Own Goal Post

66 thoughts on “Own Goal Post”

1. The problem is that he doesn’t understand that he’s not a victim. He clearly seems to see people being mean to him when he’s not allowed to do whatever self-indulgent nonsense he wants to.

   1. 10/7: This is a good line if you’re Bugs Bunny and it’s the fifties.

2. Today’s Crankfuckery

   Meanwhile in Centerville

   Jeff: Pam, what is that thing standing close to our door?

   (Pam takes a look, and the thing standing in front of the Crankshaft household is Absolute Bane from the Absolute Batman comic book series, who grabs Jeff and throws him towards the sun at Mach 800)

3. I’ve come to enjoy it when TB bares his self-awareness and tries to troll his critics, at least for the discussion it perks up here. He’s bad at it, as last week proves (his best bit was last Monday’s acknowledgment that Jeff and Batton are hard to tell apart), but that failure is funny enough on the semi-occasional doses he dishes it out these days. You wouldn’t want to watch an insult comic bomb repeatedly, but it is funny at least once.

   I liked that TB mixed things up with his typical “comics don’t have to be funny” routine by tossing in a couple of other stray shots (“where’s Crankshaft?”, a salute to his only reade… I mean hate-readers) and sanding the edges down by having his title character deliver the tired strawman argument while he reacts with smarmy disengagement rather than the righteous indignation he usually channeled through his mouthpieces (Les, in particular). It still came across as weak and thin-skinned as it typically does, naturally.

4. It’s just hard to piece together what message we’re supposed to take from this. Batiuk used Crankshaft as a strawman to mock the “where’s Crankshaft?” fan sentiment. Then he turns right around and gives them Crankshaft! Does he think he made his point? If so, I don’t know what the hell it was.

   1. The point? “Look at me! I get paid to write whatever I want, however I want, for whatever audience I want, for as long as I want, and no amount of whining or complaining can or will ever change this! So suck it losers! I WILL CONTINUE TO SPEW OUT WHATEVER RANDOM THOUGHTS CROSS MY BRAIN IN COMIC STRIP FORM, AND YOU WILL KEEP LAPPING IT UP BECAUSE EVERYBODY READS COMIX COMIX ARE GREAT COMIX COMIX COMIX I LOVE COMIX!”

      I mean, I thought it was pretty straightforward, no?

      1. Without people reading his material, he’s a nobody. He forgot this.

      2. Well, yeah, but then he turned right around and wrote what he just mocked the audience for demanding! After last week’s performance, wouldn’t it have made more sense to switch to one of the things he wants to write?

         After Batton spent a week telling the readers to go fornicate themselves, I thought for sure the Batton Thomas interview was going to continue next. That would reinforce what I thought was Batiuk’s point. Or maybe this is some kind of passive-aggressive thing? “Oh, you want more Crankshaft? Okay, FINE, here you go!” Maybe he’s gonna follow this up with weeks and weeks and weeks of no Crankshaft?

         Batiuk can’t read between the lines that “where’s Crankshaft?” really means “why is the strip publishing this crap and not Crankshaft stories?” Which, as I argued, is positive criticism in the sense that readers want the crazy bus driver Batiuk promised them. This strip was his idea, not the readers’. But Batiuk takes all criticism personally, and then misrepresents it with a strawman, because his brain doesn’t know how to do anything else.

         1. But this IS what Batiuk wants to write … this week. He wants to write about whatever occurs to him. If he’s got a Crankshaft joke, he’ll write it. Hey, sometimes it’s fun writing puns! But if it’s OMEA week, he’ll write about that. If he’s suddenly momentarily enraptured with Winnipeg football, or an old movie serial, or an old house he saw by the side of the road, he’ll write about that. Or comic books! Hey, yeah! There’s something that would be fun to write about — comic books!

            So Batuik’s not going to harp on the “comics don’t have to be funny” theme … because something else occurred to him. And he hasn’t got the attention span to focus on anything other than the thing that’s occupying his attention right now.

            Next week, we’ll see what other shiny bauble has captivated him. And about 3 weeks from now, if he put the reminder in his diary, he’ll be thinking “Pizza Monster”….

            1. That’s not what Batiuk says about himself, though. He is completely contemptuous about having to write gags at all. So call it another mixed message.

            2. I’m going to respectfully disagree.

               He’s contemptuous of having to write gags when he can’t think of a gag.

               When a gag has just occurred to him? Why, writing gags is something noble; a calling, even; something that gives people a much-needed wry grin as they make their way through this vale of tears called life. (Then he thinks: Could Crankshaft refer to a bride’s ‘”veil” of tears’? Oh, that’s a gag right there! Tom, you genius, you’ve done it again! <mimes running around bases>)

            3. Are we talking about what Tom Batiuk thinks he is, or what he is actually is? You’re reacting to the reality what Batiuk actually is: a poor writer who will continue writing gags because it’s the only thing he knows how to write.

               I think my reaction was more to what Batiuk thinks he is: someone who’s moved past gag writing, and is disdainful of his audience for wanting more if it. I argued that if he’s moved past gag writing, and hates it that much, then he can get rid of the characters that he needs to write the gags for. Especially when it’s time for them to die of old age anyway, or at least retire.

               I think I was trying to illustrate how false Batiuk’s complaint is, by showing what he would logically do if it were true.

            4. One more go-round with this, then I’ll leave it alone for a while…

               I don’t think Batiuk feels he is above gag-writing. I think he feels he is above writing ONLY gags.

               Putting aside any issues of whether he is talented enough to pull it off, I think Batiuk believes that a long-running artistic endeavour focused on characters and storytelling should be able to have a mix of observational humour, emotional moments, suspense, running gags, heartbreak, excitement, surprise, comfort, unhappy moments, insight, goofiness, and relatability.

               I think he thinks that’s what he’s doing. Or at least trying to do.

               So I don’t think Batiuk has any interest in abandoning gags. They are PART of what he sees as the rich tapestry he’s creating, and they will therefore be part of his writing for as long as he writes.

               Batiuk’s response to “Where’s Crankshaft?” is “There’s way more to this strip than that.” Of course, the subtext to “Where’s Crankshaft?” (which Batiuk can’t or won’t discern) is “That bus driver’s the only the decent thing in the strip — focus on your strengths, pal.” But given that the subtext eludes Batiuk? He’s answering the “Where’s Crankshaft?” question as best he can … he doesn’t have to ONLY write Crankshaft gags, and he ain’t gonna.

            5. But this IS what Batiuk wants to write … this week. He wants to write about whatever occurs to him.

               Having just finished 2003 on my readthrough, collecting, this is where it becomes very in your face with the idea that Funky (and Crankshaft now, I suppose) merely exists as a showcase for whatever Batiuk is interested in doing instead of being what it actually is. The big Wally return story is very blatant. It’s not a story about a man returning from war after being MIA, it’s not even a soap opera story as such. Rather, it seems as if Batiuk got it in him that he wanted to do a story pulled from an adventure strip and Wally in Afghanistan provided, in his mind, the perfect vehicle to do that. It’s why the story feels ridiculous and not like anything that would happen in the real world. Because it’s not intended to be realistic, it’s just a pastiche of/homage to stuff like Terry and the Pirates. Why? Because Batiuk wanted to write Terry and the Pirates fanfiction and anything else that spawns from it is incidental.

               Writing based on what comes to you like that is fine for a gag comic or one without real continuity but it doesn’t work in what’s supposed to be an otherwise grounded and realistic setting where the whimsical elements are now incongruous.

               Also speaking of elements which don’t work, Ayers bringing over his Crankshaft style after Byrne’s run on art is just… yeesh! He did fine aping Batiuk’s style and while it’s not like it’s top tier art I think there is a bit of pleasant, cartoony charm to it. But the Crankshaft stye with its oversized heads and too detailed features makes it look like the art of a street artist who does caricatures for a living which just looks awkward while the characters begin to look more shapeless. Characters are less expressive, the body language and acting becomes far stiffer. I get that the writing in the last 15ish years of Funky is morose but I think the actual problem is the shift to the Crankshaft artstyle and the damn droopy eyes. It makes everyone look like they’re in a perpetual state of resignation and like they’re about 5 minutes away from tying the rope and kicking the chair. The writing is what it is but I think it’s the art which even more heavily contributes to the absolutely miserable vibe that made the strip infamous and if it still looked like it had prior to the middle of 2003, it might have made some of that later stuff slightly more bearable.

            6. @Narshe So you think that story was an intentional attempt to create a <i>Terry And The Pirates</i>-style story? Did he say this on his blog or in an interview? Because that seems way too specific. “Showcase for whatever Batiuk wants to write about” feels more the beginning and end of his thought process. And as usual, the story has no tone or other indicator that would suggest “this is meant to be an adventure story, not a serious look into the life of POW.” He was absolutely pounding the drama angle of it, as he wrote <i>Saving Private Ryan</i>, not <i>Maybe Go Collect That Wally Winkerbean Guy We All Forgot About</i>.

         2. Someone recently came up with a grand unifying theory that almost everyone is twelve now. Batiuk’s making that look mighty plausible.

            1. TB, truly a man ahead of the times.

            2. That would explain Jffff’s inner child.

5. One really has to admire Batiuk’s ability to undercut his own arguments. Every time he goes on one of his “comics don’t have to be funny!” tirades, he always manages to put a joke (well… “joke” in some sense of the word) into each strip. He did it before when Skunky when giving his lecture on the history of comics, he did it last week with Crankshaft… but it makes his argument that much weaker. If you can’t even do a comic telling us that comics don’t have to be funny without attempting to force a punchline in there (not succeeding, of course, by attempting), then… what’s even the point? It seems like he’s trying to reinforce the idea that comics SHOULD, nominally, have a joke to them, while trying to tell us the complete opposite.

   Do you think he even realized he was trying to put ostensible jokes in there, or is it just such an ingrained habit he can’t help himself?

   1. I would tend to think the latter……but he can’t admit it.

   2. I think everything Batiuk does now is so instinctual that I doubt he even thinks about it very much. He certainly doesn’t see the inherent contradiction of saying “a comic strip doesn’t have to contain gags” in a comic strip that’s absolutely dependent on gags. His output seems to be the repetition of rote behavior. He doesn’t know how to write jokes anymore, but he can look at his old work when he did know how to write jokes, and try to copy the style. Almost everything the man does seems to be an attempt to duplicate the style of something, without having any understanding of what makes that thing work.

      1. Which is why he’s so brittle.

         1. He’s insecure because he’s a fraud, and he knows it. The man lucked into a dream job early in adulthood, but has spent his whole life wishing he was doing something else. So he never learned anything about cartooning or writing, because these things were never his interest. He actively resists any outside input. Batiuk cares nothing about writing; he cares deeply about being seen as a writer. So we get what we get; a pretentious fraud creating a world of pretentious frauds.

            1. But he can’t admit it so he blames the strip’s name or bullying fungus people or his mother.

            2. He reminds me of Lynn Johnston in a way. Just as the syndicate was ready for a female artist whose discontent didn’t threaten the system, people were ready for a subversion of Archie Andrews. He just won’t admit he got lucky either.

            3. Lynn at least was a mostly competent storyteller who did what she did reasonably effectively until the last few years when things in her life started going off the rails. She would at least tell a story to completion as opposed to Batiuk’s thing of building up and building up, getting to the big moment and then skipping ahead because he had seemingly no idea about how to write what came next. Or having characters radically change off panel and never actually tell the story beyond a simple “I changed” or other handwavey explanations like “Actually my mom called me Donald because she agreed to be in on my ruse.”

               At least when Lynn did a story about a gay character, she actually had the gay character front and center in the story about him. I know about Batiuk’s prom story and how tertiary the gay characters are to it. If TB actually had a spine, he would have done a real story making an actual notable character gay and making them prominent in said story. I have feelings about who would have worked for a story like that too but ultimately TB isn’t a good storyteller and doesn’t really care about more than the shocking moment so it never would have mattered.

6. https://i.postimg.cc/ncMtTwKv/c32314807578013eb390005056a9545d-A.gif

   1. https://i.postimg.cc/ncMtTwKv/c32314807578013eb390005056a9545d-A.gif

      1. 

7. 

8. I just wonder what he’ll fixate on next week. I also wonder in Batton Thomas is the Pizza Monster.

   1. Deep down inside, aren’t we all…the Pizza Monster?

      (which makes no sense, so Tom might say it)

      1. The closest he ever came to making sense is having Pete confront the possibility that he was the Lord Of Late.

9. 

10. Today’s Crankshaft

    (ZZZZZZ)

11. Man, I <i>hate</i> when 1 year olds can’t play like consummate professionals at their height! This may be why I don’t get invited to Thanksgiving anymore!

    Also, my drop-kicking them. Ever see a kid the size of PJ fly across the room? HOO-BOY! (covers mouth while shoulders shake)

12. 10/10: It’s cold but no one listens…..

13. Today’s Crankshaft

    Keesterman: Enough talk about our medical issues, Ed, did you hear about the incident where someone ran over some girl named Misako and then proceeded to beat up some honor student for no reason?

    (Ed gets up from his chair and sprints out of the diner only to encounter a furious red-haired man wearing a white gaurkan and a red t-shirt, who kicks Crankshaft in the groin so hard that he turns into a pile of coins)

    Ed: BARF! (note: “BARF!” is the dialogue of defeated opponents in River City Ransom/Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari)

    Related to the Batiukverse: Today is the 18th anniversary of the strip where Les cries in the rain after burying Lisa’s ashes in Central Park

    

    1. Didn’t Lisa die on October 4, 2007? Les was in New York City a week after that? Oh, he probably had some writing contract to sign. And the death of his precious Lisa wasn’t going to get in the way of THAT.

       1. Lisa did die on October 4th, her funeral was held and Les flew over to New York to bury her ashes on the 8th

          Here’s the sequence between the October 4th and October 10th strips

          

          Behold, the first ever appearance of Dick Facey

          

          

          

          As I’ve said before, part of me wishes that Batiuk should’ve also shown Holly dealing with Lisa’s death instead of only focusing on Les

          but another part of me thinks that it would’ve been just as overwrought as it actually was

          

          1. “I’d start wondering if I did everything I could have done.” Well, let me clear that up for you, Les: you didn’t do ANYTHING you could have done. You didn’t sue the hospital (even though your wife was a lawyer). You didn’t do anything to prepare for Lisa’s death, emotionally or financially. You did nothing to help your child cope. But you kept your “promise to Lisa”, whatever the hell that is. What exactly did you promise her? “After you’re gone, I will roam the ends of the earth to rub your death in everybody’s face, while doing nothing productive”?

             1. This is probably why he has a bug up his arse about Lisa’s Story: deep down, he knows that he’s going to be revealed to have stood around like a shivering pillar of shite and reviled for being a selfish man-baby.

             2. Les has made a full-time job out of controlling Lisa’s narrative. His #1 priority is insisting that Lisa’s story be told “correctly” – meaning, the way he wants it told. Even though we’ve seen enough to know that Les’ vision of himself as a loving, supportive, loyal husband who did everything he could for his dying wife is pretty far from the truth.

             3. It’s like how Frank Burns saw the world. To say the least, it’s fascinating. To say the most, it’s perjury.

          2. But to have another breast cancer survivor add to the conversation subtracts from how wounded a nebbishy white man is.

       2. Nah, it’s fine that Les went to New York right away. I mean, he COULD have attempted to console his daughter or something (like some kind of human being with empathy), but instead he had to dash off and do his own thing. Perfectly in character for Les to make that trip so soon after Lisa died, really.

    2. Fun(ky) Fact: It’s also Taiwanese Independence Day!

       “The National Day of the Republic of China, also referred to as Double Ten Day or Double Tenth Day, is a public holiday on 10 October, now held annually as national day in the Republic of China.”

       My hopes of a FW visit to Hong Kong (and maybe Taipei?) as Les promised Cayla dashed so long ago i no longer even get mad about it (i am still very mad)

    3. 

       Someone left the cake out in the rain…

       And I don’t think I can take it…

       ‘Cause it took so long to bake it…

       And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh no…

       1. When I look at that image, I just hear “November Rain” playing in the background.

          Don’t you think that you need somebody? Don’t you think that you need someone? Everybody needs somebody. You’re not the only one. You’re not the only one.

       2. For me, I picture either “Untitled (How Could This Happen To Me)” by Simple Plan, “Dear Agony” by Breaking Benjamin or “Valentines Day” by Linkin Park playing in that strip

14. 

15. 10/11: Let’s remind ourselves why Batiuk wants to make climate damage a thing: he personally has been inconvenient by it.

16. 10/11 Redux: That’s now twice within a seven-day stretch that TB tried to hammer home his homemade nonsense phrase “climate damage.” Thing is, you cannot damage the climate. The climate is what it is; what environmental forces natural or man-made do is alter it. That’s why “climate change” is what folks either agree with or argue against.

    Also, “equator” means a circular line or path that divides into two equal parts. Had the newsanchor announced “from now on polar bears will be known as tropical bears,” it would have at least made more sense in regard to weather and the climate. It still wouldn’t have been funny, but it would have made more sense.

    Can’t wait to see what Monday offers. Shouldn’t wedding bells be ringing soon?

    1. It’s the comic-obsessed little boy in him that can’t see that…..and that’s a Flash Fact.

    2. He seems to have this weird thing of taking common phrases and such and changing them just enough so they’re unique to him. I don’t know if he’s just trying to be cute or what but it’s like some kind of language-based uncanny valley, like an alien almost getting human speech but being slightly off. The prime example of this, for me, is “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall” which is used incessantly because of all the Dinkle strips. Maybe it’s just some weird Ohio variant but I have never, in my life, heard anything except “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall”. A hundred bottles of beer on the wall doesn’t even flow properly because of “A” and “Hundred” starting from the same position. One hundred bottles, yes. A hundred, no.

       This shouldn’t even bother me as much as it does but seeing it so often eventually started driving me up a wall.

       1. This is why they keep track of stuff like this. Another example of Batiukese is calling a screwdriver a vodka and orange.

       2. He’s not alone in sounding like a glitchy AI. Lynn Johnston loves to insert obsolete British usage into her dialog.

          1. Not as bad as her perpetually dropping the “d” from “and” whenever a non-adult spoke. Yes, they may sound like that, but let the reader put that in.

             1. Her funetik aksents aren’t any fun.

    3. There seem to be at least three possible reasons why Tom often uses the phrase “climate damage” in his strips instead of “climate change.”

       (1) He thinks that “climate damage” is actually a standard term in common use. (2) He knows that “climate change” is the standard term, but he thinks he will get complaints from newspaper editors or their readers if he uses it, so he substitutes “climate damage” instead. (3) He knows that “climate change’ is the standard term, but wants to use a phrase that he thinks will sound more troubling in order to raise more concern about the problem, so he substitutes “damage” in place of “change.”

       1. Maybe he wants “climate damage” to become the accepted term, so that people will look back and remember that it was Tom Batiuk who coined the term in the first place. Like how Charles Schulz is credited with popularizing the term “security blanket”. (Except, of course, that the term “climate damage” is stupid, so it’s not gonna happen.)

       2. I think he does things because he thinks it makes him look clever that he’s got his own lingo and whatnot even though it just comes off as kind of odd. Sort of like how all of his happy husband and wife couples banter like they’re from a middling CBS sitcom to show how loose and loving they are with each other.

17. Today’s Crankshaft

    I cant help but worry whenever if next week will be either Interview From HFIL Week or Ed Crankfuckery Week

18. 10/12: We end the week with Classic Ed ..thus clearing the path to some other stupid thing

19. Today’s Crankshaft

    (Crankshaft walks into the street after making the phone call, where he is immediately struck by Truck-Kun. When Crankshaft wakes up, he immediately notices that he is on the rooftop of Reihō Academy. Crankshaft tries to run but is lifted from the air and thrown onto the floor by a man wearing a reddish-orange school uniform and has dyed purple hair)

    1. lol I didn’t expect to be reading about that here today. River City Ransom was one of my favorite NES games, and it’s one of those games that I look back on and see a ton of Japanese cultural things that I was completely oblivious towards as a child but are visible now. Everyone loved Acro Circus, but Isis Scroll is the low-key best item in the game. $1:1pt stat increase is top notch. BARF!

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