A Spoooky Search.

Hello all! Hope you had a delightfully spooky week. I was forced to listen to the most tragic World Series games of all time, and dealt with my grief at a cruel world where either the Dodgers (BOO) or the Yankees (HISS) had to win. I ate my feelings in mini sized Halloween candy bar sizes and dreamed of a better place. A bright and beautiful utopia where both could lose it all.

To spare all your necks further strain, and for my own amusement, let’s play a little game with this week’s sideways comics covers.

My questions to you out there in Beady-Eyed Nitpickerville:

1.) Which of these covers is the most tolerable?

2.) Which of these covers is the biggest insult to comics, literature, and the human race as an intelligent species?

3.) Did Tom steal this idea from this blog, and our Time Mop covers of the early months of 2023?

4.) How many copy pasta references can you find?

For example:

65 thoughts on “A Spoooky Search.”

    1. None of them. They’re all complete garbage, insulting to the reader, serve no purpose to Batiuk’s self-indulgence or the alleged story supporting it, and aren’t even good comic book covers.
    2. Definitely the Peanuts one. Because it’s a blatant ripoff of someone else’s work, because of WHO it rips off, and how badly Batiuk misses the point of the story. You can’t just TELL Linus the Great Pumpkin doesn’t show up. He has to slowly realize this on his own. The story is an allegory for unrewarded faith. One thing I do like: Linus’ reaction is very on point.
    3. No. Tom Batiuk needs no inspiration from us to draw comic book covers.
    4. Trying to find re-used art in Comic Book Cover Week is like trying to find artificial preservatives in plastic fruit. I’m sure it’s there, but the whole product is so blatantly fake there’s not much point to proving that part of it is.

      1. Your comment is a numbered list on my phone, but not my computer. Weird.

        WordPress. 🤦‍♀️

    • 1) the PBM vs King kong cover
    • 2) the one where PBM meets with the pulp to read comic books, THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE FIGHTING
    • 3) I dont think that Batiuk would be bothered to look at this blog
    • 4) I can’t find any

    Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean

    Jess: Have you heard about this Lunchly thing that Logan Paul, KSI and Mr. Beast are selling?

    PBM: Yeah, there’s mold in every one of them.

    Darin: I’d rather eat a Montoni’s pizza than that shit.

    1. For your point #2, that was my response and that’s part of the reason, yes.

      95% of the motivation behind Tom talking about comic books is “wowee lookit this cool cover!!!” and what does that picture depict? Two human things sitting and reading comic books. There is nothing remotely exciting about that non-action as depicted. There is nobody on the planet who would look at that picture and be enticed to know more of the story.

  6. If I was told I had to pick one or I would be fired and put in prison, I would pick the Frankenstein’s Monster one. The utterly helpless and thoroughly defeated stance of the Pizza Monster tells me this is the final issue.

    Batiuk frequently says of comic covers he likes “It makes you want to buy the issue to see what’s inside.” NONE of these have that characteristic. NONE.

    Of course I could say that about all his Bantom covers too.

    1. Of course, Batiuk then fails to ask the essential follow-up question: What is is about a good cover that makes you want to buy the issue to see what’s inside?

      What do good covers have in common?

      He’s like a toddler eating a cookie. Don’t bother asking what specific sensory or flavor qualities attract the child to the cookie. Don’t bother asking him about whether he prefers cookies made with butter or shortening, sugar or honey, hard or soft wheat flour.

      All you’ll get is “gimme cookie! WANT COOKIE! I LIKE COOKIE!”

      A fine opinion for a toddler, but a sad way for a senior citizen to view the world.

      1. To be (half) fair, it’s sometimes difficult to articulate exactly why one finds an image appealing. Sometimes it’s an emotional resonance that’s hard to put in words. If you’re talking to someone and say “I like this image,” it’s perfectly acceptable to leave it at that.

        However, if you’re going to write a post about a cover you think is great, it’s a task you should really attempt before you click “send.”

        1. Sure, and I wouldn’t expect a casual comics reader to write an essay on what goes into an appealing cover. Their job is to read and enjoy, and they need do nothing else.

          But what if you go to art school for 4 years and graduate with an BA?

          What if you have ambitions to be a top writer at Marvel or DC?

          What if you go into comics as a profession, and slowly turn your strip into a showcase for the covers of your made-up comics?

          What if you have a blog where about half your entries are about comics, and a weekly feature highlighting covers you like from the thousands you’ve seen over your 60+ years of obsessing over comic books?

          And that blog also prominently features your own comics covers, even including them on a virtual spinner rack?

          If that describes you, I think you should be expected to be capable of analyzing comics covers beyond TOMMY LIKEY COVER.

    2. Batty rails against capitalism, depicting it as being a degrading system. But his precious comic book covers are a result of capitalism. The publishers are trying to entice you into buying the comic book, any artistic choices are secondary to the business needs. I have no problem with this . But I doubt Batty has even considered this.

  7. Number 1): Most tolerable? I’d have to say the ones featuring King Kong and Dracula. Why does “Frankenstein” resemble the Incredible Hulk? Also, to nitpick, Frankenstein was the mad doctor creator, not the monster. The Pizza (Box) Monster is reading comic books along with The (Inedible) Pulp🙄. Look kids! Comics! Catch the excitement! TB’s comic book obsession to insert comic books into everything is beyond annoying. My least favorite one was Tuesday’s unattributed Peanuts themed theft.

    Number 2): Least favorite? The Peanuts cover. I can appreciate a tribute to Charles Schulz and Peanuts, but this is just lame. “He never showed!” TB sure recaptured the “excitement” of the Burnings© didn’t he? Wouldn’t it have been funnier to have Linus thinking he sees the Great Pumpkin, only to have the Pizza (Box) Monster slowly rising out of the pumpkin patch like Snoopy in the classic cartoon? There’s no mention of Schulz or Peanuts in the panel. Most readers are quite familiar with the scene, which proves TB isn’t fit to hold Schulz’s felt-tip.

    Number 3): Did Batiuk swipe the idea for the covers from SoSF? Sometimes I believe TB must have remarkable self-control not to peek at SoSF, but I highly doubt it. TB was jonesing to do some comic book covers. TB’s recent need to turn Lillian’s mysteries into sideways covers has been odd, to say the least.

    Number 4): Copy pasta references? I’m not very good at spotting these. Can I take the shotgun approach and say all the faces in the bottom panels were copied and pasted from previous Crankshaft strips? I’d like to bet some of the bodies were, too. The candle would be very easy to copy and paste.

  9. What are The Pizza (Box) Monster’s superpowers anyway?

    The ability to make his adversaries sick to their stomachs, like they just ate a Montoni’s pizza? The Pizza (Box) Monster waves his hand at his adversaries, and they fall to the ground, holding their stomachs and retching.

    Can the P(B)M shoot pizza grease, pizza sauce, mozzarella, or toppings out of his hands (or his butt)?

    Chase away his adversaries by showing them a Montoni’s pizza?

    Taking their pizza order and ghosting them?

    Not accepting competitors’ coupons?

    Lamest. Superhero. Ever.

    1. His superpower is to be so weak and easily defeatable that he imbues the villains with a false sense of superiority, so that they barely try when confronted by the actual superheroes and are, thus, stunned when they are defeated with ease.

    2. In a review of Andrew H. Malcolm’s Canadians, Margaret Atwood noted that Canadians tend to like ten toppings on their pizza, while people in the U.S. tend to have three at most.

      Should be be able to release ten toppings at once, it might get him into Alpha Flight…or at least allow hm to stop a rampaging Cerebus, who insisted to Red Sophia that he “must have meat.”

      Jeremiah was a bullfrog, but Cerebus was an earth-pig (“aardvark” to you, as Malcolm X would insist).

      1. Mr. bwoeh and I had a Canadian deluxe pizza while on a ski vacation in British Columbia. One of the more memorable toppings was Canadian bacon. The sauce was a lot more tangy, almost like BBQ sauce.

        Note: Mr. bwoeh spent his adolescence in Windsor, Ontario.

        Another Note: My younger brother was a fervent reader of Cerebus the Aardvark, but quit reading sometime in the early 1980s. I read several issues and loved Elrod the Albino, who talked like Foghorn Leghorn. I’m also familiar with Elric of Melniboné because my older brother read those books by Michael Moorcock.

        1. BWOEH:

          I tried Canadian bacon once and found that I preferred the U.S. variety.

          Foghorn Leghorn came out of Kenny Delmar’s Senator Claghorn on Fred Allen’s radio show. As the Warner Brothers cartoons were copyrighted, whenever Delmar wanted to do the Senator, he had to call and ask permission to use the voice he’d originated. I’d like to think that whoever said it was all right was suitably embarrassed at the request.

          The law, to cite Sir William S. Gilbert, remains the embodiment of everything that’s excellent and has no kind of fault or flaw. But as William Conrad’s introduction to “The Fugitive” reminds us:

          “Men make laws…men carry them out…and men are imperfect…”

          Given his admiration for the *Dick Tracy* storyline about Flattop, Jr. and the ghost, I can’t help thinking that Tom Batiuk plans to return to “The Burnings” when we don’t expect it, giving us some sense of closure.

          It must be because I heard Stephen Colbert read Ray Bradbury’s “Veldt” recently.

  10. CBH: As loathsome, detestable, and annoying as the Dodgers may be, anyone is preferable to them. I’d root for the Les Moore-led Scapegoats over them.

    1. Normally I would agree, but the current Yankees edge out the Dodgers for me right now simply because they have a former 2016 Cub on their roster. I wouldn’t have minded for Anthony Rizzo to have a good postseason and get another ring. Instead the poor chonker couldn’t even jog to first base in time.

    2. i realized something about baseball: it’s a laid-back sport. I don’t hate the Yankees or Dodgers or Cubs or Red Sox or anyone. Because a guy who cut me in line is far more deserving of my vitriol than a baseball team just trying to do its job. It’s a business, everybody wants to win the World Series, but only one team can.

      And other sports are much better at getting your venom going. I can hate Middle Tennessee State if they”re my school’s random football or basketball opponent for this year, and they threaten to wreck our season.

      The Dodgers won the World Series? Eh, good for them. Good for Freeman, and Ohtani, and Kershaw, and Teoscar Hernandez. If the Yankees won, good for Juan Soto and Gerrit Cole and so on.

      The last baseball team worth hating was the 1986 Mets.

      1. The only baseball team I rooted for–ok, the only sports team ever I paid the slightest attention to–was the ’69 Mets.

        That’s because my entire (CT) school sneered at them. “They can’t win!” I rooted for them because, as the underdogs, I identified with them.

        When the Series ended, I made sure to say to them “But I thought your team couldn’t lose? Your team is a bunch of LOSERS.”

        Notably, this did not make me any friends. As a Weird Kid I didn’t have any friends anyway, so no loss. Their looks of sadness and lack of any reply was worth it.

      2. Oooh, uh, I’m gonna have to go ahead and uh, disagree with you there, Banana. Especially about the 1986 Mets, but that’s way too off-topic for SoSF LOL. There are two kinds of baseball fans. Good, regular people, and them. Just earlier today I read an article about the 2001 World Series, and how “America was pulling for them”, and how sad it was when they lost to the (LOL) Diamondbacks. At least one American was DELIGHTED by that outcome. Anyone but them.

        Otherwise, I agree. Unless my team is involved, I don’t especially care, or begrudge anyone else…unless they’re involved, in which case I have a moral obligation to root for whoever they‘re playing. It’s a whole deep-seated thing.

        1. I’ve always been a National League guy. Maybe that’s why I don’t get the visceral hatred for the Yankees some people have. Yeah, they’re rich, smug and they buy a lot of wins. So do the Cowboys, Lakers, Wolverines, and Manchester United.

          And I lived in Seattle in 2001, so I probably should hate the Yankees more than I should. That Mariners team deserved a World Series ring infinitely more than the Marlins ever did. And the Marlins got two.

  11. Hola, snarkers! I’ll just respond to the first two queries.

    Most tolerable? I concur with BJ6K that none of these are any good. And the Dracula one contains the most disgusting-looking pizza ever depicted in a Batiuk strip. “It’s just tomato sauce?” The coloring gaffe renders the gag senseless.

    Biggest insult? Tuesday’s Great Pumpkin cover, but TB’s invoked Sparky so many times we’ll allow it. Again, all these strips stink (I still haven’t seen Saturday’s). Guess all the comic book heavy hitters who used to crank out the sideways komix kovers no longer are returning Tom’s phone calls. Tales from the SCRYPTS? What are SCRYPTS? And instead of a “reality bubble” we are treated to a second panel with an inscrutable “punchline.”

    1. “Scrypt” is “a password-based key derivation function created by Colin Percival in 2009.”

      I guess we’re supposed to think of the Crypt-Keeper.

      If there was a Scrypt-Keeper, I suppose there’d have to be VALIS-Keeper and am Owl in Daylight Witch as well.

      “Sleep well, and when you dream, dream of electric sheep…”

    2. You know, I also noticed and was irritated by SCRYPTS, but critiquing these covers was like looking at a Bosch hellscape and noticing that one of the tormented figures could use a haircut — there’s just so much awful going on that relatively minor issues fade into the background.

      Medical and pharma pros refer to prescriptions as “scripts,” and my mind immediately went to the bulging bags of monthly prescriptions TB presumably picks up, if his life is anything like Funky’s. But that doesn’t make sense, unless you posit that his brain is so addled from polypharmacy that horrors emerge from it regularly.

      Comic book scripts? But no; there are no scripts, just covers.

      JavaScript scripts? AppleScript scripts? Python scripts? TB hardly seems programming-savvy.

      Or — and stay with me here — OR, he just thought of a random word that contained the word “CRYPT” and guffawed out loud at his own cleverness, waited about 10 months without ever thinking about it again, and then sent it off to Dan Davis.

  12. One: Kong, as the art is equally nice, dopey, and there are biplanes. It would be the BEST ART TOM STOLE EVER if it but had a zeppelin.
    Two: Umm…is WordPress going to assign random numbers titled “List”? Huh, guess so. Okay, big tie for worst. Obvs the Peanuts one, because didn’t Tom recently say on his blog-like object that Schulz was “over-rated”? Whatever, Tommy Pimp My Strip Mr Pulitzer Loser. 2nd: TOM drew guys reading comic books with PIZZA-STAINED MITTS, one a pile of droopy, post-flushed toilet paper? SACRILEGE! They should be like Bart reading Radioactive Man #1: turning the pages with tweezers.
    Three: No. Tom can’t even do an interview without supplying the questions in advance. Tom doesn’t do criticism, and never introspection. This wimp couldn’t go toe-to-toe with a tree sloth.
    Four: Truly a gimme question. All the art is stolen.

    Wait…I made a joke on GC about the Dracula joke working better “if the pizza wasn’t covered in urine.” The non-neck-wrecking version here shows it literally SPLASHING OFF THE PIE.

    1. Sorry this one got stuck in the torso chute for soo long BTS. Not sure what the hang up was.

      THANKS WORDPRESS /s

      1. Oh, it was WP. It gave me a hard time while I was writing that and uploading it. Sorry if you had to delete like 15 posts. I used to check if it was stuck by reposting and getting “duplicate post.” That meant it went up, just was still in moderation. Sure didn’t work this time!

      2. I hate it when it does that. WP appears to really dislike certain commenters, and I wish I knew why.

    2. It’s just as Tony Montoni always said: “You can’t make Montoni’s Pizza without ‘P’!”

    1. I would have to say the Frankenstein cover, simply because it was the first, the least cluttered, and could have simply been Darwin’s graphic contribution to what was supposed to be a storytelling contest.
    2. Thursday’s Pulp cover. Of course two characters stop whatever conflict they had to obsess over Precious Comic Books, the only TRUE form of storytelling (Fahrenheit 451 be darned).
    3. No, because TimeMop wiped those incidents from the Funkyverse Timeline into a Pocket Universe where Batiuk comes up with every idea ever dreamt up.
    4. Well, I’m pretty sure he copied and pasted PBM’s “joke” in Friday’s strip from one of those South of the Border billboards dotting the landscape along I-95: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RPk7Qpk5zkU/hqdefault.jpg

    Now, as for Saturday’s exciting climax: Just to sum up, the power is back on (we never saw what the problem was), the decorations are up (we never saw them hung), and what was supposed to be a story-writing contest devolved into Boy Lisa drawing a quintet of humor-free comic book covers (all complete with company logo and price, for some reason). Of course, there were no customers or even trick-or-treaters at Mopey Montoni’s. And zero appearances by the guy the strip is named after.

    1. Wow! Taking a Batiuk sideways cover and making it actually funny? One upvote isn’t enough for something achieved at this level of difficulty!

      1. The art on this is just so… so lackadaisical. Look at that fist.

        Look how far we’ve fallen from the days of Neal Adams or even James Pascoe.

        Again, Davis can do better, based on what I’ve seen of his work online. He can, but he don’t.

        1. And why would he?

          I mean, I’m sure he’s getting paid a low, low rate by Batuik simply to slap something together by the deadline. And the writing Davis is being asked to illustrate? Well, it’s not like good art will suddenly make it sing. So Davis did the math, figured the money was worth it if he could keep his work on Crankshaft to under an hour a day … and here we are. I’m sure he doesn’t spend any additional time looking at the finished product once it’s done, and he probably figures no-one else will either.

          I’m reminded of Michael Caine, a good actor who took a big paycheque to co-star in the awful Jaws 4. His line, to anyone who asked/complained about the film: “I did not see Jaws 4. But I have seen the house it bought, and it’s lovely!”

  16. “Best Halloween Ever” my Holtron-printed copyright. Scribbling comic covers on napkins is weaksauce compared to renting a helicopter for your thievery stunt.

  18. Darin’s dead inside, slowly morphing into Flash Freeman, stoned out of his mind, staring off into the middle distance face stood out to me today.

    Because it’s the exact same Darin head as yesterday’s strip.

    Talk about getting LAZY.

    1. David Lynch wrote a comic that ran weekly for ten years. It was called “The Angriest Dog in the World.” Virtually every strip was visually identical.

      The first panel always contained the same copy. Only dialogue balloons changed.

      Lynch was being intentionally absurdist. Perhaps TB should adopt the same approach and just reuse the same panel of Mopey Pete, Boy Lisa, Generic Blondes, and PBM, all with their incongruous poses and expressions. Then he can insert random words in the dialogue balloons and call it an homage to Lynch.

      Tomorrow: Dialogue balloons feature selections from the manual of the 1976 Olivetti Lexikon 82 electronic typewriter!

      1. He might as well. Andrews McMeel Universal and Gannett are seemingly happy with anything he provides.

        TB doesn’t draw anymore. His strips lack the humor of ACT I Funky Winkerbean or even Crankshaft from several years ago. His current writing lacks any drama, suspense, or any real stakes or consequences. Other than that, he’s a great cartoonist. /s

        Did you ever read The Comic Strip That Has A Finale Every Day by John “Scully” Scully?

        1. I did, and it provided the same character evolution and edge-of-your-seat drama we get from TB today!

    2. Remember when Boy Lisa used to have a way smaller, pointier nose? Then, sometime in mid-Act III, BatYam and/or whatever pud he hired to draw the damn thing just slapped a big ol’ Winkerbean schnozz-ola on him, and he’s sported a big freaking honker ever since.

      1. “JEEPERS, Darrin!” said a random blonde. “When you wear glasses, you look 30 years older and STARVING! Have a delicioso Montini’s pizza blob-object! It has PISS!”

        Darrin gasped, “Do you not SEE?! The coming of–HIM?! The DESTROYER? HE–the MONSTER, the MADMAN–who does NOTHING BUT SIDEWAY STRIPS?!”

        OLD MAN: “Be gettin’ outta me way! Gotta vote for JAMES K POLK!”

  19. Re: The November 3 2024 Crankshaft

    Why? Just… just why? Why do you do this, Tom? WHY????? Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency? WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?

  20. PULITZER-NOMINATED COMIC STRIP FEATURES IMPORTANT, GROUNDBREAKING DEFENSE OF VOTING RIGHTS

    Cleveland, OH (AP) — Tom Batiuk, Pulitzer-nominated creator of the seminal comic strips “Funky Winkerbean” and “Crankshaft,” has once more broken the boundaries of what had been thought possible in the medium. This Sunday, the strip will feature a thought-provoking strip that may change the way Americans look at voting rights and disenfranchisement.

    “Nobody has really tackled this issue,” Batiuk said in a phone interview conducted from his Medina, OH, home. “I felt that the rights and obligations of voting should be discussed in newspapers, and since no one else had ever gone there, I suppose it is epoch-making,” he added modestly. “It may be controversial, but I’ve never backed down from taking a polarizing stance and sticking to it.”

    The titular protagonist of Batiuk’s strip, “Crankshaft,” will be shown fighting the forces of evil for his right to vote. “There’s a lot of conflict, a lot of excitement,” Batiuk promises, “but the good guys prevail in the end.”

    1. “And a newspaper comic strip? What a perfect medium to get the message out!” Batiuk continued, unprompted. In fact, we hadn’t even identified ourselves on the phone as a news agency — he just answered the phone and started talking.

      “An important message which is specially targeted to young voters,” he enthused. (Seriously — we didn’t have to say anything to this guy.) “When you’ve got a platform like I have, you feel an obligation to use it wisely, because people can be swayed by your every thought. And young people especially love comics — I know I did! Of course, comic books are the coolest medium. Did you see my collection of comic book covers this week? They were awesome. Turning ’em sideways involves some commitment from the reader, but that’s how I know I’m getting the right readers. The ones who know how to read comics the right way. Let me just walk you through this….Y’know, I created ‘The Pulp’ when I was, like twelve…”

      At press time, Batiuk was talking into the phone about some godawful movie serial he loved as a kid, although we had actually quietly hung up on him about a half-hour earlier.

      1. Courageous Comic Is Also Endorsed by Major Medical Associations

        Dr Vyrda Bray, president of the Chiropractic Society of America, is one of Batiuk’s biggest boosters. “We love Tom Batiuk! His sideways strips have put my oldest through college!

        “I mean,” she hastened to add, “that’s not why we love him or anything. It’s because he, ah, takes these brave stands on these important topics, like… like the important stuff he’s been writing about this week! Like that. I mean, the CSA is all about social justice.

        “But it just so happens that he’s making all of us rich — not that we care,” she added quickly. “It’s more, you know, how brave he is and stuff.

        “I’m probably his biggest fan. You know, I’ve won the Batiuk Neck Crick award two years running. It’s our industry’s highest honor.”

  22. It’s one thing to try and lampoon the current election circumstances in an extremely non-political way, but doing it with “geeze the young people need to be pushed to vote don’t they” is like a joke from before the last eight years.

    I can’t really accuse Batiuk of being unrealistic, I have friends who are stubbornly refusing to even consider voting and staying out of everything, but doing such a PG gag about them needing flashy and colorful signage when the most vocal of the new generation are extremely concerned about the election’s outcome is extremely tone deaf to run with, even if this strip was drawn and copypasted nearly a year ago.

  23. Harriet, I’m surprised you didn’t mention Lillian’s famous “crooked crucifix” pose, done in silhouette, on Oct 27.

  24. Answering CBH’s questions:

    I – They’re all terrible, of course … being asked to determine which one is ‘most tolerable’ is roughly equivalent to asking whether you’d prefer botulism, salmonella, or listeria. I suppose, if pressed, I’d pick The Pulp as the least worst, as its depiction of boredom and indifference is the closest match to the actual reaction of readers of this comic.

    II – Biggest insult? Tough call…in that I don’t think that any of the parties being insulted would notice or care. An insult is only an insult if the intended insultee takes umbrage; these strips are like a baby throwing a glass of water at an aircraft carrier.

    III – I do not have an eye for the copypasta (and even if I did, I think CBH is the undisputed queen of this particular skill set.)

    IV – If Tom is coming over here and swiping ideas, we need to post better ideas. Here’s mine…. Tom: a year-long sabbatical did wonders for cartoonists Garry Trudeau and Bill Watterson! They got lots of acclaim and awards after they returned. Imagine what a two-year or even three-year sabbatical might do for you!

  25. 4.) How many copy pasta references can you find?

    Readers want to know how many copy pasta references Comic Book Harriet found. P-p-please, CBH!

      1. LOL!

        I found some references from earlier comic book covers Batiuk had done, but I ran out of time to post them all. King Kong was Atomik Ape. Frankenstein was a Subterraran.

        The Linus leaning on the pumpkin is pretty ubiquitious, though his facial expression is usually different.

        I couldn’t find Dracula, or Pulp, and it made me sad.

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