for pages about things, but when it’s over you still don’t have the most basic information. He just thinks the “right” and “wrong” things are self-evident.

               Classic Batman TV show, lovably campy, fondly remembered, paved the way for comic book crossover media, and full of great actors like Burgess Meredith? Wrong. Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Luigi’s crappy pizza? Right. All with a tone of “can’t you see these things yourself, you dummy?”

            5. Batiuk doesn’t write thoughts. He writes blurbs. Negative or positive, all his writing is blurbs.

            6. Theory: Threatened by the prominent presence of sexy women, and the reaction of his fellow college guys to them? The Batman TV show was well-supplied with bombshells in tight outfits.

               “That’s the WRONG way to enjoy Batman, guise! That’s the WRONG way to get your molecules rearranged! It’s not SERIOUS enough!”

            7. BJ6K: Because 18-year-old Tom Batiuk already knew everything he needed to know.

               Ah, that explains much. I was a few months shy of my thirteenth birthday, just starting high school, when the Batman TV show premiered. I obviously didn’t yet know enough to understand why it was blasphemy.

               I remember it being amusing, maybe a bit silly, but worth going back to see each week. But we still had a black-and-white TV in those days. Maybe I would have understood what was wrong with the show if I could have seen it in garish color.

               Nah.

               Meanwhile, today Lillian narrates the audiobook version of Davis’s artwork. In case you’re getting the strip over a dial-up with narration and no pictures.

            8. Batman was at his silliest in the 50s and early 60s, but an effort was being made to make him a more serious character (not to the level that you’d get in the 80s, with Frank Miller and the death of Jason Todd and whatnot, but still…), starting with the “new look” Batman in 1964. (When they added the yellow oval to the bat-symbol.) So I suppose I could see one as thinking the TV show was going to take the character back to the silliness the comics were, at the time, trying to get away from, but honestly, even the show was far less goofy than “Zebra Batman” and “Rainbow Batman” and “Bat-Baby” and “Knight Batman” and “Kilt Batman” and… well, you get the point. So even if the comics became sillier to match the show, it’d still be an improvement over the pre-“new look” days.

   2. Has TB written anything about the Marvel or DC television or cinematic universes?

      I’d certainly expect him to have strong opinions on the TV or film incarnations of the Flash, but I don’t recall a peep.

      Why the fury about the 1966 show, but no opinions at all about the Batman films or the Joker films?

      Downright odd, honestly.

      Am I missing something?

4. Today’s Funky Crankerbean

   Day Fifty of the Byrnings

   What does Stan Lee have to do with any of this

5. Could a Booksmellers employee, sick and tired of having to maintain the store’s “Les Moore” section, have deliberately used a defective heater?

   1. If they did, they got away undetected. It seems like it would be hard to stage an equipment short leading to a fire, anyway.

6. +1 for “Blaise Ashcomb”!

   Wonder if we’ll hear from “the local media”? If they’re grilled in open court, they might have to reveal their big trade secret — when a story hits, immediately (but slowly) amble over to a town miles away, and casually interview someone who hasn’t heard about the story and has no connection to it.

   1. I also would like to give massive kudos to ‘Blaise Ashcomb’. A punny name so clever and unbearable Batiuk’s past self is gnashing his temporally displaced teeth in jealousy.

7. Working on a thing late night and checking in on today’s Funkyshaft, and… generic autumn nostalgia. Guess that means one thing:

   

   I could spend effort editing Patchy the Pirate’s “THAT’S IT?!” reaction as a response, but frankly half of us saw this coming, despite the pretenses. Maybe we’re wrong, maybe this is the epilogue week as Tuesday deals with more fallout, but I wouldn’t count on it.

   I’ll have more collective retrospective thoughts and a followup on my Bingo board tomorrow or later.

   1. Yeah, this story feels like it’s twitching slightly. Les hasn’t shown up to take a victory lap yet. I think it’s more likely that it will continue next week, rather than on Tuesday. The puff pieces said only that it runs “through October”, which leaves the week of Oct 21-27. Though that would seem to be Pizza Box Monster Week, if we’re going to have that at all.

   2. Today’s strip brought that exact same image to my mind. Kudos!

      1. For me it was more Frodo standing on the slopes of Mt. Doom crying that “It’s done.”

         I mean, we’re still in a lava soaked hellscape of choking hot air and barren rock slowly melting into sludge…but at least the arc’s over.

         1. “…but at least the arc’s over.”

            But is it? Skip the Dip’s interminable interview with Bottom Thomas could come back. “And, Heroic Author, how did this non-event affect YOU, as an Heroic Author?”

            “Well, in 1962, the Flash got like SUPER-CHONKY–My molecules stood in line!”

8. So to sum up…

   Les decides to teach Fahrenheit 451, but is told it’s on the “not approved” list. (Is that an actual list? Because it would be a massive undertaking to list EVERYTHING Westview doesn’t approve for teaching. Would make more sense for it to be “not on the approved” list. But anyway…)

   Why was it not approved? (“Because there might be things people don’t want kids to see” isn’t an answer.) And why was Les so determined to teach it regardless? (Though Not Lisa pointing out that telling people they can’t do something only makes them want to do it more could be an answer, but I don’t think Batiuk has the awareness to realize what he wrote there.)

   So Les arranges to buy the books himself, and distribute them through the local “Booksmellers”. But someone sets fire to Booksmellers. Who set the fire? And why? Skip says it was because of F451, but then immediately says they may be unrelated. Skip’s not very good at his job. And who names a store “Booksmellers”?

   Then Les arranges to have the copies – somehow mostly undamaged despite the fire – given to Lillian to distribute instead. Why not distribute them himself? (Okay, that one’s probably because it might put Les himself at personal risk, and he’s too much of a sociopath for that.)

   Someone then sets fire to the bottom steps of Lillian’s bookstore. Who set that fire? Was it the same person as the Booksmellers fire? And why did they set this fire? And why set it at the bottom of the stairs, where it wouldn’t do any damage if it got put out quickly enough (which, as it turns out, it did)? And how does Lillian operate a store with only one exit? That place seems like such a massive deathtrap that Neddy Spencer could have designed it.

   Then we find out Jeff went to Kent State (even though we knew that already, but it’s not Batiuk dialogue without the clunkiest of exposition). Then Ed rambles about his illiteracy, because Batiuk thought he had a point to make there (he was wrong). But it eats up a week of strips, and can technically count as Batiuk splitting up The Burnings story so that no part was over three weeks?

   The protesters arrive, because they don’t want Lillian selling a book any halfway decent bookstore would have been selling anyway. (So she probably didn’t have it before, actually.) Why don’t they want F451 to be sold? “Because it sends the wrong message”? What message is that, exactly? And why is it wrong? And who are these protesters anyway? The parents of Les’ students? Random “concerned citizens”? Were they also protesting Booksmellers, or were those different protesters?

   Mindy calls Mopey (because who else would you call in such a situation), who uses his and Lillian’s contacts to call in the Legion of Super-Zeroes. Why do either of them have Ed’s coworkers as contacts? And why only Andy and Rocky, and not Mary or Lena? And why isn’t Les there, since he instigated the entire situation (unless they did call him, but he’s so much of a sociopath he decided it wasn’t his problem)? And why has no one called the police at any time during this, unless Centerville has no police department?

   Then we get the reveal that Lillian has had a camera installed, which has caught video of the protesters. When was that put in? Was it there before the fire? If so, shouldn’t it have captured the arson being committed? (Which probably explains why they only set the fire on the bottom steps, since that’s the only spot the camera would have picked up. Had he gone up the stairs, there would still be footage of someone walking up with a can of gasoline, but not the actual lighting of the fire, even though that would be more than enough evidence to convict.) If it was put in after the arson… how? It was still the same night, who installs security cameras that quickly and in the middle of the night?

   The protesters leave, saying they “made their point”, even though they accomplished nothing and said even less. Mopey quotes Stan Lee about being closed-minded, even though, had anyone actually said anything of substance, the “good guys” would likely never have even considered anything they said. But at least Mopey wasn’t quoting Flash Forgothisname quoting Stan Lee again.

   And those were The Burnings that will somehow lead to there being no bookstores in the future? Lots of questions that should have defined the story, but which Batiuk seems completely unaware of, so we’ll never get any kind of answers. So… about what we all expected, right?

   (And will this comment get caught in the torso chute? Yeah, probably. Seems to happen to me a lot lately. Ah, well, I’m just venting and rambling anyway.)

   1. Apologies about the torso chute… I have no idea why it has it in for you. Racial profiling maybe? It ain’t easy bein’ green.

   2. This is an excellent summary of all the problems with the story.

      1. Thanks, it means a lot. Though even through all that, I think I probably missed a few. (Like, in addition to when Lillian got the camera installed, what even was the point of introducing it? If it didn’t catch the arsonist, all it did was get footage of the protesters, who then uploaded even better footage of themselves anyway. So, like… what was Lillian being so smug about, other than “smug” being one of the default settings for a Batiuk character? The camera did absolutely nothing for the story, but Batiuk sure seemed to think it was of monumental importance…)

         But then, that was The Burnings in a nutshell. Batiuk thinks it’s of monumental importance, while most everyone else looks at it and says “what was the point?”.

   3. Tom Batiuk can’t not tell you why Fahrenheit 451 isn’t not on the not approved list. It’s not called not writing for nothing!

   4. Other than that, how did you enjoy the story, @Green Luthor?😂

      The part that cracks me up is related to how everyone thought Lillian would read from Fahrenheit 451 to teach the Wussy Hill Mob what the book was all about.

      Almost everyone was correct, but I had to laugh about how Batty went about it. Her act of reading from the book was all but irrelevant. He reduced Lillian’s brave lecture to a mere six panels. In the end, her words seemingly had no effect whatsoever on the Wussy Hill Mob. They appeared to leave when they grew bored.

      So much for the brave and courageous Lillian Batty boasted about in the Daily Cartoonist. Betrayed by Batty’s own writing.

      To be honest, I pessimistically believed Lillian was distracting the mob until Best Actress Award Winner Les Moore arrived to “save the day.” 🙄🤮

      1. It’s a pretty typical TB move to have his hero lecture the unwashed masses, but have the masses remaining unconvinced Philistines despite the lecture.

         Roberta Blackburn is the same gadfly in every story no matter how many times she “loses”… the parents mad about Wit went away unmoved by Susan’s screed… from Hollywood to his incessant book signings, Les is constantly encountering folks who are unendingly callous, unmoved, and oblivious to his grief… school levies are constantly failing with the obtuse voters in Westview… all the teachers at Westview pretty much NEVER get through to their students (strongest student-faculty relationship in all of Act III was probably Bull and either Summer or smokin’ Jarod Posey)… and on and on and on…

         The hero never changes anyone’s minds, they just demonstrate their superiority. Beyond the fact that this technique completely ignores what is generally one of the most interesting avenues in storytelling (character change/growth), I also find it quite off-putting.

         1. Roberta Blackburn is the Funkyverse’s Sideshow Bob. She exists only to be wrong and lose every conflict, but we were supposed to see her as a new and threatening villain each time. Yet she’s still better than the Faceless Gay Couple and the Faceless Anti-Ray Bradbury Mob.

      2. Other than the parts that were completely moronic, the story was fine.

         Unfortunately, nothing in the story wasn’t completely moronic, so… 😛

         1. 🤣

            It was rather unremarkable, wasn’t it? TB had six or seven weeks to spin his tale, and yet accomplished next to nothing.

            TB: Book banning/burning exists. People are conflicted about it. I’m not taking a strong stand. You’re welcome.

            Think of me come award time. 🏆

9. Today’s Funky Crankerbean

   Thus ends the Byrnings

   Not with a bang or a whimper, but with a self-righteous smirk and mope

   ah well, back to the regular Lillian-Crankshit nonsense

10. Sunday: The only part that pisses me off is the old lady Lilian or Vivian or whatever being so fucking stupid as to assume Pete Rattabastardo would be quoting wisdom from **anything** other than a comic book….

    Monday: Krankenschaaften is already getting aroused at the thought of what he’s going to do to those leaves with the ten barrels of liquid butane that he just ordered from his Cabela’s catalog…

11. The Burnings©. Is that all there is?

    1. The first time I heard this great song was on my honeymoon. Unfortunately, it was my wife, Mrs. SP singing it.

       1. Oh, my! That must have deflated your ego.😉

          Back in my school days, there was a movie show on late Friday nights called The Hoolihan and Big Chuck Show. On the local CBS affiliate, I believe. On breaks, they performed skits.

          They closed the show with Is that all there is? At the end of the show, the song came to a halt like somebody unplugged the record player.

          1. Be Ware of Eve Hill,
             I am more than aware of the *Hoolihan and Big Chuck Show*.
             I worked with a great nurse. Her dad was a refugee from Belarus with his folks. They came over to America and settled out west. At age 12, the officials put him in First Grade with all the little kids. Talk about rough! The family eventually settles in Cleveland. He gets married. Has 2 daughters. The oldest one is my nurse. She told me stories of staying up on the weekends with her Dad, and watching the *Hoolihan and Big Chuck Show*. She brought in videos of their shenanigans. They were great! Good times! Good times!

             1. Holy déjà vu, Batman! Have we had this conversation before?

             2. I do not believe so. However I AM in the presence of Be Ware of Eve Hill. That makes me somewhat addle-brained.

12. For a sense of “Batmanology,” look to the “The Spawn of M.C. Gaines” chapter in All in Color for a Dime.

    The Batman (note article) was dark and mysterious in his early years; he loses the article near the end of the 1940s, and by the 1950s and 1960s he had acquired a “Family” (Batwoman, the first Bat-Girl, Ace, the Bat-Hound and Bat-Mite, who was his Mister.Mxyzptlk, only he was a fan and not a foe) and was fighting aliens regularly, to say nothing of time-traveling (first, hypnosis, Professor Nichols).

    In 1964, though, came “the New Look”: Batman (the article is still absent) acquired a yellow circle around his emblem, lost Alfred for two years (it was the TV series which brought about his return), stopped fighting aliens (save in JLA and in World’s Finest) and began functioning once more as a detective. (Did he not debut in Detective Comics #27?)

    He had not gotten back to the garden (Joni Mitchell reference) or to where he had once belonged (Beatles reference), but he was getting there…and the TV show era (1966-68) undid a lot of that, to the point that by the end of the 1960s, Julius Schwartz, who edited the principal Bat-titles, was asking Neal Adams why people felt that Batman only was truly himself in Brave and the Bold.

    Adams replied that elsewhere the Caped Crusader functioned in daylight, was gregarious rather than grim and so on. Schwartz took that to heart and in 1969, the article returned, the deductive abilities became more pronounced and the artwork grew dark and moody.

    Nowhere in the TV show do we learn how Dick Grayson came to be Bruce Wayne’s youthful ward, and only once do learn that “dastardly criminals” killed the Waynes. (The Wayne Foundation was the Alfred Foundation originally.)

    It’s different now, of course (the article seems to have disappeared again, but Batman is so off-putting in the more recent stories I’ve seen that no one would think him anything but a Dark Knight), but when the TV series began, the character was between incarnations. The show may have played up the silliness and then took it to its campiest level, but it reflected its source better than its critics might want to admit.

    (And DC wasn’t afraid to cash in on its popularity. Batman began appearing more frequently in *Brave and the Bold* and eventually took over the team-ups in the summer of 1967. He dominated *JLA* covers and even appeared in a story in that book which he shouldn’t have — because it was called “Missing in Action — 5 Justice Leaguers” and the story in which they hadn’t appeared was one in which he certainly wasn’t MIA. Why, on a cover of *World’s Finest,* he even borrows a “holy” from the TV Robin in regards to “hemispheres”!)

    I wonder how Batiuk felt about “The Green Hornet,” which avoided camp with its heroes…and only lasted one season of twenty-six episodes.

    Bruce Lee was Kato in that, and in Asian countries, the series is known as “The Kato Show.”

    ‘Nuff said, as they say someplace.

    1. Though that Green Hornet (and Kato) guest-starred on the Batman TV show, so… who even knows if that would have influenced Batiuk’s opinion of it.

       1. GL:

          Come to think of it, the Green Hornet and Kato appear twice on the show: first, in a window-climb encounter, where they present themselves as the heroes they truly are, and again in a proper two-parter where the Dynamic Duo believes them to be criminals visiting (invading?) Gotham City.

          I imagine you’re right: “The Green Hornet” would probably have struck him as nearer to the source material, but, in the end, not near enough.

          For what it’s worth, a weary detective in Billy Wilder’s “Fortune Cookie” looks forward to going home to watch “Bstman.” If Amicus Breef is unavailable, there’s always Whiplash Willie Gingrich!

    2. Anonymous Sparrow,
       I have 2 older brothers. The oldest bought everything he could find with emphasis on Tarzan. The older focused on the Batman, War Comics, and on the Avengers. (Notice the article!) I was much more narrow. I liked the Incredible Hulk, Thor, and the Fantastic Four. Of course, we all read each other’s favorites. The first time I was impressed by the Batman was a story where he followed a crime spree around the world that took exactly 24 hours. I believe Denny O’Neil wrote that, and Neal Adams drew it. IT WAS SO DIFFERENT THAT THE TV SHOW! I loved it!
       By 1965, I knew there were much better *the* Batman stories than what DC put out from 1955 to 1966. My folks bought my older brother an illustrated book by Jules Feiffer, *the Great Comic Book Heroes*. This edition had Superman on the cover. But inside was the original Joker story by Bob Kane/Bill Finger. Spectacular! While the 50’s and 60’s had many bleak Batman stories. There were good stories during that time. (Maybe few and far between!) DC put these stories into the Batman Annuals. There was an issue introducing Mirror Man. Very clever. Another where the Joker trades for different skilled criminals. Finally, the issue where the Riddler is brought back from 1948 into the Mid 60’s. All high quality writing.
       If you can find it, my all time favorite the Batman cover is issue #15! The Batman on a machine gun. But Detective Comics #94 is even better with him and Robin sloshing through sewers.

       “It may be night, but life is beginning to stir.”

       1. SP:

          Those are some great covers.

          In researching them, it seemed that a lot of the characters in the initial Batman stories put in “single appearances,” which reminded me that the Joker almost died in his second appearance (also in Batman #1). He gets a dose of his venom and should be off to join the Choir Invisible…but someone recognized the character’s potential and we had a final panel in which a bewildered doctor explained that, incredible as it seemed, the Joker was going to live.

          Feiffer’s book concludes with a Spirit story from Will Eisner. When I first read it, I didn’t think too much of it: later, with a good many more of Denny Colt’s adventures under my belt (to say nothing of Maggie Thompson’s essay on the Spirit in The Comic-Book Book), I did, but I don’t think I would have chosen it. If you associate anything with Eisner, it’s innovation, and this is pretty straightforward.

          (The Spirit ordering milk in a bar fairly begs for a request for it to come “in a dirty glass.”)

    3. “The Kato Show”? Must be similar to the “Mr Sulu Show.”

       1. When I was feeling whimsical in my younger days, I used to rewrite “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” as “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kyle.”

          Mr. Kyle was in charge of the transporter on the original “Star Trek.”

          And, of course, Harry F. Mudd dishes out the crud…

          1. Mr. Kyle was communications officer in “Wrath of Khan.” Still played by John Winston.

             1. Thank you for pointing that out. Much more heartening than learning that Lieutenant Jose Tyler from “The Menagerie” (or “The Cage”) went on to become a commodore in The Rift!

13. Well, we got the whole spiel about Crankshaft’s illiteracy, and we saw him clutching F451, announcing that if people wanted to ban it, there must be something wonderful about it.*

    So… What happened? Is this the first novel he’s read? The first time he’s read for pleasure? What did he think? Or is he still struggling bravely through it?

    Has it enlightened him? Bored him? Enraged him?

    Oh right. It was just a line of dialogue. Like all the other lines of dialogue in this strip, it didn’t mean anything and didn’t actually represent anything that had happened or will happen.

    Just random words. Empty, disconnected, fleeting thoughts.

    It’s called writing.

    *Caution: Do not apply this principle to the bad kind of banned books (defined as banned books TB doesn’t like)

14. Today in Crankshaft:

    Crank: “Yep, it’s a real fluster. And it’s landing on your ‘snow-white chicken’ hairdo!”

    Lil: “I guess you could call it a FlusterCluck!”

    All smirk merrily.

15. Today’s Funky Crankerbean

    Lillian: Let’s smirk and make ghastly puns about autumn! (makes a smirk that rivals Dick Facey in sheer punchability)

16. There is a disaster clean-up company around here that advertises with the slogan Like It Never Even Happened.

    They must have paid a visit to the Village Booksmith on Sunday night. Which means (given the cost of overtime and weekends) that Lillian’s bookshop is a lot more profitable than I thought… or it’s a front for a drug dealer.

17. So… did Les teach F451 after all that?

    Was he disciplined by the school after the brouhaha?

    How did he teach the book? What did he say about it?

    What did his students learn that they couldn’t have learned from any of the approved books?

    Tune in on the 12th of Never, same Batiuk-time, same Batiuk-channel, to find out!

    1. Like the protestors, the story thinks it made its point, so it left.

       1. It’s a little unusual, though, to not have a smug victory lap for the ultimate author avatar. I would have expected a classroom scene where a bunch of rapt high school kids listen as Les expounds on the theme, “burning books is bad, m’kay?”

          Or perhaps a Mopey Les scene where he laments to Not-Lisa about the unfairness of the world and the uselessness of everything.

          Maybe there’ll be a smirking coda to the story yet.

          1. I think Lillian victory-lapped hard enough, relative to all the nothing she did in this story. There’s no bravery in speaking to a non-angry mob, when she already knows they’re not going to do anything. (SEE ALSO: Les road-raging that driver who turned out to be Mason Jarre doing “character research”.)

18. From the perspective of drama and plot logic, this storyline called for a sequence in which Les is called before the School Board to justify his teaching F451, gives a speech about why the book ought to be taught in school, and persuades them to take it off the “Not Approved” list. I’m not saying that would have been particularly interesting, but it would have wrapped up an important aspect of the plot.

    1. “Plot”?

19. I believe Puff Batty said that this story was meant to be the backstory behind “The Burnings.” The ones referenced in the last strips of Funky Winkerbean:
    

    Yet we have learned explicitly that there were only two bookstores hit by arson, and both of them very much “survived.”

    So *no* bookstores were actually burned.

    And yet Tom Batiuk thinks this arc explains “The Burnings.”

    1. Tom Batiuk thinks a great many things.

    2. He also thought a time traveling janitor with mind control powers was an Elegant Solution™. (To a problem that didn’t even exist.) Tom’s mind works in… interesting ways.

    3. I’m thinking that the Byrners started another burning spree, only this time they weren’t holding back

20. Today’s Funky Crankerbean

    Ha ha it’s funny because crankshaft has to deal with that one leaf again

21. Well, “The Burnings” was as lame and anti-climatic as I thought it would be, far from what we were promised in the dying days of FW. Now we’re back to inoffensive, if not funny or memorable, comic strips about blowing leaves. “The Burnings” came off as TB thumping his chest and declaring he had something to say before offering nothing but some generic mutterings about free speech which required no courage, offered no insights, provoked no controversy, and really didn’t apply to the actual situation he set up. Watching as TB brought “The Burnings” in for a landing with his usual nods to comic books, I felt a rush of melanchonly as I realized yet again that he has nothing to left to say. As FW helped me get through jr. high and high school way back in the days when Dan Quayle strode the earth like a colossus, I’m saddened by that but it is what it is. My guess is CS will start to fade like FW did, with its final impressions being lingering and smug smirks, suspended in the air like the Chesire Cat’s grin. That was my final though about “The Burnings.” This half-hearted and lame attempt to write a major story with something to say reveals it is time–it’s actually well past time–for TB to bow out and retire.

22. Today’s Funky Crankerbean

    Now crankshaft is an being asshole for no reason, like he always is

    1. Also, today (actually tomorrow) is the 2nd year anniversary of my first comment on SOSF (https://sonofstuckfunky.com/2022/10/16/excuse-me-have-you-seen-the-bridge/#comment-147188)

23. And the lesson, kids, is: Feel free to burn, baby, burn. Burn anything you damn well please. Stores, garages — hell, burn an orphanage if you object to their having Goodnight Moon in their library! BURN IT ALL DOWN!

    There’s no penalty, no investigation. No downside at all, really. Watch those pretty flames dance!

    “But what if they get my face on camera?” Oh, my sweet summer child. What if, indeed? Nothing will happen. No one will ask questions. They’ll forget about it within 24 hours, and get back to focusing on what really matters: being asshats to their neighbor across the street.

    1. And for the life of me, I have no idea why he goes out of his way to be a big, swinging dick to Keesterman. Flashbacks to his youth of needlessly playing hooky show him tormenting him for no seeming reason.

       1. And yet Keesterman willingly hangs out with Ed at the Dale Evans all the time. For… reasons? You’d think he’d avoid Ed as much as humanly possible, but… nope. So they’re friends, but also hate each other? Or something?

          1. It’s as if he’s Keesterman’s Bull Bushka.

24. The Burnings.:

    If a ten-year-old wrote this, you’d sigh and figure that post-secondary education is not in this kid’s future. It might be time to start looking at high schools that might teach the kid a trade…

    If a seventy-seven year old wrote this, you’d sigh and figure that the irreversible mental decline has started and is gathering steam. It might be time to start looking at assisted living facilities that will keep this person occupied and away from sharp objects…

    But this being Tom Batiuk, he may have written this when he was ten, filed it away, and came across it again when he was seventy-seven. In fact, if you listen carefully you can almost hear him exclaiming: “This is genius! It’ll fit nicely in between doing some strips based on that Starbuck Jones story I found, and having Ed write my cool comic-book idea “Super Astromen of The Far Future Year 1960”!

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