Posters beware of eve hill and Y. Knott made comments that got me thinking about the Funkyverse in general:
‘The Sentinel’ ceased publication and only exists in Skip’s imagination.
beware of eve hill
Everybody’s humouring ol’ Skipper. “Great edition this week, Skip! Read the whole thing cover to cover! And all for 10 cents — what a bargain!”
Y. Knott
There hasn’t been a newspaper published in years, of course. But it makes the old man happy in his dotage to “interview” people, to write “stories”, and to have “interns” around who will give him someone to talk with.
It’s the same for Les Moore, who wrote some “books”, won an “Oscar”, “teaches”, and “climbed” Mount Kilimanjaro — although he hasn’t left his house since he finished high school.
That would explain a lot about this world, and why it’s so focused on literature when its inhabitants (and its creator) can barely read, write, or even speak.
Take this week’s Crankshaft, for example. It’s yet another book signing arc, starring the insufferable Lillian McKenzie. This week, Lillian bends over backwards to prove she’s incapable of writing a sentence, much less a book series that’s been showered with awards. This on top of her usual smug condescension, and Tom Batiuk’s spammy corporate logos of real world events that still tolerate him. We get:
Monday: Lillian gets in line for a book signing, not realizing the line was to see her. (I guess those pre-teen twin assistants of hers set everything up, which is usually the host’s responsibility.)
Tuesday: A fan gives an incoherent title suggestion for Lillian’s next book. Lillian seems to be sarcastically mocking her.
Wednesday: Lillian wasn’t mocking her. The fan jokes that Lillian is “all done except for the book part!” This may be the most self-unaware joke Tom Batiuk has ever made, for reasons I’ll get to.
Thursday: A line of signing attendees spits out more title suggestions, which are all “Murder” followed by a preposition, and then random words. How would Murder On The Zoom Panel even work? The meeting attendees are all in their own homes, and anything that happens is video-recorded while an AI generates a transcript. Doesn’t leave much room for mystery. But Tom Batiuk Lillian doesn’t think this far ahead.
Friday: Lillian repeats Wednesday’s joke. We also see that she wrote down the suggestions, further confirming that she is serious about using them.
Saturday: Lillian goes even further to show how dull and uncreative she is. She says “White-Collar Crime at the Book Publisher just isn’t as attention-grabbing” as the Murder titles.
Well, Lillian, I’ve read the books Bringing Down The House about the M.I.T. blackjack team, and Fake: Forgery, Lies, and eBay about art forgery in the early days of online shopping. They were compelling reads. There are also many great movies about white-collar crime: Wall Street, The Big Short, Catch Me If You Can, and others. That Lillian rejects this concept out of hand, but wrote down Murder At The Airport Book Kiosk as a worthy suggestion, is a greater indictment of her talent than anything I could say.
Les Moore is another person who can’t possibly have written the books he’s credited with. This one strip exposes him as a fraud:
How can Les write Lisa’s Story when he’s too emotionally fragile to even read Lisa’s story?
Les can’t give his readers a raw, emotional look into the world of dealing with cancer, because he never even dealt with it himself. He spent the whole time avoiding anything other than his own feelings, mostly leaving Lisa and Summer to fend for themselves. Real-life cancer sufferers, like Alex Trebek was, can at least be honest about their condition, and acknowledge the role loved ones play in support and survival. The short personal stories at thisislivingwithcancer.com are light-years ahead of anything Les Moore or Tom Batiuk has ever hinted at in the 20 years Lisa’s Story has been attracting attention to itself.
So Lillian and Les are frauds. Skip Rawlings is a fraud, because there’s no way one man with one arm is creating a full-featured daily newspaper alone, especially when that man is over 100 years old. (He was also the villain in a white-collar crime story, but Tom Batiuk is too blind to see it as that.)
Pete Roberts-Reynolds is a fraud, because all we ever see him do is design comic book covers and steal ideas from his girlfriend. He never actually writes anything, even though he supposedly wrote this world’s Star Wars. And since today is May 4th, may the force be with you. You see what I mean? Starbuck Jones has been around for decades, and it doesn’t even a catchphrase!
You know which author I do believe in, though? Harry Dinkle. He’s the one person in this world I can believe wrote an actual book. Unlike most of the others, we’ve seen him work on it. Dinkle at his typewriter writing bad puns was a staple joke in Act I. It was replaced by the self-indulgent “lord of the late”, “le chat bleu”, and book signings in Act II. Dinkle has the work ethic and obsessiveness you need to get the job done. Nobody would ever read it outside of historical research, but it would get written.
Lillian, Les, and Atomik Komix are lazy. They write books like most people buy lottery tickets. They’re certain this is the one that will make them rich and famous. But even if they win awards, Monday morning they’re still working their dead-end jobs in their dying poverty suburb. (A dying poverty suburb with a strip club, which was an unexplored plot point in Crankshaft after the Valentine Theater closed.)
Which brings me back to the original question: what is the purpose of book publishing in the Funkyverse? Because it sure as heck isn’t quality literature. Lillian thought an arson attack on her own home was a great inspiration for a book, even though she never bothered finding out who did it. (We will, though.) Does the Hercule Poirot of this series solve murders by giving smug lectures and astroturfing flash mobs?
If Murder At The Bookstore Burning and The Centerville Sentinel and Lisa’s Story and Starbuck Jones and Singed Hair and Fallen Star and the entire output of Atomik Komix aren’t actual books, then what are they?
I think the Funkyverse is a cargo cult. When European and American cargo ships started showing up at remote South Pacific islands, the locals invented a narrative about John Frum. Who was probably an ordinary person who introduced himself as “John from” wherever. The locals made him a god figure, and started doing rituals intended to bring John Frum back to their island, with a cargo ship full of goodies. They made a god out of some shmoe who worked for a shipping company.
On top of that, the book scene in Westview has elements of joss paper. In Chinese culture, it is common to give gifts of money for New Year’s, to deceased loved ones at funerals, or to use in burnt offerings. A whole industry of printing fake money for these purposes exists.
If you combine these two concepts, that’s what these books are. The residents are simple natives in a forgotten place who know book writing is a path to fame and fortune, and absolutely nothing else about it. They are performing a ritual to try and appease a fickle god. But they need physical books for that ritual. The book can’t exist as merely a Word file. It has to exist on paper, with a title and a cover. It doesn’t have to have any content, just a title and a cover. Which is why Funkyverse denizens spend so much effort on titles and covers, and absolutely nothing on the contents of the book, even if it’s just a comic book.
It’s why Chester Hagglemore puts so much effort into creating comic book covers of characters his staff can’t possibly support.
It’s why they spend hours in line at each other’s book signings, buying books that aren’t even new anymore, and which no one would ever want to read even if they existed.
It’s why they spend so much time acting like Hollywood’s idea of a writer, smirking at each other over incoherent sayings. It’s like they’re trying to be witty, but don’t know what wit actually is.
And when they’re not on panel, Lillian and Les and Pete and all the others are in line buying other people’s books. The whole town belongs to the cargo cult, and they all reinforce each other’s behavior. It’s basically the local economy.
That’s my fan theory, and I’m sticking to it. In the Funkyverse, when you’re “all done except for the book part,” you’re done.
Son of Stuck Funky 
You nailed it! When your only other source of entertainment is the strip club where they show the same 3 movies, you’d get bored enough to mob every book signing as well.
What does “Murder by Trade” even mean? Best I could come up with was “Murder by Trade Paperback.” It makes no sense, but sometimes comical book collections are called that. Maybe “Murder by Silver Age DC Flash Omnibus” didn’t fit. Perhaps you Trade your signed copies in for your monthly food ration. That would explain the lines!
Successful Ohio author John Scalzi has said “If you have a story idea for me, keep it to yourself. I don’t want to get sued for using your idea.” But Lillian is going to use all their weird and stupid titles that are just “Murder at the Bookstore or Another Fine Literature Retailing Establishment Near You, But Not fleaBay” slightly rephrased. C’mon, dude. “Murder at the Rexall Spinner Rack” is right there!
The only Lillian book i want to read is Murder In The House Of That Bitch Who Hid My Marriage Proposal Letter.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Trade is a gay slang term which refers to the casual partner of a gay man or to the genre of such pairings. […] Often, the terms trade and rough trade are treated as synonymous. Often the attraction for the gay male partner is finding a dangerous, even thuggish, partner who may turn violent.
“Murder by trade” doesn’t even make any sense. I guess it means “by profession”, like it’s about a professional killer. But an Anton Chigurh character wouldn’t fit the “cozy mystery” vibe. So to whatever extent this is a good title, it fails to fit Lillian’s series. Not that she even noticed.
Today’s Crankshaft
HOW THE FUCK DID CRANKSHAFT MANAGE TO PURCHASE AN ENTIRE BOAT FROM BEAN’S END
I mean the boat is only 5 feet wide yet 40 feet long. It would tip over if you farted on the sails wrong. So I imagine it was deeply discounted.
And he’s back shopping at Bean’s End again today. What does Batiuk think is so damn entertaining about this concept?
I’ve been to 2 book signings, Bill Griffith with a Zippy comp, and P.Z. Myers with “The Happy Atheist.” Both had Lillian-length lines for the signings. But these were preceded by 2+ hour lecture/Q&A sessions. That you paid to attend. But every FW signing is just that–A signing. Why would you go to those? I know there are Meet the Author events at B. Dalton or whatnot. Are those mobbed? We’ve seen pictures of Tom’s signings. Nary a customer. Cargo cult makes sense, but it also seems like a fetish.
“You don’t have a signed copy of Lisa’s Story?! BURN THE HERETIC!”
I’ve wandered by a couple of those, including one at the mall last weekend. Most of the time, they’re pathetic. Nobody’s buying their unknown book, if only because it has a target demographic most people don’t belong to. I wouldn’t be interested in a cozy mystery novel, even if it were a fine example of the genre. So the author just sits there at an empty table, looking like they’re questioning their life choices.
Which makes me wonder how many books Batiuk is selling during his annual trips to Ohioana Book Fair, Ohio Music Educators Association, and Akron Comic-Con. He’s there every single year, at events that are an odd fit for him. I doubt he’s selling enough to pay the cost of the table and gas. But that’s not really why he does it.
Don’t know how many books Tom sells, but the Ohioana conferences do seem to draw a respectable enough crowd. Enough people that you don’t feel embarrassed walking through like you’re speedwalking past an entire row of beggars with bowls held out.
There’s no fee for a table at the Ohioana Book Festival…but you do have to apply annually, and be accepted by the review committee. You need to be Ohio-born (or Ohio-based), and you also can’t be there to plug the same book you were there for last year — the application is for new books only.
With a new Funky Winkerbean volume every year, Tom meets the application guidelines. So this is one book event that it makes sense for him to attend … basically, it’s a chance to sell his books for free (minus the gas money it takes to get him there.)
This is, of course, the direct result of his poor story telling. At least in For Better Or For Worse, they used to give a sample of Mike’s literary mantelpiece.
I was once reading a site dissecting a very long book series. The site was much like SoSF, but less snarky and with more Bible scholarship. The series had 2 authors, each one plotting and doing the bulk of their own writing. Their stories didn’t mesh well. The segues were “My turn to write now!” The book’s 2 main characters were identifiable as to which of the writers was currently in charge. Because the characters were such obvious Mary Sues. So perfect in every way!
One is The Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time. He was the premier writer in the world. Top reporter on the biggest news magazine of all time, and had won Pulitzers! (Sound familiar?) Every time he visits the office, we’re told how beloved and awesome he is, cracking everyone up with his lightning wit. What’s he saying? Where’s a sample of his prize-winning work? Nowhere. We’re told this.
The blogger noted that in a book, you can say a character is the world’s greatest ballerina or violinist, because you can’t see what they’re doing. If you’re the world’s wittiest and bestest writer, the reader needs examples of this. Especially if the book you’re reading is awful. Show, don’t tell.
Sound familiar?
Johnston showed us Mike’s technique: “take a story told in confidence, cover your ass legally by waiting for the person to die, change some names and write it in a prose style that can be likened to a torrent of porridge.”
He boasted about “And the living buried the dead,” FFS!
I just thought of another similarity to Tom in that book series.
You know how his Sunday strips are 5 panels when they could be 3, or even 2? (The Sideways ones should be zero) His meandering blog with extraneous details that never mean anything? In the book series, the reporter’s editor gives him an assignment. In a movie, it’d be “You need to go to–NEW YORK CITY!” Smash cut to a helicopter shot of the Statue of Liberty as Rhapsody in Blue plays.
In the book, he leaps into action by making 5 phone calls, telling people “I’m going from Chicago to NYC.” Most of these people we never see again. He orders airplane tickets (on his phone–for books written before cell phones, there are a lot of phone calls). He takes the elevator to the ground floor, hails a taxi, which drives to the airport, and we hear the whole drive as if it were GPS. “He drove past Mayor Daley Road and took a right onto Hog Butcher of the World Boulevard, then 3 blocks later…” He goes to the ticket counter, gets his tickets, waits to board…
Movie: Ten seconds to New York. This book: 55 pages. Five spent making a phone call in the airport men’s room.
Extraneous detail I’ll add: the star reporter’s name is Buck. A Star Buck, you could say.
There’s a reason for all the superfluous nonsense: he’s trying and failing to hide the fact that he can’t imagine the thing he’s building up to.
Writers can make perfectly good books like this, if they’re good at writing scenery porn. Tom Clancy and John Grisham come to mind. They could dump pages of mind-numbing detail about war machines and legal maneuvers, but in a way that supported the story and was entertaining to read on its own. I suspect these self-indulgent Eat Pray Love type books are good at this too.
Your two authors, and Batiuk, don’t do this. They’re just name-dropping every New York thing they can think of. It’s a cheap substitute for the sophistication they want to convey but simply don’t have. They sound like those people who go to London for a week and come back saying pip pip cheerio and eating crumpets.
“Travel Porn” might have been a better word for it. There are writers who are good at that too. They can really paint a picture of an exotic place, and the people who live there. A lot of travel bloggers like Drew Binsky excel at that. These authors sound like they thumbed through the world’s most basic New York tourist guide, and then wrote out their to-do list.
Which I have to Batiuk a little credit for. Old FW felt like 1970-80s Cleveland, in the way a lot of old sitcoms like Cheers or Taxi captured something about their location. He captured the “quiet lives of desperation” feel of the Rust Belt. Everyone had stable but dead-end, low-paying factory jobs, and accepted it because there weren’t any other options. Like most of his skills, it atrophied after Act I.
sounds just like that “running the bases” strip.
Speaking of published authors, here’s a scintillating sentence from the latest “Flash Fridays” on TB’s blog:
Perhaps he got so excited by the homophone in the first part of the sentence that he went into a fugue state.
It’s called writing.
While this isn’t the thing I should be reacting to, what on earth does “get your act together if you want to win the case” mean? If your lawyer needs you to do something to improve your odds of winning, they will tell you precisely what that is. And if you haven’t testified yet, you really can’t do much to screw things up, unless you’re stalling on submitting basic paperwork. This is so vague and it should be so specific.
I can’t tell whether (a) the Flash’s lawyer gave him vague instructions, or (b) the lawyer gave more specific instructions, but Batiuk’s plot summary is vague on what that advice was.
@Joshua K. , It turns out the whole thing is so goddamn stupid that there’s no real answer to that question. The Flash’s lawyer is concerned about his public behavior for some reason. Even though this wouldn’t matter to a sequestered jury that is instructed to consider only the facts of the murder case. You know, The Flash’s ongoing murder trial, which Batiuk completely forgot to mention in his synopsis. And only barely mentioned in his list of 17 “dangling subplots”. Which had two entries each about the Flash Museum and the Flash’s super-secret ring. Both of which were both also weeks-long Funky Winkerbean plots.
Does TB read Comic Book Resources? Because this article may rearrange his molecules:
10 Things About The Flash That Make No Sense
https://www.cbr.com/the-flash-confusing-plotholes/
It’s really mild. Clearly written by a long-time Flash fan. But Number 2 Will Blow His Mind!
(It’s that Flash 123 is sorta goofy)
Does TB read Comic Book Resources? Because this article may rearrange his molecules:
10 Things About The Flash That Make No Sense
https://www.cbr.com/the-flash-confusing-plotholes/
It’s really mild. Clearly written by a long-time Flash fan. But Number 2 Will Blow His Mind!
(It’s that Flash 123 is sorta goofy)
Today’s Stupid, Asinine, Shark-Jumping Bullshitingly Uninteresting Crankshaft
Looks like we’re back with the Bean’s End bullshit
Today’s Crankshaft
somebody PLEASE take away Crankshaft’s wallet because at this rate, he’ll be broke
it’s too exaggerated to be realistic, but it’s not exaggerated enough to be funny.
Today’s Crankshaft
Ed: No, I’m gonna fucking kill you with the pitchfork. (impales Jeff in the chest with the pitchfork)
Ed should be buying something to defend himself against pitchfork-wielding mobs.
A riot is an ugly sink, unt, I sink it is zhust about time zat ve had vun.
For those of you who didn’t think last week’s strips were boring enough, the Artiste has put up pics of his stint at Ohoiana. Of people leafing through his books, but not of them holding up copies he’d signed.
There is a pic of someone realizing the terrible truth in the old adage, “Curiosity killed the Monkey.”
if someone buy a book batiuk just signed, and held it up saying “here’s one for your blog readers”, would batiuk see it as a moment worth photographing? And if so, would he get it in frame? And if so, would it be focused? And if so, would he white-balance it first? And if so, would he remember to charge his phone before the show? And if so, could batiuk do all this before the man’s arms fell asleep?
overall, i’d lay 1000-1 against the parlay of “someone buys a signed book” and “batiuk successfully photographs it.”
All of them are looking at the Crankshaft book, the first two with a slightly bemused expression: “I guess this might be a gift for someone who likes baseball? Does my husband like baseball enough that this would be something he’d like? Meh. I’m guessing there are probably better books at some of these other tables, right?”
Curious George, meanwhile, is not from Ohio (nor were his creators H.A. and Margaret Rey) — but he IS curious! Shortly after this picture was taken, The Man With The Yellow Hat arrived and firmly escorted George to a less sad table.
I’ve had a post stuck in the Chute for about 100 minutes now, with just the “comment posting” graphic assuring me it’s doing something. The last time this happened, after 20 minutes I reposted it, and that’s how it got posted twice! (The downvote on my post? That was me, angry at myself)
Is something weird going on with the commenting site again? Am I the only one seeing commenters names posted as in crossword puzzles–once horizontally, then vertically? Am I nuts for posting this when the thing doesn’t work? It’s not the SITE, it’s…I dunno. The McArnolds ice cream machine being down again?
As we all know, Batiuk rates writers above any other profession. I was thinking, perhaps writers in the Batiukverse are so important they should hire bodyguards. Then I realized anyone who is a writer in the Batiukverse is automatically universally loved by everyone, and there’s no need for bodyguards. As we’ve seen at the book signings, Les, Lillian, and Dinkle are always willing to make their fans happy, regardless of how many.
One of these days, I expect Batiuk to show some mother holding her newborn up to Les and asking him to bless her baby.
While writing the first paragraph about the first paragraph in my previous reply, I was reminded of an old comic strip. Does anybody remember a single panel comic strip, by Gahan Wilson, where a cartoonist is walking down the sidewalk surrounded by two burly bodyguards? One of the bodyguards shoves somebody out of the way and says, “MAKE WAY! THERE’S A CARTOONIST COMING THROUGH!”
I can’t seem to find it online. Anybody else remember it?
Anyhoo, Batiuk probably has it hanging on the wall of his Comics Castle, with “CARTOONIST” replaced by “WRITER”.
Dadgummit. Overedited again. Meant to write:
“While writing the first paragraph a̸b̸o̸u̸t̸ ̸t̸h̸e̸ ̸f̸i̸r̸s̸t̸ ̸p̸a̸r̸a̸g̸r̸a̸p̸h̸ in my previous reply”
(Sorry if this gets double-posted…But I have to go to bed sometime.)
I was thinking–yes, despite evidence to the contrary, that is a thing I occasionally indulge in–about the greatest arc in Funkhistory. Yes, “WHERE’S FATHER?!”
I assume Tom heard about Fatty Arbuckle one time. I guess even he realized that having it told in first person would mean the character was 130 years old, so he bumped it from the 1920s to…the 1940s. Hollywood since its founding has been riddled by scandal, why not the 60s or 70s? The best part of that arc–besides the flat-out absurdity–was Ayers’s art. I’m sure he rolled his eyes while doing it, but DAMN that’s some great art! The 40s clothes, the buildings, the cars…I would’ve loved it if it was set in the 70s, just to see his lovingly detailed rendition of Cliff Anger’s AMC Gremlin.
I wondered “What happened to Chuck?” The answer to this is I Dunno. I did find this 2013 article:
https://www.indeonline.com/story/news/2013/09/03/meet-akron-s-chuck-ayers/42096026007/
“I’m averaging about 50 hours a week.” On Crankshaft. No wonder he quit and Don’t-Care Dan Davis took over. Someone with TB’s work ethic of “PHEW! That was a tough 10 minutes work!!”
Also, it would be great to have that Croenenbergian Crank mug, if you hate your coworkers as much as Ed hates everyone else.
I walked Chuck’s labyrinth last summer!
https://www.eventsakron.com/news/2023/07/unveiling-fresh-diggs
If you search for “chuck ayres labryinth” you will find a few less effusive articles than the one I posted. They are in the Akron Beacon Journal and I believe they’re behind a paywall.
My own theory about the Sentinel is that it’s operated by the Centerville Historical Society in the same manner that the National Park Service operates Mabry Mill (on the Blue Ridge Parkway) and used to operate the Alley Spring Mill (in the Ozark National Riverways): as a historical re-enactment for tourists, which produces a small amount of product for souvenir use. At the mills, one or two days a week, for maybe half an hour, a person in period costume would turn on the water and feed a little grain into the hoppers. Tourists could watch as this got ground, and then buy a small bag of the flour for a ridiculous price.
That’s how I see the Sentinel. It’s a historical demonstration of how newspapers used to be written and printed in Centerville, before radio, TV and the internet made them obsolete. Remember that the office is inside the Centerville Historical Society museum. Skippy goes through the motions of “reporting,” “writing,” “typesetting” and “printing” a two-or-three-sheet rag that’s either given away for free or costs two dollars a copy, depending on the Centerville Historical Society’s endowment.
The question I have is, does Skippy know he’s play-acting being a reporter/publisher, or has he been playing this role for so long he thinks it’s his real job? Beats me, though I lean toward the latter.