Payola And Kennedy

Since the Winnipeg Blue Bombers week month year endless arc has begun, it’s a good time to talk about a Funkyverse concept I’ve been wanting to give a name to. This is another installment in my TBTropes series.

“Payola” was the practice of individuals accepting money to play certain songs on the radio. It was the early days of mass media, and radio DJs found they were well-positioned to accept bribes from record companies who wanted their work on the airwaves. A similar concept was “plugola,” which was a product endorsement done outside the traditional advertising arrangement. Congress started putting an end to these practices in 1959, at the same time they went after against rigged TV game shows.

This isn’t really what Tom Batiuk does in his comic strips, though. Poster The Drake of Life nailed his motivation:

I assume TB is a fan because someone related to the team paid him a tiny bit of attention and he glommed onto it desperately. 

https://sonofstuckfunky.com/2025/07/18/we-were-all-thinking-it/#comment-176917

I believe this also. But neither “word “plugola” nor “payola” works to describe all the corporate logos, borrowed intellectual property, and childhood favorites that that drive plots in Funky Winkerbean and its spinoffs. Batiuk isn’t getting money under the table to do this. I’ve invented the following TBTropes term to describe it instead:

Egola: any plot element in the Funkyverse that exists to indulge Tom Batiuk’s ego.

I gave it the same -ola ending. It’s pronounced with emphasis on the E, rhyming with “Ricola” from those TV commercials.

Let’s list some examples of Egola in the Funkyverse:

  • Winnipeg Blue Bombers
  • Ohio Music Educators Association convention
  • Ohioana Book Fair
  • The Phantom Empire
  • The Flash
  • other comic book properties he likes, like John Howard’s Batman logo t-shirt and the Superman art during last week’s interview
  • San Diego Comic-Con
  • the negative renaming of companies Batiuk doesn’t like, like FleaBay and Toxic Taco
  • stories where the characters pretend to share Tom Batiuk’s own shallow opinions, like “climate damage” and school tax levies
  • Plots about Lisa’s Story, which is really just promotion for Batiuk’s own real-life books about it
  • Montoni’s, in its role as a stand-in for Luigi’s pizza of Akron, Ohio
  • The entire book publishing process, as depicted. Which, according to Tom Batiuk is: declare self “good writer”; write book off-panel; get agent; design cover; do book signings; do interviews; do more book signings; win awards; do more book signings; design more covers; win more awards; repeat.
  • The entire character of Batton Thomas
  • Especially his endless, insufferable interview with Skip Rawlings. (Holy cow, how big does your ego have to be to think that two dinner meetings isn’t enough time to interview you properly?)

Drake of Life went on to say:

Think he’ll bother to make up a story about why Jff’s a fan?

I don’t think he will. Even though it would be stunningly easy to justify Jeff’s interest in the CFL instead of the NFL: he’s from Cleveland. I’m sure the woebegotten Browns have driven plenty of people to get behind teams like the St. Louis Battlehawks rather than the local team. (And I root for an NFL team whose last big game was the plot of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.)

Exploring Jeff’s thought process could be great fun. There’s a whole Internet culture of football fan bases poking fun at each other, like Drew Magary’s “Why Your Team Sucks” series, and YouTube creators like UrinatingTree and BenchwarmerBran. You could do that kind of story here.

Instead, Pam and Ed have been talking to Jeff like he’s Rain Man having a fit about missing Judge Wopner. “It’s still in the wash”? He was wearing it the last 15 times we’ve seen him! This is an excuse you’d give your two-year-old who’s upset about misplacing a stuffed animal. I wonder how bad this is going to get.

(Canonical side note: if it’s true that this is Jeff’s “game shirt”, that means anytime he’s wearing it, he’s trying to watch a Blue Bombers game. Go back and read that “Ed dials his own cell phone” Sunday strip again, and imagine Jeff is a football addict who’s being distracted from his precious game. Gives it some of that subtext it needed, doesn’t it?)

Unknown's avatar

Author: Banana Jr. 6000

Yuck. The fritos are antiquated.

72 thoughts on “Payola And Kennedy”

  1. To test this theory out, we would need to create some sort of business/organization/charity that pays a teeny, tiny bit of positive (and ONLY positive) attention to Tom Batiuk. We could then do a controlled study to see how much attention paid gets rewarded with a mention in the strip; how much merits a continuing plotline; how much a series of on-going mentions, etc.

    We wouldn’t want to taint the experiment by making the enterprise comic-book related — we couldn’t be sure if the comic books were somehow enhancing the egola. It would need to be something not already in the strip’s world.

    Of course, we know through observation that The Blue Bombers got their plotline and continuing mentions through having an actual Crankshaft Day at one of their games. That seems like an awful lot of effort and expense, though. Doesn’t it seem like a really savvy corporation could get continuing mentions for a lot less? OMEA gets an annual week’s worth of strip time, and Batiuk pays THEM for booth space!

    1. Did the Blue Bombers really do that? I thought they just sent Batiuk a jersey (which he simply could have ordered and paid for, for all we know.) It was the Toledo Mud Hens who actually retired his number 13.

        1. The article is a goldmine of Batiukery….but the absolute pinnacle is having him recount one of his “favourite stories”. You’ll be blown away by just how utterly it captures Batiuk’s narrative sense.

        2. Oh, that’s some great intel. Looks like the story will run through August 17, since that’s the date for what looks like the last strip in the story. You can see it here: https://static.cfl.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/25-08-17-Large.jpg

          Also, it looks like the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have already done your little experiment. They let Tom Batiuk and his monstrous ego run on the field with the team, to hear a cascade of cheers that weren’t even for him? Brilliant move. They knew how to give him exactly what he wants. And it didn’t cost them a cent.

        3. It allowed me to take a lot of reference pictures, and I do that when I’m doing stuff, especially Crankshaft where I’m working with Dan Davis, the artist. I like to give him all the material I can to help him tell the story and he did a great job.

          So nice of TB to save Davis a trip or two to Google, Alamy, and Getty Images…

          1. Oh, I wiah Batiuk would use Getty Images. Then he’d finally get sued for copyright infringement.

        4. “What I’ve always found is when you really research things deeply, there are things that a lot of people might not know about or appreciate but it adds value to the story,”

          “And that’s why I choose to never actually USE any of the research and just throw whatever nonsense comes to mind in the moment. Value? Who needs THAT in a story?”

          Do the Blue Bombers have a mascot? Will they win the game by passing the ball to the mascot against all rules of the game and actual common sense? Can the Blue Bombers’ mascot be Zanzibar The Talking Murder Chimp? (We can only hope.)

          1. Will they win the game by passing the ball to the mascot against all rules of the game and actual common sense? 

            The August 12 strip in Y. Knott’s link above suggests a similarly ludicrous outcome.

      2. They sent him a jersey but Jeff’s just got a t-shirt? Cheap, man; even i’ve got a couple of jerseys from my favorite teams. In fact i was tempted to get one for the Mudhens, they’re alright.

    1. Panel 4

      Skip: I’m from Yonkers and I never heard anyone say that.

      Batton: Oh, not in Yonkers, no. It’s a Brooklyn expression.

  3. Today’s Crankshaft

    Day 2 of Winnipeg Blue Bombers Storyline

    While today’s daily strip sucks, it beats being with Jabba the Comic Book Store Owner, Skip The Worst Interviewer Ever and/or Bummer Batton Thomas (In my opinion)

  4. I love the detail from the article how his wife gets to come along for the football trip, but Davis the artist was left behind and has to make do with whatever poorly-framed pictures he remembers to take.

    Speaking of poorly framed/cropped pictures, I don’t want to know what’s going on at the bottom of the picture of the superman statue that he posted on one of his recent blog entries.

  5. He took to watching the CFL during an NFL strike. I don’t know why he doesn’t fixate on one of the two Great Lakes teams because this year, the Argonauts and Ti-Cats are ‘rebuilding’ (circling the drain).

  7. BJ6000: a Miami Dolphins fan, eh? A pain I know all too well. I actually remember their last Super Bowl win. I was wearing footy pajamas, and I had to go to bed right after, but I do remember it. Sigh.

    1. Yes, I grew up in greater Miami in the 1980s, which meant the Dolphins fandom was inculcated into me. I don’t remember their last Super Bowl win, because I was less than 2. But I remember Kellen Winslow. Oh, fuck that guy.

      And I went to the 1985 Browns-Dolphins playoff game, which was an underrated disaster in both teams’ history. The Browns won the Central at 8-8, and had no business even being in the playoffs. But they brought their A game, got up 21-3, and looked like they were going to beat the mighty Dolphins. Then Marty Schottenheimer decided he wasn’t even going to pretend to pass the ball anymore. Don Shula was way too smart for that, and wore them down. Then the Dolphins absolutely shit the bed against the fucking Patriots, depriving the world of what should have been a great Super Bowl against that obnoxious Bears team (who the Dolphins crushed in the regular season, handing them their only loss).

      Yes, it’s unfathomable now, but the goddamn Patriots went to the Super Bowl. Can you believe that shit?

      1. I grew up a Dolphins fan in New f*cking Jersey, which was way tougher back then than it is now. I became enamored with the majesty of Larry Csonka and the No-Names, and my allegiance never wavered. Way back in the day, I relied heavily on distant AM radio signals, the team newsletter (Dolphin Digest), and Sportsphone (“for all the sports news instantly, dial 976-1313”). It’s hard to even fathom now, but local stations often wrapped up their NFL coverage before the 4PM games were all complete, so if the Dolphins were in San Diego or something, you needed to get creative to find out who won.

        1982, 1984, 1985, 1992, 1994, 1999, 2002, every road wildcard game appearance this century…yeah, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. Sigh. I was eight, and I assumed MY favorite NFL team would win MANY more Super Bowls. Sigh again. The only upside these days is already knowing exactly how the upcoming season will play out, like we always do. SIGH.

        1. At the time, being a Dolphins fan in the northeast was fightin’ words. Now everyone just laughs at you, as if Dolphins fan gear were a disco outfit.

        2. It’s a shame that Marino never won one, because that man’s place in NFL history has really suffered from that and the rule changes that make his accomplishments look less impressive.

          Some asshole who should know better posited that Phillip Rivers was as good as him.

    2. I was a Dolphins fan when I was a wee one, primarily because my grandparents got us Super Bowl VII Champions shirts when I was a kid and I was able to wear my brother’s well into the 80s.

      One of those cool things I had that I probably could have kept better track of.

  8. Man I so hope Ed used that stupid jersey as a rag. Ed used it to pick up dog crap or to just wipe his hands after changing the oil in their Batiuk mobile.

  9. Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop the clock! Now Batiuk has to drag my home state of Delaware into this Manitoba mess, and it’s going to be going on until mid-August!?

    That’s it, I’m outta here. If anybody needs anything I’ll be in New York City with Mary Worth. See you all in three weeks.

    1. So we have two people from Delaware here? I moved to Hockessin when I was 9 months old, and we moved much closer to Wilmington when I was 14.

      Haven’t lived there since the 90s, but Dad was still living in Chadds Ford when he passed 15 years ago.

      1. Two people from Delaware and three Dolphins fans. We’re a wierd mix, apparently.

  10. So it looks like Crankshaft destroyed Jeff’s Blue Bombers shirt, and this will be the catalyst for them to go to a live game. What day do you think we get the staple “Jeff asks Pam for permission strip?

  11. Today’s Crankshaft

    Day 3 of Winnipeg Blue Bombers Storyline

    Ha ha it’s funny because Ed is responsible somehow for causing Jeff’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers shirt to go missing

  12. Looking at how Crankshaft developed over the last 15 or so years, I think it’s instigated something bad. I think that Batiuk doing the whole “Jfff’s awful mom dies and he discovers his inner child and that’s wonderful” has made the already irritating character of Jfff absolutely insufferable.

    It obviously opens up elements like the Phantom Empire and visiting Bronson Canyon in the middle of the biggest wildfire in history that would have been better left closed, as well as the character of Jfff’s annoying inner child, who we’re supposed to like and find all heartwarming but instead he’s nauseating. But it also makes Jfff’s infantile and insignificant concerns take on a much larger importance.

    Look at this stupid sequence. Jfff needs his Blue Bombers shirt to watch the game, like a child. He can’t watch the game if he doesn’t have his Blue Bombers shirt. And then everyone’s supposed to indulge him on this. It’s supposed to be everyone’s problem, not just Jfff’s. He’s now decided that it needs to be a growing concern for Pam, and we’re supposed to implicitly understand this. Finding Jfff’s Blue Bombers shirt has become her problem.

    This is a grown man in -I don’t know how old Jfff is supposed to be these days – his 50s? 60s? And this is not only a major issue for him, but it’s a major issue that everyone’s supposed to care about. Where is his shirt? And what are you doing to find his shirt so he can watch his football game? This is only acceptable because Batiuk has indulged Jfff’s childish bullshit for so long that it no longer seems ridiculous to him. By letting his inner child run loose, Batiuk now has this man regularly engaging in childish activities and fits of pique, and we’re supposed to indulge him. It’s like because his mom was so awful and stabbed his comic book once we’re all supposed to give him his childhood back by letting him behave and have expectations similar to a 4 year-old.

    It’s pathetic.

    2. As pathetic as it is for Jeff to insist on having his Blue Bombers shirt to watch a game, I would say that it became Pam’s problem too when she decided to lie about what happened to it. “It’s in the wash.” “It’s been in the wash for a month now!” “I know … the spin cycle seems to be taking forever these days!”

      1. On top of that, Pam appears to be covering for Ed somehow. So not only is Pam dulging Jeff’s whiny need to have every little thing his way, it’s indulging Ed’s complete indifference to other people’s property. And they’re both going to be rewarded with a long, expensive trip.

          1. I know, right? At least Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver would be a fun city to visit.

      2. Pam lies to him because his shirt and his need to wear it get so much out-sized importance in this world that she can’t simply tell him that she doesn’t know where his shirt is. Of course she knows where it is and what happened to it, because it’s one of the most important things in the world, because Jfff needs to wear it when he watches his football games!

        That’s part of the point: that it’s important enough to lie about.

        Again, this is a grown man. They’re assembling a family meeting because this grown man needs to know where one particular shirt is so he can wear it to watch a football game. The fate of their very world is at stake.

    3. The truly irritating thing is that his lack of awareness is consistent. A seventy five year old third grader who wants his binky is even more pathetic when you consider he never outgrew being the eight year old who was going to die of despair because a damn funny book was a day late. He has no clue at all how repellent he is.

  13. Yeah, he was 75 when he was shown in Funky Winkerbean going to Bronson Canyon, but he’s been deaged, and I’m not sure how old he’s supposed to be here.

    It’s a weird thing because there are certainly benchmarks that suggest how old he is supposed to be.

    Frex, if he was at Kent State when the National Guard thing went down, which has been shown in the strip, he’d be well into his 70s by now. This was conceivable from his appearance in FW, but he and Pam both look substantially younger now. They were all grey-haired and wrinkly in those appearances.

  14. I fill sketchbooks with all kinds of dopey comic ideas.

    I lost my favorite Bobby Rahal t-shirt when I was 16.

    I have never, not once, referenced that lost t-shirt in anything I’ve drawn in one of my dozens and dozens of sketchbooks. Because my arrested development is not THAT bad. Oy, this is painful stuff.

    1. And I think it’s going to get worse between now and Saturday. Remember the arc when Crankshaft damaged Jeff’s comic books (the greatest possible crime in the Funkyverse), and Jeff just quietly sold them? And John Howard assured him the water damage didn’t hurt the value at all (which is complete bullshit)? I think that’s where this is going. Ed’s going to be the one who broke Jeff’s precious Blue Bombers t-shirt, and Jeff’s not going to even get mad about it when he rightfully should. And this will result in them taking an expensive trip together.

      Jeff’s juvenile whining must be indulged at all times, but so must Crankshaft’s juvenile destruction of other people’s property. And the Funkyverse must be 100% conflict-free at all times.

      1. It got worse. Friday wasn’t exactly what I expected action-wise (I thought Crankshaft would be the guilty party). But it was what I expected tone-wise: Jeff’s <s>mother</s> wife Pam has damaged the <s>easily replaceable</s> precious t-shirt Jeff <s>had no emotions for before Monday</s> loves so much. And now <s>mom</s> wife must sheepishly beg her <s>child</s> 75-year-old husband for forgiveness.

  15. Rictus Homunculus ruined Jeff’s WBB shirt by using it to floss his prodigious choppers.

  16. Readers complain about the glacial pacing of the story arcs in Mary Worth. Karen Moy’s has nothing on Tom Batiuk. Tom Batiuk can pad out a story with the best (worst?) of them.

    Get to the point, Batty. We know the reveal of what tragedy transpired concerning Jeff’s shirt will be a groaner. Delaying the reveal is neither witty nor suspenseful; it’s just annoying. Get it over with and move on.

  17. Today’s Crankshaft

    Day 4 of Winnipeg Blue Bombers Storyline

    PAM JUST GO AHEAD AND TELL JEFF WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS WINNIPEG BLUE BOMBERS SWEATER

  18. As he does so often, TB mistakes dragging out a story for building tension.

    We saw this in the “Linda Bushka Holds a Letter” and “Wally Winkerbean Looks at His Shoes” and “Adeela Approaches a Building” arcs, and many more.

    He thinks it’s cinematic. It’s not.

    And even if it were, these are comic strips, not movies.

  19. Welp, GoComics/Andrews McMeel has made itself even more “no fun allowed”, apparently they’re getting litigious over reposts of the strips they’re hosting with DMCA rights, just forced several major subreddits hosting retired strips like Far Side and C&H to stop posting and close up.

    Doesn’t necessarily affect the blog like the lawsuit threats in the prime snarking years, but depending on how volatile they go after strip edits our parodies might get them turning their noses again. Fun times.

  20. Today’s Crankshaft

    Day 5 of Winnipeg Blue Bombers Storyline

    Ed: Long story short, Pam had to throw away that shitty shirt of yours.

    Jeff:

    the caption in the image is from a mistranslated Chinese dub of Revenge of the Sith

    1. This leaves me at the same point I was Monday when I asked why he only had the one Bombers shirt. A real smart fan would have more than one.

  21. Why is Pam treating Jeff like she has to tiptoe around him and is scared of his wrath about the ruined T-shirt? Jeff is not one of the more intimidating figures in the Batiukverse.

    1. Because Jfff is a histrionic butthead about even the most minor of things. When he gets inconvenienced even a little it’s an entire week of him whining about it.

      That, and that it allows Batiuk to stall and make a sequence that would be 2 weeks top stretch all the way out to 6 weeks.

      I also love how Jfff thinks he needs to explain to Pam what bleach does and how it should be handled. As this episode has shown, Jfff hasn’t done a load of laundry in his entire useless life. He probably married Pam so she’d do it for him, and yet he treats her as if she doesn’t know the first thing about it.

      1. Batomic Comic Obsessive can’t get it through his thick skull that most people would love to see the Pyro bury an ax in his favourites’ thick skulls. It’s not appealing to watch him stamp his feet on the ground any more than it was to watch him want to die of despair because he had to wait a day to see Flash use ridiculous speed to punch Captain Koala.

    2. Because it’s central to Batiuk’s revenge fantasy against his mommy. If the mother offends the child by destroying his property, she must grovel for the child’s forgiveness. Which we already know will come in the form of an expensive trip to Winnipeg. It’s sick.

      1. And, right on cue, here’s the next part of the fantasy: an overly large reward intended to win back the child’s love (which the child will petulantly refuse to provide). Jeff called this garment a t-shirt, which can be bought online for about $35 CAD. And is certainly how Jeff got it in the first place. The thing wasn’t irreplaceable! If damaging the shirt was such a crime, all she had to do was buy him a new one. But no, mommy offended the child by taking away his special object, so mommy must punish herself.

        1. It’s nice that Pam and Jfff are of the leisure class so they can both afford to pay for this as well as afford the time off to travel to another country to buy a shirt that Jfff needs to wear if he’s going to watch a football game.

          To call back something I posted earlier, it’d be nice and even potentially amusing if Batiuk made some acknowledgement about just how absurd this is, but he won’t. This is what Jfff deserves, so Jfff gets it.

          1. What do Pam and Jeff do for a living, anyway? I can’t remember seeing their jobs mentioned.

          3. Joshua K.:

            The Emasculated Jeff is an accountant. I remember, because as an accountant for much of my professional career, I felt offended when I found out.

            Sense of humor impaired, Batty missed an easy one. Considering Ed Crankshaft’s propensity for destruction, don’t you think it would have been funny if Batty made Jeff an insurance salesman? His highest-selling policy could have been Ed Crankshaft umbrella coverage.

        2. Yeah something weird about the timing here–if you make a big deal about a shirt you kinda need a backstory about why that shirt is so meaningful–then we’d have a flashback to the first trip Jeff and Dishrag took to Winnipeg and why they had such a great time there (they were on the run from Kent State assuming the guardsmen were still hunting them, they took drugs and had sex: you know, boomer stuff).

          And then if Crankshaft showed up and ran through the tunnels, well, whatever.

      2. I hate to be that guy but I think Batiuk is too stupid to realize his dad spent his free time cutting his wife off at the knees to feel butch. He gives off the creepy, stupid hero worship vibe of Daddy’s little moron and paid obeisance by slagging his mother for having a mind.

  23. Today’s Crankshaft

    A Brief Break from the Winnipeg Blue Bombers Storyline

    Now we’ve shifted from 75 year old Jeff Murdoch throwing a Caillou-esque tantrum over a SINGLE FUCKING SHIRT to Ralph talking about a eight-track player

    1. Ralph still has an eight-track, but Funky had the only Discman left in existence. I just don’t get how Batiuk’s mind works sometimes; you’d think the eight-track would have died decades before all the Discmans, but… apparently not?

    2. Maybe they could get Jon Arbuckle to shoot him like how Seth MacFarlane had Arthur shoot Cailliou.

    3. Caillou! That’s exactly what this is. Caillou is a spoiled brat whose random, arbitrary needs are indulged at all times, and who is never, ever corrected, or even told he’s misbehaving.

    4. Well, I’m still hanging out in Upper East Side Manhattan, dropping AC units on old ladies who walk under my window, but I see that Sunday’s ‘Shaft was something about Ralph and his auto’s beloved 8-track player. Let me get this straight: Ralph Meckler, the Bunny Berigan fan who is presumably in his 80s or 90s, listened to 8-tracks–the medium that had its zenith in the era of classic rock–in his car? Was that what he was using to play “I Can’t Get Started” in order to impress the carhop (yes, Bunny was released in 8-track)? I might have believed that Jfff had a player in his car, but not Ralph.

  24. I misplaced a 1976 ELO concert T (the gift from a female admirer) long ago. No problem. I have others (including two ELO shirts) and I still have LPs she also gave me.

    And speaking of concerts, I caught BTO with Jefferson Starship and Marshall Tucker Friday and I didn’t have to travel to Randy Bachman’s hometown of Winnipeg to do it. I traveled 40 miles and returned home with great memories of an awesome show even more concert Ts.

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