I will be honest, once I finished the first part of this Summer retrospective I figured I would just take things up through the end or close to the end of Act II. See, it’s kind of hard to talk about Summer in Act II because she’s really not much of a character given that she only just starts kindergarten in the final few months of it. For most of it she’s just a baby or a pre-schooler and really doesn’t seem to exist as an actual character as much as she is a kind of thing that’s drawn into scenes with Les and/or Lisa.
She’s more of a living, baby-shaped accessory than anything else. She’s not a baby who’s secretly an evil genius or anything, she’s just kind of there to add color to scenes. There’s a part of me that wanted to just get through this period as fast as possible because of it but I just couldn’t do it. For one thing, I realized doing that would make this a mega-sized entry and we don’t really need one that’s as long as this insipid Larry Dinkle storyline over in Crankshaft. But I also realized that maybe there’s at least a little value in using Summer’s presence to give us a sort of quickish overview on the last few years of Act II.
By the by, Batty’s inability to keep to a timeline rears its ugly head once more due to a teeny tiny problem. That problem is, once again, the presence of Durwood and the rest of his high school class. Summer is born in summer 2002 and at the end of summer/start of fall in 2007 she’s entering kindergarten which would mean five years in-universe have passed. I’m sure the readers can already see the issue but just to make sure it’s clear to everyone, when Lisa said she was wanting to get pregnant she mentioned that Darin was a junior in high school. Even if we give that Batty doesn’t actually know high school grade names and Darin is actually a freshman, he still should have been out of high school by around 2005. Yet Summer’s entering kindergarten and Darin’s class graduating happens at the same time. So is the Class of ’07 just exceptionally slow? How did it take them six years to finish four grades in high school?
Ah well, there’s no use getting myself worked up over it. Let’s get to what this is actually about. Batty decides to open up the year with some biting humor about how guys like football and some times they get loud while watching it.
Les also shows that now that the new car smell is gone he cares about his daughter roughly as much as he cares about everything that’s not his precious writing.
Now it’s around the period of John Byrne’s stint as artist and all the attempted dramatics of DCH John’s attempts at wooing Becky and getting tossed to the curb because Wally has shown back up in Westview, having survived being blown up in Afghanistan. Inbetween weeks where John’s mother sits forlornly with a Superman cake and John purchasing an engagement ring so he can ask Becky to marry him after like one or two dates, we get a week dedicated to Lesisa deciding to ignore Summer while she cries in the hopes of getting her used to sleeping normally.
With this hurdle cleared, Summer seems to be taking to other major infant milestones quickly such as hitting the point where she begins doing a Michigan J. Frog impression.
This is also the time period where Lisa was starting out as a lawyer with her first job being helping out at a women’s legal center to help deal with a guy who was going after an employee for having breast cancer. That job lasted for as long as Batty needed to do his “Lisa fights for cancer victims” story because the minute the case is over the legal center shuts down forcing Lisa to get a new job. A word is put in for her to work as a public defender in the state’s capital appeals division where she meets yet another sexist jerk when she’s forced to bring Summer along with her to her first day on the job.
She gets assigned to working on a case involving a death row inmate named Danny Madison, a Vietnam veteran who’s up for execution for a robbery and murder. Working with Misogynist Man — real name Mark Potter — we get the impression that he’s less a misogynist and more just an incredibly jaded guy due to the high failure rate of his line of work. I mean if your job was fighting losing battles to keep people from dying you’d probably have a case of the Mondays too, so his introduction kind of sticks out since these sexist tendencies never really crop up again.
For most of the rest of 2003, then, Lisa is busy trying to find any evidence to exonerate Danny. From statements about his PTSD from convenient war buddy and Westview High vice principal Nate Green, to shaky justification for unreliable witness testimony because one of the witnesses to the murder was a shut-in which I guess means her eyes didn’t function or something. So while this is going on, it’s up to Les to play Mr. Mom and take Summer on a playdate where he reacts to lady talk about the way you’d expect him too.
But he manages to overcome his fear of cooties and win the Mom Squad over with pretzels, beer and football proving that old canards about what planets men and women come from wrong (Les, for the record, comes from Hisanus). While Les is wooing the Westview MILF Brigade though, things aren’t going so well for Lisa. Her clever legal tactic of throwing agoraphobes under the bus fails to have much of an effect and it’s looking more and more like Danny’s not going to make it leading to this heartwarming Thanksgiving strip.
As time continues to run short for Danny, Les attempts to introduce Summer to sports.
April finds out that Kortney’s been using sex chatrooms while she’s supposed to be working but Ellie can’t bring herself to fire her, while Liz has started student teaching– wait, that strip’s got me all mixed up.
Anyway, all of Lisa’s efforts have failed which means Danny’s execution is imminent. This leads to the delightful Christmas tale of Lisa having to go to the prison and watch — at his request no less — Danny being executed. Misogynist Mark had told Lisa when she started that he thought she didn’t have the spine enough to stick with the job and after having earned his respect, Lisa decides to prove him right by immediately quitting.
Danny had learned of Summer when talking to Lisa a little before Thanksgiving and when Lisa had come in to tell him that they were out of options, he in turn tells her that he’d made Summer a Christmas present. After his execution we see that it’s a snowman carved out of what I presume is prison soap.
I get that Batty was trying to give a touching end to an otherwise grim story but man, that second panel there is just kind of weird and the emotion doesn’t come through at all. Maybe it needed Ghost Danny or something, I don’t know. But Danny’s more or less forgotten as soon as he’s gone and to start 2004 we see that Les’ inadvertant indoctrination is beginning to take hold and Summer is on the path to becoming a filthy sporto.
Batty also can’t help himself by bringing back one of his favorite tropes: dramatic irony.
At this point, presaging her eventual future in Act III, Batty’s started getting bored of the little rugrat and so her appearances actually dwindle a lot. She gets some things like a customary appearance during Mother’s Day but she’s mostly just there to hang around as a prop for scenes. This includes a week in August about her birthday party — the prepartion and the actual party — where I’m pretty sure that Summer doesn’t actually appear because he’s more worried about sticking it to helicopter parents for some reason.
One of the big storylines running throughout 2004 is the Moores deciding that being well into adulthood with careers and a kid, they should start looking for a house. More precisely, Lisa decides this while Les pouts and grumbles the whole time. All of their initial attempts, including a crossover week with Crankshaft where they were checking out Lilian’s house, go nowhere. And then in the fall, they find it; the place of their dreams. A cozy little home in a cozy little neighborhood.
The Taj Moore-hal has arrived and it hates Les because there’s a running joke for a while of him hitting his head on a low-hanging pipe every time he goes into the basement.
Of course come December, we also get the customary dose of Lisa pining for the son she had to give up while the daughter she actually has sits in blissful, childish ignorance of being Mommy’s Little Runner-Up.
I’ll end things here for now with the close of 2004. There’s some other events that take place this year too such as the start of Funky’s relationship with Holly, which means the first appearances of Cory Winkerbean, as well as the birth of Maddie Klinghorn in the summer. That last one is another thing that throws the sacred timeline off because she’s a full year younger than Summer yet is in the same grade when realistically she shouldn’t be. If TimeMop can’t even keep the timestream clean, I can’t imagine what a poor job he does with the floors and bathrooms.
As I said earlier, it’s a bit hard to write about Summer specifically in Act II because she’s just a toddling prop more than she is an actual character. So I think that next time, for real, I’ll try and get through the rest of Act II and all the fun times with cancer that made this strip famous.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Both Yesterday and Today’s Crankfuckery
Days 23 and 24 of In The Name of The Father
Like father (Larry L. Dinkle) , like son (Harry L. Dinkle The World’s Biggest Asshole)
At least Larry was nowhere near as aggressive or irritating like his son would become when it came to shit like this
About that title: What In The Name Of The Father, Tom? That title implies that the story is about some kind of deed done on behalf of the father. All we’ve seen is Dinkle digging through meaningless scraps of his long-dead, long-irrelevant father. The bait-and-switch story about Eugene moving… somewhere had more potential than this dreck.
And now Daddy Dinkle is whining that rock and roll is pushing him out of the picture? “Heartbreak Hotel” was 1955 – almost 20 years after he played that damned ballroom. Seems to me he had a good run. And how on earth does that fit into a timeline where he was about to debut a new song? Is Tom Batiuk really suggesting that “Sunrise Over Kilimanjaro” was the song that would have prevented the ascendancy of rock and roll, but AND THEN HE DIED (scary organ chord)?
Again, we see how Tom Batiuk has no clue that certain risks always exist for certain career paths. When you’re a live performing musician, you’re always subject to shifts in mass tastes. Ask any heavy metal band what happened to their careers when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” dropped. They didn’t sit around lamenting the song they never got to play. This is just pathetic.
Whining In The Name Of The Father should have been the full title.
“Hm, this story is about Dinkle’s father, I need to give it a pretentious title so people will know it’s a Serious Story. What’s a well-known phrase about fathers… uh, ‘in the name of the father’? Sure, people know that phrase. I’m sure if I think of something better in the next eleven months, I can always replace it. Hahahaha, who am I kidding, I’m not thinking about this story again once it’s done. Good joke, Tom, I should be a writer.”
At this point I’d like to think the British Invasion resurrected Dinkfather to the land of the living only so the Dave Clark Five could kill him again.
Leaving him in Bits and Pieces and making everyone else Glad All Over. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself, and it’s no worse than anything Crankshaft would say-that is, if he were speaking in his own strip.
Making us glad all over!
6/25: Larry, you are mistaken, you are obsolete. Look at Elvis on the street.
Elvis? I thought the TV singer was Conrad Birdie! Wasn’t Ann-Margret about to run out and kiss him?
It could be anyone who ushered in an era where Larry was chasing a goal nobody cared about. Sunrise Over Deus Ex Machina wouldn’t have brought big bands back or made him other than a man too stupid to quit when he was behind but you cannot tell a Batiuk that.
Once Papa Dinkle was faced with rock and roll, he had two choices: adapt, or die. And we know which option a Funkyverse character will always choose. The story’s already told us. And Then He Died.
The blubber skulled moron thought that adapting to changing anything was letting bullies win. I remember him talking about going berserk with rage when they changed why Flash ran at Does Batiuk Understand Physics Speed.
Indeed, Dinkfather was a dead man walking when Elvis dealt the killing blow. He had already been (im)mortally wounded by Pat Boone…
It all cycles back to Batiuk being too stupid to live. Big Band music is Larry’s comic book.
The odd thing is that Michael Patterson was equally attentive a father.
First, I’d like to wish the happiest of birthdays to our dear Comic Book Harriet. It’s been a heck of a year, I know, but this year will be full of bright and beautiful things, I’m sure of it. You deserve it all and more. 🎂🎁🥳
Second, I think it’s interesting that “Kilmanjaro” is so prominent here. The climbing of Kilimanjaro seems to occupy an important place in the mythos of both Batiuk the man and Les the avatar. At first I thought there was going to be some grand cross-generational, cross-family connection, some kind of arc, but I should have known better. It’s not going to mean anything. It never does.
Yeah, I noticed that too. It’s like New York City or the Chateau Marmont restaurant; it’s another random thing Batiuk has latched onto as being emblematic of something. He won’t acknowledge the existence of Chicago, parts of Los Angeles other than Hollywood, or even more important cities in Ohio like Cincinnati. It’s New York to be successful, Hollywood to make movies about your success, and Kilimanjaro to have your life-altering journey. He literally can’t think of anything else.
It’s the dumb kid in him. He can’t see things that aren’t somehow magic and won’t be bullied into acknowledging the Second City.
Y. Knott posted about it in the comments for the last installment, but the latest Match to Flame REALLY deserves some more attention here, because… man, it’s a doozy.
https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/match-to-flame-245/
Actually applying that research, however, was never even considered. (See also: the exhaustive list of Things Tom Batiuk Knows Nothing About.)
WEEKLY??? You went back to your old high school WEEKLY? Dude, anyone who hangs around a high school that much who isn’t a student or faculty should probably be on a list somewhere. You’re seriously entering “Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused” territory here.
Emphasis mine on that last sentence, because… hoo-boy.
Seriously? Is your imagination THAT limited? I mean, that’s, like, the EASIEST joke to write about that situation. Just hearing the first part of the story, I could have come up with “someone tries to clean up the place by taking the tape off the floor”, and I’ve never been there! (It’s been said ’round these here parts that Batton Thomas is a bigger self-own on Batiuk than even the snarkers could do, but this is a strong contender in that category, too…)
(Okay, the last sentence on that quote was supposed to be bolded – it was when I typed it up – but I guess WordPress didn’t feel like applying that formatting. Ah, well.)
I’m not sure you’re picking on the right thing about needing to be there to write that joke, though. I think the piece Batiuk wouldn’t have imagined without seeing the place is that there was tape in place to mark Where Elvis Stood. _That_ detail doesn’t strike me as a particular lack of imagination not to think of; it’s a small thing that a studio doesn’t need to have, much as it makes sense if it does.
I mean… you can find pictures of Sun Studios online, and see the tape marks on the floor there. Or you can find articles about the place that mention them. One doesn’t need to actually see them in person to know about them, and it’s a fairly obvious joke to make once you do know. It’s not really “Something I could not have written without actually having been there”, y’know? Especially for someone who had just got done gloating about how much “research” he does.
It’s not that it’s something “a studio” doesn’t need to have, it’s that it’s something that’s already fairly well-known about THAT PARTICULAR studio. Something related to why it’s a famous landmark and tourist attraction in the first place.
He’ll die on the hill of boasting about how creative he is.
With the school stuff, I want to say Batty has either implied or said before that he continued to do substitute teaching long after he stopped teaching full time. Maybe in his old age he picked it back up now that he had more free time as he was older or something. It would explain why Dinkle kept showing up as a substitute for Becky’s classes after he retired.
As for the Bedside Manorisms story, I just thought it always seemed like a bad idea to have a group of old people, at least one of who flits in and out of crippling dementia, wandering around Memphis.
The sky would be turning legal pad yellow as children would be using Dinkle back into a ball of presumptuous dirt.
Okay, him substitute teaching does make it make more sense. It’s just that he casually dropped the fact that he would make weekly trips back to the high school while discussing his “research methods”, which (without context) made it sound like he decided to hang out at the high school on a regular basis for no particular purpose other than his “research”, which sounded more than a bit sketchy. (Like when Crazy Harry went back to 1980 and the security guard dragged him away from Not Dead Yet Saint Lisa, his blog entry made it sound like that would have – or at least should have – been based on experience, that type of thing.)
With that context it makes sense, but, of course, said context isn’t provided, so…
Nobody would bat an eye at “I was a substitute teacher”, but he insists on phrasing it as “I visited high schools once a week.” Which makes him sound like the aforementioned Matthew McConaghey.
And he only does it because of his extreme aversion to clarity. “I was a substitute teacher” isn’t writer-y enough for Tom Batiuk. He thinks “I visited high schools once a week” is better, when it’s actually less clear, and lets the reader fill in the blanks as they wish.
The lack of self-awareness is just stunning, as is his need to over-embellish every word that comes out of his mouth.
“I was a substitute teacher” would imply that Batiuk’s comic strip was somehow less than wildly successful, and that he was unable to earn his entire living solely through the genius of his writing. That, of course, is a perception he cannot allow to stand. (Even if most people would think it’s completely reasonable to keep your part-time teaching gig for a couple of years, until your creative career really takes off.)
Oh those heady days when Summer was an infant, keeping Les irritated and awake all night with her crying. Back when she was the hero of the strip…
Pity how it turned out for her.
You would have to stupid, petty and eight years old to burn with resentment of a colicky baby. He and Lynn Johnston are all three things.
I will say that when I wanted to do that Foob thing, I wanted to remember what was happening there at the same general time that Funky strip was because dammit if I’m going to make pointless throwaway jokes like that they at least need to be accurate! And I will give Lynn credit, when I wanted to do that finding what I needed was very easy. Whoever she paid to do her site did a good job with the archives. Everything is incredibly organized and easy to find. Proper character tags, being able to look up specific storylines, all that kind of stuff.
I’m a sucker for things being properly organized so that’s at least nice and beats having to trawl GoComics where there’s a chance the archives may be incomplete or they may have screwed up an upload in some way and then just never bothered fixing it. I can only imagine how bad Batty’s site would be if he ever decided to throw up real archives of all his work too.
Lynn Johnston gets a fair bit of stick, but her comic strip had genuine cultural impact, and although you may disagree with the storytelling choices she made, her work was coherent, and represented a clear point of view. Even though I’m not especially a fan, I’d still say she’s miles and miles ahead of Batiuk on pretty much every level.
I grew up reading For Better or For Worse, and I enjoyed it. Maybe not every story, but the strip was for the most part a fun read. I liked watching the kids grow up, and I’m glad Lynn gave everyone a relatively happy ending. One of her best stories was when Lawrence came out. The characters reactions were all honest and believable-groundbreaking at the time and so well done.
What bothers people is that Elly didn’t know that she had it made.
The message seemed to be that it sucks to be Elly.
I do think I understand the conflation of Lynn Johnston and Tom Batiuk that seemed to rise among internet comics commenters in the early-mid 2000s and continues to this day. Both had a tendency to make their main character/apparent author avatar insufferable. Both appeared to like the attention they got when they took aim at “important” issues in their strips and subsequently appeared to tailor their work to continue to seek that attention. And neither seemed to take the criticism that came with these turns well either. Though, I certainly would say that TB was more craven in his attention seeking and more sensitive to the criticism than Johnston, they seemed to be quite similar in many ways from the early 90s to the late 00s.
While I do think Johnston is a more talented cartoonist and a better storyteller than TB, what really and truly would put her miles ahead of Batiuk is that she also knew when to quit. Fortunately for her reputation, and our digestion, she didn’t risk FBoFW turning into the incoherent tire fire that Act III Funky Winkerbean was (and that “Act IV” Crankshaft is). Heck, she didn’t even keep up with that retouched FBoFW rerun project for all that long. These were very wise decisions. Had TB wrapped up Funky with a brief “happily ever after” flash forward for a week or two after Lisa’s Death, his work would be held up as a pretty direct peer (if, perhaps, not quite as good) to Johnston’s I think, at least among comic strip nerds.
She has no interest in revisiting the Patterson’s world because she had an end game in mind: setting up ending on a title drop.
Her archives were put together by someone her husband recommended.
Les’ expression in the last panel where he puts Summer in the crib and says she’s “somewhere” is just awful. At the very least, he could look distracted instead of appearing completely checked out and no longer giving a crap about his kid.
Narshe-another nice job on the recap!
ComicBookHarriet-Happy Birthday!
Being too stupid to understand that he should care is on brand though. There’s never been a basic human reaction that he’s understood or agreed with.
So, off-topic, but is the commenting feature at Gocomics not working for anyone either than me? I’d hate to complain to them if it’s something they already know about. I ask here because I figure someone will both know and answer.
It’s not working for me, either. Can’t even see if there are any comments, for anything.
You have company. I can’t get the conversation to open either. I’ve tried just about everything. Cleared my browser data. Logged out and back in again. Restarted my browser. Turned off my ad blocker. Rebooted my computer. Tried commenting on GoComics on my phone. Zilch. Nada. Bupkis. Not a t’ing, mon.
Where’s my lawyer?
hbcbh fr fr lol but seriously yes Happy Birthday to you Madam. Narshe, thank you for another wonderful entry with more panels that I haven’t seen.
I can post comments on the new GC system. I think my likes are visible too. Some days still have their entire comment history wiped and others don’t. It looks like it’s much messier in keeping the sequence of posts in proper order too.
06/18 – Look, a journal I never knew about!
06/22 – I wish I could hear my father’s last composition BUT HE DIED.
06/23 – Here’s the sheet music to the final composition!
06/24 – OK you all can go away now, let me read about how my father forced children off of a baseball field to use it.
06/25 – Let me read about how my father felt that his life’s accomplishments were nullified by Elvis.
06/26 – Let me read about how my father took the time to rationalize overconsumption and wrote it down.
What’s coming next? A stubbed toe in 1936? A chance to headline with Glenn Miller in 1940 that was missed AND THEN GLENN DIED? A bottle of hair tonic unexpectedly ran out in 1948? A private show for Fidel Castro in 1957? A forgotten birthday party for Harry in 1961? Where is this story even going, Tom?
—
The above is what I wanted to post there today, but anything after the first sentence was deemed in violation of current GC guidelines and flagged for deactivation. I changed DIED to PERISHED to PASSED and had the same issue. I guess we get what we pay for, and I’m just glad that it is nothing.
It’s like he’s trying to raise as many plot points as possible, and then immediately abandon them.
And may God strike down every online platform that censors words like death, suicide, drugs, sexual assault, etc., but then inundates you with stories about those exact topics.
What’s coming next? Hopefully some eye-opener like Harry discovers he’s illegitimate or something. Wouldn’t that be something?
“in the Name of the Father”. Some commenters have pointed out how Larry Dinkle looks Hispanic. Wouldn’t be funny if Dinkle was the anglicized version of Del Rincón or Tinoco. Daddy Dinkle’s given name is Lorenzo.
I’m sure tomorrow’s next big reveal will be… “and then he died.”
The new commenting system tells you when your post has been rejected? That’s a step up, as far as I’m concerned. Too many times with the old commenting system, I’d write a comment, come back to the conversation later, and find it just sitting there like it had cooties. No replies and no upvotes. I can always count on at least one pity upvote. It stinks when you spend time writing a three-paragraph post and have no idea what innocuous term triggered the nanny bot.
And the answer is: Dinkle’s ego gets stroked again! Because his dad thought he was the leader of the world’s greatest band!
Both music and narcissism run through the Dinkle men’s veins.
How silly of me. I should have been able to predict soppy sentimentality. Of course Harry can pick up and play daddy’s trumpet like a virtuoso today. After sitting in a storage locker for generations no restoration is necessary. Must be that magic Dinkle touch.🙄
More like Batty refuses to let facts and common sense stand in the way of his story.
Happy birthday, CBH!
6/26: And we’re back to Dinkle not forgiving his dad for reacting to stress wrong.
OH BOO HOO HOO I SMELLED ALCOHOL ON MY DADDY’S BREATH WHEN HE HUGGED ME. At least he hugged you, you complete fucking jackass.
Did he slap him around? No. Did his mom throw hot water at him like Shouto Todoroki’s mom did? No. Doesn’t matter because he still does everything to spite his dad.
Did he hug his kid? Not that I ever noticed.
I don’t think we ever saw Larry Dinkle in 50+ years, except as a prop in the insipid Eugene/Lucy story. So there’s a good reason for that.
I was actually talking about Harry. Seems to me that he only started getting to know her when she was made a band director.
Oh, sorry. But yeah, good point.
This speaks to a problem with these people. Just as Les The First Magnet doesn’t understand how badly he’s always failed as a father, the temperamental goof in the monkey suit doesn’t see himself as the ghost he was to his child.
Happy belated birthday, ComicBookHarriet!
Yesterday’s Crankfuckery
Day 25 of In The Name of The Father
I’m guessing that Larry L. Dinkle felt like he was being cast aside because the youth was shifting towards Elvis Presley
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 26 of In The Name of The Father
(flashback to 1977, Dinkle is screaming at his band students when he notices the ghost of his father walk up to him and smack him in the face)
Ghost of Larry L. Dinkle: You’re a fucking dissapointment, Harold.
Harry: I THOUGHT YOU’D BE PROUD OF ME!
Larry: YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO MAKE THE LIVES OF YOUR STUDENTS A LIVING HELL!
Yeah, that’s the elephant in the room. Batiuk continues to ignore the one thing that might actually make this story work: Harry Dinkle taking a hard look at himself, and wondering how many of his father’s behaviors he imitated in life. But Lord knows Mr. World’s Greatest Band Director isn’t doing THAT.
Question is, will this arc end with Harry suddenly realizing that–between his past-midnight band practices, countless weekends going door to door for band fundraisers, and working evenings on his multi-volume Claude Barlow retrospective as well as his autobiography–he never made any time for his daughter Halle? You know, Halle, who nonetheless stayed in the “family business” and–desperate for any notice from him–became a music teacher herself? I’m guessing probably not.
Nah, if Dinkle was going to have that kind of revelation, the story would probably have been titled “Cat’s in the Cradle”.
Definitely not. That would mean being like someone he condemned.
I don’t have the time to look it up to get the specifics right now but there’s a week I believe late in Act II where Dinkle temporarily burns out and runs away from band camp to see his daughter and lament to her about how consumed with the band he’s been which included not spending time with her when she was growing up. But of course Halle was totally fine with it and encourages him to go back or something to that effect so he gets over it.
Hm, the lesson I’m taking from this is that not even his own daughter wants to spend time with Dinkle. (I mean, definitely not the lesson Batiuk wants us to take from it, but… Batiuk obviously doesn’t realize how loathsome most of his characters are…)
Well, that would require understanding what the characters look like to other people.
The Funkyverse is a particularly bad example of Snap Back, where what should be a world-altering story is ignored. Tom Batiuk can’t have Harry Dinkle pondering if he’s wasted his life, or mistreated his loved ones. But Batiuk (correctly) senses these stories win awards, so he tries them anyway. Then when they don’t win anything, he ignores them, or retcons them away with zero explanation. Like Dinkle’s deafness.
Just wrapped up a couple days of hard labor out in the yard.
I hate mulching. But I love having mulched.
What is “mulch?” Is it the dog’s name?
Pounding someone to mulch without quite knowing what mulch is was a great running gag in early stories featuring Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo.
mulch is a layer of material applied to the surface of soil. Reasons for applying mulch include conservation of soil moisture, improving fertility and health of the soil, reducing weed growth, and enhancing the visual appeal of the area.
‘Nuff said.
So far this week, I’ve bought 42 bags of the stuff, and I’ve got to get six more today. (I thought I was done, but my bride said, “Not so fast, Lovey.”)
By the time I load the stuff onto the push cart, then load it into my car, then unload it at home, and then schlep it to wherever needs it, I’m exhausted. Wish I could just have Bean’s End deliver it.
Thanks for the deep dive on Summer, Narshe.
To be honest, I don’t remember some of the events that you mentioned in your blog. As Mr. bwoeh likes to say about my becoming-all-too-frequent memory lapses, “there is a hole in your mind”. Ow. No doubt he picked that up from one of his science fiction programs or books.
For the record, that’s a line from Babylon 5. (And, yes, it does refer to someone who had a memory of something important removed. More than that I shan’t say for the nonce.)
Mr. bwoeh and I discussed Babylon 5 this morning. He tried to explain the saga of Commander Sinclair to me, but it went completely over my head. It’s a shame that Michael O’Hare actually had a severe mental illness. He was a very handsome man.
6/27: He smiles at his father’s egomania but still sees nothing of him in himself. This means that a nifty way to anger him is to remind him that his monomania and perfectionism are why he manifested as an absence in his daughter’s life.
Anonymous Sparrow,
Two comments you could be interested in:
1. Don McLean also switched genres from soft Rock to Country Music later.
Just saw “Supergirl”. Loved it. No spoilers, but I can sum up my review. It is “Captain Marvel” done right.
RE: Sunday 6/28’s ‘Shaft:
Well, Arcamax ran out of “black ink” again. Even though I don’t read music, I think I was able to figure out what was going on; Harry hauled out his dad’s old horn and is using it to play “Taps,” because this “tale truly told” is mercifully, finally at an end.
So help me, if we go back to Skip Bittman interviewing Batton Thomas tomorrow…
That was my assumption. Having somehow magically connected with his dad, he can cede the stage to the new Most Punchable Man.
Nah, next week is going to be Skip covering a local interest story: the son of a local celebrity band leader found a previously-unknown composition of his father’s, and will want to interview that son at length about it.
Is it the end, though? This shit has been so vague and aimless that it could easily drone on for another 2-3 weeks.
Batiuk just needs to drag a few more story points to the top of a building, then throw them off tbe roof, Jackson Pollock style.
Larry Dinkle was… an amphetamine user! And a PTSD sufferer! And had gambling debts! And was secretly gay! And hid someone else’s proposal letter from his lover! And his mom took away his conductor’s baton! Come on, surely one of these is going to win Batiuk that award he wants so badly!
Apologies if someone has already pointed this out, but Sunrise Over Kilimanjaro, as transcribed in Sunday’s strip, is a real-world composition that Batiuk has shamelessly lifted without crediting the real composer, Ed Huckeby.
https://barnhouse.com/product/012-4309-00/ It’s a 2014 piece for middle/high school band, in the quasi-cinematic style (not big-band/jazz) that dominates educational band writing these days. My kid played it a couple of years ago.
Perhaps Dr. Huckeby is a friend of Batiuk’s and this is intended as a tribute, but if so it’s a strange way to do a tribute.
Kind of sad that the best thing that can be said here is “at least he didn’t steal artwork from a child this time”.
Do the musical notes we’ve seen in the artwork match the real-world composition.
Yes, exactly. You can view the chart and even listen to the piece at the publisher’s website I linked to above.
Cool, thank you for confirming!
This week Arcamax managed to include the black ink in “Luann” but not in “Crankshaft.” Last week they skipped it in both strips.
I doubt that Tom Batiuk is aware of the problem. nor should he be. Since his contract is with GoComics.com or its affilates, if he looks at his strip online I’m sure he does so on GoComics.com, not necessarily on any miscellaneous sites like Arcamax that the strip might be syndicated to.
It’s just amazing how little they care about showing the comics that some people pay for.
I don’t think I can follow the chronology of Larry Dinkle’s life.
On 6/22, Harry said that his father was going to premiere “Sunrise Over Kilimanjaro” the night he died.
On 6/23, Lillian, holding the sheet music for “Sunrise Over Kilimanjaro,” says that Lucy said that the band was going to premiere a new song after intermission, but when they got back, the band was gone.
I thought that meant that Larry died while Lucy and Eugene were still dating and going to whatever ballroom this is where Larry Dinkle’s band played. That would imply that Larry died no later than 1941, since after Pearl Harbor Eugene went off to World War II and Lucy had a nervous breakdown.
But in the 6/25 strip, we see that Larry lived to see the rise of Elvis Presley, meaning that he lived at least until 1956 or so.
I guess there are ways to reconcile this story, but I’m not going to try to do so myself.
Tom Batiuk not being able to keep his own continuity straight? Perish the though!
This is a 76-year-old failure’s idea of a Hail Mary. Batiuk is just throwing everything he can think of at the wall, and hoping something sticks. His lifelong tendency towards mimicry in lieu of actually knowing how to write is making itself very, very obvious now.
I’m sure there’s a Very Elegant Solution™ to explain all this.
Yesterday’s Crankfuckery
Day 27 of In The Name of The Father
(ZZZZ)
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 28 of In The Name of The Father
(Dinkle suddenly gets a horrifying realization that no matter what he did ever since being forced out of Westview High, he will always be remembered as the cruelest band director in history, which sends him completely over the edge)
Dinkle: OH, WHAT’S THE FUCKING USE!? I GAVE MY STUDENTS EVERYTHING THEY NEEDED AND WHAT DID THEY DO!? THEY FUCKING SPAT IN MY FACE! DO THEY NOT KNOW WHO I FUCKING AM!? (a hellish aura suddenly envelopes him) I! AM! GOD!
(Dinkle suddenly transforms into a Super Saiyan-state, and then screams so loudly that he causes a massive explosion which both destroys his house and kills everyone inside except him. Dinkle then emerges from the rubble completely unscathed and starts laughing maniacally)
Dinkle: THIS WHOLE WORLD WILL FEEL MY WRATH!
RE: Mon. 6/29’s ‘Shaft:
JUMPING BUTTERBALLS!!!
BWAHAHAJAHAHA sonehow this is still going on!
6/29: So we’re going to see them play the Song Of Success on Independence Day.
Nah, Batiuk’s got the Independence Day celebration scheduled for July 15.
Which makes a sick sort of sense.
I was going to gripe about the dubious continuity of the whole choir now being dragged along on Dinkle’s daddy issues adventure… but dragging around those he has been given power over for his own selfish purposes is, indeed, a classic Dinkle move. No notes on consistency (or lack thereof) from me.
Is that even the choir? There appear to be 2-3 young males in the shot, and we all know There Are No Men In The Choir until Crankshaft joined. The woman looking off-panel to the right appears to be Dinkle’s wife Harriet, showing admirable contempt for the proceedings. The other old woman doesn’t look like the choir members we’ve seen.
Probably not, all I know is they seem to have materialized out of nowhere in this story. Could be a group of people Dinkle encountered outside of Kroger. Could be the 3rd image that came up when Davis googled “crowd at abandoned gazebo”.
Dinkle’s megalomania knows no bounds…
His need to surpass his father blinds him to the fact that other people aren’t put there to serve his whims.
A propos of nothing, last night I had a very vivid dream in which I woke up and looked at my phone to see what Crankshaft was up to. In its two panels, Crankshaft himself was holding up his fist and yelling at no one – both lines ending in “…those beady-eyed nit-pickers!” In the dream I immediately went to this very website – at which point I actually woke up.
I am weirdly touched.
I’m guessing that Eugene hung himself in the town square, and everyone has turned out to enjoy the spectacle.
It’s always been my theory that BatBrain had grand plans for Summer, In his post-Lisa’s Story euphoria, he envisioned all kinds of fantastic arcs for Summer, each more prestigious than that last. But, it turned out that Les having a tomboy sporto daughter wasn’t as naturally hilarious as he thought it’d be, and it was hard writing for girls. So, he had her play basketball, then he shipped her away until the last week of the strip.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 29 of In The Name of The Father
WHEN IS THIS STORYLINE GONNA END
When Lillian lays some wisterias on Eugene’s grave.