If any of you are wondering where the heck the Cranky Awards are, blame the ghost of WP Sullivan who died in my bedroom in 1929. He hexed the boiler in my elderly house causing a total meltdown in subzero temperatures. The freezing cold fallout left my roommate and I playing musical chairs with the circuits on our fuse boxes to see how many heaters we could plug in before the finest electrical wiring provided by the post-war, pre-moon landing era completely exploded.
In that shuffle, computers took a back seat to more pedestrian concerns. Like making sure our toilet didn’t freeze.
But now we have a boiler again. And I have a vicious head cold! So Cranky Awards should be appearing shortly!
Just as soon as I get done cuddling my cast iron radiator like a recently resurrected lover.
Son of Stuck Funky 
ComicBookHarriet,
I know it is misery on top of misery, but I think you write Batton- Lefty, better than TB ever did.
🤩😱😍🤠💠🧿
You don’t want pipes to freeze because they burst.
It was definitely a concern, but the saving grace of a very old house is that all the plumbing is concentrated in one corner of the building. So the kitchen was a balmy 59 degrees, while the plants in the front room succumbed to frostbite .
Ah, well…..you win some, you lose some.
1/22: We get to the point, sort of. Batiuk likes getting paid to do this.
I had a thought about Batton Thomas: is this entire character supposed to be self-deprecating?
Because Batton is WAY too precise an encapsulation of all Tom Batiuk’s worst qualities. Batton is a tedious, needlessly smug, comic-book obsessed egomanic with a childish need to gloat about his successes, and zero apparent writing skill. If I was going to use Batton Thomas in one of my parody strips to mock Tom Batiuk, I wouldn’t have to change a word of his dialogue.
I’ve been assuming that Batiuk intends Batton to be a flattering portrayal of himself. Because (a) most people, even genuinely self-deprecating people, don’t have this keen an understanding of what other people find annoying about them. And when they do, (b) we don’t want to see them beat themselves up this much. It’s one thing for William Shatner or Adam West to play along with, shall we say, public perceptions of their acting skill. They don’t poke fun at themselves in ways that broadcast to the world how much of an asshole they actually were.
I can only conclude that Batiuk thinks Batton Thomas is a flattering portrayal of himself.
Batton’s first couple of appearances were definitely intended to be self-deprecating because he was portrayed as some old guy who makes a comic strip and shows up to places like he’s important but nobody under DSH John’s age actually knows who this guy is. It’s not done as if they’re idiots for not recognizing him or anything either unlike the guests in various book signing strips. As a small, once a year gag I don’t really have an issue with it.
But I’ll take a differing position and say that Batton as he became after those initial appearances isn’t Batty patting himself on the back for thinking he’s so great but rather a reflection of his insecurities. Batty’s an old man now and despite the promise he seemed to show, his life’s work is going to go down as a footnote. He won’t be seen as someone who trailblazed or was an auteur or even as someone who just put out a solid strip, but as simply a guy who took a gag strip and made it about cancer.
It reminds me of one of my many listen throughs of The History of Rome, one of the episodes dealing with Hadrian ends with the wry observation that given all of his accomplishments it only makes sense that to most people his legacy is “Didn’t he, like, build a wall or something?” and so it is with BatTick minus the actual real accomplishments. All the teen pregnancies and suicides and Lisa’s Legacy runs and OMEA appearances and Dinkles shoes and ultimately his legacy is “that comic where the chick got cancer.”
Batton Thomas is he product of an old man attempting to shore up that legacy and try and tell people that no, he’s not just Drunky Cancerbean, that he did a lot of stuff and worked really hard and told all kinds of stories and led an interesing life. It’s not narcissistic self-aggrandizement but a whiny final plea to consider his works and life as a whole and please see him as the hardworking creator who’s put over half a century into this artform, dammit! Will it work? Given that the only people still reading Crankshaft are going to be the people who already kow him and his work and thus are not the ones he’s trying to reach, I’m going to assume that no, it won’t.
Lord, how I hate all of Puff Batty’s faux-humble, fake-aw-shucks, gosh, you mean little old me? characters.
Millions enjoyed the honest braggadocio of Harry Dinkle in Act I. Because we can enjoy an honest braggart; we can laugh at his outsized self-regard.
No one enjoys a talentless hack who affects humility while boring the crap out of everyone with long, endless, pointless tales of his alleged creative exploits. You can’t even laugh. It’s just irritating.
And repetitious. Les, Lillian, and now Batton. Pure smug pomposity wrapped in a mantle of fake modesty.
Batiuk reminds me of a southern college football coach. He runs this huge, cynical, multi-million dollar empire, and answers every media question like he’s cosplaying as Barney Fife.
Thank goodness that style is waning in popularity, e.g. Nick Saban. He very much acts like the CEO he is Even though he looks like the love child of Billy Bob Thornton and Squidward.
You make a good distinction between Batton’s first appearances, and this endless, pointless interview. I wouldn’t mind the character in principle, if the Funkyverse wasn’t already packed to the rafters with Mary Sues. Sheesh, giving Les Moore an Oscar, and then having Les’ zero-talent daughter write the book that redefined the human race and attracted time travelers, wasn’t enough vicarious ego indulgence for this man? On top of all the other writing awards he’s handed himself?
Which is the real problem with this interview: Batton Thomas is a complete jackass, and he makes Tom Batiuk look like a complete jackass. This interview has been going on for two solid months, and he’s done nothing but humblebrag, and brag far less humbly. And gloat about how he stuck it to people who did nothing to wrong him, like an obnoxious 1970s roommate that was mentioned once.
Nobody wants to listen to this much gloating from anyone, not even friends and family. Certainly not an interviewer, who has some duty to write something interesting for readers, and would try to keep the interview focused. (The ONE interview, not an endless series of interviews which now has more installments than Police Squad!)
I think Batton Thomas reflects how Tom Batiuk wants to be treated. He wants professional journalists (from the New York Times, not the Centerville Sentinel) to sit down with him, and bribe him with friggin’ Luigi’s pizza. Then he wants to drag them to unimportant places from his own life, drone on for ages about his narrow-minded comic book shit that not even comic book addicts care about, and make goo-goo eyes at him because he’s the super-writeriest writer they’ve ever met.
I do know one thing about Batton Thomas…it took considerable balls (the galling kind) to write himself into FW a solid forty-five years into its run. Another new character was the LAST thing Act III needed, but he boldly forged ahead anyhow, and shoehorned Batton into the mix. And we’re all poorer for it.
There’s an old electricians joke I heard years ago.
Q: How much does it cost to burn down your house?
A: One penny
Banana JR, this may be the best and most true statement ever.
“If I was going to use Batton Thomas in one of my parody strips to mock Tom Batiuk, I wouldn’t have to change a word of his dialogue.”
Bravo my friend, you win the internet for the day
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 4 of The Interview from HFIL, 2026 Edition
(sound of crickets)
And now all of a sudden we’re in the middle of a conversation about Batton’s “other strips”? Sheesh, he never even told us what his first strips were! Or anything at all about anything! He’s just setting up his next gloat.
How’s that Mordor Financial court case comin’, Skip? You stickin’ it to the man? Speakin’ truth to power, giving voice to the voiceless, all that good stuff? I bet you’re workin’ on it night and day, just kickin’ against the pricks out there, sticking up for the little guy. You’re gonna show them! Power to the people!
Wait, you’re what? Interviewing “Batton Thomas”? Who the hell is that? Is this what all the wrangiing about the newspaper was about? Is this the hard-hitting journalism that drove you to multiple felonies as you stole the assets of the Centerville Sentinel’s new owners?
Jesus, Skip. What a pathetic sellout.
What Mordor Financial case? He just drove to New York, walked into the CEO’s office, declared himself the owner of the Sentinel, drove back to Ohio, and assumed ownership. He got what he wanted. The end. The only case that should exist is Mordor Financial pressing charges against Skip, and/or suing him. But that’s never going to happen, because no one in the Funkyverse is allowed to ever push back against anything a designated “good” character does. Even though all they had to do was yank his computer/building access. Which they had hours to do during his return drive.
Weren’t his parting words to the Mordor CEO, “I’ll see you in court!” after the CEO threatened to sue? (Which, as you said, is ridiculous; you don’t need to sue a trespasser, you just have cops remove them.) I might be misremembering, but at least one of them said “I’ll see you in court!”.
And the lead-up to the whole utterly unrealistic and ridiculous incident was a whole lot of self-important blather about the little guy/”the people”/small-town salt-of-the-earth Centervillians vs the Evil Empire, aka the boot stomping on a human face, forever.
Seems like ol’ Skipperdee dropped that pretty quick in favor of cutesy cooking columns by Lena and a 107-part interview with Splattin’ Vomits.
I don’t even remember. The whole story was just so damned stupid I don’t even care about the details. No yokel from Ohio would get anywhere near a Manhattan hedge fund CEO’s office. And if he did, and threatened to destroy the company’s property like Skip did, security would deal with him in short order. He’d almost certainly have to explain himself to the police. And any power Skip had to follow up on this threat would have been removed long before he re-entered Ohio.
For a guy who name-drops New York every chance he gets, Batiuk sure doesn’t seem to understand that New Yorkers do not like to be fucked with. And they will not be cordial after you announce your intention to steal their stuff.
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
I know you and most of SOSF posters read a lot of other comic strips. Heck fire🔥! (Schnikes…I sure cleaned up your favorite expression!) But you got me reading more strips myself. I just counted that I read 31 strips on GC. Out of those, I read 10 that are no longer having new strips written. Such as Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, Ink Pen, Bloom County, and others. So my question to you and other commenters, do any of you read Funky Winkerbean as a daily strip on GoComics? For me it is a ‘hard no!’ I read Foxtrot Classics and go straight to Get Fuzzy. I only read Crankshaft so I can keep up with SOSF. (Which I follow daily…hoping to get my ComicBookHarriet fix!) Unfortunately, Batton Thomas has become the figure head of all things written by TB. He represents all the failed arcs and missed opportunities. Heck fire 🔥! Even Les produces real emotion in a reader. Generally ‘revulsion’! But Batton Thomas? No way. No how. He doesn’t even work himself into a solid “meh”.
Stay warm, this weekend, SOSFers!
💝🥶⛄️❄️🥶🫂🌺💐🌹
Sorry to leave you hanging there, SP.
I have 90 GC titles listed as my “favorites”. I’m not sure how many of my titles are no longer producing new content. I hate how we can no longer view other people’s profiles and see what they read.
I do read ‘Funky Winkerbean’ as a daily strip on GoComics. Most people consider the early ‘Funky Winkerbean’ strips the best from TB.
It’s hilarious how TB releases the Batton Thomas/Tom Batiuk saga one week at a time. It’s like he thinks it’s the greatest story ever told, and it would be too overwhelming to release all at once.
Like you and Comic Book Harriet, I miss the old curmudgeonly Ed Crankshaft. The strip has lost its bite and been transformed into some kind of Shiny Happy People B.S. Ed Crankshaft used to be a menace. Now he’s as terrifying as a Sunday School teacher.
Krankenschaaften buying a 50lb bag of birdseed in the middle of a typical freezing northern Ohio winter??
1/23: Day 5 is more of him not understanding what people see in his work.🙄
To be fair, I don’t know what people see in his work either. Well, not since Act I.
If he’d gone the Beetle Bailey route, he’d be better off. That is what syndicate guy thought he was getting.
Orson Welles agrees with me, Batton is nothing.
Oh, come ON, BtS. A joke’s a joke, but repurposing a Welles anecdote about meeting Adolf Hitler to be about Batton? That’s in really poor taste. I mean, what’d Hitler ever do to you to deserve such cruelty?
Welles’ words on Woody Allen fit well enough too.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 5 of The Interview from HFIL, 2026 Edition
This is the greatest boring interview of All Time
“Didn’t want to buy the books to get my glorious introductions, eh? Couldn’t even be bothered to read my Match to Flame blogs? Well you’re not getting away that easily for now I shall bring them directly to the funny pages!”
RE: Sat. 1/24’s ‘Shaft:
Now, I’ll confess that I do not have total recall of the past 14 months of this interview, nor do I remember every appearance by Batton Thomas, Creator of the Formerly Syndicated Comic Strip “Three O’Clock High.” As such, I have to ask if this is the first time our humble cartoonist has stated he was once married. If so, doesn’t it seem a tad strange that he mentions his editor Mr. Sherry by name but can’t be bothered to say the name of his (late? ex-? neglected?) wife?
She doesn’t register because she isn’t a funny book obsessed dolt.
Ew. Wives are like moms. And moms are only good for stabbing coloring books(?) and throwing away comic books and saying comic books will rot your brain. And maybe, if they’re good moms and do what moms are supposed to do, bringing you chocolate chip cookies and milk to eat in the attic while reading Flash #123.
But other than that, they’re nonpersons.
I wonder if Batty actually talks to his wife like he’s Humphrey Bogart the way Les and every other husband in his works does.
This sort of crap is why he conflated Women’s Lib with United Girls Against Jughead.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 6 of The Interview from HFIL, 2026 Edition
(Suddenly, Skip suddenly gmod ragdolls onto the ground after listening to Batton for 38 hours)