Man, I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of a better way to celebrate our nation’s birthday than by dragging a small cadre of elderly people through the dilapidated remains of a defunct amusement park, to the jagged, tetanus riddled shell of a dance hall, and then making them listen to a trumpet solo squeezed out between the withered, puckered, trembling lips of a fat, retired, band director.
When placed my bet that this would end with a musical performance at Chippewa Lake, I was picturing an official performance of both of Dinkle’s elderly musical groups at the grand opening of the Chippewa Lake Nature Park. A celebration of the community coming together to honor the past while creating a safe and clean space for future generations to enjoy. But no, in the Funkyverse Chippewa Lake is still a ghostly wreck.
Why are you so hung up on squatting in everlasting ruins, like a maggot in a corpse? Go ahead and honor what your local community is doing, Batiuk. Please. They’re even opening a little museum on the park grounds, you should be all over this shit!
While the train crash of this story has been miles more entertaining than endless Skip and Batton arcs, and I will never turn down a Batiuk prestige arc inanely told, I still wish we were getting some traditional 4th of July grill explosions. With all the fuss being made over the 250th, I’m surprised Batiuk didn’t cook up some shenanigans like he did for the Eclipse.
Fifty years ago he was all over the Bicentennial. He milked it for gags for more than a year. From one off gag strips starting in 1975, to an arc starring Dinkle, a leading up to a two week honeymoon to Colonial Williamsburg in July of 1976.
I promised Sorial Promise a SnowBelle update. Here she was on 7-3, just before being loaded up and taken out to pasture to meet her first boyfriend.
They grow up so fast… sniff.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Things can never be rebuilt as it means addressing a problem and not frowning impotently.
ComicBookHarriet,
Thank you! There are never enough Snowbelle photos. We can all say we knew her when! Later when asked, “Where were you when Snowbelle met her first bull?”, I can say, “At home, in bed, 6:01am on the 4th of July!” I cannot think of a better way to celebrate 250 years of freedom. I must remember to also thank Tom Batiuk. It’s all due to him.
Most importantly, give your dear parents a big hug and tell them, it is from the gang at SOSF! We love you so much!
💝🩷🧡💚💖🫂🌺💐🌹🧨🧨🧨💥
You big ol’ goof!
SnowBelle was a real gem yesterday. Was the first into the barn, and the first onto the trailer, all cool as a cucumber. She’s part Simmental, a breed known for being very laid back, and her mom was similarly chill. I was being really smug about it to dad.
Her mom is in the lot right now getting ready to sell. 😦 Didn’t have a calf this year, and she’s already pushing 20.
ComicBookHarriet ❤️,
YaY! I soak up any and all of your cattle stories. As you know, Mrs. SP was raised on a farm. They started out with angus. Then they included Charolais. The Charolais bull was named Charger. Well named. Angus bulls from neighboring farms insisted on breaking through fences to battle him. Unfortunately for them, he had a considerable size advantage. Charger was quite educational. Mrs. SP’s brother learned about the birds and the bees watching Charger interact with his ladies.
So sorry to hear about SnowBelle’s mom. She really only had one job and she old agreed out of it. It is sad. Mrs. SP owned an angus cow named Susie. She often delivered twins. But she also had extremely rich cream milk. Good for ice cream but bad for calfs.
Did you give your parents their 4th of July hugs? Don’t make me come there and do it for you!!!
Again, you are loved!
💝💘💕❣️💖🫂🌺💐🌹
These were solid strips, not Calvin and Hobbes great, but fun strips with decent jokes. They reminded me of why I was a regular reader back in the day, before it all got so messed up.
What’s more, the characters were consistent. Ann looks like every ignoramus who doesn’t understand that the world is not Murrka.
Right, everyone knows someone like that. Comedy has to based in reality. Unlike the current cast of characters which are all just a puppet of Batty’s wants, needs, and frustrations.
We appear to coming up to the thing that broke Batiuk: Crisis At Infinite Newsstands. Most people saw it as a combination of a cash grab and an excuse to retool a bloated continuity. Batiuk saw the first AND THEN HE DIED because he had to face a hard fact his mother tried explaining: The Flash is the intellectual property of DC Comics and they decide his history.
Also, he used to be able to be consistent with the characters. That changed after they changed who was wearing the red zentai suit and running at Ridiculous Speed.
“…and then making them listen to a trumpet solo squeezed out between the withered, puckered, trembling lips of a fat, retired, band director.”
You left out “deaf”
So did Tom Batiuk.
AND THEN SHE DIED.
Now let’s all celebrate the semiquincentennial in true Les Moore style.
USA!! USA!! USA!!
At least Eugene’s proposal letter got to hear the song. I’m sure it’s still among the wreckage somewhere.
Ah, no, for you see, that letter was left at the Wisteria Ballroom’s burned out husk at the ruins of Summit Beach Park. This the the burned out husk of the Starlight Ballroom at the ruins of Chippewa Lake Park. Not confusing at all. I don’t know how you could mix up the two. [/sarcasm]
And it was all written by the burned out husk of the ruins of Tom Batiuk.
Yes, the distinction is extremely clear, and I apologize for getting it wrong. [/weapons-grade sarcasm]
I really don’t think Batiuk is a fan of the rebuilding project. Rebuilding the sites means nothing to him because the image of defeat and loss matters more.
Today’s Crankfuckery (Happy American Independence Day / Fourth of July)
Day 34 of In The Name Of The Father
Guess this is how In The Name of The Father ends
not with a bang or a whimper, but with Dinkle playing Sunrise Over Kilimanjaro in the ashes of Chippewa Lake while Ed, Lillian and a few background characters listen to him play
And the leopard got up and slowly walked away.
These are the times that try men’s soles is cute. As with all of his puns, it only works if you’re reading it.
For those missing the Crankshaftian holiday chaos we didn’t get this year: This is not a grill explosion, but it is a cartoonish yet real-life fireworks mishap in Nebraska in 2022. (Incredibly, no-one was hurt … although that minivan was toast.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsTVNJ_FaqY
7/5: Instead of a fireworks or grill explosion, we get maudlin whining about how AND THEN HE DIED.
It feels to me as if this is the only time Sunrise Over Suicide Cancer will ever be performed. Larry can’t be a genius who was the victim of bad timing because AND THEN HE DIED!
Thank you AI for explaining this strip to me Al is my boomer neighbor who grew up listening to The Kinks, and Death of a Clown was one of his favorite songs. This strip fails because we never learn much about Larry and his relationship with Harry. Back to Batton Thomas being interviewed….
Rusty:
“Death of a Clown” has a lead vocal from Dave Davies, who co-wrote the song with his brother Ray, who sang the bulk of the group’s material.
It originally appeared on the *Something Else* album of 1967, which begins with “David Watts” (nice and smooth) and concludes with “Waterloo Sunset” (heartbreaking and beautiful)
Curiously, it also contains “Two Sisters,” which recounts the struggles of two sisters, Sybilla (trendy and fashionable) and Priscilla (dowdy and housebound), and it brings up something not to Tom Batiuk’s credit.
You should think “oh, like Lucy and Lillian,” but you can’t, because in decades of strips, we don’t have anything approaching the realization that our sympathies belong with one sister, rather than feeling that both are fools:
She was so jealous of her sister
She threw away her dirty dishes
Just to be free again
Her women’s weekly magazines
Just to be free again
And put the children in the nursery
Just to be free again
Priscilla saw her little children
And then decided she was better off
Than the wayward lass that her sister had been
No longer jealous of her sister
So she ran ’round the house with her curlers on
No longer jealous of her sister
Recommended follow-up for the Kinks: *Arthur, or The Decline and Fall of the British Empire,* which is, for my money, a better rock opera than the Who’s *Tommy.*
So Tom Batiuk referenced a Kinks song in this story… and it wasn’t “Come Dancing”?
Since this is “In the Name of the Father,” we can’t have “Situation Vacant” (also on Something Else) in which an awful mother-in-law destroys the marriage of her daughter Susie and son-in-law Johnny.
Frustrated readers may be more apt to think of “Set Me Free,” knowing that the hope will not be the deed.
The Kinks’s “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” was at the Westview Reunion.
Ray Davies went beautifully to the movies in “Celluloid Heroes” (no specific film noir references), but I think his best message for us all is this:
My bank went broke and my well ran dry.
It was almost enough to contemplate suicide.
I turned on the gas, but I soon realized
I hadn’t settled my bill so they cut off my supply.
No matter how I try, it seems I’m too young to die.
Life goes on and on and on.
Life goes on and on and on.
Tornado, cyclone and hurricane
Can batter the houses with the thunder and rain.
Blizzards can blow; the waves hit the shore,
But the people recover and come back for more.
Somehow the people fight back, even the future looks black.
Life goes on and on and on.
Life goes on and on and on.
Yep that’s what AI told me!
It’s a song that has no relevance to Larry Dinkle, of course, who had little use for rock music and never would have heard this song anyway. His death seems to have happened sometime in the 1950s (y’know, when silent pictures were still big and WWII was ongoing) and “Death Of A Clown” is from 1967. Also, it’s specifically about circus and carnival performers, which Larry Dinkle was not.
But using this inappropriate song to wrap things up is completely in keeping with Batiuk’s level of storytelling skill, and this arc’s overall depressing vibe of “Hey, Tom, have you ever thought of trying this totally neat-o cognitive test? It might really be a fun challenge for you!” And because Tom has never had even a scintilla of self-awareness to begin with, this is a sad, cheap, hollow ending that utterly rips off the work of a creative better, while also utterly failing to understand why the original works and why the rip-off doesn’t. Truly loathsome. Sure hope the lawyers from Davray Music, Unichappel and ASCAP are on top of this … he’s quoted half the bloody song AND published the music.
_______
Just amplifying what Rusty said….The Kinks had an unbelievably great run of albums in the late 1960s. Face To Face, Something Else, The Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur are easily as good as any pop/rock albums anyone else was putting out at the time, up to and including The Beatles.
________
So….back to Batton and Skip? My guess is a week of Crankshaft puns and general idiocy first. Call me an incurable optimist!
Sorry, it was Anonymous Sparrow making the Kinks recommendation TO Rusty. Agree wholeheartedly with your musical musings, AS!
My brother discovered The Kinks courtesy of Come Dancing, and as a result I heard a lot of Kinks tunes from his stereo. Somehow my brother convinced our dad to make the hour drive to see them live with The Romantics back in the 80s, and I still remember the balcony bouncing up and down from all the dancing. We’ve also seen Ray Davies solo a couple of times, most notably in 2001 just after 9/11, when Ray closed the show with Waterloo Sunset and dedicated it to the USA that evening. Great tunes from an underappreciated band.
Oh dear Lord. I saw this coming, but really? This is how he honors his father? With a solo on top of a pile of rubble? Dinkle leads a band, is presumably in contact with at least two other band directors (Becky and his own daughter) and attends the Ohio music conference year after year. It shouldn’t be too hard to find a band that would at least give the entire piece a run through. Wouldn’t it be a more fitting tribute if Harry engineered a performance of the composition for the audience it never got to have?
What a bizarre story. And I still don’t know how Harry really feels about his father. After reading the journal, does Harry have any adult insight or understanding of him? When he and his mother were told Larry died of a heart attack, did they accept that explanation at the time or did they have nagging doubts? Or was the journal supposed to be a revelation that the police got it wrong (even though there would have no reason for them not to fully investigate how a bus ended up in the lake). Harry also said his father would have found his own end strangely fitting because the “good guys don’t always win”. Does Harry actually believe that too, or would he have preferred to have his father around a little longer?
CBH-I loved the photos of SnowBelle as well as the Bicentennial strips revisit. I wouldn’t last a day trying to farm!
The strips were funny and lighthearted back then. Dinnkle was at his best, before his egomania became overbearing.
I hope everyone had a nice. safe, 4th of July holiday!
We are dealing with a story that went nowhere and did nothing. Even so, it’s better than the Batton Death March.
Oh, look, the Chippewa Park Stage, complete with accurate depressing graffiti.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 35 of In The Name of The Father
(ZZZZZZZZ)
Tom, next time try a tale that’s competently told. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having read this story arc. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.
Also: Justice for Livinia!
It’s not completely told yet! Now they’re back at Dinkle’s housing looking at his dad’s grandfather clock! Will this be over before Christmas?
I am concerned that Harry will mistake an unusually spiteful last request for something sentimental. Why else is he supposed to be heading to Nashville.
Dinkle hasn’t been given an award or found a comic book yet.
That’s the end game: a prize to lord over people.
7/6: As he makes music related wordplay, I can’t escape the dread that he’s going to mistake a final spiteful request for something sentimental.
7/6: Meanwhile, they passed by a billboard that had Batton Thomas ask “Miss Me Yet?”
“NEVER!“, I cried.
…..is a mighty long time…..
GOOD LORD THIS IS SOMEHOW STILL CONTINUING
I refer not just to this arc, but to Crankshaft in general.
It was an exciting choice to do this story without any character having any reason to do, or not do, any thing at any moment but how is this still going on?
ComicBookHarriet,
One your previous mentions of SnowBelle from February 2025, a Cranky Awards post, included a photo of a very young SnowBelle. Wow! Compared to the photo pasted today that is incredible. They really do grow fast!
I can relate, on a somewhat lesser scale. Mr. bwoeh brought a German Shepherd puppy into our home a few months ago. Fergus has just entered the age of rapid growth for a German Shepherd. The vet says he’ll be around 85 pounds by his first birthday. He was the size of lapdog a month ago. Mr. bwoeh sure loves his big dogs.
Thanks for reminding us that there was a time when Harry Dinkle was actually funny and amusing. Not the black hole void of entertainment he is now. Every appearance of Harry Dinkle fills me with dread. Why does TB continually foist the unlikeable characters on us? Batton Thomas, then Lillian, and now endless weeks of Harry Dinkle. Is this some form of punishment? Is he holding Les Moore in reserve?
Batty: Snark on my super-duper comic strip, will you? Witness the full power of my craptacular writing and unlikeable characters!
Readers: Noooo! Have pity!
A German Shepherd puppy! Mr. Bwoeh must have boundless energy to take that on! They have a lot of love to give and from my experience always want SOMETHING to do.
Yeah the Bicentennial strips were pretty good. I’m sure it’s a stolen joke, but the ‘We would have been Tories.’ punchline is perfectly delivered.
I also have a German Shepherd puppy story!
When I was three years old (1975), one day my father randomly came home from work with a German Shepherd puppy. We’d never had pets before that. I warmed to the puppy immediately. The problem was that I had a newborn old baby brother, and I remember my mother expressing concern about that to my father. But he became the family pet anyway. I was given the option to name him. I named him King, because he had a regal bearing. Though I couldn’t express that with my three-year-old vocabulary.
I didn’t detect it at the time, but my parents got annoyed with King over time. Here’s the thing about German shepherds: they’re great dogs, but if they don’t have a job to do, they’re going to get into mischief. Which is exactly what King did. The day my brother learned to walk, I remember expressing my astonishment at this to my parents. On the same day there was some kind of incident with King that was the last straw.
The next thing I knew, three-year-old me was being asked if I wanted to trade King for Daisy. Daisy was a female toy poodle that some relatives who were police officers had brought over for a visit. I have no clue why they would have had Daisy, but it was explained to me that they were looking for a police dog, and they wanted King for that purpose. They asked if I would be willing to take Daisy and give up King. Daisy was great, and I was OK with it, so Daisy joined our family and King left.
Daisy joined our family and remained there for several years. Her pregnancy was a memorable moment in my childhood. I didn’t fully understand what was going on, but one day I went to the living room, and there were four little puppies in the basket Daisy usually slept in. I remember this was a Sunday morning. We were going to keep one of the puppies and give the others away. Which we did, except that the plan was to keep a male we named Buttons. One day, when there were two puppies remaining, Buttons bit me out of nowhere. So we gave him away and kept the other remaining puppy, a female named Ginger, instead. (On a side note, I later met Buttons when I was at a neighbor’s house and some adults brought him over. He had been renamed Bo. I was glad to learn he found a good home.)
So Ginger became our family dog, joining her mother Daisy. Ginger went blind early in life, but remained our family dog for over 13 years. She adapted so well that visitors were surprised to learn she was blind. She walked down the street with one foot on the pavement and one foot on the yard, and used that to know exactly where she was. She’d only get confused if we re-arranged the house furniture, and she would quickly figure out where everything was now. It opened my eyes to disabilities, and how strongly living beings can compensate for them.
As for Daisy, she only lived a couple more years after that. As best I understand it, she was hit by a car and killed. Though I never quite understood how this happened, because 8-year-old me was home at the time, and would have noticed this kind of thing on our quiet street. Not long after that, the cat distribution system chose us, and my brother and I bonded with a black and white kitten we met in the day care of the bowling alley my parents went to. The cat mysteriously disappeared about eight years later, which I never got a clear answer to either.
But Ginger lived on, and only had to be put down when I was in my 20s. She was a good and loving dog with impressive adaptation skills. She was also the last dog anyone in my family ever had. My brother and I both had cats in adulthood, and are more or less cat people now. Which is odd when dogs had a huge impact on us. But that’s the nature of cats, I guess.
Thank you for sharing your dogs and cats. I enjoy stories about pets based in reality as opposed to Batty’s shaggy dog story.
I hope King found a good home. German Shepherds are incredibly intelligent and eager to work, making them naturally easy to train. Ginger adapting to her blindness is remarkable. Relying heavily on her acute senses of smell and hearing, she could navigate familiar spaces and live a long happy, active life. I hope rearranging the furniture was necessary because without the details it seems kind of cruel. Daisy getting hit by a car is so terribly sad. It always hurts when pets die, but to have one taken away so suddenly has to be worse.
Your brain must work on the same wavelength as my husband. His dogs have been named Caesar, Duke, Kaiser, King (ours was a Doberman), and Baron. Our last two have been named Rusty, because of his reddish coat, and now Fergus.
I first met Caesar, a Great Dane, when we were first dating. After one date we went back to Mr. bwoeh’s place. He mentioned he had a dog but this was the first time I met him. After we entered his apartment, Caesar slowly approached me and started sniffing. I wasn’t expecting him to be so big, and stood there like a deer caught in the headlights. Caesar reared on his back legs, placed his big paws on my shoulders and licked my face. I had passed the “dog test”. Caesar approved.
While Mr. bweoh preferred big dogs, I wanted something smaller and chose a black toy poodle. Growing up, my next door neighbor was a French war bride who owned a white toy poodle named Mignon. I always like the name so I named my toy poodle Mignon. Mignon was very affectionate and loved children. When she died I went to some of our neighbor homes to give them the news. Many of the kids wept.
My last dog was a Westie named MacDuff. A husband born in Scotland, a breed of dog that originated in Scotland, why not give the dog a name from the “Scottish Play”. Mac was my cuddle buddy. He lived an amazing 19 years. I haven’t had a dog since. There was no topping Mac.
My older brother loves cats. He tells me after his cats die, a stray will appear and adopt him. Perhaps I should get a cat. A cat lady starter kit.
Mr. bwoeh has discussed getting an English Mastiff. He showed me a photograph of one. I asked him if the photo had been doctored. After he answered no, I asked him if was I supposed to walk it or get a saddle and ride it.
Fergus is our second pure German Shepherd. Our previous one was back in the late 1980s and 1990s. Kaiser was always an even-tempered dog, and highly protective of our family, especially our son. Kaiser was a little over a year old when he entered our home. Someone trained him well.
Our beloved Dane Shepard, Rusty, died from cardiac failure just this past March. He was quite a character. He was exactly the way you described German Shepherds. Taking him on walks was always an adventure because he often pulled on the leash. Mr. bwoeh would joke that Rusty would take me for a drag. This July 4th really hurt. Unlike most dogs, Rusty loved fireworks. A few years ago, during a fireworks show just down the road, Rusty got loose. He was having a ball, galloping up and down the street, barking at the fireworks, his tongue wagging. I miss the big galoot.
I don’t remember Bicentennial Day very well. We spent the day with some of my parents’ friends. For some reason, we went bowling. Perhaps the guy was on Dad’s team in the company bowling league. Beats me. I was most likely the typical young teenage girl who wanted to be anywhere but there.
Now entering its sixth week, this overwrought, meandering tale sure has the feel of yet another failed prestige arc. The only thing missing was his obligatory puff piece preceding its appearance. I guess Batty ran out of victims… I mean takers.
Newspaper Representative: After ‘The Burnings’ fiasco, we won’t even sell you ad space. Why don’t you try producing something funny?
CBH, here’s to you and all the effort you put into this. You are indeed a Dedicated Follower of Batiuk.
Thanks, Marty. I couldn’t do it without my dear co-bloggers. The trials of Following The Batty One are too great for any one soul.
And we couldn’t do it without you, CBH. You are Ray Stantz, the heart of the Ghostbusters.
It’s honestly hard to believe Puff Batty couldn’t come up with a big band song that would be more appropriate for this solemn occasion than 1967’s sardonic “Death of a Clown.”
Sentimental Journey?
Gonna take a sentimental journey
Gonna set my heart at ease
Gonna take a sentimental journey
To renew old memories.
I’ll Be Seeing You?
I’ll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day through.
Having said that, I bow to no one in my love of the Kinks. I once had a dream where someone was interviewing me and they asked me, “What is the greatest song ever written?” I pondered for a second and answered confidently, “Waterloo Sunset.” And I woke up, and I realized: Yeah. Yeah, I guess it probably is.
The Kinks were my sister-in-law’s favorite band. One of the first dates she went on with my brother was a Kinks concert at the Richfield Coliseum.
The Kinks lyrics were pulled directly from the actual graffiti on site. But no one but Batiuk and Davis knows this, so it just confused a whole busload of snarkers.
I rather enjoyed learning that Tom Batiuk beat all of the folks who share their totally-real-it-happened-my-uncle-saw-it stories on Facebook about Americans visiting foreign countries during the 4th of July and wondering why there were no celebrations to that bit by 50 years. Beat them by 50 years and did it better and funnier. Tom Batiuk did this… Truly remarkable.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 36 of In The Name of The Father
I THOUGHT WE WERE DONE WITH DINKLE YAPPING ABOUT HIS DAD
Today’s Past Batiukverse Storyline: Funky and Tony Go To Salsomaggiore, Italy For The World Pizza Competition
I can tell from personal experience (last thursday, Me and my family went on vacation to Mexico) that Panel 3 is somewhat accurate on how long it takes to get on boarded on a plane
Tony’s expression in panel 2 screams “go right a-fucking-head, drink that bottle of alcohol and I’m gonna kill you in the exact same manner that Tony Soprano killed Ralph Cifaretto”
Darin: Does Mr. Montoni know that Funky went to drown his sorrows after placing last place in the Pizza Championship?
Rachel: I highly doubt it.
We’re supposed to believe that greasy dump Montoni’s got invited to a world pizza competition? It wouldn’t even be a candidate for “Greater Cleveland’s best pizza” in the local Pennysaver.
Also: Christ, Wally, just tell them you can’t drink alcohol.They’d understand, and they’d be a lot less insulted. Why are basic courtesy and clarity so difficult for these smirking cretins?
Christ, Wally, just tell them you can’t drink alcohol. They’d understand, and they’d be a lot less insulted. Why are basic courtesy and clarity so difficult for these smirking cretins?
That was Funky in those strips, not Wally. Wally didn’t reappear until this strip:
Either way… it’s not difficult or rude to decline alcohol when you have a valid reason to do so.
But does Batiuk know this? All signs point to “No.”
Apparently, band turkeys in Dinkle’s freezer don’t spoil, either, no matter how many decades you leave them in there.
As someone who has had Luigi’s pizza a few times, I concur, they would not be invited anywhere. I’ve also been to Italy many times and learned to make pizza there. My favorite is pizza in teglia, or Roman style pizza. The one with potatoes and rosemary is out of this world! The true secret to great pizza is fresh ingredients and a real pizza oven.
Not whatever Tony uses to make Worse Than Gas Station Pizza.
Hey, I live near a Casey’s, and their pizza is Domino’s/Pizza Hut/Papa John”s grade. And it’s a lot cheaper.
Batiuk doesn’t know what other pizzas taste like.
RE: Tues. 7/7’s ‘Shaft:
You know it’s going to be a looong month when we’re already on the 7th and St. Spires choir member Pat has had more dialogue to date in “Crankshaft” than Ed Crankshaft himself.
There’s always a silver lining. Remember: Yes to Dinkle means no to Batton and Skip.
Although Puff Batty has a remarkable ability to make you want whatever it is that isn’t what he’s doing at any given moment.
“If this is tea, please bring me coffee; if this is coffee, please bring me tea.” — Abraham Lincoln (apocryphal)
7/7: What’s next? Mommy stabbing his sheet music?
That would be way too exciting and humorous for this plot.
It would also require curiosity about the widow Larry left behind.
There’s a way to do something with the idea that Dinkle’s ego is a massive overcompensation for his daddy issues but the time to do that would have been in Act II when Batty was trying to use it as a fresh start, not 50+ years later. The only way I’d buy something like this is if this was all set up for Dinkle to suddenly die himself. Hey, that’s an idea. Kill Dinkle.
I said from Day 1 that this story didn’t make any sense because of Dinkle’s age. Even if Dinkle realized that his father drove all his pushy, aggressive behavior, what good would that do when Dinkle himself is pushing 80? He’s already pushed his daughter Halle into the profession, influenced an abusive successor in one-armed Becky, and continued his behavior on a choir made up of old ladies. It is way, way, way too late for Dinkle to have an epiphany that his alcoholic father made him an asshole. The most anyone can do is say, “yeah, he did.” And it’s far too late for Dinkle to change his own behavior. Which would never happen anyway, because Tom Batiuk needs Dinkle to be an asshole, because he thinks that’s funny.
What we’re seeing is his asking them to let his past be an excuse for being Zitboy: “his dad was an alcoholic no-show so he gets to indulge his God complex.”
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 37 of In The Name Of The Father
There’s a trope called “Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse”. (it is a deconstruction of the Freudian Excuse), it states just because you had bad things happen to you in life, it shouldn’t give you the right to be a horrible person (examples: Tony Soprano (his dad, Giovanni “Johnny Boy”, and uncle, Corrado Jr. “Junior”, were in the DiMeo Family (a mafia family in New Jersey) and his mother, Livia, was a awful parent who emotionally abused him, his older sister Janice and his younger sister Barbara when they were growing up, which he claims as why he is who he is, but his younger sister Barbara is a decent person, which means that Tony chose to be a mafioso, just like Johnny Boy and Junior before him. He is aware of this too, as in Season 5, he has a dream, which near the end of said dream, has him confronting his high school P.E. coach, Mr. Molinaro, who tells Tony that he had the talent and the skill to live a honest life, but instead, he chose to be a criminal) and Injustice Superman (he lost Lois and Metropolis because of Joker and became a brutal dictator who’ll kill anyone who dares speak up against his rule, Earth 1 Superman tells him that Lois’s death doesn’t justify becoming a tyrant)
Why am I saying this? It’s because Dinkle basically said in today’s strip that he is who he is because he wanted his father’s approval, which I consider to be bullshit
Well said.
But it’s the bullshit Batiuk uses to justify himself and his favorites. In his case, he has to have mommy issues because admitting she was right makes him an idiot inviting harrassment.
Batiuk wants it to be a license to commit jackassery.
7/8: Does this pig-headed fraud acknowledge the harm he did others in his quest for validation? To quote Lana Kane, neeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwp.
It’s so infuriating and fake. This arc is so bad.
It makes the trial of Dead Skunk Head look coherent.
At this point, you almost have to wonder if Batty is trying to drive readers away on purpose. Maybe he wants out of his contract, so he’s pulling a full-on ‘The Producers’ move, deliberately manufacturing a strip so aggressively unreadable that the syndicate will be forced to cancel it just to stop the bleeding. ‘Springtime for Dinkle in Germany’?
I’m starting to keep an eye on the strip’s follower count at the top of the page. Currently 11.3K Followers.
Batiuk will never, ever give this up voluntarily, at least not as long as he can get paid to write precisely what he wants to, with no editorial interference. Being a “writer” is his entire identity.
So, no, he’s not trying to tank the strip — this arc is exactly what he wanted to do. Later this month, having Skip and Batton continue with their endless interview will be exactly what he wants to do.
There’s no ulterior motive … as seen in his writing, Batiuk operates at a one-dimensional level of “First thought, best thought.” And that thought will never be, “Maybe I’m not good at this.”
You take me too literally. It was a joke, an attempt to explain the depths Batty’s writing has fallen.
I really am keeping my eye on the follower count, though. I have only read the Crankshaft discussion once this week. Several commenters either announced their departure or threatened to unfollow the strip if Ed wasn’t featured again.
Dinkle’s redemption is about as convincing as that “I never fit in” stunt that Cindy pulled at the 50th reunion a few years back.
Look, the whole flat bad guy characters are really just broken people bit can work, you just have to do the work. You have to show how they were broken and/or you have to show how they redeem themselves (or at least the conflict that arises within them in regards to the connection between their brokenness and behavior). Heck, TB even did this when he reclaimed Bull Bushka in Act II. It doesn’t even take all that much time/many panels if it is deftly-written…
YES. That’s exactly what it is. Cindy Summers at the class reunion, whining about feeling left out to all the people she maliciously left out.
There were ways to do Cindy’s redemption from her high school days, there’d be ways (and times) to do Dinkle’s behavior being an overcompensating act born from his childhood issues. But these ways and opportunities were missed entirely because TB does not think beyond the immediacy of what he’s writing. He does not consider his characters to be real people within the context of the fictional world he has created. They’re merely action figures to be posed how he wants and to be pulled from the toy box to participate in whatever story Tommy Batiuk has invented for his game this time.
He makes these big sweeping changes to characters’ personalities and adds to their backstories in unnatural way because those things he wants to do don’t exist until he decides he wants to do them. Cindy “not fitting in” during Act I can work if actually done right, the idea that her popularity is a farce and is more due to her overbearing nature keeping people in line but the whole thing is hollow, she’s not truly liked or respected because she’s so mean and that’s something she needs to make up for after high school. That she was a deeply insecure person who acted in a certain way to mask that. Those are things that you introduce early in Act II and show her gradually trying to make up for and deal with it.
But no, she just shows up having changed and then Batty pulls the “I WAS ALONE TOO!” card out of his ass at the end of the strip’s run because Cindy wasn’t a character with thoughts and feelings that informed and influenced how she’d act. Like most of his characters, she was whatever he needed to be for the story he wanted to tell in the immediate moment. He is completely incapable of thinking beyond the immediate moment when it comes to his stories and characters. Dinkle being insecure didn’t exist until now because he never wanted to do a story about it until now but once he did then it was always there and we’re just supposed to accept it because his intent now applies to his intent then.
This is because his sense of storytelling is, as said a thousand times, influenced entirely by old comic books where continuity and consistency was a much more loose thing.
Yeah, I’m not buying it either. Cindy’s “I never fit in” was every bit of b.s. as Dinkle’s proclamation that “greatest band director” was an invented persona. How many times have we see him thinking to himself “I’m the World’s Greatest Band Director” with no one else in the room? That’s not a lack of self-esteem, that’s just plain egomania.
I don’t understand why TB insists on retroactively changing the motivation of characters years later. It undermines them and damages his own work. Cindy was a snobby mean girl, Dinkle was a tyrannical ego-driven band director, and they were funny back then. Let them be, and don’t apologize for that. The problem, which has been discussed here many times before, is that aside from Bull he never let the original cast grow up emotionally. Not only that, no one calls anyone on their bad behavior. Instead of going along with Harry’s all night choir practices, wouldn’t it have been great for just one of those ladies to say “Hey, do we look like 16 year old band kids to you?” If he had allowed his characters to mature a little more gracefully and have some self-realization, then it wouldn’t require all this apologetic backpedaling.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 38 of In The Name of The Father
I recently contracted a stomach bug, vomited around a dozen times, and yet that’s far less painful than trying to understand today’s Crankshaft strip