Some selected final panels of book signing-related strips, from as far back as 2010:
Notice how similar these all are, even though they’re different characters. Because they’re all here to indulge Tom Batiuk’s fantasy: that he’s an elite writer who attracts long lines at his far too many book signings. Then he laughs at his own unfunny/incoherent joke. And then he belittles you, because he’s a writer and you’re not. Next, please.
All of these were responses to perfectly reasonable questions or to harmless banter, from genuine fans. And they all got Bitter Les Face in response. Though it was kind of nice to see Les on the receiving end from Dinkle that one time. Look at his shocked, unhappy expression. You can almost see him thinking “wow, is this how I come off to people?” Of course, Les’ heel realization is never explored, because the Funkyverse can’t have that.
I get why an author might find book signings annoying, and mine a few jokes from the experience. But we’ve had several book signing weeks over the years, and it’s always this same collection of conceits: annoyance, self-aggrandizement, intellectual superiority, and the author’s rude dismissal of people who are fawning over him. And as is standard for the Funkyverse, not one of these fans ever responds to being insulted by someone they admire. If anything, they’re too dumb to even notice.
Which makes me wonder what Tom Batiuk’s book signings are really like for him. From the book signing pictures we see on his blog, I infer that he doesn’t get many takers. Which can also lend itself to comedy. But he never subjects his stable of writers to this treatment. “No one came to my book signing” stories tend to be discussions of things that happened off-panel, like in fall 2017.
Batiuk loves to control the narrative about his work. But he can’t make real-life convention visitors be interested in him. Especially when he appears at the same handful of local venues every year without fail; those venues are awkward fits for his audience; and he never sets foot anywhere else. He’s setting himself up to fail.
So what we get instead is a different kind of fantasy. “Batton” gets plenty of visitors, but they’re all mind-bogglingly stupid. Even though they’re flattering him to an absurd degree, like someone mistaking his work for Archie. And we’re the snarkers? It seems to me that Batiuk is venting at his fans for being idiots, when his real complaint is that there aren’t nearly enough of them.
If these stories are an accurate description how Tom Batiuk treats his fans, it’s no wonder he doesn’t have very many.
Son of Stuck Funky 
What he doesn’t realize is that his superior attitude drives people away. He’s Homer Simpson wondering why stupid jerks don’t like him.
Everybody’s who’s met Batiuk says he’s a nice enough guy, but his book signing arcs tell a very different story. He’s fantasizing about having a huge throng of fans, so he can fantasize about insulting them. What kind of person does that?
The key word to remember is bullying. The man has a persecution complex that’s observable from space. Being asked a question must look like an attack from someone trying to destroy him.
I think it’d be less annoying if he was willing to just playfully make fun of himself more. Some times there’s an annoying or baffling person, some times Les (or whichever Batiuk stand-in is doing a book signing that weak) is the one saying or doing something dumb. I don’t think anyone would have an issue with that because it’s balancing out that yeah, some times there are awkward or dumb or annoying people at this things with the author’s (stand-in’s) own foibles. He almost reaches this with the intial Batton appearance where the joke seems to be more about his irrelevancy than others not understanding his genius. But whatever self-deprecating humility he managed to muster up at that time was apparently an ephemeral and fleeting thing.
I’m willing to give Batty the benefit of the doubt in that he probably isn’t actually thinking these things at his IRL meet and greets and is more just doing his usual shtick of taking a joke (the awkward fan encounter in this case) and completely running it into the ground because it’s an easy way to kill a week’s worth of strips when he seemingly has no other ideas. Not too different from that late ’70s to mid-’80s period of Act I where it’s just an endless stream of students taking tests, class descriptions from the student handbook, etc. Its biggest problem is that it’s pretty much a Les joke and considering what a condescending and unlikable prick Les is towards everyone already, it just comes off looking worse when it’s (probably) just intended to be a goofy situation.
Here’s the thing: Batiuk doesn’t seem to realize that Les would be a nightmare to have to live or work with in real life. His reaction to Summer’s prom dress and refusal to understand that he should be hanged, drawn and quartered is telling.
Oh, I HATE HATE HATE that prom dress strip. My post lambasting it is one of my favorite things I’ve ever written here. It’s my answer to the question “why do you hate Funky Winkerbean so much”? Because that strip was a potent distillation of all the reasons why this world and everyone in it are so disgusting.
That one strip is thoroughly illustrates what a piece of shit Les is; what a piece of shit Lisa is; and how blind Tom Batiuk is to his characters’ atrocious behavior. They destroyed their own daughter, so they could stand around and eyerollsmirk at each other. Then Batiuk cut away from it the next day, because Les cannot be held accountable for anything ever. And all of this is played for laughs.
It is SICK.
It’s worse when you remember that sewer trout like them are indulged and their polecattery laughed off. Batiuk doesn’t understand context.
I’ve only been to 2 book signings, one by science writer PZ “Pharyngula” Meyers, and a comics one, Bill “Zippy th’ Pinhead” Griffith. Both were great speakers and cool guys, and amused to sign it to “Bill the Splut”. You can see that last one at the 4/8 post on my page: http://www.thoughtviper.com/new/new113.htm
Look quick! My web provider tripled my yearly hosting fee to $900 a year, and since I’m on Social Security with a sudden influx of massive medical bills, I don’t know how long it’ll be up. Read the Inexplicable Object of the Week, which won awards’n’stuff back in the day.
Sheesh, who is your hosting provider? Are using a lot of specialized or legacy services?
They’re called Readyhosting. My site is plain old school HTML. Click on the above, and it takes microseconds to load. It looks like something from the early web in the 1990s. No idea why they’re doing this.
I think about it in terms of collecting baseball autographs when I was a kid. They say “never meet your heroes”, but for the most part, my heroes treated me all right. I didn’t expect anything of them beyond an autograph, and I never asked for one except in appropriate venues. There was only one I had an unpleasant experience with.
A lot of athletes don’t like signing autographs, and they’re perfectly justified in declining to do so in a private setting. But most of them realize that fan relations is part of their job, and will make themselves available sometimes, and be courteous. As with politics, a brief, positive interaction with ordinary people goes a long way towards winning their loyalty.
Which makes “Batton” ‘s rudeness really stand out to me. If he hates meeting fans so much, why does he do so damned many book signings?
This need to appreciate things the “right” way and be a sneering, surly wad when people don’t is also why he was a jerk to people trying to adapt Lisa Is A Bit Player In Les’s Tragedy Born Of Passive Stupidity.
It’s a thing you see back in Act II with Les as well. I mentioned it before, that there’s a Sunday strip where he’s annoyed at some kids watching Romeo and Juliet similarly to how they’d watch a movie. I would say it’s actually decent character writing on Batty’s part if Les being annoyed or upset about people not enjoying things the (way he thinks is) “correct” way was a negative personality aspect we’re intended to roll our eyes at since it’s consistent throughout decades.
But of course that’s not how it’s presented at all. Les is always the smartest and most cultured guy in the room compared to everyone else. After all, who’s going to be smarter than a guy who hallucinates (except for that time the Hollywood crone saw it) and talks to a French cat who once turned into a sexy woman and tried to seduce him?
Batiuk used to teach Freshman Comp so that’s kind of where it comes from.
In his final years as dementia overtook him, Ronald Reagan would endlessly rake leaves. It was unnecessary busywork that kept him happy, and it harmed no-one. So Secret Service agents would surreptitiously take leaves out of the piles he’d made and redistribute them on the lawn, and Reagan would uncomprehendingly continue raking for hours without realizing what was actually happening.
I have a feeling that Tom Batiuk’s family lets him go to nearby comic-cons in a similar spirit.
I think he’s that obnoxious, opinionated family member where you have to avoid certain topics at all times. I imagine every person who ever ate a Thanksgiving meal with the man knows to never, EVER talk about comic books.
This is actually a strip Batiuk should have written himself. It shows Batton handling criticism in a witty but courteous way, while also framing his answer as the correct one.
Instead we got three days of Crankshaft and Batton sniping at each other, in a failed attempt to make this same point. Which Batiuk further undermined by depicting “Grandpa Wrinkles” (obviously Ed Crankshaft) front and center in this week’s book signing presentation.
What trips him up is the word comic. If we had a word for what we were looking at that didn’t imply having to be laughed at, he’d be less defensive.
That word is … “Crankshaft”.
Or Mary Worthless or Sex Organ VD.
Do you think TB saw my parody strip and liked the punchline enough to work it into the 11/7 strip?
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 4 of Batton Week
This week is just so boring
I used to imagine going to one of Batiuk’s book signings, masquerading as a serious FW fan, and milling around near him all day, peppering him with questions he wouldn’t or couldn’t answer, just to see what would happen.
“Darin’s weird half-sister. Whatever happened to her? Will she be reappearing soon, or what? You can’t just leave that thread dangling, right? And Fred Fairgood, is he still alive or what? And when Boy Lisa and Jessica returned to Westview after failing in The Big City, why did they go to Les’ house first instead of Fred and Ann’s? I mean, they were his parents and all. And Roberta, that meddlesome old bag, did she ever come down from that scissor lift? I ask only because I’ve been working on a definitive FW timeline, and getting YOUR input would make it all worthwhile! So seriously man, come on, tell me what’s coming next year. Oh, don’t be like that, I won’t say anything to the press”.
Like that. But, after pondering it for a few seconds, I thought “meh, I don’t wanna drive to freaking Ohio just to bother ol’ Tomban”. He seems like a decent enough egg. I’m assuming he doesn’t get all that much attention at the signings simply due to the fact that very few people even know what FW or Crankshaft even are, as his strips have had all the cultural impact of a Journey cover band. I suppose that’s the price one pays for choosing a path of remarkably consistent sub-mediocrity for that long.
What rankles is the realization that people think he’s ripping off The Simpsons.
I will never meet Tom Batiuk, simply because I have no reason to ever go to Cleveland, Winnipeg, San Diego, or a comic book store.
In an ideal scenario, I’d have pulled off my moronic plan, and convinced BatYam that I was merely a rabid FW fan (or, more accurately, THE rabid FW fan). Then, one year later, he’d have done a book signing arc where some dolt pestered Les with all kind of mindless Lisa trivia. Then, I would have been forced to snark on myself, which would have been pretty weird.
I mean, here in 2025, I have to believe that anyone who ever wanted Batiuk’s autograph probably already has it. It’s not like a wave of Gen Alpha kids are re-discovering FW with fresh new eyes or anything. In fact, it’s safe to assume that sometime within the next 50 years or so, everyone who remembers FW at all will either be dead or close to it. It’s a sobering thought, you know?
All it takes is the right person on Xitter or TikTok or Twitch to find and talk about it and suddenly Funky will become a meme. The chances of that happening are probably 0.01% but that’s still not zero. Admittedly watching zoomers and alphas try to make sense of the time Lisa and the post office got blown up because of Rush Limbaugh or ZANZIBAR THE TALKING MURDER CHIMP would be pretty amusing.
But the reality is that even if it did, through some odd alignment of planets, gain ground among younger people it would just be something like Chien becoming a waifu figure and getting a ton of art to the point where she’d be effectively separated from the work she comes from.
It’s the same thing with For Better Or For Worse. Both strips are destined to be forgotten.
I think FBOFW will be remembered somewhat longer than FW (or Crankshaft or John Darling).
For one thing, FBOFW ran in a lot more newspapers at its peak.
For another, there was a lot more news coverage of the most famous FBOFW storylines (when Farley the dog died, and when Lawrence came out as gay) than of any storyline from any of Batiuk’s strips.
And FBOFW was occasionally adapted for animated television, while none of Batiuk’s strips got a major adaptation.
The only thing he left behind was a Good awful play.
Fun fact: Mike used to be voiced by Vik Sahay. You know him as Lester from Chuck.
If Reddit posts are any way to judge things, Batiuk’s work is already forgotten now. If I happen to come across a thread that mentions US newspaper comic strips somehow and is posted to one of the more visible subforums (/todayilearned or /nostalgia, for example) where “ordinary” people will share a thought, nobody mention’s his strips at all, either positively or negatively.
Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side are the perennial favorites, with some mentions of Fox Trot and Peanuts to a lesser degree.
Family Circus is like the Nickelback of US comic strips, in that everyone comes out of the woodwork to shit on that strip. I’m no huge fan of it or anything, but in a world where Batiuk’s strips, Crock, Marvin, and Momma exist, I don’t see how FC is worse than all of them, but it’s only FC that anyone mentions.
Everything else basically doesn’t exist. All the serialized drama soap strips like 3G and Brenda Starr? Vanished. Strips that are or were basically OK and innocuous like Broom Hilda, Fred Basset, or Geech? It’s like they were never drawn now. Hell, even I didn’t know about Tumbleweeds until recently (thanks to reading this page, actually). Tom’s work? It’s already at this same point right now, really.
The entire art form is in its last throes before extinction. There hasn’t been a new, culturally relevant newspaper comic since Dilbert. Everything else is zombie strips and reruns.
And even it is irrelevant now.
The play based on Funky Winkerbean has mostly been produced in high schools. (Same for Luann, for example.) By contrast, some other comic strips have been adapted into musicals that made it to Broadway — Li’l Abner, Annie, Peanuts, even Doonesbury. That’s what I would consider a major adaptation, not a show that goes direct-to-high-school-drama-department.
I would say Pearls Before Swine is a more recent culturally relevant comic strip than Dilbert. But Pearls debuted in 2001, and I’m not sure of I know of one more recent than that which could be considered “culturally relevant.”
“Family Circus is like the Nickelback of US comic strips, in that everyone comes out of the woodwork to shit on that strip. I’m no huge fan of it or anything, but in a world where Batiuk’s strips, Crock, Marvin, and Momma exist, I don’t see how FC is worse than all of them, but it’s only FC that anyone mentions.”
IMO, FC towers over FW and Crankshaft, and, as insane as it may seem, it’s not even close. FC delivered what it was aiming for, and never required any weird tonal shifts or creepy shock-value gimmicks to get there. Barfy killing Sam, Billy going through chemo, Thel developing a Vicodin habit, you know, stuff like that. It was consistent, which is what you want in a comic strip that runs daily for hundreds of years. Yeah, that Jeffy was really enraging sometimes, but he was a middle kid, so what do you expect? I always secretly liked those dotted line Sunday strips. There, I said it.
“All it takes is the right person on Xitter or TikTok or Twitch to find and talk about it and suddenly Funky will become a meme. The chances of that happening are probably 0.01% but that’s still not zero. Admittedly watching zoomers and alphas try to make sense of the time Lisa and the post office got blown up because of Rush Limbaugh or ZANZIBAR THE TALKING MURDER CHIMP would be pretty amusing.“
“Why is the annoying dweebish guy screaming USA, USA? Is he supposed to be some sort of radical nut-job or something? If his wife is in there, why is he so happy? I bet it turns out that HE’S the mad bomber! Let’s keep reading! Umm, OK, uhhhhh. What? Who’s that guy? A marching band? What? Oh, wait…that’s the end? What? You mean this comic strip ran for fifty years like this? What is it, some kind of scam?”.
And Zanzibar was just too edgy for these kids today. Maybe if he was a vaping, energy drink-gulping murder chimp who 3-D printed a gun, it could play. But he was just too old-school Hollywood to resonate with today’s uber-cool crypto-slangin’ teens. Now that Mr. Jiggs, there was a chimpanzee who knew how to connect with the youth, who, after all, are the future of something. But, I digress.
Making fun of The Family Circus is part of internet history, man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysfunctional_Family_Circus
Do the Keanes care? Apparently not.
I dunno… Apparently, folks will still be demanding autographs from Tom Batiuk in the year 2990.
Some of TB’s appearances have been very close to my house, and I’ve thought of doing something similar. I want to ask him three questions: Is Lisa dead? How about Phil Holt? What about Tony Montoni?
A year or so ago one of our SOSFers (I can’t remember whom) had his son, a student at Kent State, stop by TB’s table at a book signing. I think he just said his dad was a reader (without mentioning SOSF), and had a chat with Tom. I believe he even included a picture or two showing the two of them, with nary another soul around. I bet it made TB’s day to have a fan who would send his son over to say hi, and I thought that was pretty nice. Is this a valid memory, or did a blot of mustard make me think this?
I remember that post.
I recall the post too, yes.
I also remember a poster telling this story.
I remember as well
the user’s name is Fan Fan
Yep that was me. I’m a regular reader here, but I rarely have much to add that hasn’t been said better by other posters. The signing event at Kent State was on May 1, 2024. My son mentioned to Mr Batiuk that I was a long-time reader of his strips and they had a pleasant-enough conversation. (My son didn’t buy a book to sign.)
Has the interface changed for adding images? I’ll try here, but might not be doing it right.
<img src=”https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX1DN4Q5nZAnkEkge0kp93KvpDEEScdmn04nciJlfpeyjyfmbAMouz0TFDA-k2TWziVC5gS8txb_8BinUTgVqsz2hLFIvIelDSyuzS7pcewhY3bOw1wUKP9WWpZ6nvqxyFibg-2Ppv1xgxGasYbXMbQijBIJmmOiURy4tUXlO3RBgeVGtE-smOtQ/s1275/Untitled.png“</img>
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX1DN4Q5nZAnkEkge0kp93KvpDEEScdmn04nciJlfpeyjyfmbAMouz0TFDA-k2TWziVC5gS8txb_8BinUTgVqsz2hLFIvIelDSyuzS7pcewhY3bOw1wUKP9WWpZ6nvqxyFibg-2Ppv1xgxGasYbXMbQijBIJmmOiURy4tUXlO3RBgeVGtE-smOtQ/s1275/Untitled.png
The interface seems to change every day.
Thank you.
11/07: Just the last sentence was necessary.
“You owe it to…your readers to stay the course and do the job. And if you think that means filling the remaining strip with unlikabe refugee characters from the discontinued one which no one wanted to see, making several of said characters self-congratulatory avatars of yourself, and turning the extant comic’s lead figure into a sad remnant of himself who sometimes goes weeks without appearing, well, it’s called writing.”
He can’t admit that it was a bad idea to fold Winkerbean into Crankshaft. It would be like admitting Les would be a nightmare to be around in real life.
He spent the last decade of Funky folding Crankshaft and John Darling characters into it so I guess it’s just a case of basically treating both as relatively interchangeable entites. If Crankshaft died then Funky would have taken Lillian and Ed and whatever inane plotlines take place there.
Crankshaft and John Darling both appeared in Funky Winkerbean before becoming spin offs, so I get why TB would go to that well. I would actually argue that the crossovers between the strips worked well and were interesting at times… but when it worked it did so back when TB used such crossovers sparingly.
I recall a crossover story arc in mid-Act II FW where the Bus Drivers bowling team takes on the Montoni’s bowling team in their bowling league, the arc ran simultaneously in both Funky and ‘Shaft with the Funky strips being told only from the perspective of the Montoni’s team and the ‘Shaft strips being told only from the perspective of the bus drivers team. It was not groundbreaking stuff, but it was a clever and effective crossover device that didn’t lean entirely on the story being a crossover or take panels away from each strip’s actual characters. And it ended in a week or two… and the idea didn’t get rehashed five times per year later like most Act III crossover bits.
Crankshaft and John Darling both appeared in Funky Winkerbean before becoming spin offs, so I get why TB would go to that well. I would actually argue that the crossovers between the strips worked well and were interesting at times… but when it worked it did so back when TB used such crossovers sparingly.
I recall a crossover story arc in mid-Act II FW where the Bus Drivers bowling team takes on the Montoni’s bowling team in their bowling league, the arc ran simultaneously in both Funky and ‘Shaft with the Funky strips being told only from the perspective of the Montoni’s team and the ‘Shaft strips being told only from the perspective of the bus drivers team. It was not groundbreaking stuff, but it was a clever and effective crossover device that didn’t lean entirely on the story being a crossover or take panels away from each strip’s actual characters. And it ended in a week or two… and the idea didn’t get rehashed five times per year later like most Act III crossover bits.
It’s the CCU – the Crankshaft Constricted Universe!
Banana Jr. 6000,
For a much better take on book signings, take a look at your namesake’s comic strip for this week over in GoComics. Berke Breathed nails it in BLOOM COUNTY, toe-nailed if you realize what happens to the only fan of Opus and his 17 page autobiography. You can tell a good writer: if he can make you regret the fate of a single cockroach, it must be called, “Writing!”
Is that the “Naked Came I” arc? I’m very familiar with that one. It has some genuinely funny book signing jokes.
I do not subscribe to GoComics, so I could not go back as far as I needed to do so to check. Perhaps our own beloved @Be Ware of Eve Hill, a known subscriber, she, could investigate more.
But it does have, “Conquests of a Stud Monkey!”
And the often broken promise, “Break it to the women, I won’t sign body parts.”
Finally, the aforementioned cockroach toe-nailing, “How can you walk all over your fans like that?”
This is Book Signing done right!
Yeah, that’s the one. Funny stuff.
And, given that it’s Opus, his naïveté is both sad and endearing
And, given that it’s Opus, his naïveté is both sad and endearing
“Well, when you’ve always dreamed of doing a comic strip… that’s right, that was ALWAYS my dream, I never even THOUGHT about going into comic BOOKS and had to settle for doing comic strips… I’m sorry, what was the question? Oh, right, about why I continued The Wrinkles after I retired Three O’Clock High. And I DID retire that strip, it was entirely MY choice, no one forced me to end it. Certainly not the syndicate, and certainly not the inability to find another artist willing to take over for that Ayres guy. Was that his name? Though I suppose I could have just fed his art to an AI art generator, it would look the same as what that Davis guy does anyway… hmm… you know, I could save a lot of time and money if I handed off the writing and art to an AI… I should make a note of that. Where was I? Right, right, you owe it to your fans, those beady-eyed nitpickers, to stay the course and keep doing the same half-assed job you’ve been doing for decades. That and the money. Speaking of which, are you going to buy anything, or are you just wasting my valuable, valuable time? I could be sponging free food (assuming you can call that Montoni’s slop ‘food’) off a lonely and pathetic ‘reporter’ who thinks he’s writing my biography or something…”
Batton Thomas is also a great insight into what Tom Batiuk thinks he is: a hardworking everyman who does it all for his fans. And he illustrates this with a cut-and-pasted head we’ve seen 7 or 8 times now, in his seventh or eighth week of interviewing himself.
Honestly, there’s also something to be said for how Batiuk showed Batton drawing at his table, as if Batiuk still did the art for his comic. (I guess technically, he never did the art for Crankshaft, did he? It was Ayers from the start, no?) But, y’know, he loves the craft and owes it to the fans or whatever.
This is why I like Jim Davis better: he admits that he likes getting paid.
Seeing as Batiuk took the opportunity a few months ago to re-post a story arc about ICE on his blog in order to call attention (certainly not capitalize on) current events, do you think he will take recent NFL news as a chance to repost the arc about Les never getting over Bull bullying him 40 years prior (also Bull died but who cares about that)?
Batiuk didn’t turn the whole Jonathan Martin thing 12 years ago into a Funky Winkerbean arc, so it doesn’t feel like something he would do know.
He … actually wanted to highlight the arc where he had somebody who was here legally abducted by ICE, who was freed by the title character’s relationship with Bill freaking Clinton, and ended with ICE agents revealed as honest salt-of-the-earth types who enjoyed pizza and just made an honest mistake?
That’s another way in which Les is a piece of shit: deliberately misunderstanding what an apology means.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 5 of Bummer Batton At Comic Booth Week
(ZZZZZZZZZ)
11/08: We transition from a week of Batiuk trying to console himself about not getting much (or any) attention to his whining that he has to live in the real world with the rest of us.
Oh here we go, the men in the suits are the true villains. Guess what Batty, that has always been true, but you were a kid, and so you didn’t notice it. But now you are an adult and yet you still cling to a childish worldview, how sad. This strip could have shown how the innocence of childhood gets washed away but yet we still have fond memories that sustain us. It could have shown Batton encouraging the next generation, but no, the kids today don’t enjoy things the proper way.
I have happy memories of Act I FW because it represented my experience in high school, especially my experience in marching band. Crankshaft was my grandfather’s favorite strip. But both are unrecognizable now. Is there no joy in your life Tom?
Even if the subject is restricted to US comic books and strips, the 11/08 CS strip manages to ignore everything about Dick Tracy and Lex Luthor, among who even knows how much other content qualifies as fictional villains being mere “men in suits” – and he had a fucking crossover with Dick Tracy, for chrissakes. Then, if you want to take Batton’s words at face value and have it apply to the world at large, it becomes even more plainly false and absurd. As you say, the childish worldview is on fully display here, and pointing that out makes you a beady eyed nit picker or a troll, heaven forbid.
What kills me is that he’s the creator of a slate of supervillains in regular clothes. Dinkle is a band director themed supervillain. Les is a high school teacher themed supervillain. Crankshaft is a crotchety old man themed supervillain. Lilian is an old lady themed supervillain.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 6 of Bummer Batton At Comic Booth Week
(cs gmod ragdolls onto the ground in exhaustion over how dull this week was)
THIS WEEK OF BATTON IS OVER (hopefully)
And people still actively hate the sunken chested whiner Liz married.
Yes the villan in Crankshaft is a writer and owns a bookstore!
Completely tangenting but I’m definitely long aware of how Funy ends and in making my way through 2020, I get to March and Dinkle and Becky having a banal week of strips whe who should pop up?
https://i.imgur.com/CeCS1mM.png
Yep, Time Mop himself after not having appeared since I believe the early ’80s. And he keeps showing up in the background or getting random panel focus all throughout the week despite having nothing to do with anything and keeps showing up in a similar manner afterwards. The same month also has Summer home from school where she’s surprised at Les allowing The Gospel of St. Lisa to be be adapted again and Cayla tells her that Les always says “the book will still be there tomorrow” echoing the final line. 2019 is when he does a throwaway Sunday joke about Summer changing her major to creative writing.
Did Batty actually present a Chekhov’s Mop and foreshadow the strip’s ending a few years in advance? I always thought, and I’m sure the general feeling among others was the same, that he was basically forced to end it and scrambled to come up with a stupid ending. But maybe he actually did eventually hit on ending it for the 50th anniversary once he saw that it was on the horizon and so moved towards setting that up. It doesn’t actually change how stupid things like Time Mop were, of course. Actually, it may make it even worse because he apparently decided, possibly years in advance, that the big ending of his 50 year not-really-epic was a fat old time travelling janitor monologuing nonsense and decided to spend two or three years setting this up. I could actually forgive him more for it being a spur of the moment reaction to getting axed than a deliberate, years long plan.
At least what we used to call the Settlepocalypse was a plausible end result of Anthony and Liz peaking in high school.
I think the reason people dunk on FC is the sheer blandness of the setting. Who gives a toss about Force Ghost Grandpa and Ida Know?
11/09: The confusing thing is not the pedestrian joke as much as it the setting.
The confusing thing is that the joke is not funny and goes against the established character of Crankshaft, who canonically hates “culture” and shouldn’t be in a museum or gallery at all.
No! Wait! The confusing thing is that even once you parse the joke — the picture is supposed to age, and be hidden in shame. There should be a sleek young greyhound walking around, while the picture shows an old, decrepit dog.
It’s so typical of Batty — trying to do an “educated,” “cultural” reference and messing up the simplest parts of it.
But then, that’s the great thing about Puff Batty. He never sticks to one thing to mess up. He gives us a delightful smorgasbord of incoherences on which to graze.
I agree that the joke would be much better if there was a sleek young greyhound walking around while the picture showed an old, decrepit dog.
But if there was, would Ed be able to make the connection? I doubt he knows what The Picture of Dorian Gray was about.
He reminds me of Phantom Limb; he pretends to be a sophisticated, intelligent guy but he had to be told Monarch used to be one of his henchmen.
I can rationalize his taking a school class to a museum field trip. Reluctantly. But my question is, is the young woman (teacher) the final return of… Chien?
it’s not Chien
It’s a teacher named Ms. Lee, who had Crankshaft as her bus driver for a few school trips to places like the aquarium and a art museum
Chien 100% left Ohio the second she graduated, has a good photography career and hasn’t looked back.
I once wrote a story here that had Chien as a world-weary photographer who died while heroically defending a child. And with Les as a whiny fatass who was mad he didn’t mentioned in her obit, because he taught her decades before.
In my head canon, Chien’s won Pulitzers but doesn’t give a damn, because she’s currently ducked behind a shattered wall in Ukraine, just waiting to pop up and take the perfect photo. She knows it could be her last one. All of them could be her last one…
Tombo created a wonderful character, so he ignored her for boring Ohio pizza shenanigans.
<i>She ducked back behind the wall. Fuck! she thought. Way to focus a camera, jerk! She jumped up, and ran right into the line of fire, thinking “I’m going to get this photo right if it’s the last thing I d–“</i>
Her Pulitzer was posthumous. Les turned up to claim he was responsible for it. His lynching was cheered by all!
No. It’s one of the teachers who has to endure being arched bu a bus driver themed supervillain.
Sure, he may have made a total botch of the execution, but give Batiuk credit. The IDEA is totally original and had never before been attempted by anybod —
https://www.amazon.ca/Picture-Dorian-Greyhound-Classic-Tails-ebook/dp/B07G73J5ZX
He can’t even plagiarize correctly. What an idiot.
Today’s Crankshaft
Ms. Lee: Why couldn’t the bus driver be either Rocky, Andy or even Mary?
This second Lisa’s Gospel: The Motion Picture arc might be the single most infuriating storyline this series has ever had. It’s like ever bad problem late era Funky has thrown into a blender to make a disgusting smoothie. It’s got Hollywood, it’s got Mason Jarr(e) the Movie Actor(e), it’s got Clueless and Artless Hollywood Execs Who Just Don’t Get It, it has Les doing things that aren’t related to his actual job, it has St. Lisa worship and needless Les glazing, the story itself isn’t anything anyone wants to see or anything anyone would care about. All it’s really missing is the Atomik Komix dorks.
The last few years do become a slog and this might be the sloggiest of them all. And Les is at probably the absolute worst I’ve ever seen him. He’s so bad that Dick Facey would be a charming personality upgrade for him. I get that Batty was going for the idea that, as something deeply personal to him, Les would have a lot of reservations about seeing another attempted adaptation but the way he acts is completely over the top. He’s known Mason for a few years, knows he’s a good guy and yet spends the entire arc whining and stonewalling and just generally being a giant chode and acting like a child. It’s like that episode of Corner Gas where everyone has to accomodate Hank in a competition because nobody wants to listen to the annoying, whiny noise he makes when he loses… except not funny.
And then there’s the way the entire thing is sold. Mason sells it to Les as wanting to go from playing action heroes to real heroes. Excuse me? What on god’s green earth could Les have ever done at any point in the series to be considered a “real hero”? He set up a chairty run, okay big whoop. He complains about how hard doing it is and he had basically just as much help from his daughter in keeping the whole operation running. Also his daughter is a champion too; she’s better than him. Does she not get to be a “real hero”? Or Mason’s high concept pitch of the movie being “Les lost his young wife to cancer” which is the one time Mr. Objection Whiner doesn’t have a whiny objection.
Because Lisa’s Story was actually Les’s Story the whole time. Les, on the surface, is so concerned about protecting Lisa and her legacy, but that hides the actual point which is to make him look like a brave and tragic figure who’s been through and overcome so much. The worst part about Lisa’s cancer and death, after all, wasn’t a well-liked woman passing away and leaving her young daughter without a mother. No, it’s that she was taken away from Les. But it wasn’t a tragedy at all, was it? Because her death really did nothing but benefit Les and made him into the real hero and main character of life he always saw himself as.
Funky Winkerbean has a lot of bad, insulting and stupid stories but this one is quite possibly the most rancid and putrid of them all. The only ones that come close are Bull’s CTE and suicide and Wally’s second return but even those didn’t get under my skin the way this one has.
The cover art barely showed her so there’s that too. Also, let’s not forget that Les could have been mistaken for a stain on the wallpaper given how much use he was. Any honest telliing of her story would accurately peg him as Useless Bystander Husband……which kind of justified his later bitterness: he’s angry at the world for expecting things of him.
Les is much worse than a useless bystander: he was actively incompetent, which contributed to Lisa’s death and suffering. And he used his control of Lisa’s Story to hide that fact.
His ineptitude as a husband and as a human being extended into being actively incompetent as a father.
And in competent as a teacher! I always hated the Batty trope where Les would berate his students for not knowing something. Duh, that is why they are there, to learn!
Asking him what part of the concept of imparting knowledge escaped him wouldn’t go down well.
Summer turned out alright in spite of, not because of, her dad.
Also, pretty much ever high school class after the original is treated as if they’re drooling morons who exist to make the lives of Les, Linda, Jim, Becky, Dinkle (he seems to teach Becky’s classes more than she does) and the rest harder. The jaded and put upon teacher worked in Act I but like a lot of Act I gags or characterizations, trying to keep it going in the less cartoonish following acts just makes the characters come off as mean and rotten.
Jim at least in the first year or so he appeared had just being a general nutjob to explain it. Linda, though, has no excuse. She might be the single most miserable person in Westview which is saying a lot.
I’m really not even sure why Linda was added because all she essentially did was kick Ginny out of the strip despite being virtually the same character. Similar attitudes (although a lot of Ginny’s ire was mostly in dealing with Act I Cindy and she seemed vaguely nicer otherwise; Linda is far meaner), fairly similar designs aside from ethnicity, similar role as being the teacher Les was closer with and teaching human relations (or whatever class was needed that week). It can be easy to see why some character was dropped and replaced with another one but Ginny and Linda are so similar that it baffles me.
As I said, Batiuk is like Greg Dumbfuck Evans: a failed teacher blaming the kids for his ineptitude and bitterness.
I think it has to do with Rust Belt Whackjob Thinking. The same doofus who swears he can get there faster than an ambulance would rather she die than admit incompetence or ignorance.
Tom Batiuk loves to write stories where his characters are better at doing complex tasks than people who’ve been doing it their entire lives. This dying person doesn’t need an ambulance driver, Les can do it himself! If he tried that for real, his criminal charges would land somewhere between felony obstruction and manslaughter. And the whole crowd would have turned on him.
I wouldn’t call it “rust belt whackjob”, but I would call it a certain type of Boomer-ish blue-collar self-entitlement. (SEE ALSO: Pluggers.)
Most of the exponents of boomer lens cap stupidity seem to come from that part of the States.
Also, Batiuk limits himself needlessly by doing stuff like this when he actually should be a quarter of an inch from reality.
What strikes me about Lisa’s Story is how much everyone defers to Les about everything at all times. Even though there’s a lot to question about it.
Have you ever seen those videos of North Korean citizens having a complete breakdown about Kim Jong-Il’s death? Because they know if they don’t, they and three generations of their family will be sent to Yodok? I think the Cult of Lisa is a lot like that. There’s an overtone of forced compliance with the self-proclaimed official narrative. The only thing Les was ever “protecting Lisa” from was the suggestion that Les might have been something other than the all-suffering loving husband.
How else would you explain the town’s complete disinterest in it all? Lisa was supposedly their friend, went to high school with them, and they had absolutely nothing to say about any of it. The fact that Hollywood stars were now coming to town to buy movie theaters and hand-deliver Oscar trophies, were of no relevance.
Somewhere under the petulance and pickiness is a man afraid of being revealed as being a dull witted obstruction. I don’t remember much but I do recall thinking he was in the way.
“Hey, did you ever, like, sue the hospital for malpractice? I mean, the mixed up results prevented you from acting didn’t they? Did you try going to other doctors and getting other opinions? Because your doctor seemed kinda incompetent. Like, did you do everything you felt you could or did you just kinda give up? I dunno, I’m just asking, y’know?”
Sadie Summers was sacrificed on the roof of Montoni’s later that weak. Cindy was recalled from New York to plunge the dagger into Sadie’s chest and complete the ceremony. Her sister’s youth was Cindy’s reward for her devotion to the Order of Lisa and participation in its blasphemous ceremony.
The one who could have told him to do those things was the one who decided not to because she’d given up.
Oh it’s totally Les’ story. When Lisa is in her final moments with death mask guy, Summer isn’t even present for one final “I love you.” She doesn’t even get a mention.
All she got was the ravaged visage of a deepity spouting ghost on a videotape….and a reminder that Daddy is so out of touch, he has no idea who Oprah Winfrey is.
Summer only existed as a prop for Les. She’s there so we can think that Les must have had it tough having to raise a kid all on his own but he’s so strong and courageous for being able to do it. Even her accomplishments as an athlete have the implication of reflecting on and holding up Les. See, Les is such a good father that he was able to raise a wonderful young woman with the conviction to stand up to bullies and the fortitude to overcome adversity and become a champion athlete.
She stops being important once she graduates because she’s filled her role in the story. She’s an adult now and thus isn’t as dependent on The Great Provider and Galaxy’s Most Inpsiring Father which diminishes her ability to to be used as a tool to sing Les’s praises. So Cayla and Mason and very late Marianne fill that role instead by being his wife/enabler and deeply tied to Lisa’s Gospel. Summer may as well stop being Les’s daughter, she’s just another sporto who happened to be living with him and he begins to treat her with the same smug, dismissive disdain he treats almost everyone else.
Also, something that didn’t hit me until the “Mason makes Lisa’s Story” storyline is that it seems like a lot of the time, Cayla is the one behind the wheel when they’re driving. Maybe she’s a better driver but I don’t know, a kind and patient black person chauffering a moody, curmudgeonly white person? Maybe Les can expand into stage and screenwriting with his new story: Driving Dick Facey.
What makes this especially rank is that if Lisa were to have survived, he’d be the same unsympathetic boor.
Lisa’s Story: The Mammogram Miracle is the turbulent and touching story of Les Moore as he must harrowingly deal with his wife’s breast cancer and his courageous devotion as she battles back from the brink.
And totally not the story of a man as useless as a marital aid made of marzipan.
You know what other characters are just a prop for Les? All of them.
11/10: On the downside, Puff Tommy gets to be a whiny little bitch who can’t see what a creep he was. On the upside, Dinkle isn’t seen as a man.
Also, it’s been months since the man joined the choir. Why is this just happening now?
No, Lillian, you’re not back in junior high. Because you never left junior high. None of you did.
I said much the same thing on Arcamax.
I’ve never understood why it’s such a big deal for a man to be in a church choir in the Crankshaft universe. I’ve seen multiple church choirs with gentlemen in them-it’s not unusual. Although after reading Monday’s strip, I think I can see why. Apparently Dinkle’s choir consists only of old widows singing to the Lord while keeping an eye out for a new husband.
Oh, THAT was a whole fiasco. See Batiuk’s blog post. (You might want to press Ctrl-A, because Mr. Writer put black text on a black background again.)
Basically, a chorister told Dinkle (who was interviewing to be the choir lead) that there haven’t been any men in the choir for years. Batiuk realized he had made a comic in which a man speaks to Lillian. The man says “think of it as God working with Sally,” which is a very pastor thing to say. Batiuk could have easily justified this by saying that this man wasn’t in the choir, just someone at the church at the time. Instead, he made a big show out of editing this male character into a woman, which made it look like he was in bad drag.
I wonder how much of the artwork mess of that absurdity was for Davis’ benefit. At the time I don’t think we understood the depths that the art swiping was sinking to.
Today’s Crankfuckery
GOOD NEWS: We’ve shifted away from Batton Thomas
BAD NEWS: We shifted to a week with Harry L. Dinkle The World’s Biggest Asshole
11/11: Yawn.
Yes, let’s watch the two most belligerent men in the Funkyverse stand around and agree with each other!
Time Mop is the only reason these two aren’t trying to murder one another….so that’s another strike against him.
Christ, what an asshole…
Today’s Crankshaft
Day 2 of Dinkle Week
(SNORE)
11/12: He’s trying to not muddle an aphorism.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 3 of Dinkle Week
Ed: Nevermind, this practice so far has been horrible because I’m with a failed band director egomanical asshole who think’s he’s famous as Mozart.
That points to another problem I have: these insufferable people are failures and don’t even realize it.
He couldn’t believe it. He, the smartest, sexiest, least balding man in Westview, kidnapped at gunpoint! By his own students!
Calm down, Les thought. They surely want to have the sex with you!
“Punch in the code.” she said, pressing the MAC10 submachine gun closer to his ribcage. “The sooner, the better, because I do not want to smell you any longer.”
Her partner laughed. “This dude–actually smells like aftershave! It’s not 1979, dude! No one wears aftershave!” He pointed his pistol. “This is a gen-you-wine German Luger! I killed this Nazi officer in 1944, and then bought it on eBay 75 years later!”
Stall for time, he thought! “Last time I was on eBay, I got a mint copy of Superman…154, where he wins!”
“The Undersea Pranks of Mr Myztlewhevs? Look, who cares, no one can pronounce that. Nice try, though.” sneered Pete.
“GOD,” said Chien. “There’s the whole ‘saving the world’ thing we need to worry about! PUNCH…IN…THE CODE before–!” A strange, unearthly noise filled the room. “Oh god. The Planet-Eaters are here already! PUNCH IN THE CODE IF YOU WANT EARTH TO LIVE! And before I cry, and my mascara runs!”
Les paused, both stunned by the fact he could save the entire world, and annoyed it took this long. I mean, he’s LES, and it took this long for everyone to realize that he’s a godlike superbeing? I mean, he realized it before he hit puberty…Maybe he should have a flashback now–Ah, yes, Captain Video or whatever his name was, fighting Martians–
“PUNCH IN THE FUCKING CODE!!” she screamed.
“GAWD! DOING IT!” These kids today! And suddenly, abruptly–
She said “Nothing…happened. NOTHING HAPPENED THIS TIME! THERE’S STILL AN EARTH!” Tears in their eyes, they laughed hysterically, slapping each other on the back. Pete said “TOLD YOU! 75th time’s the charm!”
“And–We are OUTTA HERE!” They laughed and went to wherever, or whenever, they were needed next.
But they accidentally left a Time Controller. Les, a world class genius, picked it up and said “I wonder what this ‘UnDo’ button does?” And he pressed it…
DON’T DO IT! IT’S THE HISTORY ERASER BUTTON, YOU FOOL!
That scene was so awesome I can insert Les Moore into it, and it still puts a smile on my face.