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.
G4. What recording device will Skip use? His 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: their mere presence at Montoni’s counts as Gluttony. (Dale Evans, by itself, doesn’t count as gluttony, since they have some non-gluttonous offerings. Especially considering the weird things Ed Crankshaft orders to do one of his stupid puns.)
That’s all 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.
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.
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.)