Sorry for the hiatus. Harvest season is gearing up here. And for my poor cohosts, the stupid pizza robot has a secret special robot power to suck organized creative discourse right out of their brains through their eyes. We’re all trying. I mean, they’re trying. I sadly have reserved only a quarter ass for blogging since I need at least half of my ass for farm chores. (The final half-cheek is dedicated to napping.)
Links to previous installments.
Summary for those not wanting four tabs open at once: Eugene brought Lil a box of old Summit Park photos. She saw Larry Dinkle’s band in one and asked Harry about it during choir practice. Harry and Lil and Cranky went to Harry’s house, where Harry explained that his dad was the scatterbrained genius trope.
I have changed the formatting for these final installments, since all the paint editing, even with just text boxes, was fiddly as all hell and took up more time than it was worth IMO. If you hate it enough, let me know and I’ll back to higher effort posting.
MONDAY:
Panel 1: everyone sitting in living room. Moon outside window to show it’s laaate. DINKLE: “On weekends, my mom would take me to see my father perform. She never missed a chance to see him in his element.”
Panel 2: sepia toned flashback of Larry directing his family sitting by, mom looks smitten, boy Dink looks amazed. DINKLE: “When he was standing on that podium, controlling all that sound with just the flick of a stick, I was in awe.”
Panel 3: living room again, Harriet looks lovingly at Dink because she’s dumb. DINKLE: “In that moment, I wanted to be him.”
LIL: A director?
DINKLE: A wizard.
TUESDAY:
Panel 1: living room, Crank is flipping through a photo album in the background. LIL: “Your father was only known locally?” DINK: “Yes, but he dreamed of making it big. Every piece he wrote, he’d say…”
Panel 2: flashback of Larry scribbling in his office in the dark, wife looks on from the door with a flashlight, little Harry peering around her. LARRY: “This is it, this is going to be my breakout hit!”
WIFE: “Dearest, did you forget to pay the electric bill again?”
Panel 3: Living room. LIL: How many compositions did your dad write?
DINK: Hundreds.
WEDNESDAY:
Panel 1: Living room: CRANK: “So every song was a dud?”
DINK indignant: “No! His songs were perfect! He was a master craftsman! Every tune more masterful than the last!”
Panel 2: Living room, CRANK: “Then why did…?”
LIL smug: “As an artist myself, I can guess what he was lacking.”
LIL and DINK at same time: “Salesmanship.”
THURSDAY
Panel 1: Living room: DINK: “I remember the last piece my father ever wrote, ‘Concerto for Trumpet’ He seemed twice as excited as normal about it. Twice as sure it would finally be his big hit.”
Panel 2: “He was set to debut the composition at a performance at the Wisteria Ballroom at Summit Beach Park on the night he died.”
Panel 3: LIL hand to heart, tearful: “He died?”
CRANK: “What’s your problem? It would be more surprising if he was still alive.”
FRIDAY
Panel 1: sepia toned flashback of an empty stage with a crowded dancehall and frantic Larry. DINKLE: “We heard that his band never showed up that night. We never found out why.”
Panel 2: sepia toned flashback of Larry driving away at night with Summit Beach in the background. DINKLE: They found my father’s car the next morning half sunk in a canal. Maybe he’d fallen asleep, or he’d veered for a deer, or another car had run him off the road.
Panel 3: Harriet has her hand on Dink’s shoulder. DINKLE: “Maybe he just got distracted.”
SATURDAY:
Panel 1: Living room. LIL: “How old were you when your father died?”
Panel 2: Sepia toned back yard, young Dink stands with his bat, ball in the dirt in front of him.: DINK: “Young enough to miss him. Just old enough to blame him.”
Panel 3: DINK frowning: “Not old enough to forgive him.”
SUNDAY
Panel 1: word bubble coming from Dink house sky is rosy. LIL “Do you have a recording of ‘Concerto for Trumpet’?
Panel 2: Living room, Cranky is looking at album again. DINK: “I wish! I don’t even have a copy of the sheet music.”
Panel 3: sepia flashback of sad lil Dink and Mrs Dink with boxes walking past the still packed music room. DINK: “Money was so tight after my dad passed that we lost the house.
Panel 4: Sepia flashback of driving away in a taxi, Mrs Dink clings to a trumpet. DINK: “We had to move in a rush, so we couldn’t even begin to sort through the chaos of papers my dad left behind.”
Panel 5: living room. DINK: “Some photo albums, records, and a few instruments are all I have left.”
Panel 6: DINKLE “Sadly, ‘Concerto for Trumpet’ is lost media.”
Crank: not looking up from photo album “Naw.”
Panel 7: closeup of a picture from the album, young Ralph is standing with the band. CRANK: “I know who would have it.”
NOTE: I did change the dumb song, it was spurred by this comment.
Instead I picked a more period appropriate piece as inspiration. Something eclectic sounding, composed in the big band era, that people really danced to.
This is far better than the slop Batiuk inflicted upon the world. Harry is relatable and the song has a not stupid name.
I strongly suspect the reason a Kilimanjaro-themed song was used is because Puff Batty and his avatar Les both climbed the actual mountain and it seems to have been a defining experience, at least for one of them.
And he can communicate that in no other way.
Also, the remix of today’s strip is actually funny.
“It would be more surprising if he were still alive” is a solid punch line. (Granted, it’s pretty surprising that Ed and Lillian are still alive, but… I dunno, Timemop or something, I guess.)
But, seriously, this is really some decent writing, especially considering how… not decent the source was. (Shall we stand in line?)
Yeah, Harriet really punched up the story while keeping all the basic elements of it. I like how Larry’s bus accident was a much greater tragedy, and it isn’t all about Harry Dinkle.
I, for one, stand in line. CBH, you’ve captured something about the magic of music better than anything I’ve ever seen in FW. Brava.
But why not? Batiuk surely has some affection for his own marching band days, or whatever inspired him to create Dinkle. In all those years, did that reverence never make it into the FW strip?
His issues got in the way.
Actually, based on his comic-book content, we would have only ever gotten empty platitudes like “Music saved me.” There were countless opportunities to show-not-tell the point in Act III alone (Becky’s recovery, Wally returning to the community band, Cody singing a show tune, Mort’s recovery and all of the Bedside Manorisms for that matter), all missed. It’s probably just as well Batiuk never attempted any of those stories.
He literally can’t not say shallow junk like that. He can feel the feelings but he can’t communicate them.
Thanks Purplexed,
And I think Batty does try to express love of music, and maybe sometimes we’re too hardened by criticism to see it. But he’s never been very good at conveying emotion with words, because it always comes off a little alien and stilted. Also he forgets to put human relationships in with ‘Man’s Awe at Thing’ to ground them.
This strip really tries.
https://www.gocomics.com/crankshaft/2026/06/18
Yeah, Batty likes the things he likes and I believe he genuinely enjoys them but as you said it can never be that simple. He can never really explain why he likes something in clear terms. There must be a grandiose meaning behind it all. He can’t have liked old Flash and pulp comics simply because he liked the ideas in them and thought they were fun and he can’t even just say it as “these comics really sparked my imagination and had a huge impact on me.”
No, he has to try and get poetic and flowery about how “When I read this comic, it opened my mind to the wondrous possibilities present within human creation. Tapping into the collective unconscious, Gardner Fox pulled things from their Jungian primordial goop and shaped them into monuments of mankind’s desire to create and explore ideas which may amaze, astound and even terrify!”
He doesn’t think he’s allowed to be direct.
This is actually two different problems. Batiuk simply lacks the ability to write what he likes about something. 275 blog posts about comic book covers, yet he has nothing more to say than “I like this cover.” There isn’t even any theme you could identify, so you could try to infer what he likes. Hell, I’d I’d like to see some comic book covers he didn’t like, if only to know they exist.
But even if you could solve that problem, Tom Batiuk still can’t write a grocery list without trying to win a Pultzer. Everything is so goddam flowery and obtuse, even when you just want to know what’s going on. He spent weeks plotting out Eugene’s elaborate goodbye to Lillian, without ever addressing any of the complexities of their relationship, why he’s leaving, or where he’s going. Somebody else made this comparison, but it’s like he’s trying to replicate Ingmar Bergman without having the tiniest clue why.
Knowing what he doesn’t like would be helpful, wouldn’t it?
@pj It really would. Batiuk has an amazing talent for writing without ever telling you a single thing one way or the other.
Lisa would have liked this.
29 September: There are four more days of Pam acting as if her brain had been replaced with an aerodynamic Styrofoam block.
Because it was more important to whine about lost opportunities and defeat.
Yesterday’s Crankfuckery
ED, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN BY “SOME” 😭
YOU BOUGHT OUT THE ENTIRE STOCK
Today’s Crankfuckery
Pam: DAD, HOW MUCH APPLE-RELATED SHIT DID YOU PURCHASE?!
Ed: All of it!
You just know the salesgirl is from Vancouver but faking a Southern accent.
30 September: Tomorrow, eleven billion apple strudels…..
As a teenager, I remember Dad taking us on a tour of his alma mater, the University of New Hampshire. Among the tales he regaled us with was how he and his roommates made applejack by leaving hard cider out on the ledge of their dorm window to freeze. Dad tried his best to corrupt his kids.🤣
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 3 of Apple Week
Today’s strip is the first time I even heard about apple butter
You must not live near any Amish communities, for whom apple butter is a common condiment on the breakfast, lunch and dinner table. It’s delicious on sliced bread or muffins.
1 October: Dear God …. she’s going to think there are actually spiders in the donuts!🤬
Spiders in the donuts, spiders in the donuts
And Pam’s insane. She probably thinks this strip is about her
Comic Book Harriet, how is your father, Comic Book Dad? I hope he is recuperating well.
Shame on me for sharing an anecdote about Dad my without asking about your father first.
No worries! Dad is doing very well, almost too well for my Mom’s taste, as he’s being bull headed putting off some further procedures the doctors want to do until after harvest. Thanks for asking! ❤ ❤ ❤
2 October: Here we go with Woman As Killjoy And Totally Not As Someone Trying To Protect Idiot Men From Themselves.
Curse that Johnny Appleseed. This is all his fault!
Batty’s need to take a joke that would have been inoffensively amusing for a single day and expand it into an entire week is one of his most irritating traits. But there’s no need to actually think of jokes when you can just write “Monday – Ed has a lot of apple cider. Tuesday – Ed has a lot of apple fritters,” and be done with it.
I’m guessing Saturday (or maybe Sunday) will be an Apple computer. I know they haven’t been called that since the 90s, but that’s never an obstacle in this feature.
Yesterday’s Crankfuckery
(all of a sudden, a apple with spider-like legs walks into the house, causing Pam to freak out)
Today’s Crankfuckery
Pam Murdoch’s immediate reaction:
3 October: At least no robots were involved in this exercise in buying in bulk.
More great work from you, Harriet. Thank you.