Here’s a writing tip: Don’t make jokes that draw attention to your worst tendencies as a writer.
Today’s joke in Crankshaft was that the insufferable Batton Thomas called himself the “doppelgänger” of the slightly less insufferable Jeff Murdoch. Complete with umlaut. One of those worst tendencies is how Tom Batiuk loves to get little details like this right, while ignoring the basic history of his own world and characters.
But that’s not the worst tendency I’m here to talk about today. The below images are of nine different women from the Funkyverse:
And to show that they all don’t just look alike, here are some hints about the group:
- Five of them have made some kind of audio-visual product. (Obviously, #2 is one of those.)
- Four of them are in long-term relationships with comic book-addicted dorks.
- Three of them have only been seen as high school students.
- Two are members of the original high school class of Funky Winkerbean.
- Two of them are identical twins, who somehow manage to look different despite being indiscernible.
- The number of characters who also appeared in both Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft is… well, your guess is as good as mine.
- Amazingly, only one of them has written a book. And that book was only mentioned once.
Post your guesses in the comments. I’ll give everyone a day or two before I reveal the answer. Have fun!
(UPDATE: CSRoberto aced this quiz in the very first post. Alternate quiz: tell me who these women are, but wrong answers only, a la Y. Knott and The Drake Of Life’s posts. Have fun!)
Son of Stuck Funky 
All these answers are correct. I thought I made some of them pretty difficult, but I was no match for CSRoberto.
The 5 who made some kind of audio-visual product were Cindy (TV news reporter), Maris (TV journalism in high school, Jessica (Butter Brinkel documentary), and the twins (Lillian’s website. Maybe that’s not audio-visual but I still counted it.)
The 4 who are in long-term relationships with comic book-addicted dorks were Cindy (Mason Jarre), Mindy (Pete), Donna (Crazy Harry), and Jessica (Darin).
The 3 who only appeared as high school students were Maris and the twins.
Cindy and Holly were members of the original high school class of Funky Winkerbean.
Holly wrote a book “Singed Hair” which only appeared once as part of a “Dinkle at the Ohio Music Educators Association” arc. Of course she did a book signing.
1 – Mopey Pete in a wig
2- Spokesperson from the Ministry of Propaganda
3 – Silly Putty Helen Hunt
4 – The kid sister of The Man In The Yellow Hat
5 – “I asked for the ‘Rachel’ haircut, and this is what I got”
6 – Jackie Gleason’s little-remembered drag character “Jacqueline”
7 – Farrah Fawcett wig model – 70s
8 – Farrah Fawcett wig model – 90s
9 – Noted James Bond villainess Vaseline Teakmullet
1 – Blondetta McWearyface
2 – Hatchetface Flaxenhair
3 – Lady Platinum-Mane of Westviewshire
4 – Blandie Bumstead
5 – Jenny Ricblonde
6 – Potato Template Female, Jowly Edition
7 – Curlysmirk Towhead
8 – Whatzername, Blond Thingy
9 – Identicalia Rubbastamp
This points to another defect: the irritating realization that his idea of gender dynamics was soldered into place because he’s too stupid to realize that Iris West is essentially a first responder’s significant other and she doesn’t even know it.
9/30: Today’s strip leads to another of the author’s flaws: not realizing that he’s just proved his critics right and not realizing that he’s made his heroes out to be idiots.
RE: Tueday 9/30’s ‘Shaft:
I can just imagine Batiuk’s drawing instructions to Davis for Panel Two: “With coquettishly downcast eyes, the saintly COMIC STRIP ARTISTE lets the barest Mona Lisa smile dance across his lips as he blushes (Warning: not all print newspapers will pick up the color of blushing). Then, in his best Uriah Heep voice, COMIC STRIP ARTISTE modestly confesses to his elderly admirer that he is indeed the cartoonist in question.”
That punim, and Batton’s “Yes, I actually am!” humblebrag dialogue accompanying it, make Panel Two in my opinion a top contender for the Most Punchable Face of 2025 award.
That may be the Michael Jordan of punchable faces.
Sept 30: Even Ed has had enough of the poor writing in his strip. Or maybe Batty is going to take a jab at us.
The next few days probably aren’t going to show what we would want to see Crank rant to Batton about, but hopefully it provides good photoshop fodder for reactions for the rest of the year.
I called it. Batty is trolling us.
Tiny Background Jeff is the best Jeff.
Tiny Background Pete is only the second best Pete, though, after off-panel successful writer Pete who makes Les jealous.
TB was self-aware about his (high school aged) blonde clones at one time. Well… exactly one time.
That actually gets into what I feel is the heart of Batiuk’s entire issue as a writer: he’s not a serious writer at all. I don’t mean that in a “haha, Batty’s a hack” kind of way per se but in that he just straight up is not built for serious writing; doesn’t understand it, doesn’t know how to do it. Every strip falls back onto some kind of wry Bazooka Joe tier pun or joke because Batiuk is ultimately a gag writer trying to write stories that aren’t gags, don’t require gags, and shouldn’t have gags. The character designs fall into this because Batiuk just kept pushing the same stock high school characters over and over that worked when it was a gag strip but not so much as a serious one. Here’s the glasses wearing loser, here’s the mentally-deficient football player with an insulting alliterative name like Putz Petrovsky or Dumbbell Dalton, etc.
So of course, every high school class needs a blonde queen bee because in Funkytown, stereotypes never left the 1960s. Of course this leads to literal clones like high school Cindy and high school Sadie at Batiuk’s absolute laziest.
I’m the rare newer reader, never being a Funky reader when it was still running but going back and reading through it for something else I’m planning on doing and in early Act II it just drives home for me that Batiuk is at heart a guy who’s only cut out for jokes and not the serious writer he wants to be. The first few years of Act II just feel like a retread of Act I. There’s the “define the word/phrase” jokes, there’s the stock Les/Dinkle jokes just with Wally inserted into the role of either Les or whatever anonymous band kid Dinkle would have been haranguing in Act I, there’s the fact that despite a big change being the supposed switch to real time it seems like for about 3ish years that doesn’t actually happen and it’s still just nebulous unchanging cartoon time.
I think the perfect example of how Batiuk being a gag, not a dramatic, writer at his core undermines his desire to tell serious stories is the BS story about Les’s proposal. Almost the entire summer of 1995 is spent with Les following Lisa around Europe but oh no, he just misses her or they walk past one another without noticing. I guess Batiuk was attempting to do this cutesy romantic story about these trials and tribulations they went through except there’s none of that, it’s at it’s core just the same gag repeated again and again for like two months. And even worse, it’s following the Susan Smith suicide story and I think undermines it by turning Susan’s storyline into little more than a set up for this inane and tedious joke.
I do have more opinions overall on Act I and what I’ve read so far of Act II and probably where I think Batiuk could have done better in the switch from gag to serialized drama (hint: Barry Balderman as the Act II protagonist would have improved a lot of things IMO) but that’s getting way off topic.
“Why didn’t Funky Winkerbean switch to straight drama at the end of Act I?” is a question I’ve long asked myself. It was perfectly set up for it. Tom Batiuk realized, correctly, that he couldn’t go back to hanging-from-the-gym-rope gags after Les went through the Lisa pregnancy story. Which was a surprise hit, and was contrary to Act I’s usual light, absurdist, gently subversive tone.
But I eventually realized why. Tom Batiuk didn’t get interested in drama because he wanted to write drama. Tom Batiuk got interested in drama because he got praised for it.
Lisa’s pregnancy was what TV Tropes calls a Black Sheep Hit: a hit that goes against the artist’s usual style. Which forces artists to decide if they want to make more hits, or if they want to stay true to who they are. Batiuk wanted it both ways. He was a Serious Writer now. But he also couldn’t stop going to the well of sophomoric high school gags, because that was all he really knew how to do, as you pointed out. Which resulted in a lot of cringe-inducing tone.
FW’s legacy could have been a solid comedic Act I, a shift to drama as the characters grew up, spent Act II as a solid drama strip in the Gil Thorp class, killed Lisa, and then skipped Act III entirely. But that’s not what happened, is it?
Feel free to share your long opinions any time!
I think that Batiuk probably always had an interest in doing drama just because of his interest in comics. The being praised for Lisa’s pregnancy does make sense as well and I think a part of it was the attention and momentum that For Better or For Worse was getting at around the same time the changeover from Act I to Act II happened so there was probably an inkling of “If this other funny pages strip can get plaudits or doing more serious drama…” although, for as much snark as Foob (deservedly) got in its last few years, it’s still a generally better written serialized drama than Funky was.
I think that Batiuk actually could be reasonably funny in Act I and not because of Dinkle jokes, when he wanted to there was actually a some cynical bite in his jokes. My 1b Act I character is Al Burch because that disaffected and put upon bureaucrat type always works and Batiuk was really good at writing characters like that (Superintendent Shoentell is also genuinely funny for similar reasons). I think that’s also why once the ’80s hits it feels like the students (bar Les and eventually Cindy) take a backseat to the teachers. It also makes seeming reverence (from what I gather) for Westview as a town and school later on funny because through all of Act I, Westview is basically Springfield: a hellish version of the typical American town filled with incompetent officials, burned out educators, unscrupulous businessmen, and a citizenry that’s as apathetic as it is dumb. Act I of Funky is an exceedingly cynical strip for the most part. I also think that’s why Funky is just kind of a mean strip… because that mean and cynical nature is baked in. Works for a more cynical comedy, and hell keeping it a cynical comedy and going farther in Act II would have not only worked but fit the ’90s Gen X zeitgeist, but not as much when you’re trying to do something that’s more serious or intended to have heart.
Which brings me to who wound up being my favorite Act I character in Barry Balderman. Barry is kind of like a less abrasive and annoying version of golden age Lisa Simpson as the one smart and competent person surrounded by morons, failures and jackasses. He’s a self-aggrandaizing overachiever, sure, but he’s also, for the most part, a generally nice enough guy. It’s funny that Lisa’s pregnacy is the turning point because it’s not really a good story at all. Lisa just shows up pregnant and has the baby in a completely improbable time period (she switched schools after summer 1986 and got pregnant but then three months later the baby pops out?) and then she goes away until Act II where Act II Lisa is practically an OC sharing only Lisa’s name (not even her history because the entire nature of her and Les’ relationship is retconned so it can be true love).
The next year, Batiuk tries for a more serious story in Barry getting stuck in summer school where he winds up connecting with Bodean and you know what? It works. Barry starts off miserable and uptight, loosens up a bit, you learn about his background and insecurities in a way that doesn’t ring at all contrived and helps to give him some depth, he goes out of his way to help Bodean figure out he’s got dyslexia and get help with it. It’s probably cribbing a bit from The Breakfast Club but by Funky standards it absolutely works. And then nothing’s really followed up with it until the very end of Act I when Barry has his breakdown over thinking that he didn’t get the highest GPA. In kind of an insulting move it’s played vaguely comedically but it still makes sense. Barry’s put his entire sense of self-worth in his grades and achievements because it’s all he feels like he’s going going for himself and the only way he seems to get any attention from his parents and in one instance (he thinks) that’s all gone because of a bimbo like Cindy so him having an anxiety breakdown makes sense in the moment. Of course it’s all done so Les can just do his “You all sucked and it’s your fault, I hate you and you’re jackasses, later,” speech before… coming back to teach at the place he hates. Despite Les never being a particularly good student or interested in education outside of one throwaway line in the leadup to the end of Act I.
Act II being about a burned out Barry coming back to Westview as a teacher to try and start over and building himself back up just winds up making way more sense to me than using Les in that role. Because Les was just a cartoonish loser where Barry had some smidge of depth and had basically been set up to have a further continuation of his story. If Batiuk wanted to be serious but keep the humor, then a character like that working to rebuild himself in a hellhole like Westview (which is possibly turning around and building itself up into a more respectable place as well) works better I feel.
I think that Batiuk probably always had an interest in doing drama just because of his interest in comics.
And what does he write? Comic book-level drama. This shit is like Sonichu. It’s media produced by a man who’s consumed nothing but children’s media his whole life. And you can see this in his output.
I think a part of it was the attention and momentum that For Better or For Worse was getting at around the same time so there was probably an inkling of “If this other funny pages strip can get plaudits or doing more serious drama…”
Yeah, that was probably a factor. FBFOW was well-written in the early 90s. I think that was about the time of the “Lawrence comes out” arc. Which put Funky Winkerbean’s later gay prom to shame.
I think that Batiuk actually could be reasonably funny in Act I and not because of Dinkle jokes
Agreed. Act I was competent, and captured some truths about high school life. The Simpsons comparison is an apt one.
If there was an overarching theme to Act I, it was that people take high school way too seriously. Even (especially) adults like Dinkle. Who was Tom Batiuk’s best character by far, but needed to fade into the background after Act I ended. Batiuk failed to realize that when you graduate high school, people like Dinkle no longer have any power over you. In Act III uses Dinkle to repeat his own Act I jokes, without realizing they don’t make sense anymore.
Barry’s put his entire sense of self-worth in his grades and achievements because it’s all he feels like he’s got going for himself.
Which would have been a great way for Funky Winkerbean to deconstruct itself. A character could have realized that pursuing GPA and other high school goals was making him unhappy, and ultimately weren’t that important anyway. But no character can ever have that moment of adult realization, because Batiuk himself never did.
Of course it’s all done so Les can just do his “You all sucked and it’s your fault, I hate you and you’re jackasses, later,” speech before… coming back to teach at the place he hates.
That was Les showing his true colors for the first time. He wasn’t an awkward outcast you could muster up a little sympathy for. He was a nasty, selfish, sanctimonious, condescending prick who thought it was everyone else’s job to give him whatever he wanted. He should have been exiled from Westview after that performance, not hired to work there his whole life. And that was well before all the appalling shit he did as an adult. But Batiuk made everyone else fall all over Les, Because He’s A Writer. Which ties into Batiuk’s own delusions about himself.
Act II being about a burned out Barry coming back to Westview as a teacher to try and start over and building himself back up just winds up making way more sense to me than using Les in that role.
Well, you sold me. I don’t think about Barry very much, because he kind of disappeared after his breakdown. But yes, he would have been a much better choice to fill Les’ role in Act II.
Cheers.
I stand in line. Wonderful analysis and a spectacular “what if?” scenario.
Poor Barry really got run through the ringer by TB in that final Act I story. And then it is revealed he can’t even attend the 5 year reunion in early Act II because he drives a beer truck in Boston (an admittedly cool job compared to what most of the cast wound up doing, but not portrayed as such in-strip). TB really came to not care for him, sheesh.
Welcome to THE preeminent source for FW/Batiuk snark on all the internet. Someone who discovered Funky Winkerbean AFTER its run was complete…the ancient prophecies are…are…they’re coming TRUE! Seriously though, I would wager you are, so far, the ONLY earthing who’s discovered FW after its very prestigious million year run. Godspeed to you, friend.
I wouldn’t say I discovered it after it finished. I would read some of the snarking for newspaper strips some 15 to 20ish years back but mostly it was following the stuff associated with For Better or For Worse since I’d read that off and on in the paper growing up during the ’90s and 2000s whereas my paper never had Funky. So I new about things like Cancer Cancerbean but it didn’t quite hit the same way for me because I just had no familiarity at all with Funky beyond seeing it pop up in stuff like that or when the Funkywatch columns would pop up on Comics Alliance.
My actual reason for going back to it now actually, going back to Cancer Cancerbean, is Willis himself. I enjoy snarking on Dumbing of Age for similar reasons people enjoy or enjoyed snarking on Funky or Foob. Willis, I know, despises Funky but for me he shows many of the same problems that Batiuk does. As of late people on the comic board of a… certain infamous site have been bringing up the latest big DoA plot and I just started thinking to myself “You know, I think this is really dumb yet he plainly considers himself better than people like Batiuk. Maybe I should go back and read Funky Winkerbean, his archnemesis, and just kind of take it in for myself to compare”.
So it’s more that I always had an awareness of Funky but I now have (stupid) motivation for going back and diving in.
I’m not sorry for this in the least.
Today’s Crankshaft
Ed: Mr. Thomas, I want to discuss something with you.
Batton: What is it?
Ed: I recently started playing some cursed Sonic fangame where Sonic is evil and murders his friends, and Pam keeps trying to get me to stop playing it due the fangame actually being a window to the world where some interdimensional being named “X” is from and the interdimensional being is murdering the people who finish playing the fangame, Should I listen to Pam or should I finish playing the fangame?
Batton: I don’t have the slightest idea of what you just said.
(Suddenly, an anthropomorphic hedgehog with dark blue-gray fur, dull peach skin, black sclera and glowing red pupils and sharp yellow teeth arrives through the front door, and IT is holding the heavily battered corpses of Pam and Andy with their jaws torn from their head)
Lord X (X/Sonic.exe (the character) during Soulless Sonic): So many souls to play with…..so little time…..
Ed: No……
(Ed tries to run away but Lord X grabs him and extends a skeletal hand from IT’s throat and tears Crankshaft’s soul out of his throat, killing him)
Lord X: Wouldn’t you agree? (hellish laughter)
What is that supposed to be about? For the first time in a long time, I agree with Batton:
Batton: I don’t have the slightest idea of what you just said.
At this point, we need another spinoff: “Who, Little Old Me?” by Tom Batiuk and Whatever Image-Generating AI Doesn’t Cost More Than 20 Bucks a Month.
—-
“Who, Little Old Me?” features the adventures of several humble, lovable authors whose endearing, shy humility can’t stop the eager world from beating a path to their door.
— Thrill! …as Lillian McKenzie shyly, humbly puts her hand to her face in bafflement at her instant success!
— Delight! …as Batton Thomas shyly, humbly answers the questions of his many fans via the world’s longest interview!
— Cheer! …as Summer Moore’s shy, humble memoir of the mother she never knew sparks others to build on it to create a science of behavioral-patterned algorithms that will one day allow us to recognize humanity as our nation!
Yes, shy humility by the bucketload is coming to the comic pages starting next Monday! Watch for “Who, Little Old Me?” in this space!
Have you ever seen the movie <i>That Thing You Do!</i>? There’s a great scene where the main characters hear their own song on the radio on the first time, and have a wonderful freakout about it.
The Batton Thomas interview is that scene, if it was written by L. Ron Hubbard. And starred Kevin Costner. And was five hours long instead of two minutes.
I’ve railed and yammered about BatYam’s bizarre woman issues countless times through the years. Regardless of how they’re drawn, what they’re called or what their assigned personality trait is, the women of FW were all the same. Far wiser than the menfolk, impossibly wry (only Les was wry-er-er), somewhat (or a lot) weary, and resigned to her spouse’s idiocy, always with a knowing smirk and a timely, glib quip. Unless Les was involved, in which case women would devolve to an almost childlike state in his presence. It makes me queasy just thinking about it.
Seriously though, seeing all the Batiukian blondes all together like that is more proof of how BatHam has a definite “type” regarding women he resents. He just couldn’t let high school go, man.
He doesn’t want to admit that he’s getting less sympathetic every day. Sixty bloody years of whining that he didn’t get the girl of his wet dreams doesn’t make him tragic, it makes him stupid.
The way women are written in Funky comes off as simultaneously (attempting to be) progressive and regressive. Yeah, the women are always wise with a knowing, wry grin yet it feels like that’s all they are too. They’re not really characters outside of how they relate to their husbands or boyfriends… usually as support, always there with a bit of feminine wisdom but not much else. Maybe they will tease their husband or boyfriend while smirking but that’s about it. They don’t really seem to have any other independent role in the series. Act II Lisa—Skinwalker Lisa—from what I’ve read up to so far (just having hit 1998) has a character that can be boiled down entirely to a head tilted at an angle, smirking wryly as it sideyes Les. When she’s not doing that, she’s initiating intimacy as a reward for all of his hard work (there’s a scary image for you this Halloween: Les Moore having sex). I can’t think of anything else she does on her own.
This continues with nearly every other female character too from what I’m seeing. What’s Linda’s character? Someone to make snide comments to Les about the school and other teachers, a role which Ginny Wolfe filled in the first year or so of Act II (but without any of the stuff that Ginny had in Act I). Mickey as the tomboy who’s able to mix it up with the guys athletically but able to hang around with the popular girls could have been good but she amounts to a wet fart. Becky? Wally’s love interest and nothing more, destined to just be a woobie. Sadie? Could have had a nice story about finding her own identity instead of being Cindy Jr. but… nope, Cindy Jr.
I can’t imagine it getting any better as it goes, either, and Batiuk gets farther away from his actual strengths as a writer to focus more on the stuff he’s objectively bad at.
Everything Tom Batiuk knows about life, he learned from Silver Age comic books, high school, and absolutely nothing else. College, adulthood, marriage, raising a child, and the rest of his life seem to have made no impression on him at all. And his attempts to create female character and dialogue reveal this.
He reminds me of something Henry Winkler said: People who live in the past are dead. He’s not living, he’s just moving.
Oh, it gets worse. So, so much worse.
Not to spoil anything, but Linda becomes something of a gender-swapped Les, and spends much of Act III as Les’ “work wife”. It’s awful.
Frustratingly, TB starts to have Sadie break away from her “Cindy Jr.” role only to ignore the possible resulting story arcs once he gives Sadie a haircut. To be fair to TB, he’s acknowledged that making Sadie a Cindy Jr. was a mistake… but where TB views her as his greatest folly (haha not even close, but really he does), I would argue that Sadie was more of a huge missed opportunity.
Frustratingly, TB starts to have Sadie break away from her “Cindy Jr.” role only to ignore the possible resulting story arcs once he gives Sadie a haircut. To be fair to TB, he’s acknowledged that making Sadie a Cindy Jr. was a mistake… but where TB views her as his greatest folly (haha not even close, but really he does), I would argue that Sadie was more of a huge missed opportunity.
Oh undoubtedly. I did think Sadie in Act I as Cindy’s bratty sister who drives Cindy into literal homicidal rages merely by existing was pretty funny. But just making her a clone of Cindy because he didn’t want to give up Cindy was definitely one of the biggest mistakes of Act II and a great indication of what I’d said earlier about him being a gag writer at heart. Act I Cindy worked as a comedic character in a gag strip, not as a character in a serialized drama, and it’s not a coincidence that Sadie all but seems to disappear once 1995 hits and the series fully shifts into soap opera drama.
But as you said, that just means she was a missed opportunity. The poetry club and seemingly budding friendship with Susan could have given a competent writer ample storylines: Sadie finds a talent for poetry and literature (maybe she becomes that most noble of Funkyverse professions: a writer), maybe she becomes artsy and disaffected as she rejects her previous shallow and materialistic self; Chien (who I’m aware of mostly through this site) before Chien, more or less. Anything, really. That’s the problem though. Batiuk never really put even the bare minimum of thought into any of this, especially with his female characters. He hits an idea and then just works on it without seemingly working it out beforehand and just goes from idea to idea as his interest carries him.
Sadly, Sadie’s story pretty much ends when she winds up working at Montoni’s with Lisa, Becky, and Rachel before she disappears.
The Funkyverse runs on “They Wasted A Perfectly Good Character.”
10/1: Here we are where I expected we’d be: watching Batiuk go out of his way to make his critics out to be stupid for calling out for being a self-indulgent incompetent. This is the same smug ass who whines that people who want to be a light at the end of the tunnel deserve better.
He also doesn’t realize that the people who want to see Ed Crankshaft in Crankshaft are giving actually positive feedback! The strip still has some legitimate fans, they’re bought into the premise, and they just want to see Batiuk deliver on the strip’s promise: the outrageous antics of that wacky bus driver. They are tired of watching Act III Funky Winkerbean refugees indulge Batiuk’s childish interests, and smirk their way through badly-written award bait. Batiuk’s response is to get offended that anyone would dare have an opinion about his work. Especially those useless cretins who read Crankshaft in the paper and buy his books!
Because he’s still that stupid child who felt as if he was personally insulted because they came up with an on brand version of why Flash runs at Ludicrous Speed. The idea that people don’t like these strangers pushing the old cast out of their own strip baffles him.
There are basically two ways for a creator to deal with negative feedback: Take it on board for what it’s worth and consider making some changes, or just shrug, ignore it, and keep on with your creative vision.
Batiuk chooses a third way: Take it on board, get butthurt, strawman it into something ridiculous, and then attack the strawman so your fans know how unimportant their feelings are.
Nobody ever protested that Crankshaft had to be in every single strip. His actual fans (not snarkers) are complaining that the strip has become “Funky Winkerbean Act IV: All Comics, All the Time.” And I guess that hurts his fee-fees.
There are a couple people who show up in comment sections to complain about Crankshaft disappeaing from his own comic strip. So it’s more like he’s attacking an easy target. He is trying reduce his critics to something petty and dismissible. He will NEVER, EVER respond to this blog, or to Comics Curmudgeon. We have very thorough opinions about why his work sucks, and we can express them well.
True, and I’ve read those comments. But none of them ever said that Crankshaft has to appear in the comic “every single day. That’s the law!”
Even back in the day, there were plots that didn’t revolve entirely around Crankshaft, and many days in which he didn’t appear in the strip. No one bitched if a few days featured Pmm or Jff. In fact, I don’t think anyone was bothered by the whole very lengthy Lillian “Roses in December” subplot and its spinoff subplots.
So “fans pitch a hissy fit if Crankshaft is not in every single strip” and “it’s breaking some comix ‘law’ if he’s not” (Batty’s obsessed with these imagined laws) — those are strawmen.
You’re right, it’s a little of both. People wanting to see Crankshaft is a legitimate criticism, but he strawmans it as “because it’s a rule” when nobody ever said that.
It also shows that he completely misses the point of the criticism. People want to see Crankshaft because they like the character, not because they’re trying to enforce some arbitrary rule. Which further illustrates that Tom Batiuk has no theory of mind. He can’t comprehend any way of thinking other than his own. He can’t even copy-has paste Internet critics into a character without making their thought process a clone of his own.
And hey, do you want to hear something nobody ever said on gocomics.com? “Where’s Funky Winkerbean?” The character Funky Winkerbean was pushed into the background of the comic strip bearing his own name, much like is happening to Crankshaft now. But nobody came out of the woodwork to try to enforce this “rule” when Funky Winkerbean became The Les Moore Show. Because Funky was a less important character, and nobody missed him when he got phased out. Which proves this was being driven by something other than imagined “rules.”
Again, Batiuk should be happy that readers want to see his title character. It shows that despite it all, his work still has a few real fans. But he didn’t learn anything from the death of Funky Winkerbean, and seems determined to re-create it in Crankshaft.
Also, there is the fatuous belief people are obliged to go away or are bullying him if they don’t want him to be a self-indulgent ass.
At our local donut shop, they always had free newspapers lying around. If I saw someone reading the comics, I would ask what they are reading. Crankshaft was always near the top. Nobody liked FW. Mary Worth was up there as was Mark Trail—until Jules Rivera took it over.
With Crankshaft becoming FW2.0, I have to believe Batty is losing readers.
But none of them ever said that Crankshaft has to appear in the comic “every single day. That’s the law!”
This is 100% a slam on “Where’s Crankshaft”, whose clever riposte “Where’s Crankshaft” appears (or used to?) every day Cranky wasn’t front and center.
It’s tempting to view it that way, but I hesitate at making at the assumption. Ego stroking is never a good look, and he’d never admit it regardless.
billsplut has contended that the GC commentor “Chief Tommy” is a TB sock puppet account, and it’s tempting to believe that to be true as well. I mention it in this particular case because there was one day in the comments where, outside of any context, he stated that I was the person who he despised the most out of everyone there. There’s no way to prove it now. Months later, there was a Sunday strip that had Ed wearing the trope Groucho “fake nose, mustache, and glasses” kit, and Chief Tommy posted “Where’s Crankshaft?” in the comments. I legitimately laughed at him saying that. Again, no way to prove it now.
The strip goes live on GC at 3AM CST instead of Midnight CST now, so unfortunately I can’t justify being there to be the first post up, and I lose a lot of the punch if I just post the question later in the evening after everyone else has read the strip in the morning and goes about their day without ever looking back. By now, though, I’m far from the only one who ever asks the question, so it’s not like I need to be the one who asks.
Of course, as has been well stated by several people elsewhere in these comments on this page today and other times, it is pure Tom Batiuk for him to completely unable to perceive why the question is being asked. No, it’s not a “law”, not that you’d give a shit. No, it’s not that comics “are supposed to be funny”, and not that you’d give a shit about that either. Try again, Tom. Keep trying.
[0]-
To be honest i never bought the idea that Batiuk was lurking around the comment sections, it seemed like neither his personality nor technical ability (i think he still thinks of it as a physical newspaper feature), and it always seemed narcissistic to assume any pushback could only be the author’s. Fans can be as defensive as any creator, or indeed far far more, as was my takeaway from Luann fandom.
Still, some coinky-dinces do pop up between the strip and the comments. I can imagine there is a friend or subordinate that “lets Tom know what’s going on”, in a telephone-game way. “People are always asking for Crankshaft” is a pretty easy thing to pass along to get Batiuk’s creative juices flowing (sorry for the mental image there).
When you cut back i was briefly tempted to start the “WheresWheresCrankshaft” account but, a little too inside-baseball, if you know what i mean.
It’s easy to fight a made up enemy with a stupid argument. Look what he did when that smug idiot Suicide Girl defended staging Audience Alienation The Musical.
Today’s Crankshaft
Ed: Batton, Mr. Wrinkles hadn’t appeared in most of the 2024 strips, and most of his appearances nowadays show him as being too passive! He’s supposed to be a grumpy asshole!
“Where is Crankshaft?”
I didn’t choose the handle out of genuine love of the character. I chose it because every character in the strip who is not Ed is genuinely, objectively, worse. All you have to do is play to your strengths, Tom. That’s all that you ever have had to do.
But he doesn’t know this because he got told different by impressive bullshit artists like John Byrne.
[0]
Man! I love your work.
Be Ware of Eve Hill wrote on April 22, 2024 on SOSF:
➡️“Another Komix Korner arc featuring Jeff Murdoch and Batton Thomas? Ugh, it’s like he’s maintaining some form of unfathomable artistic integrity by creating a comic strip that no one can enjoy.”⬅️
(Eve, you know you are important when people are quoting you!)
People expect to see the main character. Some strips like *Rex Morgan MD* can get away with that rule, if the story arcs are interesting. But TB does not do that. He focuses on the worst characters, arc after arc. Ed Crankshaft is no winner, himself, but compared to Batton, Jfff, Dinkle, and the Lizard…Ed is comedy gold. It is ironic that Batiuk does not grasp that concept.
From that blog of his…
“There’s nothing quite like the melancholy beauty of the Autumn light.”
We know, Tom. And the falling leaves are metaphors for things. Unless I was reading FW all wrong.
10/2: Again with the “People don’t like ineptly done drama that makes everyone involved look like simpletons and cowards = people just want to laugh mindlessly” nonsense that does a bad job of hiding what a sneering, slappable little punk he was growing up.
Anyone have a link to that “Skunky Winkerbean” stand up bit from a few years back? I’m not finding it, but you know, I’m not so good at Grandpa Google.
here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8peyDxadxU
Tension builds…
Tension builds…
This week is GLORIOUS.
I am loving every single smug, inane, garbage-fire bright moment of it.
Batty’s still got it folks!
By ‘it’ I mean a pathological badness that defies explanation.
He’s like a baseball pitcher who has lost every one of his pitches except his brushback.
Batty’s generating content for us this week! I’m off to Italy today, so not sure if I will follow this while on vacation. I need to forget about the real world for awhile! A presto, ciao!
Have a great trip! Make sure your ID is Real ID compliant!
Today’s Crankshaft
I’d rather have Batton talk with Skip instead of Crankshaft being a Strawman becuase that (Crankshaft Strawman) has been incredibly insufferable so far
It really is a multi-layered Fuck You to his readership. He not only takes a shot at the people who’ve expressed their desire to see the main character more, he uses that character to voice the strawman criticisms of himself.
The idea that reading it removes our right to express an opinion says all we need to know about this arrogant stumblebum. No chuffing wonder we see preening incompetents being indulged. They’re all him.
And it’s not like he’s responding to the snarkers. These are his sincere fans he’s giving the finger to.
Thinking that his readers are idiots who don’t deserve better just makes me hate him more.
Re: Crankshaft, October 2 2025.
Oh, screw you, Tom.
This is how I become aware Cindy and Mindy aren’t the twins.
Well, it sure wasn’t these two strips.
Yes, one of these blondes is just a few years away from attending her 50 year high school reunion…
This bring up something I’ve been wanting to point out: Mindy and Pete are about 50 years old now. Just something to keep in mind as they get married and we go through another round of “young kids just starting out in life.”
Speaking of which, Cindy & Masonne Jarre’s kid must be walking and talking by now. What’s the little angel’s name, I wonder? Belle Jarre? Cookie Jarre? Adora Jarre?
He’s actually already graduated from Kent State! Becuase of Cindy’s advanced age, she had a grownup.
Thedoorisa Jarre.
We all know the child’s name will be Lisa.
Actually, they had twins. Say hello to Cindy, Jr. and Starbuck Jarre.
I have no idea whenever if Cindy actually gave birth or not
But if I were to guess the child’s name, it would probably be Frank if male or Stacy if female
Roberto, I had to give you a downvote, because you just powered-up one of the most obnoxious earworms every written. Because now it’s going to make me think of Cindy Summers.
If you don’t know what song I’m talking about, don’t ask. Believe me, you don’t want to know.
I think we all know that their kid’s name is going to be Les. If they have another child… also Les. Third child? Les.
There’s also the strong possibility that they’ll give one of those children TO Les, as one does.
The big problem with For Better Or For Worse is that Lynn essentially cut herself off from reality towards the end. It started out as something relatable: the story of a young mother who really didn’t like kids much. She’d rushed into motherhood only to find that it wasn’t her thing. Towards the end, it became an implausible mess that had the Patterson family marry a car dealership.
Elly Patterson became to Lynn Johnston what Les Moore became to Tom Batiuk. A once-flawed character became the in-universe author avatar, and started filling all the author’s fantasies.
And her fictional children followed the careers Lynn chose for the real ones.
Also, the mess with Liz and Anthony? Lynn defending mentally hoping out of her first marriage because her first husband expected her to live up to her vows and her just friends stuff with the man who became her second husband. We didn’t like Anthony and since he was a stand in for Lynn, she started wailing about fungus people who forget she’s a real person with real feelings
Lynn has an even bigger axe to grind than Batty. She really became a shrill harpie by the end of the strip. And I was always a fan of FBoFW, I grew up reading it. I was older when all the misery came out, those were some dark days on the comics page. Batty and Lynn, peddling their misery nonstop.
It got to the point where the Patterson family got to resemble a mind control cult.
True, but Johnston had a lot more to be angry about. She was reacting to the dissolution of her marriage, which is a valid thing to be hurt by. You can empathize with her a little. And some great works have been made by artists in that situation (SFX: drum fill from “In The Air Tonight”).
Anthony and everything about the end of FBOFW sucked, but you can see where it was coming from. Batiuk gets mortally offended over the tiniest criticism. Even when it’s basically a compliment in that readers are demanding to see more of the title character, and more of what the strip promises.
You also have to remember that society expected more of her than she was capable of and she can’t deal with the contradiction. She’s supposed to be fond of kids but she can’t fake it.
Anthony would fit right in to a modern online community for people who cheat on their spouses. He had all these noble-sounding justifications for why he needed to “follow his heart to his own true love”, or whatever crap he spewed. But he compeletly ignored his commitment to Therese, after she had given him the child she never wanted to have. Anthony was a complete piece of shit, and the readers called him out for it. Johnston made things worse by insisting Therese the bad guy when she wasn’t. Therese’s real misdeed was being a career woman with no interest in family. And Lynn Johnston will not have THAT.
And this doesn’t even mention that Anthony was a creepy Niceguy who tried to pick up Liz after rescuing her from a rape attempt (ewww). Or that he was a useless nepo baby who was much less successful than Therese. Or that Liz ran away from better suitors and a fulfilling life in Mtigwaki,. All so she could live the boring life suburban mommy instructed her to.
As you know, Lynn defended this infantilism by saying that Liz respected her parents’ opinions. What I take that to mean is a legitimate fear of being disowned for defying the crazy woman.
Yeah, that’s another facet of Johnston’s twisted worldview. Liz was an adult and had a career, and had zero reason to tailor her life to what Elly wanted. Adult children cut off their parents for behavior like this. Which is what Liz should have done: told Elly to go to hell. But like Les Moore, no one is ever, ever, EVER allowed to tell the author avatar they’re wrong. Or even that they’re being an asshole about it.
You’re preaching to the choir. A happy ending would have both adult children tell Elly to get bent.
At least April told Elly to get bent. Or at least we can infer that from her epilogue, that she moved off to Alberta to be a veteranarian or something.
You just know Elly is whining to the only mother worse than she is about how April doesn’t know where love, home and acceptance are because she lack self-awareness.
Having read through Foob in full within the last year or so, and with distance from reading the last few years as they were happening, I can honestly say those last few years aren’t as bad as people made them out to be. They’re not good and they’re a huge step down from what I’d consider the strip’s peak (around when Martha is introduced to when Liz graduates high school) but it’s not the worst thing ever either.
The Mtigwaki thing, having re-read through it all at once and with the context of the years leading up to it, now confuses me in regards to how the readers/snarkers took it at the time since Liz, before she even graduates, tells her friends that her plan was to move away for a few years, experience things and then come back and there’s multiple times while she’s there where she’s openly homesick. I have a sneaking suspicion that the big backlash against what happened with Liz came from readers around the same age who grew up with her and saw themselves in her and thus didn’t like that she was throwing away the exiciting life in an exotic community with an exotic hunk because that’s what they wanted even if it went against things the character and comic had been saying for years.
Actually, I strongly get the idea as I read it that Liz from around the time she graduated high school became a self-insert not just for female readers around the same age who grew up and connected with her (there was an article I found from around the time of her relationship with Eric with some female readers saying it’s what drew them in) but for Lynn herself. Liz wasn’t fulfilling the life that Lynn wanted for her IRL daughter but was Liz trying to recapture some of her youth with something more ideal for her: a stable career, a reliable husband, yet young and pretty and pursued by multiple handsome and exciting hunks. So it’s essentially a tug of war between an author who wanted one thing from the character in recapturing her own desires and readers who saw themselves in that character and felt a sense of betrayal and both sides got more and more obstinate over it.
A lot of stuff in the last few years was handled poorly which is made frustrating by the fact that there are good ideas if they were developed properly. I think if the strip ends in 2004 with Elizabeth graduating and moving with her future ahead of her, Elly and John preparing for retirement and Michael now having his new family then it winds up with a far better legacy. Like I said, the writing and art quality had gone down since around the late ’90s period but it’s really only those last 3 years which really tarnish it. All that said, Lynn at her worst was still a more competent writer of serialized drama than Batty at his best. There’s dumb stuff in Foob but you’re generally not being presented with cartoonish absurdity and being told it’s meaningful art that Says Something like with Funky.
10/3: He essentially reverts to whining about being bullied in order to deflect any questions about not sticking to or being aware of or respecting his real strengths.
How many times is this that we’ve had to hear the strawman spiel about how “comics don’t have to be funny”? Where he acts as if drama hasn’t been a regular feature on the comics page since the 1910s?
He’s not only using a syndicated humor strip to settle imaginary scores and avenge long-ago butthurts, he keeps going back to the same ones again and again.
Bizarre to say the least.
He thinks that this is what people mean when they talk about clumsily done drama.
People keep telling him “You shouldn’t write drama! You just can’t do it!”
He seems to think this is generic advice given to all cartoonists, rather than something specifically directed towards him…
Today’s Crankshaft
I want the MinMope wedding to come soon because Strawman Crank Week has been absolute fucking shit
The Minmope wedding will be the Cory-Rocky marriage all over again. Montoni’s, comic books, Montoni’s, comic books, living in the apartment above Montoni’s (even though they already do that), conversations with pointless side characters, a parade of smirks, “young kids just starting out” when these losers are both in their 50s.
I’m also betting there will be no sight of Darin or Flash Freeman, when they actually SHOULD appear because it’s the wedding of their lifelong best friend/coworkers.
And despite working in comics, Mindull will know nothing of comics because DUMB GIRL .
I’m beginning to think that Montoni’s was built on either an Indian burial ground or the entrance to some kind of lair where an eldritch god sleeps. It’s the only explanation for why this small pizza shop, which until Funky took it over was a poorly and cheaply run (and probably dirty) eatery that did poor business, has become the go to wedding venue and social gathering spot of this mid-level Ohio city.
Montoni’s must always exist and the pattern for it of weddings and “youngsters just starting out” living on its premises must always continue in order to feed the B’tuk which dwells beneath, its dreamings inflicting the residents of Westview collective and low grade psychoses and miseries as it warps them beyond all recognition. This is why, for instance, people in Westview constantly look older than they actually are becoming lumpy, shapeless potato people.
If the B’tuk’s avatar/herald in the mortal realm were the Pizza Monster, it would actually make A LOT of sense.
10/4: He isn’t going to because Tom Batiuk has never asked the question “What am I doing to get people upset with me?”
Today’s Crankshaft
I’m hoping that next week, we move back to Crankshaft doing Crankshaft shit instead of the Interview From HFIL
Today marks the 18th anniversary of the October 4th, 2007 Funky Winkerbean strip, where Lisa dies, marks the end of Act II and the beginning of Act III and sends Les on a downward spiral that turns him into the Dick Facey we all know and fucking despise between the Act II-Act III timeskip
Again, Batiuk’s got no idea how badly he ruined Les. Granted, Old Helmet Hair was no bargain but he’s way better that the lower he became.