I swear on the decaying blonde Barbie jammed in the background of the Luigi’s bandbox, if we do not get Ed Crankshaft on Monday, doing one of the eight or so things that Ed Crankshaft has done for the last 38 years, then I will create an effigy of Tom Batiuk from old pairless socks and ritually burn it at the stake! This is not (just) a joke! I’m serious! On Monday morning when I go to GoComics there had better be a comic strip with an elderly asshole buying another Bean’s End boondoggle! Or else!
Am I coming across as aggressive? Maybe it’s because of this stupid week of Batton blathering about his precious Bristol Board. Because Batton, as Batiuk’s wish fulfilment Mary Sue, of course needed no ghost artist providing pencils for him to trace.
Heaven forbid Batiuk give Batton his own Avers Chuckson! He might have to write Batton having a relationship with someone who isn’t a goat looking git with a smartphone.
Still aggressive? Hmm….maybe it’s because of this comment by my own dear Co-captain.
One of Batton’s most obnoxious remarks had spilled, nearly word for word, from my lips months before that August strip. Should I be mad?
See, I dabble with a bit of fanfic writing now and then. Every few years, some movie or show or comic or video game or web series will spawn some mentally completish narrative in my brain and I’ll spend a few months to a year binge building the outline of an epic tale of cringe and feels. Sometimes I’ll even start writing the story down. Sometimes I’ll even show a couple equally cringe friends, so we can cringe and feels together.
Thus far, I usually lose steam after a bit, and it becomes more and more tedious and frustrating to put words to word document. I go full GRRM mode and eventually move on to another project, promising I’ll finish what I started I swear. Once I even did! (Do not ask to see it, it is 15% lost to digital hell, and 100% too niche and cringe for even you, my wonderful nitters)
Anyway, I was talking to one of my friends, (the one with the epic webcomic, who did the Westviewcrumb Tinies for us.) As I whinged to her about once again getting bogged down in a fic, she asked me, “Do you like writing?”
And I said, right away, not knowing that I was copying Dorothy Parker and WOULD be echoed by Batton of all people.
“I like having written.”
Because that’s the honest truth, for me. I love having written. I love going back to reread stuff I wrote even decades ago. I find my own jokes funny. The scenes I put down give me just the feels I was wanting to be feeling. The characters speak to me because I put the damn words in their figurative mouths. The set ups and pay off feel balanced and satisfying.
It’s like cooking for yourself, knowing just how much garlic and lemon and sugar you really really like. If eating your own handmade pasta was 100% more egotistical and narcissistic.
But writing, unless I’m in one of those wonderfully manic moods, can be an absolute CHORE. If I could have my rough drafts extracted from my brain and into a word processor by a helmet covered in needles, I’d do it. Definitely.
But I know that my dear Banana Jr. didn’t mean ‘loving having written’ in exactly the way I do. He’s clear about that in the rest of his comment.
And this is demonstrated SO SO CLEARLY in this godawful Skip and Batton interview drivel. Nothing (heaven help us– so far) has been about the stories Batton wanted to tell, it has been about wanting to achieve the social status of a writer. Like a forensic investigator dissecting a rotting corpse, maybe this wretched storyline deserves a deeper analysis…
FARM REPORT FOR THOSE SO INCLINED:
Monday was about 10 degrees Fahrenheit with a foot and half of snow. Today it was 85. All four seasons in one week. Someone get Mother Nature some lithium because the bitch is bi-polar af.
Had our first calf of the year on St. Paddy’s Day, on a day barely warm enough to leave it out on pasture. We’re up to four calves today, including a widdle moo with widdle Ray Bans.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 6 of Interview from HFIL Week
I hope next week is gonna involve Ed Crankshaft doing his usual shit instead of Batton Out Of HFIL
RE: Sunday 3/22’s C’Shaft:
Great Guardians, not even Sunday can give us surcease from The World’s Most Boring and Self-Indulgent Interview!
Not only is it a Silver Age comic book strip, not only is it a sideways twist-your-head strip, not only does it make a mockery of a classic Gil Kane cover (GL #19, 1963), but “Batton Thomas” has the gall to put his own punchable punim (which at first I thought was Mopey Pete’s) on it! If this does somehow spread itself into a second straight week I’m bailing and spending the next six days over in Mary Worth!
We’re supposed to gaze in awe at this derivative hack being derivative and lament that we’re not boring imbeciles.
And yet, it’s such a natural progression, isn’t it? “Batton” is so hung up on not getting that DC/Marvel job in 1974, that he’s invented an elaborate fantasy world where he *is* a comic book creator. Even though all ever does is draw comic book covers – other people’s comic book covers. Note how seamlessly the narrative segues into Batton being the artist, even though this ostensibly an interview with him about an entirely different job – a different job the narrative went to great lengths to tell us he didn’t get.
Watching gender-swapped Aunt May get taken for 200 large is definitely darkly amusing.
I wonder what color of light apathy is. Green is willpower, yellow is fear, rage is red but what Batton instills flips me.
I’m pretty sure that if “meh” was a color it would be beige.
Probably.
The XKCD color list has a color called Bland. Plus a lot of creative and hilariously vulgar alternatives. The one that feels “meh” to me is called Lichen. It’s #8fb67b.
I’m going to stick my neck out and say that the “how to hold my ink bottle” cover thing is actually (a little bit) interesting. Maybe that’s just because it follows such tedious insights as “this table is old” and “paper is great” and thus seems better by comparison. Like something Ray Doty would have done in “Wordless Workshop” (my favorite “comic strip” of all time.)
And also, Batiuk used to be the pretentious incompetent hack Freshman Comp teacher Les is…..as was Greg Evans. Luann is a spin-off of an earlier strip about a bitter, vindictive, apathetic and hostile failure teacher named Eva…..Fogarty.
CBH, I’m 100% with you on the fanfic and writing thing. Though my attempts, especially as I’ve gotten older, have been motivated less out of love for something and more out of spite. I remember a few years ago being so annoyed by the Brian Michael Bendis reboot of the Legion of Super-Heroes that I just had a burst of “Here’s what I would do if I could reboot it” and had this whole outline of possible stories, background info, dozens of character profiles… and then the spite-powered energy ran out and I got it out of my system.
When I was doing my readthrough and collecting of Funky there was this little niggling voice at times that would be like “Wouldn’t it be interesting to write about Sadie as an observer of the events around her? And what became of her after Act II anyway?” But ships like that never leave port because the process of writing once that initial burst of energy wears off becomes a big hill.
But then some times that spite — among other things — is powerful fuel and now I’ve got a script sent to a friend in the hopes that, apparently doing our best Atomik Klutzes impression, we’ll have a small comic done for Free Comic Book Day. I’m not expecting it to be great (on my end, the art will look nice though) but I figure if some of these individuals (and people like Batty) can call themselves comic writers then what the hell? I can at least say I did it once.
Anyway, I do wonder if we get a second week of the World’s Most Tediousy Trite Interview but I’ll go out on a limb and say we’re getting a Mopetoni’s week. But the last time Cranky was the focus of his comic was the 3rd week of February (it’s since been the interview, two weeks on Max Goof and Jessimindy and back to the interview) and even Batty is smart enough to realize going over a month without more than token appearances from the title character is bad, right? I mean I don’t get the impression he hates Ed Crankshaft the way that he did Funky Winkerbean.
Awhile back, when Funky Winkerbean was still active, I asked the community how many of them had written a book that had been published. It turned out that many regular commenters did, including myself (though mine were software textbooks). Which is another problem with Batton’s I’m-A-Writer-And-You’re-Not attitude: writing is not rare a skill. Especially at the Bad Mary Sue Fanfiction level Tom Batiuk operates at. Everyone who’s ever posted here is a better writer than Mr. Pulitzer Nominee.
I’ll mentally add you to that list. And don’t sell yourself short: “here’s what I’d do instead of the crap they spent millions of dollars making” is a great place to start. Don’t get me started on Toy Story 4.
Narshe, spite can be great fuel, I mean…look at this entire blog? Generational spite going on here. Without discipline, which I woefully lack, you won’t get a finished project, but you’ll get a heck of a lot down on digital paper!
If you get your Free Comic Book Day comic printed, please plug it here!
CBH, don’t apologize for “I like having written.” Unlike Batton Thomas, you’re capable of explaining what you mean by that. You enjoy reading your own past work, but creating that work for the first time can be difficult. I’ve done this too. I’m really proud of some of the things I’ve written for this blog. Some of them really hit that sweet spot of “thoroughly researched, precise, fuck you” I’m usually aiming for. I like having written them.
For me, the feeling is more “I hate Photoshopping, but I love having Photoshopped.” Writing isn’t a chore for me; it was always something that came naturally. But Photoshopping can be tedious, and frankly isn’t my best skill. And one thing I particularly enjoyed having Photoshopped this week was Luann in the Montoni’s booth, saying “and were teaching arts and crafts at a local school.” That image was a NIGHTMARE to make. I had to stitch seven or eight different images together, remove all kinds of extraneous bits, and fabricate some of it by hand. It took forever to just make that Frankenstein monster look human. That image is the main reason why Luannshaft didn’t come out until Monday morning.
And our readers here gave me the best compliment possible: they said absolutely nothing about it. Because it looked like it belonged. I thought I’d have to apologize for it, and a couple other images which I thought came out pretty lousy. But that one shot of Luann, with her head partially blocking the speech bubble, is a goddam masterpiece. I’m delighted at how good it looks. I’ve marveled at it more than once. I love having Photoshopped it.
So I have absolutely zero problem with “I like having written.” What a have a problem with is Batton just throwing the phrase out there without no explanation, and then smirking as if it wins all arguments until the end of time. It is a perfect microcosm of how he views writing: as a way to one-up other people. When the act of doing so reveals that Batton can’t write for shit.
That’s the thing, isn’t it? If he isn’t crowing about a phony victory and enjoying people’s jealousy, he’s bravely enduring being a passive do nothing.
Man, a great photoshop is just the most satisfying thing! There have been some gems produced here over the years that worthy of a vanity press binding into an omnibus. And thanks for getting what I mean with the ‘having written’, Take pride in your work!
CBH, you like having written because of the feeling of satisfaction you get from having completed a difficult task, and because the work you’ve completed is something you did for its own sake. And you like it as a reminder of who you are and what you feel strongly about, and you have no expectations that anyone else will be into it. There’s a purity to that.
Tom Batiuk likes having written, because when he says he’s a writer people seem impressed … and also it makes him eligible for awards. Of course Batiuk may well have, circa the mid-70s, started out writing and creating simply for the love of having created something. But that faded away decades ago….
There is no sense at all NOW that Tom Batiuk loves writing. Sure, he loves talking about himself; he loves having his FW work being bound in anthology form (to the extent that he’s willing to pay to have that done); and he loves anything that seems even vaguely adjacent to praise or recognition (such as paying to have people hold Dinkle banners in the Rose Bowl parade so that Dinkle can be said to “march” in the parade — what an honour!) So he loves having written — in that if he hasn’t written something, there’s literally nothing about him that is the least bit interesting.
Without Tom Batiuk “having written”? He basically cases to exist.
Thanks Y Knott. I mean, I would be lying if the grasping little lizard part of my brain didn’t respond to accolades, so it’s not all noble endeavors for the sake of art. That’s probably true of all creators from the masters to the half-hearted amateurs. But this stupid Batton interview makes Batiuk seem like the Rebecca Black of cartoonists, buying and imitating her way into an immortalizing monument to cringe culture all so she can call herself a popstar.
There might not actually be a person without the smug need to rub in fake, impossible, no way accomplishments.
There’s something kind of Bojack Horseman about it. Except that Batton is in full-blown denial about being washed up, whereas Bojack realizes it all too well. If it ever dawns on Batton how little respect he actually gets and how irrelevant he actually is, he’d probably turn into Bojack: bitter, cynical, and self-destructive. The Batton Thomas interview feels like a prequel to Bojack Horseman.
I’ve said it before but I feel as if Batty’s entire problem hinges on the fact that, relative other cartoonists, he didn’t have to work much for his success. Obviously I don’t mean he did nothing because he still wrote and drew a daily comic strip on his own for 20 years and for a brief window was writing three strips simultaneously, which is certainly no small feat. But a lot of other cartoonists have to really grind it out, a lot of comic book writers had to start out doing copy editing before even being given the chance to write some 8 page backup for a D-list character, a lot of comic book artists also worked in fields like advertising.
But for Batty, in the span of about half a decade he went from teacher to humor panel in the local paper to syndicated comic strip to two syndicated comic strips. Sure neither was the biggest comic around but that’s the kind of success I think a lot of creators would dream of and I think it went to his head. I think that’s also left him somewhat bitter over the fact that it Funky Winkebean failed to get the same multimedia stuff other comic strips got. Even his former collaborator Tom Armstrong’s strip (the one he left John Darling for) got an animated special while the most FW got was a high school play.
He had a lot of success early but by the end of the ’80s it had fizzled out which I don’t think that’s ever sat well with him and has left him craving validation he feels he deserved and earned. He’s like someone who goes viral and then keeps trying to cash in despite the fact the clock has long passed the 15 minute mark and lacks the self-awareness to really see why things went like they did. He was a decent, at times even very good, humor and gag writer but wanted to be seen as a serious creator. I think if he had just stuck to keeping Funky as a gag strip he would have gotten that animated special or one season cartoon he always dreamed of but I feel like nobody really wanted to touch a property that could be gags one minute and teen pregnancy and suicide the next. His constant eyerolling at people saying “If they’re called comics why aren’t they funny?” is genuine annoyance but also a tacit admission that he knows, deep down, that moving away from gags to hack attempts at serious drama undermined the recognition he wanted and the success he felt he should have had.
Batiuk had all that success, and he learned absolutely nothing from it. Because to him, it was a way station that failed to lead him where he wanted to go: comic books. So he never had any appreciation for it.
On the other hand, Garry Trudeau sold the first strip he ever created at the age of 22, and won a Pulitzer at 27. Not a whole lot of struggling for him — huge success happened pretty much right away. And I believe he dealt with it fairly well.
I wonder if any part of the shift in tone of Funky Winkerbean back in the 90s was the result of Batiuk realizing that he didn’t have it in him to do multiple gag-a-day strips, and making one a drama-with-some-comedy strip would be an easier lift.
If you look at Batiuk’s dramatic strip stories, none of them are creative, none of them offer a novel angle on the subject matter, but since the subject matter’s serious, the strips aren’t expected to be particularly humorous either.
Just Another Sideways Sunday …
He learned to keep a bottle of ink on his drawing board from the cover of a Green Lantern komix book? I have no idea what that means and I’m fine with that lack of knowledge. What’s Mopey Pete doing there?
I don’t know what it means either. It looks like some kind of screwable metal bracket, like something for a window frame, or maybe for an electrical outlet. Which is attached to the wood desk by a pushpin, that’s pushed in about 1/16 of an inch. There’s also the question of what company makes ink bottles that are the perfect size for this purpose; I suspect they all vary a little. But Batton doesn’t tell you that, even though it’s necessary to understand how his solution works. Even though he’s been talking about office supplies for two solid weeks!
This interview bends over backwards to not reveal anything at all.
There’s also the question of whether that’s supposed to be Mopey Pete at the drawing table, or Batton’s younger self. Commenters seem to be about 50-50.
The lack of prominent eyebags, which Mopey has lugged around since his Westview High days, points to that being a younger Batton. Incidentally, Gil Kane wasn’t the sort of pompous peacock to put his own sorry puss onto the cover art.
It’s 100% intended to be Young Batty but I’m sure that Davis, in all of his artistic genius, just traced a drawing of Mopey, removed the eyebags and called it a day.
As for the content, either TomBat truly never thought of keeping an ink bottle on his drawing table until seeing it depicted on the cover of a Green Lantern comic or it’s another attempt at romanticizing the creative process by showing that these comics didn’t just inspire him creatively but practically too. Either option is equally possible with him.
That sounds right, but it requires Batiuk to be so disinterested in his own process that he doesn’t care how he himself is depicted within it. Which also sounds right.
I wonder if it’s made out of folded cardstock and pinned to the drawing board?
This whole strip is just plain baffling. We can’t even make out what the solution is, and we can’t identify the random artist in the drawing. On top of the inane subject matter, Batiuk can’t even deliver that inane subject matter coherently.
Didn’t Silver Age Batton Thomas have a mustache?
Good point. I thought that character was Pete, because it looks like Pete and not like Batton at all.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 7 of Interview From HFIL Week
I think that’s Batton Thomas at the drawing table
3/23: Ed’s back mangling English.
Say now, who is this fresh-faced scamp with the trucker hat who can’t pronounce “bisque”? I see a bright future for him! Thumbs up!
Also, can I just say that, after last week’s strips, a tuna melt and a bowl of tomato soup sounds real good right about now.
I never thought I’d say this but “Hallelujah, we’re back to bad puns!”
And at least “bisque” is a word that Ed might possibly garble, since it’s a cuisine word derived from French, not the kind of word Ed would obviously know.
By contrast, I think the last malaprop Ed gave us was “grandsin” instead of “grandson” (saying “Anything for my grandsin” in reference to Max’s wedding), which was just stupid because even young children know the word “grandson.”
I assumed Crankershaft called the kid his “Grandsin” because the tyke was conceived out of wedlock.
Well CBH…looks like those pairless socks will stay in the laundry room for another day.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Ed: Finally, we can eat in peace without those Batton and Skip guys tryin’ to use this place to interview each other!