There. Fixed it.

Saw some sweet and snarkless commenters on GoComics make an attempt to defend ‘Eugene Buys Wisteria’ as perfectly appropriate over Memorial Day.

While I agree that the bare bones heart of the trope is fine enough. Elderly Person Honors Deceased Love is a pretty universal emotion to ply, the arc sucked in execution.

First of all, the strips were boring as fuck. No tension. No conflict. No humor. And no new information or insight on any of the so-called characters.

We don’t learn anything new about Lucy or Eugene.

And Eugene is not a character.

Eugene’s only purpose when he appears is to pine for dead Lucy and reminisce over a summer’s worth of Summit Park dates from 80 years ago. He’s the dead girlfriend equivalent of the cabbages guy from Avatar the Last Airbender.

So I fixed it.

Enjoy.

(Also I laughed out loud at Batiuk keeping Lucy’s birth year 1920. It’s such an easy fix to turn things into amorphous-comic book time, ala Simpsons, by obscuring the year with the flowers. But Batiuk’s gotta Batiuk, and I guess Eugene and Lillian are canonically super spry centenarians.)

77 thoughts on “There. Fixed it.”

  1. Cabbage Guy served an actual narrative purpose: he reminded people that most of us can’t shoot lightning out of our fingertips and thus have to make an actual living.

    1. Maybe YOU can’t, but my Sith training should have be spewing the volts in no time.

      1. Still, though, the Gaang might be saving the world…..so this guy can sell cabbages….

  4. RE: Monday 5/26 and the Interview from Hell:

    I would say “This has to be a joke!,” but clearly there’s nothing funny about it. After a full week of Eugene and his wisterias, we’re back for the fourth or fifth time since last August to Skip Bittman and his never-ending interview with Batiuk cartoonist avatar Batton Thomas. Robert Caro takes less time with his LBJ biographies!

    1. The fact that we’re supposed to sympathize with this self-promoting incompetent and agree with his blinkered vision says a lot.

    2. This “interview” is going to make “The Death of the Phantom” look like a tightly-plotted, concise masterpiece of storytelling.

      1. God, he thinks he’s so clever, doesn’t he? I worked in radio for a year, and “making it look like have you have more audience participation than you really do” is a common practice. “Batton” was just doing the newspaper’s work for them. And if the strip was so new it didn’t even have a name yet, the “local paper” probably wasn’t expecting an avalanche of suggestions. And how good were any of the suggestions if “Rapping Around” won? It’s generic, undescriptive, and instantly forgettable. The Far Side and Bloom County were previously Nature’s Way and The Academia Waltz, which at least made sense for what they were. Batiuk hates the name Funky Winkerbean but at least it was memorable.

    3. I always knew Batty was a hack, but from today’s strip I learned that he is also a shameless self promoter. I now believe the GoComics conspiracy theory that all those comments which praise the strip are the work of Batty and his friends.

    1. “Here are your wisterias!” NO. It’s “Here is your wisteria.” It’s one of those weird horticultural nouns that has no real plural, like “holly” or “mistletoe.” Every florist knows this.
    2. No florist has wisteria in stock. It’s an invasive vine that’s impossible to cultivate profitably. and sheds its petals very easily. There is a sweet little story to be made from these facts – an old man thinks of wisteria and assumes he can go buy some…florist gently corrects them and suggests stock instead (the weirdest flower name, also one with no plural, but one that’s coming into season now and which is the most underrated cut flower; beautiful spicy fragrance and hardy in an arrangement) – which he accepts wistfully. “You can’t go home again,” he says. “No,” she says, “but these really are pretty, aren’t they?” Beat. Smile. Gravesite…then….
    3. Not exaggerating: maintenance guy just picking up the flowers and wordlessly tossing them: one of the biggest laughs I’ve had in weeks. Seriously – made me so, so happy.

    1. Wisteria wasn’t even a flower that was relevant to their relationship. It was just the name of the ballroom! Yet another case of a Funkyverse character being fixated on the absolute wrong thing.

      1. Eugene the Creep should’ve dug her up, gone to Chuck E. Cheese and thrown her in the ball pit. Ballroom, room full of balls, same thing, right?

        1. You reminded me of the music video for Tom Petty’s “Last Dance With Mary Jane.” Because Eugene really is that much of a creep.

          I previously said that Eugene visiting Lucy in her final days was a good twist ending. But after this week’s events, it now looks Eugene pestered Lucy his entire life, without ever proposing to her, clarifying the situation, or even finding out what happened to his letter. This is just Les and Lisa all over again, but Eugene makes Les look like Don Juan.

          Lillian didn’t drive Lucy into a mental institution. Eugene did. Can you imagine this guy just inviting himself into your life for 80 years because he wrote a letter? (SEE ALSO: Schaeffer, Rebecca.) If Lillian wanted to help her sister, she should have gotten a restraining order. Or bought a gun. What an absolute creep.

          1. Batty is sitting there smirking like he is the “Lord of the Language” for creating another “roses in December” moment. But the rest of us see a dumb story that doesn’t make sense on any level.

          2. And Batiuk doesn’t consider how Eugene’s fixation on Lucy would affect Lillian. He’s constantly reminding her of her cruelty to her sister, for which she can never fully redeem herself.

            “Every six months or so I’m going to force you to relive the most regrettable, cruel and destructive decision you made in your life, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

            Does Batiuk not realize just how much Eugene would be tormenting his newly-favorite character Lillian with this behavior?

            (Of course he doesn’t, but it’s still amazes me. He’s oblivious to the emotional lives of the characters he’s created. It never occurs to him.)

          3. Batiuk has no theory of mind. And I suspect many other comic strip crearors don’t either.

          4. I realized recently that the British TV show, “As Time Goes By,” is based on the same premise of a letter gone astray decades ago. But instead of everyone mourning and grieving and regretting and going insane, the show touches on the premise and then moves on, following the protagonists as they meet again, court, and marry after all those years of separation.

            But even Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer couldn’t bring life to Batty’s turgid melodrama.

          5. Batiuk has no theory of mind.

            Clearly, and it’s weird because he at least considers the response of the other person. I think he’s shown Lillian being touched that Eugene was still hung up on her dead sister, which only works by completely removing everything Lillian contributed to the sequence.

            It’s similar in how Les is the only person actually shown to mourn the death of Lisa. Presumably the other characters were friends of hers, but none of them were ever shown mourning her or acting as if they had lost something too when she died. It was all about Les. Batiuk seems to realize that Summer should have some sadness, but he makes it all sterile and mundane: nothing like what he shows Les going through. This, despite the fact that Lisa’s death would be more traumatic for Summer than Les.

            I think the only other moment where he showed anyone feeling anything about Lisa was when Cliff said the word “kemosabe”, and it reminded Cindy of Lisa going through chemo. And that seemed to be in service of nothing more than using that weird opportunity to bring Lisa up again.

            It’s as if Batiuk can only have a singular focus, and anything that’s not part of that focus gets dumped. Les’s response is the only one that he’s concerned about, so he has a child character treat the death of her mother as just another thing.

          6. I think Batiuk mimics. He knows how people *are supposed to* act when a loved one dies, but it doesn’t came from a place of actual understanding, empathy, or personal experience. Because he forgets things. He forgot to depict Bull’s own children at his funeral. He forgot that the whole town would have had immense respect for Bull, and wouldn’t tolerate Les trashing him at his memorial. He forgot that Bull wanted to donate his brain for study; Batiuk never resolved this plot point. He forgot that police and insurance companies have procedures to prevent ridiculous lies like this story told. He forgot that a woman wouldn’t make a fetish object out of the tool that was used to end her beloved family member’s life. Then he forgot this again with that stupid “make a toy out of grandpa’s murder weapon” story.

    2. Florists. The latest entry in the encyclopedia of Things Tom Batiuk Knows Nothing About.

      1. As I’ve said before: For a former schoolteacher, Tom is most incurious person in the world.

  8. Every time TB does one of these Funky riffs, the people who read CS for the Crankshaft don’t seem very happy about it. And he follows it up now with a week (minimum) of Tom talking to Tom about Tom AGAIN?

    What was the point of Hello Eugene Week and its weird bummer ending? I think he likely lost more readers than he gained. And…what was the point? All joy is transient in an implacably hostile universe, where we all eventually die alone and afraid? Kierkegaard and Sartre might say “Dude, touch some grass or something!”

  9. Hey, updates to Tom’s blog! A John Darling Who Was etc strip. Why does he rerun these? The art is like Lena–not just ugly, but aggressively ugly. Guy at the construction of Notre Dame: “WHOA! I said hideous gargoyles, not THAT!” Fortunately, it’s about something from 40 years ago that maybe people got then, but of course TB gives no context, so, huh! Who cares, problem solved!

    And a photo of a guy at Ohioana looking at one of his books with a “WTF is this shit?!” expression. Look at all those enthusiastic crowds! They mob Ohioana in their ones and twos!

    1. I also like the picture of Batiuk, with his self-satisfied smile that he’s getting to sign a book for someone. And is he wearing a Winnipeg Blue Bombers hat? Yes, he is! He’s a sell-out, except sell-outs get paid. He gives away product placement, in his comic strip and on his body, for free.

      1. Correction: He’s signing a book, but there’s no evidence he’s actually signing it for anyone. The picture we see is of Tom, very much alone at a table, happily drawing. And we actually see, in another photo, the drawing that Tom did — it’s a generic “Funky through the ages”, which is not personalized.

        Tom’s clumsy attempts to show us the life he would have us believe he leads are both sadder and funnier than any deliberate attempts he makes to be sad or funny in his writing. In short, Batiuk’s blog is where to find Batiuik at his very, very Batiukiest.

    2. The context is that the host of “Wall Street Write-Off” (oh, my sides) is a caricature of Louis Rukuyser, who hosted “Wall Street Week” on PBS for many years.

      And the joke is… that investors try to take into account global events when planning their investments, and instability often spikes the price of precious metals? GOOD LORD, WHAT A KNEE-SLAPPER.

      But why are Rukuyser and his guest wearing ceremonial Roman clothing, complete with sandals? Is that supposed to be part of the joke about gold and silver prices?

      The real joke is that TB posts a .jpg so jaggy that it looks like something sent via a 1200 baud modem in 1993. Truly bizarre.

      1. Louis Rukuyser

        That’s a name I haven’t heard in awhile. My first media job in college in 1990 was broadcasting this show on the university’s low-power PBS station W10BR. Tony Brown’s Journal was another one.

  10. Crankshaft 4/27:

    Batiuk has no timing, no clue how things work and cut the other guy off but he’s the victim.

    1. The victim of a prolific and well-liked real cartoonist too, the late Roger Bollen. An oversized panel from one of Bollen’s Animal Crackers strips adorned the walls of the pediatrician’s office I went to as a kid.

      TB was actually interviewed for Bollen’s obituary in The Plain Dealer back in 2015. It’s one of TB’s better published interviews, honestly. Must have had a good editor…

      Tom Batiuk, creator of the Funky Winkerbean comic strip, said Bollen was a friend and inspiration.

      “When I was in college at Kent State, I got his phone number,” Batiuk said. “I called and said I wanted to meet him and ask his advice on the comic business. He refused. I called again and he refused. I called a third time and he said okay. He later told me he always turns down people the first two times to make sure they are serious.”

      Batiuk said Bollen offered excellent advice and became a good friend.

      “He was a very funny guy. He always made me laugh,” Batiuk said. “At one point he was doing three strips at once. I later was also doing three strips at once and he called and said ‘Hey, you don’t have to copy everything I do.'”

      1. If he’s willing to make a heel out of a nice guy who helped him, I don’t wanna know what he’s gonna do to Stan Lee.

        1. We saw what he did to Hal Foster, another real cartoonist Batiuk supposedly looked up to. He made him a dishonest art thief. So Phil Holt could spend decades carrying a momento around in his wallet, wondering what might have been, rather than actually doing anything about being victimized. Sound familiar?

          I’m actually curious to see how big a jackass “Batton” will be this week.

      2. And Batton skipped that part of the story. Literally the only aspect of the story that is worth retelling: persistence is rewarded. A lesson that Eugene, Phil Holt, and most of the Funkyverse cast desperately needs to learn. And he skipped it.

          1. Then why is he telling a real-life story where it’s central to the outcome?

          2. So he can whine about bad people who want him to wait to be praised. Remember, this is still the whining cement-head who lost his will to live if a funny book got lost in the mail! Imagine him being told to plug away until he can do something people actually like!

        2. Ah, turns out he didn’t skip that part after all. He just decided that his avatar, instead of three calls, made FOURTEEN before his victim decided to give in. So less “rewarding persistence” and more “get a damn restraining order from this psychopath”. Nice job on the self-insert there, Tom, we truly stand in line.

          1. Batiuk pulled the same stupid stunt Lynn Johnston does: exaggerate so much, it takes people out of the story,

          2. The real story would have been better! “He made me call three times to prove I was serious, and later admitted this to me.” It’s amazing that Mr. Quarter Inch From Reality doesn’t use realism when it would actually work.

          3. That would require him to understand people. Today seems to point to a world where Roger asks himself why Battom never wanted to see his studio.

  12. I don’t get it. In yesterday’s strip, Batton was driving and another driver was irritated and honked at him. Then when Batton arrived at Roger’s house, he saw the other car in Roger’s driveway, implying that the person who was angry at Batton might have been Roger, the person Batton was going to visit.

    But now we see that Roger wasn’t even out of bed at the time, so the other driver couldn’t have been Roger.

    If there was some other person (particularly a rival cartoonist) in the living room, there might be some kind of story here, but so far we haven’t seen anyone else in the house besides Roger’s wife, who shows no indication of being the person who might have honked at Batton.

    1. Batton skipped the part of the story that billytheskink mentioned: “Roger Bollen later told me he always turns down people the first two times to make sure they are serious.” So some time had passed between yesterday’s incident and today’s incident. Timemop nudges again!

    1. Maybe Skip is so colossally dull himself that it negates any ability for him to get bored?

  14. I’m sure no one here remembers The Avengers movie. No, not that one, the one based on the Steed/Mrs Peel 1960s BBC spy show. It ran 90 minutes, and the only way that they didn’t hack 30 minutes of screen time from it is if they cut an hour. Utterly incomprehensible.

    Three days into Batton’s Neverending Story, it feels like every other strip is missing. Not just “What was with the VW?” (which we could find out tomorrow, if Tom’s friend ever awakens) Why did we need to know his first strip’s title? Why not just dive into the VW story? That’s what he does: either pads the story to make it last exactly 6 days, or truncate it so that it does. And if it’s that: GOOD. Maybe we’ll only get 3 more days before it starts again in a few months.

    1. We’re witnessing Tom Batiuk’s dream interview. This is what he wishes would happen every time he sits down with a journalist. Even though he pre-writes all the interview questions, and preemptively rules out anything critical or even interesting, it’s still not what he really wants. He wants the ego tongue bath he’s been giving himself for a month now.

      He wants to be taken to a restaurant, bought pizza, and allowed to drone for hours and hours about absolutely fucking nothing. The interviewer throws out all his interview questions, as well as any notion of time, professionalism, conciseness, or having a point, and just lets the greatness flow directly from the Lord of Language. He smirks in reaction to every single one of Batiuk’s non-existent witticisms. He forgets his entire angle for the interview story and just takes it all in, transfixed at this once-in-a-career opportunity. What must it be like to hear the stories about what Batiuk’s first comic strip used to be named, the time he went to another cartoonist’s house, and of course the life-altering trip when he almost got a job drawing comic books?

  15. I check in every once in a while, just to see what BatYam is up to these days, and he never disappoints. And by that, of course, I mean he always disappoints. I mean, wow. I cannot believe “Crankshaft” still exists. If FW was some sort of high-grade, wryness-infused weed, Crankshaft is the tarry, gooey residue on the bottom of your bong. At least that’s how I see it. I really don’t know how you guys can read that thing every day. Sigh.

    Batton Thomas again, eh? Batton’s debut marked the point where FW went from being tediously moribund to being on total life support. It’s like he went out of his way to make Batton even more boring than he is, which is no mean feat. I’d chalk that up to his comedic sensibilities, if he had any, that is.

  16. 5/29:
    Very Important Plot Points: MONDAY: How I named my strip! Tu: ROAD RAGE! W: Sleepyhead! Th: My name is Aldo Kelrast!

    Did he write 3 strips for each day, then throw 2 away? This isn’t a coherent narrative, this is a cognitive test for the nursing home.

  17. Today’s Crankshaft

    Day 4 of the Most Boring Interview, Ever (Spring 2025 Edition)

    goddamnit Batton is one of the most boring motherfuckers in all of fiction

    1. Is that Mindy serving the pizza? It’s nice that Batiuk remembered she co-owns the place now.

    2. Still Today’s Crankshaft

      In the original strip in GC, it looks like the pizza that Mindy is holding started talking for Batton (which reminds me of the Elrod era of Mark Trail when it sometimes looked like the animals are talking because of the speech bubbles being near them)

      1. Can we also NOT see that Same Last Panel of Smug Batton? It’s been used in every one of these “Anne Rice’s Interview with a Dumpster” arcs.

        Forget the speech bubbles! I assume that’s “steam” coming off the pizza-like object. Or it could be cartoon stink lines, or the pizza merging with the walls covered in spider webs and black mold, or the hairiest creature on Earth’s pubes.

        And yet, Skip looks at it like it’s the first time he’s going to eat in a week.

  18. “So, do you expect me to talk?!”

    “NO, Mr Bond! I expect to
    READ TOM’S BLOG!”

    “Christ. Turn the laser back on.”

    https://tombatiuk.com/komix-korner/

    It’s the history of SIDEWAYS SUNDAYS! There’s a LOT here. Like…a lot! Like “sensory overload” a lot.

    1. Look at the last Starbuck Jones Coloring Book cover! Yeah, every kid in 1957’s parents let them buy THAT!

      Thing I learned: Apparently they had “Rule 34” then!

      BAHAHAH! These are insane!

      1. OKAY, I’ll stop for today, as I currently plan to sleep at some point, but…

        Starbuck #123, which is the molecule-rearranging number–YEAH, the Comics Code sure allowed all the T&A we see on these covers! And…HOLLY: “John gave me this issue because the pages are old and creamy!” FUNKY: “Hey, this was MY copy! I’m responsible for it also being CRUSTY!”

        1. OK, I lied, here I am again. Just want to say that these idiotic covers are hilarious when you see them all at once. And, yes, he does rag on his mother throwing his comics away in one.

          When did she do that, Tom? When you went to college in 1967? Dang boy, you sure can hold a grudge.

          1. Tom is so adept at holding grudges, he might as well be friends with John Byrne. (Oh, wait…)

  19. “So, do you expect me to talk?!”

    “NO, Mr Bond! I expect to
    READ TOM’S BLOG!”

    “Christ. Turn the laser back on.”

    https://tombatiuk.com/komix-korner/

    It’s the history of SIDEWAYS SUNDAYS! There’s a LOT here. Like…a lot! Like “sensory overload” a lot.

  20. Kinda off-topic,but I got the script of Funky Winkerbean’s Homecoming! It’s pretty good,but I can’t read sheet music at all nor do I play anything except for kazoo. The one thing I do wish there was is footage of the play!

    1. That’s awesome! I’ve been looking for a copy of the script for years without any luck, I’m glad to hear that one exists.

      I do have a video of the play being performed, by high school students from Walnut, IL in 1990. Not amazing video or sound quality, but it is (as far as I know) the full play and most of the dialogue can be heard clearly enough.

      1. Got mine off Ebay,was over 30. Are you able to share footage over email? I wouldn’t post it. Even though my grandpa plays guitar,he can’t read sheet music,either. However,I can sight-read one of them

        1. I’m happy to share the video, it’s just rather large to share via e-mail (about 320 MB). I downloaded it many years ago off of YouTube or the old Google Video service and it disappeared from there shortly after.

          I suppose I could upload it to YouTube. I don’t know if copyright issues are a risk, was that what got it taken down all those years ago or did the host simply not have an interest in hosting the video any more?

      2. Suggestion:

        Billytheskink, if you have a copy that’s digital, perhaps a screening night over Zoom (or Discord or whatever works for the most people on this site) could be arranged. Might be a fun excuse for the regulars here to get together, and to share in a rare piece of Batiukiana. And to do some real-time commenting on the play!

  22. This week’s story has been like an anti-narrative. It would have made more sense if Scott Dikkers had drawn it for “Jim’s Journal,” his intentional anti-humor strip.

  23. I was watching the first Spiderverse movie and thought it was great! Halfway through I thought “This is so great, every superhero movie is going to have a multiverse.” And now, they do!

    It can be great, like the “Loki” series, or it can be used as an excuse for lazy, sloppy writing. “The character acts totally out of character because…Multiverse! Yeah, that’s it!” Immediately Marvel came out with “Dr Strange: Into the Mall” (may be misremembering a bit). It wasn’t awful, but like most Phase 5 Marvel, it sure ain’t good.

    In a blink-and-miss it moment in that–How come I can’t live in the universe where the President is Steve Rogers?!

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