That insufferable jackass Batton Thomas is back to drone on about nothing while Skip pays rapt attention. Which means it’s time to evalulate the bets I solicited!
G1. When will the next week of the Batton Death March begin? May 18. One point if you got it right.
G2. Will Skip start the week by making a comment about “continuing the interview”? Skip said “so you talked the last time about…,” so that’s a Yes. One point if you got it right. He doesn’t have to say those exact words.
G3. Where will they meet? Not 100% confirmed, but it looks like Montoni’s, which is worth half a point. I’m sure Mindy will be by on Wednesday to drop off the pizza. (TUESDAY UPDATE: The presence of Ed, Ralph, and Keesterman in the background suggests they are at Dale Evans instead. And maybe that Batiuk is feeling some pressure to at least pretend Ed Crankshaft is still the main character.)
G4. What recording device will Skip use? Skip’s cell phone is visible. Half a point.
A7. How many times will Skip smirk? Wow, twice already, and it’s only Monday. We’ll count again at the end of the week.
M4. Who will Batton name-drop? Nobody yet, but I’m going to make a ruling that it has to be a real person. His “band director character” is obviously Dinkle, but that’s not what I’m looking for here.
M6. Will Batton act like a complete jackass at some point? Of course, he already has. Take your .0001 point and get out of here.
M7. Will Batton talk about doing actual work on Three O’Clock High or The Wrinkles? He mentions Bizarro Dinkle becoming popular, but that’s not the same as doing actual work. So not yet, but it could still happen this week.
M8. How many of the seven deadly sins will Batton commit? I’m counting today’s strip as Gluttony. Batton has spoken at so many potluck dinners that he got Tupperware poisoning, implying that he must have consumed a massive amount of the food there.
Also, I’m going to make a general ruling here: simply meeting at Montoni’s counts as Gluttony. Dale Evans, by itself, doesn’t count as gluttony, since they have some non-gluttonous offerings. Even if they’re just things Ed Crankshaft orders to do one of his stupid puns.
That’s everything I can evaluate so far, because the others are weeklong totals, or they are for events that can still happen later this week. By the end of the week (including a possible Sunday), this post will be a complete list of all the wagers that were offered. And I’ll tally up a winner of those of you who made selections.
Ian’s Drunken Beard is the early leader:
G1 – May 18
G2 – Yes
G4 – cell phone
M6 – Yes
That’s 2.5001 points! And some of his other plays like “7 smirks” and “6 deadly sins” look pretty good so far.
After this week, I’ll calculate the totals, and standardize the set of offerings going forward.
WEDNESDAY UPDATE: We have a sideways panel, and some early artwork. That would fulfill the following:
A5. Will there be a sideways strip? 1 point, of 5 if there is a second one later this week.
A6. What early Tom Batiuk artwork will appear? This appears to be real-life pre-Funky Winkerbean artwork, which is worth 1.5 points if we can confirm it. Let me know if you can, or there’s a blog post explaining it.
THURSDAY UPDATE: Today we learn that “Harry Finkle” will straight-up commit murder, Crankshaft-Pop Clutch style, to sell band candy. Surprisingly, this doesn’t violate any new deadly sins. It’s not Wrath, because it’s not motivated by hatred. There doesn’t seem to be a deadly sin that covers what we would modern law would call “criminal negligence” or “involuntary manslaughter.”
Which makes me question whether the 7 Deadly Sins bet is viable. Batton either breaks them constantly (Pride, Sloth); never breaks them (Wrath); or are things Tom Batiuk would never have one of his own “good” characters do (Lust). Gluttony is largely a function of where/what they’re eating. Greed only manifests itself in the Funkyverse in the form of highly valuable comic books. As for Envy, Batton doesn’t commit this sin so much as he inspires others to commit it. The encounter with his wannabe rockstar neighbor right after he got his cartoonist gig is a perfect example.
I’ll honor the wager for this week, but I don’t think it’ll be part of the game going forward. (And yes, there will be a game going forward.)
FRIDAY UPDATE: We have the Batton face! That hits the easiest target on wager A1.
SATURDAY UPDATE: That word zeppelin isn’t quite big enough to fulfill A2. Will there be a word balloon that is more than half the size of the panel?
I will post a final tally after Sunday’s strip. (Sunday strips count, if the strip is related to the Batton Thomas interviews.)
Son of Stuck Funky 
As I have said before, Batiuk seems to not be aware of just what made Dinkle so riveting. He can faithfully reproduce the bombast, the lack of concern for his charges and the insane drive but doesn’t really see what other people see.
First, there were the Dead Saint Lisa videotapes, lovingly preserving every ounce of phony sentimentality for future generations. Now we have the Batton Thomas Chronicles, where readers are treated to endless footage of a smug author-insert reminiscing about his own artistic genius as though the world has been anxiously awaiting the Ken Burns treatment of his career.
Batty seems hooked on the concept of preserving legacies. Somebody this egotistical can’t be relying solely on his blog posts, can he? It makes me wonder if Batty has been recording his own life story. Somewhere in Batty’s “Comic Castle,” he already has a climate-controlled vault filled with interviews of himself nodding thoughtfully while explaining how meaningful his own work is. Seriously, somewhere in Medina, there’s probably an entire bookshelf labeled “Interviews About Me, Volume 1–37.”
Crankshaft readers are fed up. They’re starting to revolt. One reader on GoComics has written an “Open letter to GoComics” requesting Batty’s firing. Others are suggesting GoComics rerun older strips.
I’ve been wondering if newspapers are required to actually print all the subscription content the syndicates force them to buy. If they’re not, then it would be nice to see some features editor say “no more of this crap” and pull Crankshaft during weeks when this is going on.
In my minds eye I see out-of-touch Batty up in the “ivory tower” of his “Comics Castle”.
Batty: Hmmm, no newspapers are threatening to drop Crankshaft because of the overabundance of Batton Thomas strips. I must be doing something right.
🤦♀️
With the precarious financial state of most (if not all) newspapers these days, I can’t imagine a newspaper paying a daily fee for content it doesn’t end up using. And with the dying relevance of the newspaper comic, I similarly can’t imagine that any current comic feature has the clout to demand “if you want to run me, you’ll also need to pay for and run this other feature.”
I can imagine that a syndicate might offer a bulk deal … “run 5 of our comic strips, and we’ll cut you a special price.” In this scenario, if a comic feature should somehow be deemed unworthy, it’d be easy enough to replace one onging strip with another from the same syndicate. But that didn’t happen when Dilbert went under … most of the papers replaced it with an offering from a different syndicate. So I suspect the strips are sold a la carte, and most of what you see on the comic pages really are the best 10 or 15 comic strips that that particular newspaper can afford.
All true. But newspapers and comics have been “dying” for a generation now. We haven’t seen any significant newspapers drop the comics page entirely, which I would think is the next stage of the process. Maybe the comics page is a major driver of revenue that keeps newspapers alive, like classified ads. So the comics page won’t die until newspapers do.
I thought there was some cable TV-like “core package” of comic strips that newspapers had to subscribe to if they wanted any of them. Everybody wants the Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes reruns, so they’ll pay for a bloated package of junk just to get them. I just wonder if they’re also obligated to print those comic strips. But that seems hard to believe in the print world.
(In the broadcasting world, at least in the three-network era, there were all kind of rules about what TV stations had to, and couldn’t, do. This is because broadcast spectrum is a limited resource, while paper and ink are not. The nature of the Internet, and other new technology, has obviated a lot of the reasons the FCC were given the power they still wield.)
Are comics a driver of revenue? Well, people seem to threaten cancellation if their favourite comic isn’t there. So while comics probably attract approximately zero new subscribers, newspapers are terrified that if they cut them, they’ll lose the crumbling subscriber base they have.
Ask anyone who works at a newspaper, and they’ll tell you — if you want to generate letters to the editor, mess with the comics page. People who remain absolutely silent about increasing inflation, rampant corruption, or global catastrophes will scream bloody murder if Hagar The Horrible is missing one day. Cut the city hall reporting staff? Meh. Cut out investigative reporting completely? Yeah. whatever. Cut The Wizard Of Id? PREPARE TO BE SKEWERED AND ROASTED ALIVE OVER A BOILING TAR PIT, YOU WRETCHED SCUM.
Yes, I really should have said the comics page is a “sustainer of revenue” rather than “driver of revenue.” It certainly isn’t creating any NEW revenue.
If the newspaper in question belongs to Gannett (the largest newspaper chain in the country), the decision is entirely out of local hands due to the implementation of the Gannett 34. Under this corporate-mandated, consolidated lineup, local editors are strictly limited to selecting from a standardized menu of 34 specific strips. A cost-cutting measure that essentially stripped regional newsrooms of their individual editing power. I believe there are six tiers of comic strips. Crankshaft is on one of the mid-tiers of the Gannett 34.
While a local Gannett print edition might only feature a subset of those 34 comics on its physical pages to save space, their digital agreements are different. Gannett papers are typically required to display all 34 of the comic strips online via their e-editions and websites.
Technically, swapping one approved Gannet 34 comic for another would probably be easy. The papers already get all the strips digitally, so replacing Crankshaft with another Gannett-approved strip would only take a few minutes. The real problem is that local editors usually are not allowed to make those kinds of changes anymore because everything is standardized and controlled by corporate policy. So even when Crankshaft disappears into another endless, self-important bloviatin’ Batton Thomas storyline, because of the way these syndication deals and corporate mandates are structured, individual print editors can’t simply pull a single strip on a whim when a storyline goes off the rails. They are bound by contract to print the corporate-approved lineup they have committed to for their pages. Readers are stuck watching the corporate syndication machine run on autopilot, while the full, unedited roster lives on forever online.
OTOH, The Albuquerque Journal can skip a week of comics anytime they want. It is an independent family owned newspaper. They buy the strips from syndicates, but they don’t have to print everything they receive. If the features editor thinks a comic is inappropriate, offensive, or just not right for the paper, they can pull it for a day, a week, or forever. Some newspapers do this all the time, and it’s totally allowed.
If an independent newspaper or a rival chain (like Lee Enterprises or Hearst) wants to run Crankshaft, they can strike their own deal directly with Andrews McMeel, assuming another paper in their immediate local market doesn’t already hold the exclusive regional print rights. The Albuquerque Journal has the good sense not to feature Crankshaft on their comics page.
It would be hilarious to see a Crankshaft comic strip replaced with the message, “Due to insipid and incredibly bland content the Crankshaft comic strip will be on hiatus until Sunday. Please help yourself to one of our other fine comic strips.”
Y. Nott is correct, comics were and apparently still are huge drivers of reader comments. Heck, the Washington Post received 4 letters and 10 calls when it cut John Darling… JOHN… DARLING! in 1981.
I wonder how many newspapers even have a dedicated features editor anymore. And whoever performs that function (in addition to whatever other job they have on the newspaper) is unlikely to demand that <i>Crankshaft</i> be pulled as long as the strip doesn’t include any blatant profanity or racial slurs. They don’t micromanage comic strips just for having boring weeks.
I suspect that the main situation in which a newspaper would drop <i>Crankshaft</i> altogether would be that the newspaper’s budget for comic strips was being cut.
I rather figured that, since last week was (mostly) a Batton week, we’d be spared another consecutive week of him. I really should have known better than to get my hopes up.
Anyway… so Batton has a “band director” character in Three O’Clock High, obviously the counterpart to Dinkle. But Dinkle is a real person in the Funkyverse world. So is the “band director” based on Dinkle? If so, does Batton even know Dinkle? I know they said he was a teacher, but did they ever say he was a teacher at Westview? And if that is the case, does Dinkle know there’s a comic strip character based on him? (Surely he’d be bragging about it if he did know, right?) But it would also be kind of weird if this “band director” WASN’T based on Dinkle, if he (presumably) acts just like Dinkle, right?
Eh, I’m sure Batiuk didn’t put nearly this much thought into it.
The Funkyverse has always had a weird Expy Coexistence. Many real people also exist in the Funkyverse (usually without their knowledge or consent); some real people have stand-ins, like Flash and Phil for Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; some fictional properties are still fictional in the Funkyverse, like Star Trek and the whole DC/Marvel ouevre; and some fictional characters are real in this world, like Lois Flagston.
And it’s all driven by the laziest possible form of narrative convenience. If tomorrow the first gag Batiuk thinks of involves Crankshaft reading Hi & Lois, then Lois Flagston is now fictional in the Funkyverse. (For the length of that strip.)
True enough. It’s just weird to have a comic-within-the-comic, with a character who’s an expy for a character that’s already in the main comic, without it raising all sorts of questions about how that continuity is supposed to work. (Questions that Batiuk will likely never realize, and if they’re asked to him, will dismiss with another “It’s called writing!” probably.)
And Chester Gould exists as the creator of the Dick Tracy strip (vide the Batton Death March) while Dick Tracy exists as a detective visiting Montoni’s in January of 2015.
5/19: Well, this makes sense, doesn’t it? He’s too dense to question brazen authority figures like Dinkle.
I wouldn’t call Batton/Batiuk (Battoniuk?) “dense”, but I would say he lacks the most basic understanding of human interaction.
I like to compare Dinkle to Dilbert‘s Pointy-Haired Boss. But PHB was obviously in the wrong at all times, and the other characters reacted to his wrongness as they should. Batiuk doesn’t seem to realize that Dinkle is a nasty guy. He worked great in the comedically exaggerated world of Act I, but he should have been phased out when most of the cast graduated in 1991. Or at least limited to the high school environment.
Batiuk can’t stop doubling down on Dinkle. He couldn’t even let Dinkle go with that mean-spirited ironic deafness arc, which is normally the kind of thing Batiuk loves. And I genuinely adored the “Dinkle becomes the music director at Bedside Manor” ending. It let Dinkle keep doing the job that defines him. And it brought a little joy into an old folks’ home, which is generally a place that needs all the joy it can get.
But Batiuk just couldn’t leave it alone. He had to Batiuk everything up. Dinkle’s deafness magically disappeared, and his old folks’ home got a friggin’ recording contract and a tour. Which is exactly the kind of parody story I would make up as a joke.
On top of all that, the abusive Dinkle of the 1980s would not be tolerated for much longer. Schools in the 90s became a lot more aware of that kind of abuse. There are too many real-life band hazing stories, like at Florida A&M and Ohio State, for his shtick to be fun anymore. The year of that stupid Rose Bowl parade entry, 2019 or whatever it was, band directors wanted to be Dinkle about as much as actors wanted to be Kevin Spacey. He’s not a role model; he’s a radioactive example of what band directors absolutely cannot be anymore. I wonder how many of those marching band directors that Funky Winkerbean was just the sponsor, and Dinkle wasn’t something they were tacitly approving of.
And in 2026, Batiuk just keeps trotting Dinkle out there like it’s still 1986, and there’s still a market for Dinkle-branded high school band room posters.
Batiuk needs to kill off Harry Dinkle even more than he needs to kill off Ed Crankshaft.
I wonder how many of those marching band directors had to be told that Funky Winkerbean was just the sponsor.
I think they knew going in. What Batiuk doesn’t get is how ready professionals are to make a mascot of a bad example. It’s like how people at nuclear power plants Stan for Homer.
Yeah, but Dinkle? A man who’s a symbol of an archetype that the profession should want to distance itself from? Homer and Pointy-Haired Boss are fools, but they’re merely incompetent, not abusive. And certainly not towards other people’s children!
He wants comic book characters, not believable people.
All he sees is a funny line about how football fields are for band practice. He doesn’t see the arrogance and the blindness to reality that propels the pompous prat.
He thinks the catchphrase is the joke.
Thinking that way is the joke. It’s absurd that Dinkle is that self aggrandizing but Batiuk doesn’t see it.
J.K. Simmons won a friggin’ Academy Award (it wasn’t even gifted to him by the real winner or anything) for playing, essentially, Harry Dinkle in Whiplash, and that came out in 2014. In a sensible world, that would spell the end for that type of character, but… nope. (Even Beetle Bailey made General Halftrack stop leering at Miss Buxley when that type of humor became socially unacceptable.)
J.K. Simmons is awesome. His portrayal of J. Jonah Jameson is the kind of thing Tom Batiuk should have opinions about, but doesn’t. He sees the entire concept of superhero movies as “not comic booking correctly,” and resigns it to the “too irrelevant to comment on” part of his brain.
Jeez, Bats really is smitten with the image/memory of himself giving talks in front of a rapt audience, isn’t he?
You just know that for the last 50 years, he’s been chuckling over his own “joke” — “Dinkle became a band director in the usual way — he was bitten by another one late one night in the parking lot.” He wasn’t about to miss another chance to share that gem with his adoring fans.
Can you imagine how insufferable he was as a teacher?
Absolutely. And what is the Batton Death March if not Tom Batiuk “giving talks in front of a rapt audience”? Skip – a creation of Batiuk’s own imagination – is the only person who’ll listen to him anymore.
“Harry Finkle became a band director in the usual way — he was bitten by another one late one night in the parking lot.” Does this mean Finkle has the proportionate strength of a band director?
Oh Lord, I just realized this is another comic book reference. Because “Batton” literally can’t answer the question of how Dinkle became a band director.
Hm, honestly, I don’t think this one is actually a comic book reference. It might sound like a Spider-Man reference, but the “bitten by another one” suggests either vampire or werewolf lore. (Not that it would be out of character for Batiuk to get comics lore wrong, but… the vampire/werewolf thing sounds inherently closer to what he’s saying, at least to me.)
Yeah, I thought that was exactly Spider-Man’s backstory. At least when I was a kid in the 1980s and was vaguely aware of it.
He can’t understand other people’s obsessions.
Who was the radioactive cartoonist who bit Batiuk? We need to stop him before he bites again!
Batiuk has mutated so far from a cartoonist that they barely share any DNA anymore.
About today’s Crankshaft comic strip. I hope Ed drove the school bus. How about some new Betton Batton odds?
1 point – Ed backs into Batton Thomas’s car.
20 points – Ed runs over and totally flattens Batton Thomas’s car.
1,000,000 points – Ed runs over and totally flattens Batton Thomas’s car, with Batton Thomas in it.
Sure, why not?
Both Yesterday and Today’s Crankfuckery
Days 1 and 2 of Interview from HFIL Week
(ZZZZZZZZ)
5/20: It’s a sideways strip that boasts about a non event.
We have a sideways panel! That’s “A5. Will there be a sideways strip?” It’s only Wednesday, so there’s time for a second sideways panel before week’s end! Also, “A6 What early Tom Batiuk artwork will appear?” may be in play. Does anyone recognize that image? It’s signed “BT”, but may be real-life pre-Funky Winkerbean artwork, which is worth 1.5 points if we can confirm it.
While I don’t have the resources to confirm it, I can’t imagine that Davis actually went to the trouble to create the artwork himself. All evidence would point to it being a Rappin’ Around from the archives.
Just another sideways Wednesday! When Michelob said to put a little weekend in your week I don’t think this is what they meant.
The worst part about this sideways strip is that, with two panels, it surely could have been re-oriented into a normal, horizontal strip. But that wouldn’t be nearly as inconvenient for the people who read comics on their computer (i.e., 99% of them by this point, probably).
The Cleveland Browns had a very outspoken sportscaster named Gib Shanley who did radio play-by-play from 1961 – 1985. He pissed off Browns owner Art Modell with a comment during a dismal first half performance. When halftime came and the teams ran into the locker room Gib announced, “That’s the first time the Browns have crossed midfield all day!”
Did Gib steal that from TB or vice versa?
Gib’s biggest claim to fame came in 1979 during the Iran hostage crisis when he lit an Iranian flag on fire during the live 11 o’clock newscast, but that’s a story for another day.
Gib was fantastic! He was one of a long line of absolutely terrific Cleveland radio play-by-play men, including Jimmy Dudley, Nev Chandler, Joe Tait, Tom Hamilton, and Jim Donovan. They all made you want to turn the sound down on the TV and listen to the radio call.
Okay, with that little bit of off-topic civic boosterism out of the way, we return you now to your regular installment of masterbatton.
5/21: It tracks that he has no idea why people laugh at cartoonish exaggerations of stock characters.
No, “Batton”, when your exaggerations rise to the level of straight-up murdering people – and then giving them government jobs – your exaggerations are WAY too big. But you’re too neurodivergent to understand this, and too full of yourself to listen to anyone who tries to tell you.
Like us.
Also, please note that “murderer with a government job” could be any of the following Funkyverse characters:
Plus someone who didn’t quite murder anyone, but easily could have:
Plus the following people who did not have government jobs as far as I know:
And out of all of them, besides Wally, the least morally reprehensible one is probably Plantman, the only one Batiuk would ever acknowledge as a murderer (or even an awful human being). (Wally, meanwhile, has been subjected to more suffering than is deserved by all the others combined.)
Plantman being a murderer at all was a cheap writing crutch. Batiuk couldn’t bring himself to make one his “good” characters the killer. Not even with a completely disposable cast. Not even when they were the only ones who had the supposed motive.
Which is another problem. By TV news anchor standards, John Darling was not a bad guy. I’m sure he’d seem arrogant and vain to an average person, but arrogance and vanity is part of a TV news anchor’s job. You have to speak authoritatively, and you have to look good. No one who worked at an actual TV station would want to murder John Darling just because of his personality! Especially not when Batiuk’s favorite characters are full of smug, unearned condescension that nobody bats an eye at.
So Batiuk once again wrote himself into a corner, and fished for the easiest answer he could find. He landed on Plantman, and manufactured yet another straw villain. Good people can’t possibly ever do bad things! (Or if they do, they assign themselves some pointless task to absolve themselves. Like “protecting Lisa.” Or taking that stupid letter to the remains of that stupid ballroom, after keeping a secret long enough to destroy multiple lives.)
Plantman comes off like a random serial killer, even if he only had one victim. His decision to kill John Darling had no logic. And the half-assed explanation we got certainly didn’t help.
And all this happened only because Batiuk threw a snit about not owning his characters the way he wanted to. 35 years later, he still has no clue that the syndicate would have pulled the last strip if it was any kind of problem for them.
Of course he doesn’t. He couldn’t even come up with a decent motive for vigilantism: Plantman convincing himself that Darling was about to commit murder suicide.
Oh sure, Les Moore says it was Plantman that killed John Darling. Yes, Les Moore, who would naturally resent the attention received by John Darling … a not-especially-bright person who is automatically unworthy because he works for the media. The same media that doesn’t want to tell Lisa’s Story the right way…
John Darling doesn’t even HAVE a wife who had cancer. Why are people paying attention to him? There can be ONLY ONE unquestioned godhead of Westview. ONLY ONE who is the undisputed center of attention wherever he goes. ONLY ONE who is both martyr and holy innocent. John Darling must die, and someone must take the fall, so the sacred name of Les Moore remains untarnished in the eyes of his legion of followers….
I imagine this has got to be just fantastically confounding to read without context. Alas, I know the running gags of Crankshaft far too well…
That’s the charm of this community, I think. We can say something like, “Humanity as our nation,” and everyone here will know exactly what that person is talking about.
He accidentally proves how stupid comic book logic would be in real life.
Harry Finkle sold band candy to a diabetic! Moohahaha! That’s funny because … meh. You figure it out. He would have sold heroin to school kids but they don’t have any money.
I’m honestly confused on what Batiuk means by this. Had it been “he COULD sell band candy to a diabetic”, it would make sense, saying he’s a top salesman and great at fundraising, something he’s always shown as an important part of high school bands. Basically, a twist on “he could sell refrigerators to Eskimos”.
But changing that “could” to “would” completely changes the meaning. Now it’s not a demonstration of sales prowess, but a sign of the person being a complete psychopath.
And, of course, it’s not like Batiuk isn’t constantly changing common expressions to “improve” them (probably in the hopes that his versions will enter the lexicon and immortalize him in the public consciousness?). But this one so drastically alters the meaning behind the expression – and with an example that replaces “sells them something they don’t need” to “sells them something that could cause them actual bodily harm” – that I truly have to wonder if Batiuk even realizes what he’s saying here.
“Would sell candy to a diabetic” doesn’t make much sense either. Merely selling candy to a diabetic isn’t a problem, as long as they don’t eat it. Which is the diabetic’s job to manage. Also, a door-to-door salesman isn’t going to know the medical history of whoever answers the door.
Now, if Dinkle had knocked on someone’s door and that person said, “I can’t buy candy bars because I’m diabetic,” and Dinkle browbeat him into buying it anyway, that would be one thing. It would also be the most action-packed Funky Winkerbean strip in 30 years. We never see Dinkle actually make a sale; he just knocks on doors, and says whatever will set off a smirk in panel 3. The strip loves to tell us how great Dinkle is, but all his successes happen off panel.
Ah, Match to Flame #239 and #240 are up. And in true Batiukian fashion… they’re the same text (but with different images). (Well, almost the same text. #240 credits the entry as being “From The Cpmplete Funky Winkerbean Volume 15“. Thank’s Tom!)
So… you do the same thing that every other person who buys books does? Good to know. Really insightful there. You know, sometimes I go to the grocery store and I’ll buy something that looks like it might be tasty, so I’ll put it in the pantry or the refrigerator until I get an urge to eat it. I’m so unique!
Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.
Dude, you’re getting called out by the band geeks. I’m gonna guess that the second part of that statement was in your head. (Also, I’m guessing “books” shouldn’t be plural there, if last week’s strips are any indication.)
Both Today and Yesterday’s Crankfuckery
Days 3 and 4 of Interview from HFIL Week
(a extremely furious Dinkle shows up)
Dinkle: IMMA SUE THE FUCK OUTTA YA FOR MAKING FUN OF ME IN YOUR STUPID COMIC STRIP, BATTON! I’M THE GREATEST BAND DIRECTOR WHO HAS EVER LIVE-(gets smacked with a chair by Batton)
Skip: Harry, you are nothing more than egomaniacal asshole who’s ego vastly exceeds his musical talents!
5/22: Criticism isn’t bullying but you can’t tell a Batiuk that. It super isn’t bullying if it’s accurate.
Today we learn that Puff Batty got a complaining letter (about Dinkle), and so did Charles Schulz (about Snoopy). Why, if that doesn’t prove they’re peers, I don’t know what does! Who among us didn’t grow up watching Funky Winkerbean’s holiday specials, wearing our beloved Dinkle pajamas and toting our Dinkle lunchbox to elementary school?
What makes this extra-funny is that Bats once wrote to Schulz, suggesting, IIRC, that they should meet, and on his blog, he’s proudly posted the letter he received in reply: a polite acknowledgement and a comment that “maybe we’ll run into each other at a cartoonist convention,” or similar. In other words, Schulz fobbed him off.
I’m wondering if i should count today as Envy. “Batton” wants to be Charles Schulz so badly that he’s trying to force this awkward parallel. Also counts as a namedrop.
It’s pretty clearly “I think I’m comparable to perhaps the most successful and beloved cartoonist of all time, and if no-one else is gonna make the comparison I will.” Call it envy, mixed with narcissism, denial and delusion.
TB comparing himself to Charles Schulz is…
Well, if nothing else, it’s audacious, and, therefore, the most interesting thing that has happened in ‘Shaft in months (years?).
It’s also laughably asinine, among many other unbecoming traits, but it’s been so long since he’s even swung at a pitch. Kudos, I suppose.
If there’s one thing he consistently shows he can’t stand it’s being told “no” or that he might be wrong about something.
Batton wraps up another boring story with another boring comment (I can’t bring myself to call it a punch line) while making that wry smile, which I guess means we’re supposed to interpret his remark as some blinding flash of wisdom or irony or insight. Which makes me want to punch him right in that stupid smile, so I guess it is a punch line after all.
Today’s Crankshaft
Day 5 of Interview from HFIL Week
(ZZZZZZZZZ)
RE: Sat. 5/23’s ‘Shaft:
Whatever “muddled aphorism” Ed is relating to his boothmates, it has to be more entertaining the “Gee, ain’t I something?” bombast coming out of Batton Thomas’ yap.
By the way, Batton, you didn’t “come up” with “Harry Finkle.” You were living near Westview High, you saw or heard about Harry Dinkle, and you turned him into a cartoon character without getting his permission.
Admitting this means nothing special.
Wow, today Batton is pointing instead of using his usual open hand of exposition! Huge progress!
“This just in to Channel 1 News. Tragedy struck today at the local Dale Evans restaurant. Cartoonist Batton Thomas, creator of the syndicated comic strip “Three O’Clock High,” was speaking with a Centerville journalist when his dangerously overloaded word balloon broke off from its tail and collapsed. Three elderly men having breakfast in a nearby booth were crushed under the massive verbiage and had to be pulled out by EMTs. Their condition at this time is unknown, although one was heard to be muttering muddled aphorisms. More to come.”