I went to all the trouble of setting up a Batton Thomas betting pool, with options like “Will Skip start the week by making a comment about continuing the interview?” And the prick just rudely shows up on a Wednesday, hijacking a harmless week at Komix Korner. And re-uses that same smug drawing we’ve seen a dozen times by now.
How on earth did I fail to offer the option “yet another smug, insufferable book signing and not the actual interview”? In retrospect, that should be a standing offer in this wagering house. The Funkyverse is an endless parade of book signings for books no one would ever ready, by people who are incapable of writing them. My joss paper theory seems more plausible by the day.
(To make a house ruling: this week will not count as a Batton Death March week. So none of those wagers will be evaluated until the next fully-focused Batton Thomas interview week.)
If Tom Batiuk fulfills any promise to his readers, it’s the meta-promise he inadvertently makes to us snarkers: that his unhinged storytelling choices will be bizarrely entertaining. Who could forget Zanizbar, the talking, cigar-smoking murder chimp? Or Darrin’s decision to make a child’s toy of the handgun that killed that child’s own grandfather? Or Cindy’s late-life pregnancy, which was never resolved in any way? Or that this tiny town would have two people with almost-identical amputations, and no character would ever once comment on that? Or Timemop, and “humanity is our nation”?
But this kind of crazy is becoming less and less frequent. I often compare the Funkyverse to the infamous movie The Room. Crankshaft now feels more like 2010: The Year We Made Contact. Stanley Kubrick’s original 2001: A Space Odyssey could be dense and tedious at times, but it was also memorable and trippy, and told a strong story if you put the effort in. The sequel lost all the weird stuff, and told a straightforward, So Okay It’s Average story about interstellar Cold War cooperation, 20 years after the Soviet Union ended in real life. (The John Lithgow space walk scene is outstanding, though.)
The Funkyverse seems to be undergoing entropy. Its internal structure, what little there ever was, seems to be breaking down. I’ll tell you what I mean.
On June 1, 2024 – almost two years ago now – this blog made the decision to continue publishing, on grounds that Crankshaft was looking like a continuation of everything we that made the Funkyverse so compelling. And sometimes, it lived up to that meta-promise. The Burnings was probably the high/low point: an overhyped story about an out-of-date controversy, that did little more than demonstrate Les Moore’s complete immunity to the tiniest amounts of pushback.
But Batiuk has not been fulfilling that meta-promised. He has left certain tropes, like Atomix Komix and even Dead Lisa, mostly in Defuncty Winkerbean. Narshe recently gave an updated rotation of the frequent topics in Act IV Crankshaft:
– Batton Death March week
Narshe
– Ed malapropisms week
– Jeff as a stand-in for Batiuk to lament something related to his interests week
– Montoni’s week
– [Emily and Amelia] manager for [Lillian] week
– Dinkle week
– Idiots at a book signing week
That’s pretty accurate, though I would add two more to that list. The first one is a category I call the Legitimate Crankshaft Week. These are weeks that were just like what this strip contained before Funky ended. “Ed malapropism week” is the most common of these, making it a super-category to one of Narshe’s categories. But even native Crankshaft stories are less creative than they used to be. They’re usually propping up some lame premise like “bus driver shortage” for another milking.
The other new type is the miscellaneous week. These used to be rare, happening mostly at year’s end. But we’ve seen more and more weeks of generic, unrelated gags. And weeks that simply don’t adhere to the traditional Monday to Saturday schedule. The recent “Ed tries to scam eclipse observers” story ended on a Monday.
On a related note, I’ve been updating the “Act IV” menu that summarizes each week of post-2022 Crankshaft. And there’s barely anything to write anymore. If I can describe a week of this comic strip as “unrelated gags,” is the whole thing even worth talking about anymore? Is the entire system breaking down too much to be recognizable, even by our own definitions of what is entertaining about it?
Son of Stuck Funky 
I feel that it is worth talking about still, because the breakdown of Crankshaft and the Batiukverse may well be a genuinely fascinating scenario. Unlike late stage Apt. 3G, for example, which slid into increasing incoherence while the syndicate ignored the sad and obvious reasons why… Crankshaft masquerades as coherent while it continues to dissolve. It makes just enough sense that you think “oh, he’s trying” while it also makes you wonder “is this guy human?” when you think about a strip for more than a couple of seconds. It’s such a unique balance.
Perhaps, by studying the dissolution of Crankshaft, we are on the cusp of the next string theory or unlocking the key that will make us all recognize humanity as our nation!
We’re busy watching him deteriorate before our eyes. At some point, it’s going to be time to drape the sheet over the corpse and walk away.
The Batton Thomas betting page specifically says “Make predictions about the next installment of the Batton Thomas interview.” So look at this as a special bonus appearance by BT. Batton junkies who just couldn’t hold out until the next eagerly-awaited interview installment are nearly delirious with joy! It’s a chance to be entertained by the man’s dazzling wit, captivating anecdotes, and megawatt charisma, all in his natural habitat — a sparsely-attended book signing event in a failing small-town Ohio bookstore.
Incidentally, I think the betting page for the Batton Thomas interview is a really terrific idea. If you haven’t already got your bets in, click the link in B6KJr.’s original post up top, and make some predictions! It’ll be a fun way for all of us to get through the next week of the Batton Death March….