With the advent of good ol’ Cranky bitching to a poor receptionist at the doctor’s office on Sunday, I think we can finally say that, ‘In the Name of the Father’ has reached its conclusion.
And boy, what a tale uh….softly…told it was. I’m guessing by ‘softly’ Batiuk meant ‘lacking direction, momentum, or motivation.’
It was awful, truly. So, for me, it was great. Because at least awe at awfulness is a feeling. His attempts at regular old Crankshaft gags, while objectively of better quality, leave nothing to be remarked on. It’s eating a stale, dollar store box of chocy-chip cookies, and remembering the taste of name brand Chips A’hoy. Forgettably disappointing.
But the arc we just got was a greatest hits medley of all Batiuk’s best sins. We got plot holes, weird retcons, call-backs to people who died in horrible ways, failed attempts to be artsy and profound, depression, ruin, and wry grins.
I went back and binged the entire seven weeks in one go. It took six minutes. Like many of Batiuk’s prestige pieces, it does improve somewhat being consumed this way, because you’re not stuck too long on a strip that’s nothing more than inane exposition, or a bland bit of conversation.
Somewhere along the line Batiuk has forgotten entirely that his audience will be reading his stories one strip at a time, with 24 hours between strips. No one is going back and rereading this dreck in massive chunks except for me. So, even if not gunning for a laugh out loud punchline, each strip should do something more than blandly progress the weeklong conversation.
RIVETING
That’s just one of many guidelines for writing well that Batiuk has either forgotten, willfully ignored, or never knew in the first place.
I confessed in some earlier posts that I dabble occasionally in the dark arts of fanfiction, and as I muddled through this nonsense for more than a month, my fanfic addled brain couldn’t help but cough up a version of the story that I saw as better.
I held myself to the constraints of being more or less the same story, told in way consistent with the best possible version of Batiuk’s style, taking up the same seven weeks. I briefly thought about trying to paste strips together for the true fan comic experience, but the task was too daunting, even for me. I hope you’ll accept my script format.
So, nestle in dear nitters, for a the first part of a story entitled, ‘Sentimental Journey’… which like all tales competently told begins with an inciting incident.
Week One:
To Be Continued…
Now, let me talk through a couple of my creative decisions, and how I think they fix some of the problems I think wrecked ‘In the Name of the Father’.
1.) Do not include Chippewa Lake Park. Yeah, both places are real and existed and it’s plausible Lucy and Eugene would have visited both. But all Batiuk did by adding a new location was confuse absolutely everyone. He’s spent 30 plus years building up Summit Beach Park as special. Keep things focused! (Something you’ll hear me repeat.) So everything here is Summit Beach and the Wisteria Ballroom again.
2.) Don’t try to make Eugene’s moving a big mystery. Two of the strips in the first week of ITNOTF were all ominous about Eugene moving. The audience doesn’t care about Eugene alone, he’s a bland quaternary character. You can’t build any stakes on his fate. The audience instead needs a little reminder about what the ancient love triangle is all about, as Lil is a main character of the strip.
3.) Try to make things specific to the characters. The only day that kind of maybe worked that whole week was maybe the “Good old days, getting old days strip.”
Except that it these sort of platitudes could be blathered by any two characters in this strip looking at any old picture. I did my best to make things a bit more personal.
4.) A wider range of emotions. Other than a few ominous side eyes by Eugene, most of the week in ITNOTF is full of bland grins. I tried to throw in some shock, surprise, concern and sadness.
5.) A bit of classic Dinkle behavior. If we’re going to learn Dinkle’s hardass personality was in reaction to his father, let’s get a little taste of it when he’s first shown in the story.
6.) Crankshaft being Crankshaft in Crankshaft. While he stood around blankly staring for most of ITNOTF, I hope to weave actual Crankshaft time into this, even if he doesn’t have a ton to actually do.
I acknowledge that one way this week still fails is in setting up clearly for the audience any question that would make them interested in what is next in the story. Lil taking the photo to Dinkle is plausible, but there’s no real stakes to it.
By talking about how Lucy loved the old band music, I’m hoping to establish why Lil would care at all about who Larry Dinkle was and follow Harry around listening to his stories. I also planted a little reminder of the whole thwarted proposal fiasco, so maybe people would speculate that I would finally resolve that.
I am welcome to any kind of criticism on this. After all, I’m not a Pulitzer Nominated Cartoonist of 50 plus years. I’m just a woman who has written some fanfic and binged some YouTube videos on story structure by other amateurs .
Stay tuned.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Today’s Crankfuckery
(Ed then gmod ragdolls onto the ground)
i know what gmod is and i know what ragdoll means, but i’ve never gotten this joke. So someone killed Ed, or what?
in my defense, i’m three times as old as you. So cut me a little slack if i need help understanding you kids today. If i had a lawn, you’d be welcome to stand on it.
It’s easy to think things through better than he cares to. I remember inserting actual stakes into the Cranky and The Bombers arc.
7/20: As we get back to the Batton Death March, I get a bit of a thrill remembering something lost on Batiuk: by making the original Flash a character in his Flash, he’s being told that The Flash is whoever the suits say he is.
RE: Mon. 7/20’s C’Shaft:
First…NOOOOOOOOO!!!
Second…What could possibly be worsethan following up “In the Name of Larry Dinkle” and “Silence Is (Fool’s) Golden” with Batiuk droning on through Batton Thomas againabout his early cartooning career? How about Batiuk droning on through Batton Thomas again about his endless obsession with a certain 1961 Silver Age Flash comic book story?
Third…Merciful Minerva, could DSH John’s grimace be any broader in Panel Two? I half expect him to shoot out his adhesive tongue and snag an unwary spider from the cobwebs in the background for his lunch!
Eugene is an awful character, but that doesn’t mean we don’t care about what happens to him. If there’s any one part of this story that got a positive reaction, it was concern for his eventual destination. We’ll all get old someday (hopefully), and it’s a natural thing to have empathy for others about. Batiuk treated it like it was the contents of Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase. He needs to start using a writing technique called “telling your readers what the fuck is going on in your story.”
No kidding. Did Eugene go to Bedside Manor? If so, then why can’t Lillian simply visit him there? If he’s going to live with his relative or at a facility in another town or state, then why not just say so?
All this fancy nonsense does is alienate people. At least Evanses are telling a story that’s coherent and easily understood: people trying to have a baby not knowing what to do now that she’s having one.
The fancy nonsense is the point! That’s what It’s Called Writing really is. It’s about dressing nothing in so many layers of pretense that it makes no sense, and then acting like your readers’ confusion is proof of your genius.
This sort of thing is why I think he must have been something of a pain in the neck as a child. Insufferable and whiny is no way to live but you can’t tell him that.
Considering that comic collection trades aren’t exactly cheap, that’s pretty first-world privilege of Batton to be dropping money that could go to his lunch on every single book that has Flash #123 in it. Maybe if he’s doing a gimmick collection of books, fair enough, but that’s still a lot of money to be blowing on metaphorical “comfort food”. Like c’mon, they have made statues of that cover, save your money to track that down.
It also doesn’t make a lick of sense from a collecting standpoint. People buy uncurated junk collections in hopes there will be something valuable, rare, or weird in there. Not so they can read a comic book they’ve already read a hundred times!
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 1 of Batton Week
(Batton picks up a trash can lit and beats John Howard to death with it)
It should be noted that we’re pretty much guaranteed to endure his huffing and puffing about the post Crisis Wally West Flash. He hates sidekicks because he thinks they detract from his idol. Stan Lee hated them because he knew what child endangerment is. Hell, they even had Green Arrow wonder why billionaires inducted kids in their thrill game…..
Notice that CBH’s rewritten strips have actual punchlines in them. Not only is she telling a better version of the story, there are actual punchlines that make each strip work by itself. Batiuk forgot how to do that years ago. So i’m looking forward to the rest of the series.
Batiuk didn’t get awards doing that. That’s why he stopped doing it.
The incredibly long story arc Crankshaft, “In the Name of the Father,” has mercifully come to an end after seven weeks. I have to wonder why Batty chose to feature a story about Harry L. Dinkle, a Funky Winkerbean refugee who has been usurping the strip since being brought over to Crankshaft.
Harry Dinkle, the self-proclaimed “World’s Greatest Band Director,” certainly had his moment, but what was Batty trying to accomplish with this storyline? Was he attempting to recapture the past popularity of the Harry Dinkle character? If so, who was asking for more Dinkle? Were readers really sending emails to TomBatiuk.com clamoring, “More Harry Dinkle!!!”? Were there any commenters in the Crankshaft discussions claiming to be pleased to see Dinkle?
Dinkle already had a reputation and a legacy. Why revisit the character only to diminish what made him memorable for 50 years? When Dinkle said, “I never developed my own sense of self-esteem” I rolled my eyes so hard I couldn’t see straight for an hour. What purpose did this storyline actually serve? Was it just Batty trying to write checks his writing skills can’t cash?
And the seventh week? I was the most mystified by that. It was the absolute peak of the Funkyverse formula: maximum emotional drag for the absolute minimum narrative output. We spent six entire days watching two elderly people stare at each other in silence, only for one of them to say a single word, make a face of absolute disgust on the way out, and get loaded into a sedan like a folding lawn chair. It takes a “special kind of talent” to stretch “an old man visited a bookstore, got cranky, and left” into a six-part epic, but there it was. If my Photoshop skills were better, I’d make Lillian and Eugene into French mimes.
Last question. Why does Batty hate Ed Crankshaft? Dozens of commenters mentioned how much they’d rather see Ed. Seven weeks of the eponymous character as background. And when we finally do see Ed, it’s a one-off. Batty, can you show us on this doll where Ed Crankshaft hurt you?
FINALLY!!!! It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been waiting to see Batiuk Thomas in Crankshaft since late May. I made a boast and Banana Jr. 6000 egged me on.
It seemed appropriate to wait for a story arc featuring him. Without further ado.
As I wrote back in May:
Golly, gee willikers. The Komix Korner, and who should make an appearance? The most vile creature in the Batiukverse.🤢🤮
VAPORIZE HIM!!!
This one is hanging on the wall of my home office. Mr. bwoeh wanted to get in on the fun. He’s a little bit of a better shot than me. /s
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
For some odd reason, JetPack does not display your first Batton pistol range photo. I believe it is your target picture as opposed to Mr. bwoeh’s.
My comments are directed at your target page. Your shits oh Batton’s nose, makes him look like Cranky. Now that is eerie!
Now you would also be eager to know, I am no longer a “the Phantom Empire Virgin”! I just finished it for the first time last night.
1. Autry is not a great actor, but he sells this film. He does something in his pictures that other Western stars rarely do: he gets beat up a lot in his films.
2. The special effects are pretty good for 1935. If you compare this to “Metropolis 1927” and to “King Kong 1933”, they hold up nicely and help the film.
3. All the actors take the script seriously, and make it believable.
I don’t know, BWOEH, if I will watch it again. It would be difficult to match your 10 times. But Schnikes, I did enjoy it and the music, especially “I’m Getting a Moon’s Eye View of the World”! 🌎 🌖
Neither photo appeared in JetPack for me either. Perhaps it’s a Postimages to Jetpack issue? Come join us on the SoSF webpage.
I have yet to see ‘The Phantom Empire.’ I bookmarked a version of it on YouTube ages ago, but I have never taken the plunge. Furthermore, I take recommendations from Batty with genuine trepidation.
It bothers me greatly when I read a young person describe the special effects of ‘King Kong’ as “cheesy”. Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen were cinema pioneers.
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
Like you, I greatly admire “King Kong 1933”. When I worked in Adolescent Mental Health, I showed the film many times. It is vastly superior to the 1976 version. Of course, Peter Jackson is today’s master. But 1933 has the superior battle between Kong and the T Rex. Plus, no one screams like Fay Wray. I understand Fay was the inspiration for the 1893 painting “the Scream” by Edvard Munch. Edvard was truly a long-distance visionary.
Bwoeh, I hope your summer includes a trip cross country.
Now THAT’S quality content!
Wow bwoeh, I’m impressed you went to the effort! And you’re a much better shot than me.
If you’re interested in doing this again, I have some ideas on how to make a game of it.
Thanks. I have arthritis in my right hand, so I have a Walther PD380, which is easy to hold and has low recoil. I fired two clips. It had been a few months since I had been to the range, so I’m somewhat embarrassed by the couple of shots that missed the 8.5″x11″ of Batton and especially my first shot that missed the B-27 completely.
I am intrigued by your suggestion to make a game of it.
Observation: Towards the bottom of the GoComics Crankshaft page is a section “Five Favorites from Crankshaft”. Les Moore’s smug puss in the September 3, 2024, comic is just begging to be made into a target.
The thought of using Harry L. Dinkle’s head as a target has crossed my mind. His enormous cranium would be hard to miss.
Am I coming across as psychotic?
Batton Thomas has the ability to induce psychosis in otherwise calm, stable people. I think this exercise is a healthy way to deal with that unwanted stimulus. Drop me a line at angerthespy@gmail.com if you’re interested in participating in a blog post.
Email sent. I’m thinking, “Yeah, I have an adverse reaction when I see Batton Thomas.”
Ladytron’s Destroy Everything You Touch has been on my playlist rotation since you included the song in your blog the other day. In one of life’s incredible coincidences, the YouTube algorithm put this in my feed. It was just posted yesterday.
I like Ladytron songs because they sound like women wrote them. “Destroy Everything You Touch” is so full of quiet anger. My favorite is “Sugar” which has the lyric “If I give you sugar, will you give me something elusive and temporary?” That would just confuse a man. “You… want us to foster a kitten?”
All the content is excellent, Harriet. Really. It stands up. It does make me wonder what kind of response the strips would have had if that was the script instead of what we got. Would enough people have seen that the quality has somehow briefly improved?
It’s just such a pity, in sum. The canvas, the tools, the paints – it’s all there. He’s the professional. Why doesn’t he even so much as care as you do.
7/21: It’s true to Batiuk’s character that he thinks reading a funny book makes him smarter than a Nobel laureate.
Also, I wonder if he knows that Gardner Fox simply stole the idea from someone else. What mad universe does he live in if he never considered that a funny book Rembrandt isn’t an original thinker?
Well, aren’t you just SO SPECIAL, Batton? Maybe you can put this latest Flash collection on the shelf alongside your many Nobel Prizes for Physics. Not to mention your Pulitzer Prize for your comic strip…oh, wait, you NEVER won a Pulitzer for your comic strip, did you? Just like someone else we know.
Ah, yes. Flash #123, the greatest comic book ever published. With it’s story of a parallel universe. A concept that became very important in DC comics for decades to come. But remember that installment of “Funky Winkerbean” where a customer at the comics store complained about multi-universe stories, and Crazy Harry said the customer should read Atomic Comics, which were great because they didn’t have multi-verse stories? Perhaps Batiuk should pick a lane on this subject.
i was just thinking of that. John Howard was there too. I also remember another strip where JH said “old school is in session” while Batton droned on about his inane preferences to a bunch of school children.
The joke, of course, is that the reason Atomic Vomits doesn’t have multiverse stories is because they don’t have stories at all, just covers.
Does Batty sleep with a bagged and slabbed copy of Flash #123? Does he hug it like a teddy bear?
Batty: I love you, Flash #123. You complete me.
CBH, I’m looking forward to ‘Sentimental Journey (Part 2)’. For someone who has written some fanfic and binged some YouTube videos on story structure by other amateurs, you’re making “auteur glorieux” look bad.
7/22: Years of effort are inferior to pulling something out of a funny book Hemingway’s arse: Official.
So, the work of thousands of astronomers, physicists, mathmeticians, and other scientists over the centuries is mere piffle compared to that of Comic Book Writers? Good to know.
Plus, it’s not as though Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Hugo Gernsback, E.E. Smith, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick, and so on did anything like that before Flash #123 came out and changed the course of Western civilization as we know it.
This hamster needs to think this because he mistakenly believes that he can triumph and be the one dishing out pain for once. He can’t admit that all of his misery was self inflicted.
Also, the only use he has for Asimov is to remind us that Dick Facey is too big a deal to know or care who Oprah Winfrey is.
I posted on GoComics, and it seemed to get posted right away, but now it’s “Pending Approval”. Hm.
I have no idea what in that would warrant needing approval. Any ideas? Just GoComics being GoComics?
The artist doesn’t matter to him because he’s a shitty one and knows it.
Green Luthor,
I had similar troubles yesterday on GoComics. On the strip, “Ollie and Quentin” the 2 characters were fighting over unequal chairs. I posted a quote by Helen Keller and got this:
[CONTENT DEACTIVATED – WHY?] ***This brings to mind Helen Keller. “I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”***
Apparently, Helen Keller is blind, deaf, and BANNED!
Green Luthor,
I have an update. I added this comment today AND it got banned by GoComics:
🧿💠”PENDING APPROVAL (since banned!)
You will not be able to read it, but on the July 21st strip, I quoted the esteemed Helen Keller. That quote got banned by the editors of GoComics.
Apparently, Helen Keller is blind, deaf,
and banned.”💠🧿
That last line is a direct quote from my previous comment inspired by you, sir!
¡Solidarity Now! (I may be mixing anti Soviet Union speeches with Seinfeld)
I guess I passed whatever approval process GoComics has, because the post is there now. The ways of GoComics are mysterious indeed.
In case anybody wanted a ruling on this: this week is a continuation of the Bad and Thomas interview. It just has John Howard standing round and smirking at everything Batton says, instead of one-armed skip.
It doesn’t matter who the sap listening to him droning on is. All that matters is his not realizing that he’s revealed how stupid he is.
And in 600 B.C., Aesop pioneered work in the study of animal species communicating with one another, and he did it in a room in Greece that didn’t even have electricity!!!!!
And three decades before those lame-ass Wright Brothers made their pathetic little “flight” at Kitty Hawk, Jules Verne wrote about a machine that flew around the entire world!!!!!
And the Hadron supercollider isn’t located in Cern, dipshit. It’s located in Meyrin, a suburb of Geneva. CERN is an organization, not a place.
I think what annoys me is the overwrought reverence. Yes, Flash #123 was a comic he read as a kid and it meant a lot to him. Yes, it’s important for what it did with comics (introducing/popularizing the multiverse for DC and being the starting point in bringing back the Golden Age heroes). But you don’t need to talk about it like it was a religious experience. You don’t need to place a grander importance on it than it has.
It’s such a common problem with everything he does. He can’t just talk about his writing process or inspirations or interests, he has to puff them up but it’s so over the top that all you can do is roll your eyes. He so desires for him and his work to be seen as more important than they are, much like with his constant chasing of awards. When I was a teenager, I saw the original Mobile Suit Gundam when it was playing on Toonami. The old series from 1979 with the dated animation and everything and the seriousness and rather unfantastical nature of it completely blew my mind. I can recognize the effect it had on me and that I enjoy going back and re-watching it without having to hype it up as a better war story than All Quiet on the Western Front or Saving Private Ryan because I’m not looking for that validation of what I enjoy.
Batty can’t do that. He craves that validation. It’s a problem with nerds in general. Too many want the validation of their activities from “normies” because they think if the normies see their nerd hobbies as something greater then the nerds themselves are validated. It’s like the people who got pissed because Roger Ebert didn’t think that video games were art. Batty’s a lot like that. He can’t accept that his work and his hobbies are simple pastimes and that’s a-ok, he needs the validation from others that it all contains more meaning and significance than it actually does.
Oh, the “video games are/aren’t art” discussion. Lordy.
I do recall your initial post stating your namesake’s inspiration, so you’re certainly no stranger to it as well. Throughout my life, I’ve cared more about video games in general than I have movies or books. I’ve easily spent more money and time on the former medium than the latter. I owned a Neo Geo AES for twenty years. I’ve spent $1000 in 1999 dollars to get a JP launch PS2. I’ve had the fortune to visit Japan a few times, and my primary destination there are arcades.
I do not call video games art. Similarly, I do not call games art. I do not refer to baseball as art, for example. But, as you say – the people who want to have that discussion and argument are not interested in the nuance of language and definitions. They want validation. They want to be affirmatively told that their indulgence deserves no scorn or ridicule, but do not realize that it is their individual interaction with the medium that is at fault, not the medium itself.
“Rose” Batiuk didn’t stab your books because she only thought that the books were wasteful and childish, Tom. The fault wasn’t solely with the books, Tom.
Everyone gets old, but some people never grow up.
Yesterday’s Crankfuckery
Day 2 of Boring Batton Thomas Week
(ZZZZ)
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 3 of Boring Batton Thomas Week
(Reverse Flash shows up and beats John Howard to death, then runs away to continue to ruin Barry Allen’s life just because)