85 thoughts on “Belated.”

  1. Today’s Crankshaft

    It’s the (hopefully) last day of the bus driver situation storyline in Crankshaft

    it was just so painfully dull (which is Crankshaft nowadays)

    1. Thanks! I erased George Keesterman’s head to paste Batton in there. Not my best work, as the line widths and resolution don’t completely match, but effective enough to get my nonsense across.

      2. I’m pretty sure you put more thought and effort into it than Dan Davis would have, though that probably qualifies as “faint praise”…

  3. Today’s Past Batiukverse Storyline: a 1996 3 day storyline where the staff of WHS have a “I Love My Job Week” week, which Linda does not take lightly

    If this storyline aired 3-4 years later, it would be Jim Kablichnick being a sour bastard instead of Linda (I think Kablichnick hates his job far more than her)

    Nate: At least Linda’s dealing it far better than James Kablichnick is. He’s been incredibly furious over this and screamed at Sally’s face 3 times.

    1. I must not have read Funky Winkerbean during this period. Linda is so touchy and aggressive. What happened to this character that made her so depressing in the latter days of the strip?

      2. Linda married Bull, who was by far BatYam’s most hated and resented character, thus she had her soul sucked bone-dry by Bull’s pointless, brainless, sporto idiocy. Linda was, by far, Act III’s most consistently miserable, weary, downtrodden character. He even drew her that way. Always totally joyless, and resigned to her stupid, futile fate. Phil Holt was a barrel of laughs next to Linda. Even Frankie was funnier.

        1. The Linda in the above strips feels very much like a young person who *hasn’t* had their soul sucked out yet. She’s expressing her opinion, resisting groupthink, and calling out stupidity for what it is. And the world just ignores her. (Which is exactly what sucks your soul out.) This is a very relatable story, to anyone who’s had a job. There’s always that obnoxiously peppy, forced-fun advocate making you do all this stupid stuff.

          But there’s one good thing about the corporate Fun Committee: it’s basically a list of people who are nominating themselves for layoffs. If a company ever has to lay people off, the roster of the Fun Committee is the first thing they want to see. It’s a list of people who’ve announced to the whole company they don’t have enough to do, and/or would rather be goofing off than working. NEVER, EVER, EVER join the Fun Committee. Don’t be overly hostile toward them, because you don’t want to be the office grump. But regard them with icy contempt.

        2. Linda got Winkerbeaned.

          We’ve witnessed over the years how TB likes to pair up his characters in matrimony. When TB was deciding which of the ladies was destined to marry Bull, Linda must have drawn the short straw. Linda became hated for fraternizing with a “sporto.” As the years wore her down, Linda became the poster child for “What’s the use?” Linda got lucky, TB killed off minor league baseball player Ed Crankshaft’s wife.

          Another one of Linda’s major sins was not being a fan of comic books. She had to suffer.

          I’ll always be curious about TB’s animosity towards football “sportos”. Did a neighborhood boy named Jerome Bushka steal his football? Did TB get cut from his peewee football team? Like Dinkle, did TB dislike the football team monopolizing practice time on his beloved band practice field. Was TB jealous of the big and tall football players in high school? Did the football players bully him?

          Speculation is fun, but we’ll never know the reason why.

          1. And what’s with this Winnipeg Blue Bombers nonsense? It feels like a passive-aggressive “look at me, I’m rejecting the NFL” stance, as if they don’t have sportos or concussions in Canada.

            (To be fair, anyone from Cleveland is quite justified in finding another team to root for. But the story hasn’t given the Browns’ eternal suckitude as a motivation.)

          2. Banana Jr. 6000:

            I’m a huge football fan, NFL and college. I haven’t seen a CFL game in over a decade. I have no idea how to watch CFL games on TV. I imagine there’s some kind of streaming service.

            I wonder if TB initially contacted the Cleveland Browns about a Crankshaft day, only to be met with the deflating response of “Who?”

            TB having Crankshaft Day with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers is such an out of the blue (pun intended) situation. Winnipeg is 1,200 miles away from Medina Ohio. Did TB send out inquiries to every professional football team in North America? Did TB embrace the first football team to give a him positive response? It’s a good thing Winnipeg responded. TB’s next recourse would have been a semipro team in Mexico or Europe.

            You’re right, TB picking Winnipeg does look like he’s patting himself on the back for being different.

            TB: The NFL? (sneers) How mainstream.

          3. Banana Jr. 6000:

            TB: I am no mere meat and potatoes NFL fan. I have refined tastes. I am a connoisseur of fine professional football. That’s why I prefer to root for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League. (sips Molson Canadian with his pinky finger up)

          4. I’ve actually been to a CFL game. During the 1990s, when there were CFL franchises in the U.S., there was an exhibition game in Miami to drum up interest in a team there. It never materialized, and the other U.S. teams went away soon after that. That was my final trip to the Orange Bowl. And, I think, the final of many games I went to with my dad.

            The only explanation I’ve seen for Batiuk’s sudden Winnipeg fandom was that he wanted to watch football during the 2011 strike, and the CFL was the only thing on. But the only NFL game that was affected by that strike was the season-opening Hall of Fame game, on July 21.

            Which raises the question: Mr. “Football Fields Are For Band Practice” was jonesing this hard to watch an exhibition game in July? Really? How much of a football addict is this man? Nowadays you couldn’t pay me enough money to sit through an NFL preseason game, and I actually still like football. It makes zero sense and contradicts its own reality, but that’s par for the course on Planet Batiuk.

          5. Banana Jr. 6000: I’ve been to a USFL game, twice in fact. The NJ Generals, once against the Philadelphia team, and once against Birmingham, maybe? A lot of people around here who couldn’t get Giants or Jets tickets (waiting lists) jumped on Generals tickets, then realized they had no interest in the Generals, and gave those tickets away. The games themselves were remarkably forgettable, as bad football games tend to be.

            Batiuk being into Canadian football is just so very much in character for him. He was born and raised in the Northern Football Belt, his home state hosts three professional teams if you count Ohio State, but of course HE has to be the contrarian. Now, I’m a lifelong Miami Dolphins fan born and raised in New Jersey, so I can understand being an outlier, but Winnipeg? You gotta make a contrived effort to be THAT big of an outlier. I bet he loves impressing people with his knowledge of Canadian rules, and loves to rank his favorite rouges of all time.

          6. I once went to a NJ Generals vs. Orlando Renegades game in Orlando, in what must have been 1984 or 1985. To this day, it is the only time I ever willingly gave money to Donald Trump.

            I’m also a huge Dolphins supporter, because I was born and raised in metro Miami. And I lived in Tampa for awhile so I was a minor Bucs fan. I’ve also been to indoor football games. Apparently, I love bad football. I refuse to root for the Jaguars, though. I have SOME standards.

            As for Batiuk, I doubt he knows what the 55 yard line is, much less what a rouge is. He loves being contrarian, but only for the sake of being contrarian, and to make you guess his reasons.

  4. If Crank is Tom’s 6th favorite character, who are the Top Five?

    1: Les

    2: Batton Thomas

    3: Dinkle

    4: Lillian

    5: As yet unseen character who is a published author with book signings in rust belt Ohio

    6: Ed Rotnose, Human Blackhead

    I swear…there’s some connection between the top 5…

    1. A couple of months ago, I sent Batiuk a email regarding who his favorite and least favorite characters are, and he said that Lisa was his favorite (I would be surprised if he DIDN’T respond with that) and Wicked Wanda was his least favorite

      1. It isn’t surprising that he picked Lisa. She would’ve won him a Pulitzer if he’d but named the strip
        “3 O’Clock High”! What’s surprising is that there is no character he’s so abused and tormented, even rewriting history to make her suffer more. I get that he thinks he’s writing Tragedy, when it’s really just wallowing in misery.

        Hey, Tom–don’t ever make me your favorite!

        1. It’s such a rehearsed, beauty pageant answer, isn’t it? I’d love to ask a follow-up question “name one thing about Lisa that makes her a good character.” She nothing but get cancer and die, and enable Les Moore’ worst behavior from beyond the grave. This guy wouldn’t recognize a character if Bryan Cranston knocked on his door.

          1. She also had “get knocked up in high school”, which was the start of Batiuk’s “prestige arcs”. (Which goes a long way to explain why she’s Batiuk’s favorite character, and no one else’s.)

          2. In Batiuk’s mind, Lisa *should* be an iconic character, because of his own self-aggrandizing fantasy about how important her story was. Which is actually two layers of self-delusion.

            First, Lisa’s story was almost immediately forgotten. Largely because other comic strips did much better tragedies. But even if the story was important, that doesn’t automatically make the main character important. Especially when that character is a simple-minded implementation of The Lost Lenore. Lisa is irrelevant to her own irrelevant story.

          3. Lisa wasn’t a character at all in any meaningful sense. There was not one single trait, no matter how broad, that she carried with her from her first to her last appearance. She was an empty vessel to be filled with whatever TB wanted to say (usually about Les) at any given moment.

          4. I feel part of the reason Lisa never became the iconic character Tom expected is because she’s not a character. 30+ years ago, Tom stopped giving his cyphers personalities. Chien and Mooch were people. Lisa’s just there. Who’d watch a show about a crusading attorney who, when confronted by the most blatant malpractice ever, literally rolls over and dies?

            CSI: Westview would be “There’s been a terrible murder!” Entire cast: “WE’RE ON OUR BREAK!” and drink coffee until the show ends. Next week: Same thing.

          5. I’ve never seen Breaking Bad. But I’ll go “out of a lamb” here (Ed cosplay!) and guess that if the series was nothing BUT identical Walter Whites, like an entire Ohio county’s worth of comics-obsessed published writers with book signings, no one would’ve wasted their time throwing pizzas on roofs. The strip is now just Planet of the Toms. This week will be Reporter Tom asking Tom-Prime about his favorite comics-adjacent foods.

            SKIP: “And when did you get into your so amazingly detailed sock puppets’ lives? Like Lisa, who you had show an emotion once?” BATTON: “It all began when I was being potty trained the week after I ate nothing but corn! Of course, I was fascinated by my output, like any 12 year old!” SKIP: “You…were being potty trained at…” “OH, look at Mr Early Learner here!”

    2. He loves Gross John and Mopey. He also thinks Darin is groovy, but Darin being largely excluded from the move from FW to CS pushes him down the list. If we’re going with FW from a couple years ago, I think Darin’s higher than both of them. But now, he’s behind.

      1. John, Pete, Darin, Crazy Harry, and other comic book’-adjacent characters are all Mary Sues. John Howard is Tom Batiuk if he was the guy who ran the comic book shop. Pete is Tom Batiuk if those evil Hollywood people had let him write the movie he wanted. Darin is Tom Batiuk if he’d gotten that comic book job in 1972. and got to rub elbows with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby asca young man. Crazy Harry is Tom Batiuk if he needed a low-end job to support himself. Even Chester Hagglemore is Tom Batiuk’s vision of himself if he was a big money guy who could run an unviable business just so people would make comic books the way he wanted.

    3. Mopey Pete most definitely has to be in the top 5. I’d put him above Lillian at number 4. Mopey Pete is continually showered with affection by TB. He’s tops in every field he ventures into. Comic book writing? He’s the best! Writing movie scripts? It’s a blockbuster success! Lillian McKenzie, best-selling author, can’t write her own bio? An easy task for Mopey Pete! Funky closed Montoni’s because business was bad. Not a problem for Mopey Pete. Sold out on the first night!

      Coming soon. Here, Mopey Pete, enjoy marriage with your blonde trophy wife.

      We haven’t seen much of Lillian lately. I wonder if TB has soured on Loathsome Lil after her epic failure as the leading character in “The Burnings ©” TB is not pleased with main characters of prestige arcs who don’t bring home the publicity or hardware.

  5. I still mumble “Okay Richie Rich” under my breath at extravagant money-spending suggestions from my daughter. Although i’ve accepted that no one gets the reference.

    1. My father used to say “living the Life Of Riley over here”, and I had no idea what it meant or referred to until many years after the fact. Turns out it was an old radio/TV show from the 40s and 50s. I just had no idea. And this was the 1970s, where kids were saturated with Honeymooners, Lucy, and old “Our Gang” reruns every single day. So it wasn’t like I wasn’t familiar with ancient popular culture.

      1. Nobody remembers lovable lunkhead Chester A. Riley, played by William Bendix on the radio and a feature film, then by Jackie Gleason (followed by Bendix) on TV? “Wotta revoltin’ development this is!”

        1. I think Riley’s second-best friend (after Jim Gillis) was a cousin of Masky McDeath!

          I refer to Digby “Digger” O’Donnell, “the friendly undertaker,” who advised him on how to deal with his current difficulty, and, when his work was done (“helping Riley out of a hole,” you might say), departed with his own variation on “hi-yo, Silver,” which was the classic “I’d better be shoveling off.”

          Digger would probably find Westview a terrible place, for all the business it might provide him.

          The voice actor for Digger was John Brown, who also played the ne’er-do-well boyfriend Al on “My Friend Irma.”

          In a couple of episodes, Al ponders leaving New York for potentially greener pastures. I don’t think he would like Westview or Centerville. (“Aren’t you being a little hard on Ohio, Al honey?” Irma might say, to which Al would reply: “Ah, Chicken, there’s too many buckeyes there and not enough bullseyes! Give me Nebraska every time, so long as I don’t have to husk the corn!”)

          I guess those sixteen episodes of “Luke Slaughter of Tombstone” I was listening to over the past few days are getting to me…maybe solving murders with Danny Clover on the lonesomest mile in the world will cheer me up…

          1. Anonymous Sparrow,
            Unlike the rest of you youngsters, I remember watching *the Life of Riley* on TV in the late 1950’s. It could have been original run since it ran to 1958, but I am betting it was reruns.
            William Bendix was huge in my parents house.
            1. The Babe Ruth Story 1948. Babe gives his curve away by sticking out his tongue.
            2. *Best! Best! Best of all time* A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Great actors. Great villain. Great songs: Busy Doing Nothing.
            3. Nice film noir, Coverup 1949 Is the sheriff a crook?
            4. (AS, have you ever noticed how romantic yet fickle the #4 is?)
            It is Bendix at his most violent. Untouchables. In 1959, he plays Wally Legenza, a ruthless evil criminal. Bad man! Sadistic! (But not in a good way!🤩)
            5. The Overland Trail 1960 with Trampus Doug McClure. Under appreciated.
            •It’s almost Baseball season. Time for Ed Crankshaft to reminisce about the Toledo Mud Hens. I have their cap!
            •We must go to France. I have a good friend bilingual in French and Italian. You would like her. She taught Italian literature for over 30 years in the university. I asked her (because inquiring minds want to know!) What’s the difference in being cursed at in French or Italian? She answered, Too much face slapping in Italian. To be cursed in French is almost poetic.
            I had to agree. If someone cursed at me in French, I think I would thank them.

          2. sorial, don’t forget Bendix’s turn as one of the survivors of a U-boat attack in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat.”

        2. I’m gonna be honest, I know the phrase “Wotta revoltin’ development this is” mostly from Ben Grimm, but it’s probably safe to say Stan and Jack were quoting Riley. Readers in the 60s would probably get the reference, but… nowadays, not so much, to the point where it’s probably assumed it’s always been a catch phrase of Ben’s, not a reference.

          1. Yeah, I get the feeling that Lee and/or Kirby had New York-born Bendix in mind when coming up with Ben Grimm’s personality and speech pattern. I always like what I think Kirby said, that he imagined the Thing’s voice being similar to Jimmy Durante’s (which they actually did in that godawful “Thing Rings” Hanna-Barbera cartoon in the late ’70s).

    2. Tom Batiuk should know that Richie Rich would never take a bus to school, no matter how much he is or isn’t getting paid. The joke collapses on itself.

  6. RE: Sunday 3/16’s Funkyshaft’

    It’s a typical comic strip set-up and punchline, so I really can’t say I hate it

    My question, though, is one for this site’s deep dive historians. Does this strip depict Ed’s first visit to the Komix Korner? I know in the recent past Jff has dragged Pmm, Mitch, and his own inner child to the shop, but I don’t recall Cranky ever climbing the steps? And shouldn’t Crazy recognize the infamous school bus driver from a half-century (!) ago that he and the Westview gang still occasionally reference?

    1. I’m sure you’re right, but…doesn’t it also seem kinda impossible for ANY character to not have visited Komix Koroner at some point? Even PBM’s been there! It’d seem like some required pilgrimage for all townspeople to have to do before they die. Even Tom married Li–er, LES married Lisa while dressed as Batman and Robin, despite never having mentioned comics before or since. Was their honeymoon so kinky that even the 9 Chickweed freak would go “Ew, gross”? (“Slide down my Batpole, Dick!”)

      Any stabs in the dark as to what the back issues are? Possibly 1960s Flash comics that Tom is missing?

      (I don’t think anyone’s pointed this out, but in the “Jeff and Rictus Humonculus Go To the Koroner” arc, all their precious omnibuses were Marvel…A little dig at Tom’s narrow-mindedness from a smirking Davis?)

      1. “Back Issues” are typically older comics, similar terminology for “backstock” but comic nerds do use it for past comics in general, sometimes a term for catching up on issues for a storyline.

        If Ed already knows that term that could very well mean he’s been infected with comic-loving fever more than he shows. That or Bean’s End readers use it too with how much they love their catalgos.

  8. CS, 3/17:
    MOTHER OF GOD, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

    Skip, he talk to Battom. Skip…he talk to Battom…All work and no play make…

  9. J. J. O’Malley,
    Thank you, JJ. I had forgotten *Lifeboat*. My favorite memory of the movie is Walter Slezak singing, * Du, Du, Liegst Mir im Herzen*.
    I see you still are leading the fight over on GoComics. Carry on, wayward son!

    1. SP:

      Did you catch Hitchcock’s clever cameo in the newspaper weight-loss ad?

      There’s a 1950 radio version of “Lifeboat,” with Tallulah Bankhead recreating her movie role. It has a reference to “All About Eve,” in which Bette Davis is playing a Bankhead-like diva in Margo Channing.

      (Davis played a role Bankhead created in the 1941 film of “The Little Foxes” Bankhead would go on to play the Black Widow in that television show Tom Batiuk despises, which so many others were wrong to like.)

      I think I would believe more readily in *3 O’Clock High* if we saw samples of it, as we did with Fearless Fosdick in Li’l Abner.

      1. Anonymous Sparrow,
        1. I will watch *Lifeboat* tonight and look for the “weight loss ad”. I did read that Hitch wanted to be one of the bodies floating past the boat. I think the studio vetoed that idea. Apparently it was a rough shoot. Bankhead caught pneumonia twice. Cronyn broke a couple of ribs. He had to be rescued from drowning. He got caught underwater trapped on some gear.
        2. I have never understood TB’s hatred of THAT TV show. It was a direct copy of 1950’s-60’s Batman comics. Some plots were directly lifted from the comics. As far as straight serious comics from the period, I think the Flash and Adam Strange kept it dramatic. But Batman and Superman ranged to the silly end pretty frequently.
        3. That is a pretty good example of Fearless Fosdick. It captured Dick Tracy pretty accurately. Again, why does TB create these characters and never show the goods. ‘Tis a mystery!
        4. Always good to converse with you, sir!

        1. Anonymous Sparrow,
          I do have a question for you. As you know this July marks the 109th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. (I think 1916 is also one of Ed Crankshaft’s official birthdays wiped out by
          Time-m-m-o-o-p-p-p!) It seems that all 3 of our heroes were present at the battle: CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, and AA Milne. In your studies do you know if the first 2 ever met Milne? I am striking out in my own search.
          I find it fascinating that each one of the 3 are the leading example and represent quite well the 3 possible forks of fantasy.
          Thank you!

          1. SP:

            While I’m not ready to say “’nuff said” here, as far as I’ve been able to determine, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were not friends in civilian life with A.A. Milne…though Tolkien was aware of something not Pooh from the author, as you’ll see with this extract from the essay “On Fairy-Stories”:

            There is no suggestion of dream in The Wind in the Willows. ‘The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little house.’ So it begins, and that correct tone is maintained. It is all the more remarkable that A. A. Milne, so great an admirer of this excellent book, should have prefaced to his dramatized version a ‘whimsical’ opening in which a child is seen telephoning with a daffodil. Or perhaps it is not very remarkable, for a perceptive admirer (as distinct from a great admirer) of the book would never have attempted to dramatize it. Naturally only the simpler ingredients, the pantomime, and the satiric beast-fable elements, are capable of presentation in this form. The play is, on the lower level of drama, tolerably good fun, especially for those who have not read the book; but some children that I took to see Toad of Toad Hall, brought away as their chief memory nausea at the opening. For the rest they preferred their recollections of the book.

            Raymond Chandler is very hard on Milne’s lone detective novel The Red House Mystery, in the great “Simple Art of Murder” essay.*

            As Chandler has a credit on Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” (a very complicated story indeed), I should note that Hitchcock’s longest cameo in a movie, to my mind, is in “Dial M for Murder,” where he’s in the photograph of the old school dinner. Since the movie largely unfolds on the set in which the picture hangs, the master of suspense is always there…even if the camera doesn’t point him out.

            By the way, Chandler has a William Bendix connection as well! Bendix appears in the 1946 film noir “The Blue Dahlia” (which helped name a murder victim the following year with Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia), which Chandler scripted. It’s the third pairing of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. (Their last is “Saigon” from 1948, about which I know absolutely nothing. Maybe it’s because of the pedigree: no one as famous as Graham Greene, Dashiell Hammett or Chandler seems to be connected with it.)

            When time permits, I am going to watch “Cover-Up” on YouTube.

            *

            At the end of “The Simple Art of Murder,” Chandler praises several mystery novels, of which I’ve tracked down all but two, Kenneth Fearing’s *Dagger of the Mind* and Richard Sale’s *Lazarus No. 7.*

            Abebooks.com has both, but the English language editions of Sale’s book begin at $96.00, and they only come after German and French translations. Ah, to have the money of Chester the Chiseler…

          2. Anonymous Sparrow,
            1. I did keep my word and rewatched *Lifeboat* last night. It is surprising the tricks memory plays on one. I did not remember Bendix being in the film. Then I misremembered Slezak singing “Du, du liegst mir im Herzen” happening much later in the film as he rows toward the supply ship. Which of course does not happen.
            2. I eagerly waited for Hitchcock’s Reducto appearance. It seems the photos are real. Hitch really lost that much weight.
            3. Thank you for checking on A. A. Milne for me.
            4. I am reading *the Wind in the Willows*. Just bought the book on Monday. I read it back in the late ‘70’s. I took a children’s lit class. It was the best college class I took by a professor that loved the topic. That class was the first time I read Winnie the Pooh. My daughter was born in 1978. After a few years, I read her both books about Pooh. I couldn’t finish the very last chapter of the second book, when Christopher Robin says goodbye to Pooh. I choked up too much!
            5. I think you will enjoy *Coverup*. Bendix has a fine role. The protagonist was a quite successful script writer.
            6. Finally, I continue to plug away at *Ulysses*. I think I am about page 100. It already has a scene that I wish I never read. It involves a toilet. I guess, you have to let James Joyce be James Joyce.

            Il y a des hommes bien. Il y a des hommes meilleurs, mais en tête de liste se trouve Anonymous Sparrow.

          3. SP:

            After I see “Cover-Up,” I think I’ll look into film noir and determine whether there is a golden year for the genre as there is for cinema (1939 gets most of the acclaim, though some argue for 1962; a young cineaste I know would choose 1971).

            1949 is the year of “Tension,” a noir I especially like.

            In *A Sleeping Life,* one of her Inspector Wexford novels, Ruth Rendell has Wexford, a doting grandfather, go out early one morning with his grandson for a chance to glimpse the water-rat. The boy has just read *The Wind in the Willows,* you see.

            (Wexford is a great reader himself and on a trip to China in *Speaker of Mandarin,* he brings Thackeray’s *Vanity Fair* with him. When his partner Mike Burden marries Jenny Ireland, a publisher’s sister in “When the Wedding Was Over,” Wexford gets a great many books from the publisher, and reads them all, the last of which enables him to solve the case at hand.)

            The first Pink Floyd album is *The Piper at the Gates of Town,* which takes its title from a chapter in *The Wind in the Willows.*

            (The original title of an “Anne” book from L.M. Montgomery was *Anne of Windy Willows.* It became *Anne of Windy Poplars.* Could Kenneth Grahame’s estate have requested the title change?)

            Congratulations on staying the course with *Ulysses.* The head coach at Camp Granada would be proud of you!

            (“He wants no sissies/so he reads to us from something called *Ulysses*…”)

            As am I. Like Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith in “Hail the Conquering Hero,” you exhibit real courage

            But it takes more than bravery to tackle *Finnegans Wake,* and feel free to be a live donkey than a dead lion there. Going up and atom for a spot of nuclear fission is not to everyone’s taste.

  10. Today’s (Monday’s) Crankshaft, about Tom — er, Batton’s childhood memory of being read the comics while eating buttered Pumpernickel bread, has the germ of something sweet and real. But the WALL of words totally filling P2 just wrecks it.

    What if… TB had taken the 2-panel-worthy joke in Sunday’s strip, about “back issues,” and made that a weekday strip, and actually *shown* his childhood memory instead of turning a comic strip into a novelette?

    Oh, wait. Is there clip art of Tom — I mean Batton — sitting on his Dad’s knee eating bread? If not, then that explains it.

    He’s just dying to write a graphic novel memoir. Wonder why he doesn’t just go for it? It’s never gonna work in the form he’s trying to use now, filling daily panels with text.

    1. I’m just dumbfounded. I can’t believe this stupid non-interview is still going on. And now it’s taken a turn into Batiuk’s mommy issues, with all this effusive praise for his father and no mention of his mother’s existence. How sick is this going to get?

      2. I did notice the warm feelings, but only, apparently, for Dad; mom, meanwhile, is Rose Murdoch, the realest villain TB ever conjured, amidst a sea of wannabes like Bull and Frankie.

        1. I suspect TB’s warm feelings for Dad only extend as far as necessary to illustrate that he has no warm feelings for Mom. Because she tried to take his comic books away!

  12. Let us all pour one out (syrup, skim milk, screwdriver, whatever) for the Centerville Dale Evans, crushed to flinders just this morning by a crashing Word Zeppelin.

    1. I just now noticed that they’re at Dale Evans, not Montoni’s. Which makes three restaurant trips now. Is Batton just using Skip for free food?

  14. We go right to motives today: comics are a link to his dad. Questioning them means questioning Batiuk pere in the eyes of Batiuk fils.

  15. The text increasingly crowding out art is an uncomfortable reminder of the ill-fated Charles Crumb, whose comics eventually became nothing but a suggestion of art with a full page of tiny writing.

    The difference is, of course, is that Charles Crumb had great talent before he lost it all to madness.

    TB had… pretty decent talent in his newspaper-daily world, before he lost it all to Pulitzer-chasing. And now he seems to have forgotten that he has an audience at all.

    1. Everybody’s sooooo sure the upcoming marriage is gonna be the wedding of Pete and Mindy. They’re looking right past the bromance that’s unfolding before their very eyes … the star-crossed coupling of two dudes ideally suited for each other, and for no-one else.

      In this corner: Batton, the self-obsessed, self-deluded, genially cloth-headed crushing bore who will not shut up. And over in the other corner: Skip, the empty vessel who has so little sense of what’s interesting that he literally cannot be bored.

      Get ready for Skitton: the Funkyverse’s most perfect couple.™

  16. What if the upcoming wedding is Ed Crankshaft and um, Mary Marzipan? (Sorry, I don’t know the name, it’s the female bus driver who is actually nice. Batiuk’s “Character” list doesn’t seem to have her.)

      1. “Why would Bull keep this picture of us?” It’s like Les doesn’t even understand the concept of friendship.

      2. Panel two is revolting. What characteristics, exactly, would Bull have “admired” about Les? He was a complete loser. He wasn’t clever, witty, driven, determined, or anything. He wasn’t even smart (he had to copy Funky’s homework). But naturally everyone has to have nothing but profound admiration for Les.

    1. The whole “Bushka must DIE–but not until he and the few people who care about him SUFFER!” is seriously the most fucked-up thing Bats has ever done. When was the triggering incident, 1963 in Akron Middle School? Long time to hold a grudge, whiny-ass titty baby. And then he had Les sneer at him DURING HIS FUNERAL, because Tom’s superpower is pettiness. I wouldn’t be surprised if some sporto Tom knew died at the time of the strip’s arc. Some old man Tom was stalking and harassing on Facebook for years, because “He deserves it. He once gave me a wedgie during the JFK administration! And everyone laughed! I’ll show him! I’ll spend 50 years making sure NO ONE laughs at what I do!” You won, Tom.

  21. Great Minds!

    https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/space-busters-2/

    Yes, here’s…a thing he did that he links to 3 times. Like reading comics and eating pumpernickel, it repeats on ya.

    “FEATURING: “Them that came from There in Those”

    Yeah, he was 11. So, about as close to him admitting he isn’t a comics legend born of god. Also: “The fascinating thing is that some earlier phantom and I had both created a title that made absolutely no sense at all. How do you bust space?”

    It’s from “Gang Busters”. It was a word then, Tom. Why didn’t you go to your current status, and Waste Comics Space? And if you’re wondering…Yeah, it’s just a comic book cover with no stories. Great minds. Apples falling from a tree. As the twig is bent. Who didn’t clean up after their damn dog?!

  22. Been missing out a lot since my last proper comment. The Crank awards were great as always, didn’t quite keep up with the vote as far as my choices vs the community’s (I think I’m a little less harsh on the regular punching bags so I don’t tend to vote for them as much as the worst cases.) Still, the commentary is great, and the Trial saga makes for a compelling alternate ending to that whole mess from last Fall.

    Least there’s interesting things to bite on here and there. The prior Crankshaft week was remarkable for running on a story about a proposed bill that, according to Google, is literally over a year old and makes it clear what headlines Tom was grabbing from. Bemusing contrast compared to the modern headlines, where it feels like such an incentive for public schools is in direct opposition to where we’re headed, but I digress.

    The Komix Korner blog is also remarkable. Everyone check before the site gets updated, Tom double-posted his latest blog post about an old space comic he made as a kid, apparently just to correct a mistake he made about one of the header images! Also the latest Match to Flame is definitely a quite a wordful; he even says the line! “Elegant solution!” That’s how he describes how he, to quote his further words, “decided to engage in some retroactive continuity repair” He uses that long-worded explanation of a retcon to talk about to solve the “problem” of having two characters share last names that he didn’t intend to have related, but decided to establish as anyways, and not the fact he “revealed” Lisa’s teen pregnancy as a date rape situation. Also describes the gay prom arc as needing “a lot more thumping of stories to make sure they weren’t hollow”. Who were the gay kids’ names again, Tom?

    1. Yeah, this “paying kids to go to school” story feels like a relic from the 90s right now.

  23. Today’s Hopelessly Boring Crankshaft

    Day Three of The Most Boring Interview, Ever (2025 Edition)

    Make it stop make it stop make it stop please bring Dinkle back for a week or let Crankshaft run over Keesterman’s mailbox because he hasn’t done that in a while (he hasn’t done that since 2022)

  24. The March 19 strip is a rare example of a strip that has an ending much better than its start.

    I can understand that a comics-loving kid from Cleveland would be excited to find that Superman was created by someone from Cleveland.

    However, beginning a strip with the sentence, “One time in elementary school, my teacher had me put the encyclopedia books into alphabetical order …”, suggests a certain lack of inspiration.

    1. March 19, Panel 3 is the new definining image of Crankshaft. Ed and his friends are sitting in the background barely visible, while Skip and “Batton” smirk over comic books.

      1. Agree 100%, BJr6K. It’s early yet, but I nominate it as a Panel of the Year contender.

    2. PANEL 1:
      “One time, as a kid, I was too dumb to realize my teacher just wanted me to shut up about freakin’ comic books and stop bothering the class, so she gave me some busy work ‘alphabetizing’ some books in another room that were already in alphabetical order.”

      PANEL 2:
      “Because I have a very limited range of interests and the attention span of a fruit fly, I pulled all the books out, then quickly got distracted by something in them about comic books. Comic books, comic books, comic books! Comic books!”

      PANEL 3:
      “Comic books, comic books, comic books! I love me some comic books! Comic books, comic books, COMIC BOOKS!“

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