Recently, the comic strip Luann has been irritating me almost as much as the Batton Death March, which begins its 11th week today. Luann‘s tedious story arc is about a “Career Paths” class, which seems to be the only class the title character is taking in her 27th semester of junior college.
I decided to improve both stories, by crashing them into each other.
Text that appears in the standard Crankshaft or Luann font is unedited from the original strip, except for minor rewording, and sometimes being paired with different artwork.
Warning: The parody story text contains lots of foul language.
NOTE: Those are parallelograms, not triangles.
The end.
Son of Stuck Funky 
BJ6000,
That was AWESOME! We need more of this. I never thought I’d say it, but I miss the halcyon days of Les Moore and those simps from FW. If I see one more Batton Thomas aka Tom Batiuk self-flagellation, strip I will puke. Just seeing him and that one-armed creepy reporter (which I just thought of, what kind of infatuation does Bathack have with one-armed people)? makes me want to go out and kick a kitten. FFS.
Also, I noticed on your plaque, with your name, it says you’re from Omaha. Sweet so am I. Well, technically Gretna, but if you live in the area you know what I mean.
Anyways, I love ya’lls work and it always puts a smile on my face and a spring in my step
Bill
Yes, I’ve lived near 40th and Dodge/Blackstone neighborhood for about 15 years.
Removing one-armed Skip from the images was probably my favorite part. It’s amazing how he manages to be just as detestable as Batton.
This is brilliant. Thanks, BJ6K!
Oh, yeah. Inner beauty: a dumb woman’s idea of how to cheer up a homely child
I mean, there’s some truth to it. Most people don’t care as much how you look as long as you’re clean and groomed. They care a heck of a lot more how you make them feel.
Luann makes other people feel bored, nervous, or a wretched combination of both.
What I find most annoying is the entitlement. Instead of the girl next door, she’s a female Nice Guy.
YES. That’s EXACTLY what Luann is. She makes up for her own lack of any positive qualities by inventing this virtue for herself, and acting like it’s everybody else’s fault for not noticing it when it doesn’t exist.
And CBH is also right that, yes, being kind to others is an attractive quality, and people will notice when you do actually have it. The problem is when people don’t actually have it. It becomes self-delusion at best, and a toxic dating approach at worst.
We’re all the time being asked to not expect things of her when she says to be kind to her.
The great big difference is that we’re actively been discouraged from sympathizing with Luann by her creators. They depict a girl with crippling self esteem issues but we’re told she needs to grow up.
I STAND IN A LINE STRETCHING BACK A THOUSAND MILES. BECAUSE I WOULD WALK A THOUSAND MILES TO READ THIS GREATNESS AGAIN.
I’m trying so hard to make these words fit that great Proclaimers song.
This is the greatest mashup ever!
That was awesome!!! Well done, my friend. Well done!
You would think combining Luann and Crankshaft would result in a toxic waste dump of a strip about awful people living cringe-inducingly pointless lives and exchanging excruciating dialogue.
And that’s exactly what happened!
But it’s very, very funny. And the Pluggers cameo was the icing on the cake. On a scale of The Biography of Claude Barlow to Lisa’s Story? This is at least a spinner rack full of Rip Tide, Scuba Cop.
The Pluggers panel is a highlight among an entire post of highlights. Tremendous use of the existing artwork.
Much as we all rightfully despise Batton Thomas and every panel he appears in… we don’t get this brilliance without him. To quote Crankshaft, truly there is a silver lining behind every clod.
I stand in line!
Fabulous. The Luann arc is both boring and stupid (as opposed to Cranky that is stupid and boring). That assignment is something that might be done in high school–in Junior College or University that assignment would involve interviewing professionals in the student’s intended profession.
Coincidence that the jerk in Luann is named Les–or homage?
I’m guessing the gun in Luann being named “Les” is just a coincidence, though that may be because I have difficultly imagining anyone being inspired by anything Batiuk’s done. Honestly, I think they’re both cases of names being chosen for wordplay purposes: “Les Moore” is pretty obvious, and the Luann character is “Lester” and he’s generally an annoying douche, i.e., a “pest”. (If any character from Luann was inspired by Les Moore, it’d probably be bespectacled weenie Gunther.)
You might be onto something. Gunther also has a Black sig ot, but Bets isn’t the doormat that is Cayla
Actually, the Les in Luann is short for Leslie. He tried to beat up Gunther for mentioning that fact.
So is the Les in Funky Winkerbean, I’m pretty sure,
Boring, stupid and a reminder that Evanses shouldn’t have bothered trying to physically age the characters.
Luann, the Funkyverse, and the deathless Gasoline Alley all teach us the same lesson: there’s no point in “aging your characters realistically” if your characters never change. It doesn’t have to be some complex Breaking Bad-level character development; just some hints that 20-year-old Luann isn’t identical to 15-year-old Luann. She can still be insecure and unsure of herself, just in a more adult way. Also, your older characters really, really need to die at some point.
To be fair, adult Luann isn’t as boy-crazy as teen Luann. But that’s only because Greg Evans realized that adult women who are obsessed with guys have sex with those guys, and Luann’s virtue needs to be more secure than Fort Knox’s gold vault. So her libido was quickly and quietly removed.
The whole world of Luann reeks of an overbearing, upper middle class, Christian community. Everybody is up in everybody’s business, and college students do early 1960s things like gamble for jellybeans. Tiffany is implied to be promiscuous, though we never see any evidence of this. She’s basically the only halfway normal person in the cast.
Adult Tiffany is a MUCH better character than adult Luann, much like adult Bull Bushka was a much better character than adult Funky or Les was. Though Batiuk addressed that by shitting on Bull in every way possible in his death/CTE story. I think the whole point of that was for Batiuk to tell his readers “no, you are NOT allowed to form your own opinions about MY characters. I’ll tell you who you should and shouldn’t like.”
Luann should have been demoted to extra like Funky Winkerbean was.
That’s the problem: the artists tend to forget that they’re going to die and what the audience sees will survive them. When they do an autopsy on his career, the phrase ‘informed attribute’ will come up a lot.
Nearly two decades ago, Joshreads compared Luann to SNL‘s recurring “Tales of Ribaldry” sketches from the late 80s, where Jon Lovitz played a Victorian era-looking fop named Evelyn Quince who hosted the “Tales”, where various salacious Victorian era-looking scenes played out. Lovitz’s host would get increasingly giddy as the corny lascivious innuendo played out… only to become a disapproving grump and shut the show down when the scenes began to turn explicit.
Anyways… It is a comparison that has aged spectacularly well and is somehow even truer today than it was in 2008. It is ALWAYS in the back of my mind when reading Luann.
Oh, I remember that, and it is absolutely spot on.
Luann loves its tee-hee sexuality and Beavis and Butt-head-grade innuendo. (SEE ALSO: Perry, Katy.) But the world of Luann is nosy and overbearing the rest of the time. A few weeks ago, Luann scheduled some canoodling with her beau Phil, which they had every right to do. Her friends interrupted, and dragged both of them into helping with a stupid art project. It reeked of slut-shaming.
PRO TIP: If your friends don’t respect you enough to let you get some lovin’ on your own terms, they’re not your friends.
It’s the same thing with For Better Or For Worse. The children get bigger but they never really grow up.
FBOFW was a lot better than other strips in this regard. Considering what small children Michael and Liz where when it started, at least they made it some of the way to adulthood. And much of the worst of it was dictated by Johnston’s own issues. (The death of Farley was pretty awful, though.)
We’re currently hip deep in an arc where she jams it to a dental hygienist who she thought lived wrong so, yeah, her issues get in the way
The assignment annoyed me too, for the same reasons. Even if you could pass this off as a college-level task, Luann wouldn’t be allowed to interview her own parents and brother. And her parents would know that, because they’re my age, and they certainly wouldn’t have been allowed to when they were in college.
Then she failed this incredibly easy assignment, because she submitted it after the deadline (which it is Luann’s responsibility to know). No worries, though: the story ignored it, and moved on to administering a BuzzFeed-level personality test. Then it moved on to third-tier character Les fudging the test to hit on third-tier character Tara.
Your spoof was hilarious and spot on! Excellent work!
I realize I’m in the minority here, but I do have a bit of a soft spot for Luann because I’ve read the strip from the beginning when she and I were roughly the same age! There are moments here and there where she is being genuinely kind and caring, and trying to help her friends. That’s when I root for her. And despite the hate for Bernice on other sites, I do like that she and Luann are still friends. For all of Bernice’s neuroses, she and Luann accept each other for who they are, but occasionally call each other out on their b.s. which what friends do (unless you live in Westview). And maybe on a deeper level, I see my high school pal and me. I was the uptight one (although hopefully not nearly as snarky as Bernice), and she was the free spirit (and way more intelligent than Luann), so that part of the strip probably still resonates with me a bit. For good or bad, I keep reading.
I don’t disagree with the criticisms of the strip though. Luann has not been allowed to grow up as much as the other characters have. That makes her attitude infuriating at times and also makes her really bad at navigating relationships with guys. I agree that Tiffany is the most interesting character-she’s definitely the strip’s Bull Bushka, although I hope her fate turns out better than his. Yes, some of the storylines are weak-this most recent class assignment was one of them. Of course, Luann would have known about a midnight deadline-she’s been taking classes long enough at this point. And a big yes to most of the characters having severe boundary issues-from dragging Luann away from her boyfriend to Tara getting Luann fired from her day care job a few years back, not to mention the entire situation with Stephanie & Kip using a shared the dorm room as their personal bedroom as Steph directed.
Which brings up another point about the “chaste” part of the strip. The storyline with Stephanie and Kip was portrayed as Steph being over-sexed and controlling, with Kip on the verge of breaking up with her but staying with her anyway. Not saying that doesn’t happen, but it’s definitely not a positive portrayal of a relationship. Gunther’s girlfriend Bets is living with him, so it’s a fair assumption that they are active but it’s not mentioned. And Luann nearly lost her virginity a while back (I can’t remember her boyfriend’s name) but determined she wasn’t ready. Nothing wrong with that take at all, but I think we know that Luann will save herself for marriage. And as slowly as everyone ages, I may not be around to see it happen if and when that day arrives.
I have to tip my hat for the latest post. Combining the insecure self-centered Luann, the astonishingly self-congratulatory in-strip avatar of Batton Thomas from Crankshaft, and then tossing in a Pluggers cameo for good measure… that’s quite a hat trick.
It takes a special kind of talent to wrangle that particular assortment of comic-strip irritants into something genuinely entertaining. Turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse is not a skill everyone possesses, but you managed it with style.
By the time *Pluggers* wandered onstage, I was mostly admiring the craftsmanship. It’s not every day someone can juggle that much material and make it work.
Well played. Bravo. Posts like this are exactly why I keep coming back to the blog.
Somewhere out there is a line, and we’re all standing on it.
Thanks to everyone for the kind words! I’m glad it was well-received. The story started with the question “what if you really had to interview Batton Thomas, for something that had a clear purpose?” You’d go insane and scream at Batton to get to the point, like Luann did. While he’s chewing your ear off and expecting you to buy him lunch.
I started with “you’re paying, right?”, and the great shot of Luann losing her mind, and wrote towards the middle. The story was basically already written for me, in the form of the actual interview. All I had to was reconstruct Batton’s own life story, and his obliviousness about how much of a self-centered prick he is, while Luann slowly gets exasperated at listening to it. I wish I had more time; I would have made it even more Space Madness-y.
I’m glad everyone liked the Pluggers cameo. That was a lot of fun to make, because that strip annoys me too. There’s only so many jokes you can make about it, but it’s great for one-off purposes like this.
My favorite part was the Ed Crankshaft cameo. I genuinely enjoyed making him the foul-mouthed voice of righteous fury. He’s a strong character, if Tom Batiuk would ever use him correctly.
“Annoying little shit” is exactly what I think happened at Batton’s DC and Marvel interviews. The man had the talent for the job. I just think he was so damned overbearing and full of himself that he turned off anyone who might have given him a shot. And to this day, he has no idea why or how.
I wonder if he calls people extras. He seems the type.
The Saalfield Building still stands just south of downtown Akron, but the sign has been removed.
I thought it looked more like a factory, or maybe a prison. Downtown Omaha has a lot of converted warehouses that look like that.
317: Reminding us that he thinks like a stupid, easily impressed third grader isn’t delightful.
Lemme take a shot at predicting the rest of Batton Death March week.
3/18: “I bought this rolling chair a few years after starting. Now it’s a necessity.”
3/19: “So I heard Carmine Infantino really liked this pencil and I just had to go out to buy one. Some times, I really felt connected to the world of Barry Allen.”
3/20: “A lot of dinners were from the local pizza parlor. It really gave me pizza mind.”
3/21: “I got a poison ivy rash once but that didn’t stop my work. That was one itch I was proud to scratch.”
Meanwhile, he doesn’t know to tell actually interesting stories.
“I read a lot about Al Capp, so I figured I should emulate his behavior. Now I have to introduce myself whenever I move into a new neighborhood. I figure if I recall this story to all of them, they won’t make it all the way to the important part…”
“I screamed at some hippies about climate damage. All they did was ask about MY damage.”
Batton can’t even find anything interesting about the very things he chooses to talk about! Yesterday’s strip was “I bought my drawing board for $25, and I saw it on Not eBay for $5,000.” The obvious resolution is either the sentimental “I would never it because it’s more valuable to me than that,” or the unsentimental “I cashed it in because $5,000 is a lot of money for a desk that’s easily replaceable.” Which did Batton do? Neither. He brings it up, then leaves it hanging in the air like a stale fart while he moves on to his next random fact.
Today he’s talking about Bristol boards. Why does that matter? Who knows? Who cares? Batton’s never going to tell us anyway.
I believe this is now Webster’s definition of the phrase “Immortal Wound”. Or at least Urban Dictionary’s…
I imagine Urban Dictionary has a much more interesting definition for “Immortal Wound.”
It’s like when Crankshaft didn’t see the irony in his non sequitur. He knows how the story ends so assumes that we do too.
That is an eternal problem in the Funkyverse. Remember when Les Moore angrily confronted someone who was following him in his car – an extremely risky act, and also completely out of character – but no worries: it’s just the harmless Mason Jarre doing “research”!
Les acts with complete impunity at all times, as if he knows the universe is looking out for him. And he’s absolutely right.
At least when Marciuliano has Ted Forth behave as if he’s the male lead in a comic strip, he’s aware of what he’s doing. Batiuk doesn’t.
You gettin’ all this, Skip? Because this is gold! Batton may never win a Pulitzer for himself, but he’s holding the door wide open for you, baby!
That really is the point, isn’t it? Skip has been sitting around for at least 3 trips to Montoni’s, 2 to Batton’s studio, one to Dale Evans, and a guided tour of dull apartment buildings Batton Thomas lived in. All the while, Skip’s got this massive smirk on his face, as if Batton’s pointless ramblings were god-tier wit, handed down directly from Mount Olympus on marble tablets.
What Batton doesn’t realize is that this is all for Skip actively sought out the most self-assuredly boring man in America as a form of both mockery of the man and a broader critique of the dulling nature of small town middle America and suburbia, where people act as if loyal devotion drudgery is a virtue. His series is called “The Droll and the Dutiful”.
“The Droll and the Dutiful,” oh that is just solid gold! It perfectly describes Batton’s style.
As great a twist as that would be, the underlying problem is that Batton is writing Skip. It doesn’t matter how incapable Batton is of saying anything worth listening to, having a point, or ever shutting up. Skip will sit there and smirk glowingly at Batton for eternity, because that’s what Batton wants. He wants people to sit around and make goo-goo eyes at him, as if he actually were the supreme wit he thinks he is.
The only way to make this interview work is to do what I did: delete Skip, and replace him with a character who would actually react to Batton like a human being would. Luann has a real objective: to complete her school assignment. Which is something a real interview would have. It would be done with an article in mind, and the interviewer would direct Batton to the topics the interviewer wants to write about, rather than just letting Batton drone on about every boring anecdote from his boring life.
Somebody at Batiuk’s syndicate should really put a stop to this. Not just because it’s a crap story, but because Batton is embarrassing himself. He’s written a testament to his own rudeness, obliviousness, neediness, and complete incompetence.
As long as their clients (i.e., newspapers) keep paying for it, the syndicate quite literally doesn’t care at all what the content is. Witness the continued existence of 9 Chickweed Lane.
Even Apartment 3-G wasn’t shut down out of mercy. It only ended when newspapers started noticing just how completely off the rails it had gone — and consequently cancelling it. The syndicate had allowed the feature to devolve into an incomprehensible senility-fuelled repetitive fever dream for years prior, and would have cheerfully continued to do so indefinitely if it were profitable.
That’s the thing the Batiuks of the world refuse to see: as long as it makes money, it could be squiggly lines in Zulu for all the suits care.
Bile fascination is still fascination so that’s not happening.
That’s the problem, though; there’s nothing to have bile about. The only bile it stirs in anyone is “why the fuck is this still going on?” That’s the wrong kind of bile. There’s a difference between “this performer makes us angry” and “we’re angry because we want this performer to go away and be replaced with a better one.” Batton Thomas (the latter) makes us pine for Les Moore (the former).
as long as it makes money, it could be squiggly lines in Zulu for all the suits care.
The problem is that this shit SHOULDN’T make money, because nobody on earth wants it. It’s just a needless expense for the already-dying newspaper industry. But I think there’s some coercion involved. I think Crankshaft is part of the “basic package” you have to buy if you wany any comic strips at all. Which is a captive market that syndicates are exploiting the hell out of, by making newspapers buy an avalanche of shit content (and maybe even making them run it) when they only want Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes reruns.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 2 of Interview from HFIL Week
Darin Fairgood: WILL THE BOTH OF YA GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE ATOMIC KOMIX WORKPLACE!?
(both Skip and Batton sprint out of the building as fast as they can)
+1 for thanks to you, Banana.
3/18: Boasting about paying extra for special, magic Bristol board marks him as a nincompoop. It’s the smugness that’s idiocy’s giveaway.
Reading the interview with Batton, I feel like Steve Martin in Planes, Trains & Automobiles.
“You know, everything is not an anecdote. You have to discriminate. You choose things that are funny or mildly amusing or interesting. … And by the way, you know, when you’re telling these little stories? Here’s a good idea: have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!”
John Candy didn’t whine about being silenced or bullied.
That’s a great point. As obnoxious as he was, John Candy’s character Del was sympathetic. His response to insults wasn’t a smirk and an eyeroll. He pushed back. He defended his own humanity. He also proved his worth over the course of the story, having skills that were useful to their shared goal of getting. At the same time, every mean thing Steve Martin said about him was 100% correct.
I saw a great video called How To Write (And Not Write) A Lovable Jerk. It uses Velma from that awful Scooby Doo reboot as an example of how not to write a lovable jerk. It lists three qualities lovable jerks should do: (1) be funny (where appropriate); (2) have value in some way (skills or social value); and (3) suffer for their jerkishness (internally or externally). It uses Dr. Gregory House as an example of a well-written jerk protagonist.
Velma, as written in that particular series, is a textbook Funkyverse character. She’s smart, because the story tells you she is. She’s horrible to other people, and makes cruel remarks at their expense, like snarking when she finds a murdered high school girl in a locker. And of course, all the other characters are written to defer to her self-assigned. She and Les Moore would get along swimmingly.
The kicker is that much like Batiuk, Kaling thinks she honored the character and franchise.
The video I linked explains very thoroughly why Mindy Kaling (who I usually like) failed. It explains how your characters have to earn the right to be a jerk, which Velma very much does not. The narrative declares her the smartest person in the room, when she’s not, and she’s such a jerk that nobody would tolerate her even if she was. Which is also exactly the case for Les Moore.
When Dr. House is a dick, he’s often being a dick for good reasons, like calling patients out on their flimsy lies. Characters like Velma and Les are jerks for no real reason, except to reinforce their own perceived superiority. Which could work if they really were superior, like House or Rick Sanchez are. But everything else about their backstory is a feeble justification at best. More likely, it proves why they don’t deserve the status the story gives them.
Contrast her with Del. He has every right to be a surly jerk but he’s just someone who comes on too strong.
Step one is for the *writer* to acknowledge that the character is a jerk. If the writer clearly thinks the jerk is a hero, there’s a sort of reverse dramatic irony in which the audience knows something the writer doesn’t, which is an awkward place to be.
And Del? Time proved him right, since if Planes, Trains, and Automobiles had any theme, it might be akin to the theme of Groundhog Day: ‘Tis better to be good-hearted and caring, even if that makes you a bit dorky, than to be clever, self-important, and cynical.
And that’s what’s truly sad about this. Tom Batiuk seems to have removed everyone from his life, except people who tell him what he wants to hear at all times. And this is the end result. Batton Thomas mocks Tom Batiuk much better than I ever could.
Calling course correction bullying marks him as a mediocrity.
More likely they’d try to kill each other like a pair of Highlanders. But they wouldn’t do it violently, they’d do it passive aggressively, like not pointing out when he steps into the street that there’s a truck barreling toward him.
Young Batton in today’s strip looks like the lovechild of Mopey and Dopey. And that’s a pairing that would be way more convincing than with their actual significant others. We already saw how much of a crush they had on Flash Freefield and Undead Phil.
3/19: In Crankshaft, more laser-like focus on the petty. In Luann, more dunking on Tiffany.
Meanwhile, in Comic Artist Heaven:
Milton Caniff: Oh, for the love of — Did you see this? Now everyone down there is going to blame me for inspiring Batiuk!
Hal Foster: Let it go, Milt. At least he didn’t accuse you of theft.
Jack Kirby: Or base a character on you who faked his own death so he could spend years drawing a single comic book.
Caniff: True, but still —
Winsor McCay: You know what you need? To have some fun. Come on, let’s head over to Walt Kelly’s place. He’s having a fry.
Foster: Ohh! And I hear Matt Baker and Dave Stevens are bringing some of their lady friends.
Caniff: They are? Wait, is Capp going to be there?
Kirby: After what he pulled last time? What do you think?
Caniff: I’ll grab my jacket.
Batty really thought that we needed an entire weak of his self-insert talking about a drawing board and some paper. An entire goddamn week devoted to a needlessly smug twat nostalgically opining over tree derivatives. There is nothing interesting about either the piece of wood or the paper. There is no cute or amusing story related to the wood and paper. There is no actual history regarding the wood and paper. “I went to the store and bought a piece of wood and some paper and then drew on them.” That is it. That is the entire week. Literally anything else would have been more interesting. An entire wodless week of the same drawings of Les reading the paper and then smirking at the reader would have been more entertaining.
“I bought a table and some paper.”
Eat shit, Batton.
On two separate occasions, Batiuk spent an entire week on nothing but a character opening an envelope. And he still managed to find a way to make an even more pointless and inane story. It’d be impressive if the result wasn’t so insipid.
As Bruce Cockburn said, it always gets worse: he bought the table and paper to channel an idol.
Both Yesterday and Today’s Crankfuckery
Days 3 and 4 of Interview from HFIL Week
(ZZZZZZZ)
I’ve read your parody strips six times. I liked seeing Truck Tyler.
Thanks! I wondered if that joke would land at all. When Photoshopping, sometimes you have to take the easy solution. Truck speaking from a restaurant booth (as were Batton and the Plugger) fit perfectly into my reconstructed narrative. Also, I refused to do anyone from Mary Worth, because that’s too easy a target.
It’s been said several times before but it bears repeating again that an important link to connect is how this week’s Batton Death March can be viewed side by side with the present Funky Winkerbean in reruns. It’s not just Tom Batiuk telling Tom Batiuk how great Tom Batiuk is; we can see Tom Batiuk’s cited creation at the same time now.
This week, in FW reruns, we have Wicked Wanda being depicted as a completely repulsive unfuckable freak of nature who is seemingly as physically horrific as she is stupid. See kids, it’s funny, because the butch flat chested oaf-beast-woman can only utter single words at a time. Oh and the football coach wants her to play on the football time. Ha ha! Hilarious! But hang on, it gets better! She’s so unworthy of human affection that even Les Moore has to tell her to stop stalking him! Oh, I can barely contain my mirth! Ha ha! This is definitely something that is worth revisiting fifty years later!
He thinks he’s being clever but all he’s doing is hammering home how cruelly they treat Big Ethel.
Batiuk is in his Metal Machine Music period at this point, if Metal Machine Music was also Mariah Carey’s Glitter. It’s a giant self-indulgent fuck you to absolutely everyone. I ask again: is anybody going to tell him?
3/20: It goes beyond just buying The Right Desk or The Right Paper. We also have his refusing to understand that Caniff might have used a tablet if he’d had access to one.
What’s most eyerolling is the need to attach some kind of spiritual significance to it. He can’t just say that he tried drawing on a tablet but didn’t like it compared to using physical paper on a board for X or Y reason. It’s not like “I prefer doing it traditionally instead of digitally” is some invalid reason. No, it has to be because doing it digitally connected him to the spirit of Milton Caniff as if they were somehow, in that moment, one and the same.
It’s how he approaches all of his meandering statements of the creative process. He believes he’s making it seem more whimsical and deep but it’s just phony glurge.
And yet he still wonders why we beady-eyed types don’t like seeing this condescending imbecile.
What’s even more eye-rolling than that is how Batton’s words about preferring ink-on-paper to using computer graphics, when those words are coming out of the mouth of an obvious cut-and-pasted computer graphic.
He thinks that he’s not a hypocrite because it’s someone else doing it. As long as he doesn’t touch a drawing tablet, he’s in the clear.
Right, by the time tablets were really widespread he hadn’t been drawing Funky for a long time (and had never drawn Crankshaft). I guess there’s the inking process which he did at least for Funky but his self-insert is always treated as if he’s still the one doing everything in universe. It’s like how he went so long without crediting Ayers for doing pencils on Funky and didn’t start crediting the penciller until Burchett’s tenure. That’s never sat well with me.
Jim Davis admits to employing a staff. That makes him better.
Something else that doesn’t sit well is his failure/refusal to understand that absolutetly nobody sane expects him to be a one man band.
HE RE-USED THAT HEAD AGAIN. I’ve already had to update my artwork:
Sorry to be a beady-eyed nitpicker, but the last two give the date as “June”, not “March”. (Although there’s definitely a good chance those panels will also show up in June the way this thing is going.)
Thank you for pointing out my error. I’ll correct the image for next time.
The one for June will have him be blind to how dull something else is.
He believes he’s making it seem more whimsical and deep but it’s just phony glurge.
It reeks of autistic masking. I don’t like speculating about Batiuk’s possible neurodivergence, but today’s strip makes it the elephant in the room. He wants his creative process to be whimsical and deep, but he doesn’t know how to do that, so he mimics what he’s seen other artists do. And he parrots what he believes to be “good” creator viewpoints, without even understanding them, or realizing that he’s contradicting himself in the same panel. Which is also what most of his opinions feel like. Climate damage bad! School levies good! While he lives in a wealthy suburb, and wastes huge amounts of resources getting his hand-printed comic books delivered.
Re: Crankshaft, March 20 2026
“I wanted to feel what Milton Caniff felt!”
“Milton Caniff died of lung cancer.”
“Hm… you think he was a Marlboro guy…?”
Swell. Day Five of Batton Thomas and his ongoing romance with outdated office supplies. Now he’s smugly dumping on a Wacom tablet because it doesn’t give him the proper “feel,” as if he’s channeling the ghost of Milton Caniff instead of just drawing a comic strip.
This whole act is such fabricated schmaltz. What’s most infuriating is that Caniff’s been gone since 1988. Nobody asked him about tablets, and somehow Batiuk’s decided he speaks for him anyway. Sure, because a guy who embraced every tool available in his time would obviously draw the line at…progress.
Meanwhile, Skip Rawlings is still stuck there, pretending this is insightful instead of a grown man sniffing his own. ass. At this point, Skip should just pack it up and leave Batton alone with his Bristol board. Clearly, that’s the only relationship he’s interested in.
I lost any remaining sympathy I might have had for Skip yesterday, when he was handling the Bristol board like it was a piece of the Rosetta Stone.
That stupid beard covers up any emotion Skip has. He’s looking at the Bristol board as Batton shoves it in his face. Skip could be thinking, “This is the Bristol board you’ve been ranting about? What’s big f’in whoop-de-doo?”
But you’re right. Any competent journalist could steer this interview into some kind of narrative that actually goes somewhere. There are no interesting points on display in Batton’s rambling. After a dozen installments of this interview, Batton is waxing poetic over paper stock? 🥱😪😴💤
“I remember that I would put my new strips an envelope and affix a few stamps to it. And I would feel a shudder because I knew that Charles Schulz would put stamps on his envelopes in the very same top right corner.
“Then I would walk down to the mailbox and be overcome by a wave of emotion and my place in history as I recalled that Benjamin Franklin created the Postal Service.
“Then I would walk back to my building and be struck by a sense of awe as I . . .”
“Oh, Jeez, look at the time, Batton. Gotta run. Seeya.”
“Running… I’m sure Stan Lee and Jack Kirby ran when they were serving their country during The Big War. When I, a fellow creative, run I can feel that connection to them in the moment.”
It somehow took him two months to copy/past from his book intro manuscript but we have a new Mulch to Flame wherein he goes in depth about his writing process. And by “goes in depth” I mean writes paragraphs upon paragraphs just to say “I would sit on the bed for an hour every day and think of as many jokes as I could while spending the rest of the day drawing.” Which I think is something he’s already said when talking about the creation of Dinkle. Of course, that was a young and hungry BatTick, full of piss and vinegar and ready to take the world by storm.
Nowadays (and probably for a long time), however…
I suspect that one can look at Act I and even, generously, Act II and compare it to Act III and current Crankshaft and find out what might be missing. The easy answers are things like “talent” and “good stories” but really it’s motivation. His heart isn’t in it anymore and probably hasn’t been for a long time. We can, have and will rag on his attempts at prestige arcs and how effectively he pulls them off but, regardless of quality, I at least feel as if stories like Susan’s suicide attempt (and the way it intertwines with Les’s proposing to Lisa) or Lisa’s cancer and death are the product of a man trying to tell what he feels are the best stories he can. Some times he even hits. I’ve said before that I like Susan’s storyline and development, I like the story about Stropp’s retirement too.
But you look at Act III and it becomes obvious you’re reading a comic written by a guy who’s lost a lot of his motivation. Oh he’ll still go through the motions, he’ll claim he gets great joy and pleasure out of doing it and maybe to some extent he still does. But the desire to really try and do what he feels is the best he can isn’t there at all. Stories about the creation of comic book covers or a self-insert poetically pondering about a piece of wood are not stories that come from a man who still feels any great motivation or passion for what he’s doing. Even when he tries to do a prestige story that disinterest still shines through as shown by the utter laziness of Bull’s death, the Burnings or the gay prom.
But the joyless drone can’t walk away because it would prove people he looks down on right.
One of Batton’s more obnoxious remarks (August 9, 2024) was “I hate writing, but I love having written.” That’s Batiuk in a nutshell. He doesn’t want to write; he wants to be a writer. He wants to sit around with a smug look on his face, acting he’s some kind of intellectual touchstone, and wait for people to line up and bask in his wisdom. And that wisdom is high school English cliches like “write every day” and “trust the process.” When it’s obvious he writes as little as he has to, and has no process whatsoever. He’s the “pretentious high school teacher with elbow patches on his suit jacket” trope.
And all because that damned Lisa high school pregnancy story in 1990 went to his head. After getting some (deserved) positive feedback on that story, he decided he was a Serious Artiste now. And he’s been failing to live up to that standard for 35 years. He’s ambitious, or at least he was. I’ll give him that. But I think most of his stories fail at the point where any human emotion is required.
This whole Luann crossover was stupidly easy to write. All I had to do was create a character who had an objective that competed with Batton’s objective of talking in circles about himself. That’s what Batiuk can’t do. He can’t imagine that Skip would have his own reasons for doing this interview, and that he would take steps to get the information he needs from it.
He can’t imagine that all of Les Moore’s friends have a million better things to do than join his inscrutable schemes to “protect Lisa.” He can’t imagine that a teenager losing an arm, and by extension an elite music scholarship, would be emotionally devastated. He can’t imagine that Hollywood would never, ever fund a movie that has zero target audience. And they certainly wouldn’t give the book writer veto power over it! There are a ton of other examples.
Did he at least attribute the “hate writing” quote to either Dorothy Parker or its more likely originator, author Frank Norris?
Answer: Did Dorothy Parker write a comic book?
I thought Batton intentionally reversed the Dorothy Parker (?) line and said, “I love writing, but I hate having written.”
Also, Les did not actually have veto power over the “Lust for Lisa” movie. Before GoComics put up the paywall, I looked up the August 2014 strips. Les quit the film, and right after that, Mason quit, causing the movie to be cancelled. Les did not himself have the right to cancel the movie.
Let’s see: Caniff won two Rueben Awards (1947 and 1972), an Inkpot Award, the Segar and Gold Key awards, and was one of the first four inductees into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, among other accolades. In 1995 his “Terry and the Pirates” was among the 20 “Comic Strip Classics” honored with commemorative stamps by the USPS.
If, by “what Milton Caniff felt,” he meant “universal admiration and recognition for an innovative and successful career in the comics industry,” I have a sneaking feeling Mr. Thomas is still waiting for that experience.
Batiuk did win an Inkpot, and he did get one legit Pulitzer nomination. But the rest of his 50+ year career is absolute zero on the awards front. The fact that Batiuk doesn’t even have a Gold T-Square, which he is absolutely qualified for (I would argue he’s qualified for it twice) says all you need to know about how little his colleagues think of him.
Milton Caniff even has a NCS award named after him, ‘The Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award’.
A while back, Banana Jr. 6000 shared a couple of links to videos on Tom Batiuk’s YouTube channel. The videos begin by mentioning that Tom Batiuk is “an award-winning author and cartoonist known for creating” blah, blah, blah. In the video, are shown a couple of awards with Batty’s name on them. One, a plaque, was a lifetime achievement award in 2012 from the Akron Comicon, his hometown. The other was an Inkpot award from the San Diego Comic-Con. Hundreds of cartoonists and other personalities have received an Inkpot Award. Batty received his in 1999.
No National Cartoonist Society awards for Batty.☹ Not even a T-Square Award. No gold. No silver. Even John Kovaleski, who creates a silly comic strip about a monosyllabic baby, Daddy Daze, won a Silver T-Square Award last year.
For those of you wondering. The Gold T-Square is awarded for 50 years as a professional cartoonist. So far, four have been presented: to Rube Goldberg in 1955, Mort Walker in 1999, to Arnold Roth in 2018 and to Garry Trudeau in 2020. The Silver T-Square is awarded, by unanimous vote of the NCS Board, to persons who have demonstrated outstanding dedication or service to the Society or the profession. Over a hundred people have received a Silver T-Square. I’m thinking it’s that unanimous vote stipulation that’s the holdup.
In some ways, babbling Batton Thomas kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? If nobody is going to give Batty the recognition he feels he deserves, he’ll do it himself. It’s just that I don’t think any of us could ever imagine it would sink to the level of Batton Thomas dry humping a sheet of Bristol board.
I wrote a full post about this awhile back. Other than the Inkpot and Pulitzer nomination, Baituk’s awards shelf is packed with a whole lot of nothing. He has a lot of awards that seem to exist solely for the purpose of getting the recipient to pay for them.
I owe John Kovaleski an apology. It sounds like he’s a workhorse for the NCS and deserves the Silver T-Square.
According to the NCS announcement, Kovaleski stood out because he:
Served in multiple leadership roles – Board member – Chapter chair.
Founded and led the Jay Kennedy Memorial Scholarship – Helping support and mentor emerging cartoonists.
Played a key role in NCS events – Acted as the voice/host behind the annual Reuben Awards presentations.
Consistently volunteered his time and energy – Known for reliability, collaboration, and enthusiasm.
Strengthened the cartooning community behind the scenes – Improving the organization’s programs and member experience.
Batiuk is (or was) a member of the National Cartoonists Society, but he’s not especially prominent in its leadership or day-to-day operations.
You introduced most of us to Jay Kennedy, the last good editor Batiuk had. Jay Kennedy was awarded a Silver T-Square for being an industry builder and advocate.
It partly depends on the definition of “cartoonist”. Batiuk has never drawn Crankshaft (and also never drew John Darling), and gave up drawing Funky Winkerbean a few decades before it ended. So, if you define a cartoonist as someone who DRAWS cartoons, Tom Batiuk is not and never has been close to being eligible for a Golden T-Square. His career as someone who draws cartoons was over sometime in the 90s…
Is that definition written online somewhere? It doesn’t seem that strict to me. Gold T-Square is exactly the award you give to people you don’t want to give any awards to. It has clear criteria, and “quality” isn’t one of them. I’m sure other cartoonists have had assistants. Especially for injury reasons, as was (at least partially) the case with Batiuk.
Dunno if it’s spelled out on-line anywhere. But a Golden T-Square winner must be, according to the National Cartoonists Society, a “professional cartoonist”. All five Golden T-Square winners (Bill Hinds won in 2024) have been DRAWING cartoons for 50 years … in Hinds’ case, for many of these years he worked as an illustrator for Tank McNamara while Jeff Millar wrote it.
I can’t point to the NCS guidelines, but that’s possibly because they’ve already set the criteria of “50 years as a professional cartoonist.” And to me (and very probably to them) it’s self-evident that a comic strip writer is not the same thing as a cartoonist. An important part of the process? Sure! But not a cartoonist. Which is why the NCS doesn’t bother to attach a rider that comic strip writers, syndicate editors, colourists, assistants,or the newspaper delivery boy who got the cartoon to your house are not eligible for the Golden T-Square award After all, the award is for professional cartoonists, and the very dictionary definition of “cartoonist” (Cambridge, Merriam Webster, Collins) is “a person who draws cartoons”. Which means that by the dictionary definition of the term, for the majority of his career now, Batiuk has not been a professional cartoonist.
This doesn’t, of course, invalidate the theory that nobody at the NCS likes Batiuk or is particularly impressed by his work, and that they have no interest in giving him any kind of award whether he technically qualifies for one or not.
Eh, I think there’s enough gray area that they could give Batiuk the Gold T-Square if they really wanted to. It’s the kind of thing that’s not going to bother anyone one way or the other.
Of course, there is another consideration.
Tom Batiuk does not appear to be a member of the National Cartoonists Society.
https://nationalcartoonists.com/members/directory/
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 5 of Interview From HFIL Week
(Skip suddenly gmod ragdolls onto the ground)
3/21: We end the week with more nonsense about the nebulous THEY who want to bully Batiuk.
Dorothy Parker never wrote a comic-book, but she was a fan of certain comic strips, among them Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby.
I always associate “I hate writing but love having written” with Oscar Madison on an episode of “The Odd Couple.” I didn’t assume that he originated the observation, lest I make an ass of u and me.
It seems unlikely to me that Batiuk would forfeit a legitimate award over not having membership in an organization, no matter how much he may dislike that organization. This is a man who’s spent money to win awards that are given to anyone willing to pay the fee to win them, and then bragged about those awards. My “is he really an award-winning writer” post was full of examples.
That was a reply to Y. Knott.
He appears to have been a member at one time, but is not listed in the NCS directory of current members. Here’s a profile he did during the time he was a member: https://nationalcartoonists.com/author/thomas-m-batiuk/
Note that for what it’s worth, Batiuk (who of course wrote his own profile in the third person) is listed as a “comic strip creator” and “author”, but not a cartoonist.