Let’s face it: Tom Batiuk is giving us nothing to talk about anymore.
In What’s The Story, Morning Glory, I lamented the lack of any kind of actual story since Max and Hannah’s wedding in March. The two months since then have been more of the same: aimless filler weeks, tired Crankshaft tropes, and forced references to unloved latter-day topics like buck rub and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
I’ll let a recent comment get me started:
I almost feel like Crankshaft has to be ending next year.
Narshe
It all feels like a man who’s reached the end of the flight and is (clumsily) getting ready to land the plane.
I didn’t think this at first, but it’s getting harder to deny. I originally classified the tedious “In The Name Of The Father” as a non-story. But at least it was a Batiukian attempt at one: full of word zeppelins and pretentious award bait, signifying nothing. At least it was snark fodder. We’re not even getting that anymore. And his blog hasn’t mentioned any upcoming stories.
I’ll let Narshe continue:
We know [Batiuk] loves his anniversaries and 2027 contains a quite a few nice round(ish) numbered ones: 55 years since the debut of Funky Winkerbean, 40 years since the debut of Crankshaft, 30 years since he closed the book on John Darling by having Les solve his murder, 20 years since the death of Lisa, 10 years since Mopey met Mindy and 5 years since the end of FW. TomBa himself will also turn 80 next year.
This is all true. And if the awards-obsessed Batiuk hasn’t gotten his Golden T-Square by now, additional years aren’t going to get him one. (Though I still think he’s totally earned it.)
It’s hard to tell what’s going on in Tom Batiuk’s head. His own blog, and occasional mainstream news articles which he appears to write himself, have a very consistent tone. He presents his work as a combination of Charles Schulz and James Thurber: a cultural icon full of memorable, beloved characters, while also being a realistic literary look into the lives of downtrodden Ohioans. Except that “downtrodden” means “denied access to comic books” and “so passive they won’t lift a finger to solve their own problems.”
But man, it has to be taking a toll on his ego, especially considering how massive it is. It’s hard to keep doing something you think deserves a reward, and never getting that reward, and never even be mentioned for it anymore. The man peaked with that one Pulitzer nomination in 2008. And that second one is never coming.
I’m a generation younger than Tom Batiuk – I was born only two months after Funky Winkerbean was – and I can feel my own mortality starting to kick in. I also have a living parent who’s in their 80s now, and whose increasing limitations are obvious. Batiuk has to be noticing this in himself. And somebody has to be talking about it, if only his own wife, and other close friends who are going through the same thing.
I recently commented that Act IV (post-Funky Winkerbean) has now devolved into a gelatinous Act V. But I don’t think there’s a real reason to distinguish them. Crankshaft is still maintaining the low standard it’s had for decades; it hasn’t turned into Apartment 3-G, at least not any worse than it has been for years. The attempts at ambition are just fewer and farther between.
The end of the Funkyverse is now an inevitability. Even if it isn’t next year, it won’t be long after.
I’ve said elsewhere that Batiuk won’t quit unless and until health issues (or syndicate business realities) make it impossible to continue. And I stand by that. His whole identity is tied up in being a working writer, and he is not just going to shut that down voluntarily.
But yes – while the decline has been gradual, and we’re not at A3G levels yet, we ARE watching the long, slow deterioration of a mind.
(Although as Narshe has shown with recent posts, this may not have ever been a mind that really grasped interpersonal relationships. Or storytelling. )
That’s the point I was trying to make. When you reach your 80s, the bar for “health issues that make it impossible to continue” gets a lot lower. Batiuk would never admit it, but he can’t live and work way past 100 with zero ill effects like his characters do. Part of him has to realize there’s no more Pulitzer nominations in his future, and more years aren’t gonna get him one. And I wish he’d come to the realization that he’s had a hell of a career, even if he didn’t get everything he wanted.
“Batiuk would never admit it” is the key here. He only needs to be healthy enough to write — he doesn’t have to draw ANYTHING. And, in fact, he doesn’t even really have to hold a pencil or tap a keyboard to write … he could dictate things aloud, if necessary.
I’m not saying there will be 20 more years of Crankshaft; hell, it’s perhaps a longshot that there will even be 20 more years of newspapers. But given the minimal health and mental acuity requirements that would need to be involved for Batiuk to continue just to write about Ed and his pals and whatever else flits through his mind? If the syndicate still wants it, and Batiuk is at least verbally communicative, I’d guess he’d still keep at it.
I’d like to think the syndicates learned something from Apartment 3G and won’t let a strip get into that state again. Especially a strip that has gone out of its way to reject syndicate help, while also having no plan for succession.
For this to happen, someone at the syndicate would need to read and assess the feature on a continuing basis.
Here’s an interesting historical fact: in a previous century, there used to be someone called an “editor” (ED-ə-tor) who would perform this function, as well as giving notes and suggestions as to how a single comic strip or even series of strips might be improved. This archaic position was thankfully eliminated some time in the past 25 years ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶e̶y̶ to ensure the artist’s intent is never compromised. The success of this policy can be easily seen in the societal impact current comics have, and the number of indisputable all-time classic comic strips that are being produced today.
The difference, though, is that Apartment 3-G was (still is, really) owned BY the syndicate. Crankshaft is owned by Batiuk. There’s only so much they can do to get Batiuk to change course… really, most likely all they can do is not renew the syndication contract when it comes up (and who even knows how long that will be). The contract probably has some clause that would let them cancel it early, but it would probably require Batiuk to pull something at the Scott Adams level to trigger it, and I don’t see that happening. (I mean, Adams was a culmination of, like, a decade of insane ramblings before he said something too offensive to be ignored. Batiuk barely says anything of substance, let alone offensive.)
And, honestly, the syndicate really cares only about the number of papers still carrying the strip and the number of web views. As long as the readers are there, they’re not going to care about the actual content of the strip. (They’re still running Marvin, and that hasn’t been funny… well, ever.)
As you know, many comic strips have continued after their creator has moved on and bequeathed them to an heir or to some other acquaintance — such as Blondie and Beetle Bailey (which both suck swamp water, by the way; there hasn’t been a fresh idea in either for decades). So does anyone think Batty will have someone take the torch?
Given the way TB went about the end of John Darling… no, I don’t think he will pass the torch.
Perhaps if his son was taking over he would, but his son has had a number of years to get into the comics business either on his own or helping Tom out and from everything I know he has not chosen to do so. I would expect that to continue.
On top of that, passing the torch would be completely antithetical to how Tom Batiuk has lived his life. He insists on complete control over his work at all times. He also has not created any kind of succession plan. I think he’s quite content to take the Funkyverse to his grave and deny us all the privilege of reading it.
What will happen is that the strips where Lillian was using AI to write her books was subtle foreshadowing of IRL events. Batty has been working with a “tech savvy person” (some kid taking classes at Kent State) to train an AI model. Tom Batiuk will retire from writing Crankshaft but the Batiukbot will continue writing it forever.
Brian Batiuk is an Operations Engineer at a television station in Cincinnati. This job likely pays better than being a cartoonist.
According to the Batty blogs, Brian seems willing to attend comic-cons with the old man. I’m not sure if that indicates some interest or just a familial obligation.
Wait, there was a wedding in March?
I genuinely did not remember it at all, so went to GoComics and clicked on a random date and got a Batton Thomas interview, so I guess my experience was the Winkerverse equivalent of being rickrolled?
(Yes, the wedding wrapped up the 15th.)
Max and Hannah went to the courthouse. I think maybe two weeks was spent on it but it still kind of came and inbetween Batton interviews.
He has to finish up the self-congratulatory interview from hell first. Once we know how stupid he is, he can quit.
Maybe he already has? Batton has been conspicuously absent, especially considering the complete lack of anything else going on.
I agree with Y. Knott; I think TB’s identity is so profoundly wrapped up in the idea of KOMIX that giving up his one remaining strip would hollow him out.
I also think that the very strips we find excruciatingly dull, lifeless, and repetitious may be exactly what the average Crankshaft reader enjoys. Remember, Garfield was one of the most successful of syndicated strips, and it used an entirely cynical, deliberately repetitious set of tropes that it recycled for years to great success. I suspect there are still chuckles being elicited by some of these current Crankshaft strips, and a few being cut out and placed on fridges. Most long-running legacy strips have long settled into the same kind of pattern; when is the last time you saw a fresh new idea in “Beetle Bailey” or “Hagar the Horrible”?
Our problem here is that we’re just about 180 degrees away from the average comic strip reader. We’re looking for something so bad it’s fun. They’re looking for the same reliable, predictable, unsurprising, assembly-line product they’ve always known.
You’re right that it would be hard for Batiuk to give up cartooning, because he’s never known anything else. But I suspect this is the same internal conversation many people have when it’s time to retire. Do you know the “spool of wire” viral story? An electrician in his 50s saw his ever-decreasing spool of electrical wire as a metaphor for his own life winding down. (Which his wife crassly dismissed, but that’s not relevant to our story.) He’s not winning that Pulitzer, but he’s not getting that comic books job either. Maybe the latter will be the thing that convinces him it’s time to give it up.
Also, if he quits, he hands his mom a victory.
I’ve never felt that there was much to snark on in general, unless Cranky is destroying property, and even that has always been presented as “that’s just what Crankshaft does.” Otherwise, he’s buying gadgets, making bad puns, or fussing/commenting about getting old; the latter certainly relatable to long-time readers such as my parents. Mom fusses non-stop about doctors, and Dad has occasional brunches with fellow seniors who probably sound a lot like Cranky and his buddies (minus the malapropisms). A bit predictable and relatively harmless, but audiences know what they’re getting.
That’s exactly right, and our best snarkery has come when Crankshaft became Funky Winkerbean Act V, and all kinds of extraneous, and ridiculous, and cringeworthy plots and characters got shoehorned in randomly. I don’t think actual unironic Crankshaft fans were asking for Dinkle to barge in, nor for half-baked subplots featuring various other FW characters, nor especially for the endless drumbeat of comix, COMIX, COMIX and the interminable interview with Batton Thomas.
Yet that’s been the stuff that provides us with snark fodder.
Right now, Crankshaft’s right on brand. Pleasing the fans, no doubt, but for us: It’s jumped the snark.
This is a good observation. Crankshaft isn’t entertaining for us unless it’s trying to be Funky Winkerbean Act IV, which it hasn’t done much lately. Even the interminable Batton Thomas interview seems to have terminated. (Now watch it come back tomorrow.)
I wonder if Tom Batiuk got some feedback that his genuine fans don’t like Act IV’s intrusion into Crankshaft. And if so, I wonder how he feels about *that*. Batiuk resents being told what to do, by anyone, even if it’s for positive reasons.
Honestly, why the hell hasn’t TB received that Gold T-Square?
According to the National Cartoonist Society’s website it’s for; “50 years as a professional cartoonist.” not 50 years writing one specific comic, even though FW still would qualify, so regardless he’s done that plus 5 years so far. He more than deserves it.
I don’t know if this is the actual reason or just speculation I have seen here, but Batiuk is primarily a comic strip writer and hasn’t done the artwork for his strips for many years. So if the NCS thinks of cartoonists as the people who draw the strips and don’t want to honor non-artist writers, that would exclude Batiuk.
Yup. All the Golden T-Square winners (and there are only 5) drew cartoons for 50 years. Batiuk drew them for about 20 years or so.
There’s also a lifetime achievement award (the Caniff) which doesn’t require 50 years of cartooning. Some years they give out none, some years one or two, but there have been 25 Caniff winners since 1994 and Batiuk has so far utterly failed to be one of them.
Incidentally, Charles Schulz didn’t get a Golden T-Square … they created a special award just for him dubbed the Golden Caniff. He’s the only one to win it.
Jeez, I didn’t think that a bunch of comic cartoonists to be so self-aggrandizing and pretentious that you’d have to do the entire comic yourself for half of a century just to get a silly award.
Nope, you don’t have to do it all yourself — some worked with co-creators on some projects, or collaborated with non-drawing writers. But all of the Golden T-Square winners (all 5 of them) drew for 50 years.
As well, the NCS also have awards for people who haven’t been drawing for 50 years, but still have produced material that their peers have found especially good. Which, at least in my view, isn’t really any sillier than any other set of entertainment awards.
Isn’t the Golden K’niff the little ball with wings that Harry Potter had to catch to win games for Gryffindor’s Quidditch team?
Both Yesterday And Today’s Crankfuckery
Days 3 and 4 of Bean’s End Week
(YAWN)
For once, I’ll take Batty’s side, it is difficult to retire, especially for someone like him where work is his identity. It’s not for me, but even I am having a hard time pulling the retirement trigger. I’ve delayed my retirement twice now.
As for the Golden T-Square, Batty has earned that and I hope he gets that award.
He’s been around long enough to get the damn thing so why the delay?
Because nobody wants to give it to him.
The Golden-T Square is exactly the award you give to someone you don’t want to give awards to. There are clear criteria, and quality isn’t one of them. They’re perfect items to hand out to people who like to whine about the awards committee being biased against them.
That the cartooning society won’t even give Batiuk this paltry level of recognition says a lot about his relationship with them. He should have won Cartoonist of the Year at least once, because everybody else did. I’d wager that Mr. Batiuk isn’t very well liked by his colleagues.
Given how noxious they are, that says something.
Tom Batiuk won’t retire until he receives an NCS award. He may end up as a brain kept alive in a jar, still waiting.
Batty: Give me what I want and I’ll go away.
Is Tom even a member of the NCS? I don’t see him listed in the membership directory at https://nationalcartoonists.com/members/directory/ . If he really wanted an award from the NCS, I would have thought he would have maintained membership. Either the membership directory is incomplete (which is a possibility), or he isn’t a member which would suggest that he isn’t looking for an award from them.
Even though he no longer illustrates a comic strip, he does have a substantial body of comic strip illustration work available to the public from drawing the first 22 years of Funky Winkerbean, so he should still be eligible for membership.
@Joshua K. That’s another possible obstacle. And wouldn’t that be fitting? The man yearns for an award but doesn’t get it, simply because he didn’t keep his membership dues current. And because he didn’t bother asking anybody what the problem was. What a fitting epitaph that would be for the creator of Les, Eugene, and other fatally passive characters who just let life walk all over them.
Some time ago, I saw Batiuk’s profile on the NCS website. It is apparently no longer there. Here’s a preserved NCS profile for Tom Batiuk courtesy of the Internet Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240421082809/https://nationalcartoonists.com/author/thomas-m-batiuk/
As for my original comment, it was a joke about Batiuk’s apparent desire for recognition, not a claim that I had inside knowledge of his NCS membership status or intentions. Sometimes a joke is just a joke.
As for why TB’s profile is no longer listed, I’ll leave that up for you folks.
So he was a member of the NCS in 2024.
Working theory: Batiuk had been working in comic strips for 50+ years at that point, and he was expecting a Golden T-Square. Because he has not drawn a cartoon professionally in years, it was made clear that he was not eligible for the award, and thus he would never get one. As a non-cartoonist, he’s similarly ineligible for a Reuben or other NCS awards. He declined to renew his NCS membership sometime thereafter.
23 October: Ed doesn’t like actually being the butt of the joke. Big shock.
I think a point to not lose sight of here is that while the content itself at these times does not give much to snark upon, we need to remember that this is content that Tom Batiuk has announced to the world as being “beneath him”.
It’s easy to otherwise just shuffle past these daily slot fillers without a second thought, and there are assuredly dozens of other strips that are otherwise completely unremarkable and typically ignored; but none of them have Tom Batiuk’s mentality, self-contradictions, hubris, and ego behind them. For a week of strips that is loosely related to gardening, let’s remember that Tom continues to reap what he has sown.
I wonder if that’s why nobody wants to give him an award.
24 October: At least an overly long reminder of why Ed should be in Bedside Manor isn’t the worst thing.
Oct. 24:
Apparently Batty thinks dementia is funny.
Both Yesterday and Today’s Crankshaft
Day 5 Of Bean’s End Week
Ed: Wipe that smirk off your face, Pam.
Day 6 of Bean’s End Week
(SNORE)
I feel like an entire week on grass growing is some kind of heavy-handed metaphor on the state of the comic. What’s next? Sunday, Ed paints the house and then the rest of the week is Pmm and Jff talking to him while he watches it dry?
25 October: What we have here is not how a tradition carries on. That being said, it’s likely that Max cannot realize that he’s the daddy now and it’s his job to drive Mitch to farmer’s markets. If he isn’t driven up by Jeff, his childhood gets murdered because Batiuk is messed up.
What a nice welcoming way to greet your family visitors: “What are you two doing here?”
Max should have said, “Nothing. We’re just leaving.”
What a tone deaf idiot Batiuk is that he cannot come up with something welcoming.
26 October: Remember that you actually had to submit something to get that award? Didn’t think so.
TB maybe perhaps giving us something to talk about today…
Let’s see Timemop explain how characters who explicitly exist in Batiukverse are also somehow characters created by Batton Thomas for Three O’Clock High.
Presumably Batton based the characters in Three O’Clock High on actual local people, with minimal changes to their appearances and names. We already know that he had a band director in his strip named Harry Finkle, who presumably would have been recognized by everyone who knew Harry Dinkle, if they read Three O’Clock High.
Batton returns like the seasonal flu — let the snark begin anew!
Imagine being nearly 80 and still kvelling about some contest you won in high school, so proud of it that you enshrine it in your comic strip, and then re-enshrine it in a later comic strip where you humblebrag about your previous comic strip and again about the contest win itself, 60+ years later.
There’s a part of me that feels like getting a cheap mass-produced award from Temu, one of those plastic jobbies with a little sculpture of a trophy cup and a small engravable plate, having it engraved with “Tom Batiuk / Best Cartoonist Ever,” and mailing it to him anonymously. It’d make his whole year. Batton Thomas would probably devote a week to discussing it with his fake “aw, shucks, who, little old me?” schtick.
When your proudest achievement is a high school essay, maybe the problem isn’t that the world hasn’t given you enough awards. Maybe it’s that you’ve spent the rest of your life proving that was your peak.
No wonder he created a comic strip about high school. Apparently, it’s the last place he can still relive his glory days.
Batton, I feel you! I remember when I was in first grade and drew a picture of our house, and the teacher gave me A GOLD STAR!!! Wow, are you kidding me? A frickin’ GOLD STAR!!!
Man, I wish my parents hadn’t thrown away that masterpiece when I was in the Army and they had to clean out their attic so they could move to a smaller house. I’d have that baby framed, illuminated, and hung right over the mantle. Ah well, I’ll always have that memory.
Does anyone want to interview me?
How fitting. The Bloviating Batton Thomas Chronicles return just in time for Halloween. 😱👻🎃🦇
This is odd. The Cleveland newspaper today ran a completely different Crankshaft strip. Ours is titled “Halloween Week[,] Day 1,” and it involves Ed snitching Halloween candy. Huh. Any ideas?
If memory serves, there was an alternate week of FW strips at some point within the last year or two of its run. I don’t believe that was ever explained either. Anybody remember this?
Two years ago, GoComics and ArcaMax ran different Crankshaft strips. One website ran a comic strip about Ed’s grilling causing massive smoke everywhere at the same time as a real-life Canadian wildfire. My memory is too hazy to remember if it was just a day or the entire week.
Thanks to the handy-dandy Son of Stuck Funky 2024 archive synopses, I can tell you the GoComics story arc started on 07/29/2024. I don’t have access to ArcaMax’s comic strip archive, and I don’t remember what they ran instead. Some folks here thought ArcaMax may have pulled the strip out of respect for our Canadian cousins during a time of crisis.
Keep us posted on the week as it progresses, if you can!
Today was Halloween Week Day 2. I guess we’re not going to see The Great High School Theme Paper Shared Award story, which I imagine is a good thing.
Batiuk is doing a clunky protest this week.
He won an essay contest? Is he shoe salesman Jimmy Wilson from “I Accuse My Parents?”
Now that we have confirmation via Not-Les and Not-Derek that Three O’Clock High really is just Funky Winkerbean, we really need a story about the cast confronting Batton over taking their IRL stories, which includes their biggest pains and traumas, and turning them into cheap fodder for his comic strip
Confrontation? Conflict? Have you read Batiuk?
Even if he actually came up with the idea, what we’d get is 13 strips of someone complaining about Batton ripping off their life for profit, then a strip at Montoni’s where all has somehow been resolved offstage and everyone’s okay.
Yesterday’s Crankfuckery
Maxwell Murdoch, you are a grown man with a wife (Hannah) and a child (Mitch). You should be doing pumpkin searching with them
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 1 of Interview from HFIL Week (Halloween edition)
How I feel every time i see these two assholes (Skip Rawlings and Batton Thomas) in the strip:
27 October: Oh, goody. The sort of flat footed, dumb moralizing we get from Robert Lamm. What are we supposed to do for the person who has no home and is neither safe nor protected? Stand around looking stupid?
Since I had to look it up: today’s panel 3 is a tracing of a January 2026 photo of a child being detained by ICE (https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2026/01/22/photo-minnesota-ice/), and, apparently, Batiuk’s entry in the #Comics4Liam campaign that followed (https://comixaction.com/comics4liam/).
Did Batiuk put up a link?
Robert Lamm? From the rock group Chicago? Or is there another person with that name?
That’s the guy. He hit the ground running with his take on the riots in 68.
And I guess this foray into politics explains why some papers didn’t carry this week’s strips.
Oh, sure, Batiuk is One of the Good Ones because he was against ICE before it even existed.
But let the world note that when I was in 3rd grade, I doodled a peace sign in my math workbook. I was against the Ukraine war before the Berlin Wall even fell!
I, too, am One of the Good Ones!
So Batton and Skip, AND Batiuk trying to be political? Guess it’s never too late in the year for candidates for “worst strip” to show up.
Hey, remember when Tom told a completely nonsensical story about Adeela being arrested by ICE, only to end with the heartwarming message that even ICE agents love Montoni’s pizza? Good times. (And remember when Tom reprinted that story on his blog, only to leave out that last strip?)
What *was* the point of that arc?
a) It would have been okay if they had grabbed the *right* person, but because they grabbed the *wrong* person, it wasn’t? So deporting people is okay as long as there’s no mistaken identity?
b) ICE agents are dedicated enough to stalk people relentlessly, using hidden cameras in stores and other tricks, and then set up elaborate snares in empty buildings, luring their victims by ordering a pizza for them to deliver — yet can’t tell one Adeela from another?
c) Justice will prevail as long as you have Bill Clinton’s personal phone number and can call in a favor, which he can easily grant you, because ex-presidents never lose their executive power?
d) Montoni’s conquers all?
Did we ever even find out what the other, correct Adeela was being deported for? Overstaying a visa or deep involvement in terrorist plots or murder or jaywalking? Probably insufficient insufferability, a hanging offense in Westview.
Yeah, and the attorney they hired, Amicus Brief, turned out to be as effective as a pickpocket in a nudist camp.
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure Batiuk knows what the point was supposed to be. I’m pretty sure he thought it was about ICE using overly extreme tactics (including perhaps the most nonsensical trap since Sean Brody got killed in Jaws: The Revenge), but in true Batiukian fashion, he completely undercut that message by showing that, gosh, those ICE guys are just regular dudes who love them some Montoni’s. (Though I suppose even Batiuk realized how badly he whiffed that message, since he cut the Montoni’s epilogue when he ran the strips on his blog.)
(I think it wasn’t that they couldn’t tell one Adeela from another, but that they just didn’t care if they had the right person or not. Since they were the evil ICE guys and all. But, again… they like Montoni’s, so… they can’t be that bad, right?)
Yeah, there were SO many issues with that story, and the more you think about it, the more you can find. It’s truly a testament to Batiuk’s prowess.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 2 of Interview from HFIL week
I genuinely have no words for today’s strip
Man, if that banal 13-word “essay” was one of the award winners, then the rest of the entries must have been some grade A garbage.
What’s that? There were only three entries? And Les got third place? Okay, now I see.
A mere 13 words? What happened?
Nowadays, when Batty writes, when 13 words will suffice, he uses 100.
In case anyone wants a good laugh today, the GoComics site has an article where Batiuk espouses on his latest foray into Pulitzer bait: https://www.gocomics.com/extras/tom-batiuk-crankshaft-america-essay
Oh, this is amazing. Pure, uncut, unadulterated Batiuk. Lots of choice nuggets here, but the clear winner for me is the line that shows that trademark extra-special Batiukian strain of utter self-absorption without even a hint of self-awareness:
“The thing I like about the approach to this storyline,” Batiuk explains, “is that I don’t really say anything.”
Perfect.
What can I say? The Delicate Genius can’t admit that he peaked when he was sixteen so has to cower behind straw men. It’s not that his premise stinks and is poorly written, the audience is wrong.
This explains SO very much. He’s been chasing that high for six decades.
This whole piece is fantastic stuff! TB still has his fastball when someone sticks a microphone in front of his face. It’s no where near the plate, of course, but the effort is finally worth our attention.
“For years, Tom Batiuk—creator of “Funky Winkerbean” and “Crankshaft”—has strived to expand the concept of a comic strip, challenging the idea that the art form is simply for laughs.” With the first sentence the entire premise is blown and the false pretense is exposed.
“For years, Tom Batiuk has strived to show what anyone who has paid attention to the medium for the past century has already known.” Wow. So daring. So brave. So inspired.
Fucking christ.
Notice that the NY Times no longer bites on stories about his latest “prestige arc.” Nor the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Not even the Akron Beacon Journal. Hell, not even the Medina Gazette cares to trumpet the latest Very Important Arc.
The only entity who’ll take any notice now is his own syndicate, about once every 5 years or so. It’s probably contractual obligation to do some kind of puff piece every few years as “promotion.”
Today’s Crankshaft garnered at least 143 likes and 147 comments (some deactivated).
Credit where credit is due, TB sure knows how to rile up the non-ironic readers.
“For years, Tom Batiuk—creator of “Funky Winkerbean” and “Crankshaft”—has strived to expand the concept of a comic strip, challenging the idea that the art form is simply for laughs.”
Is that what he was doing during the first twenty years of FW when it was nothing but F-tier Dad jokes and fourth wall staring? God, fuck these people. I’ve said it before and I say it now – it’s like I’m on the receiving end of some massive dumb fucking psyop conspiracy that is trying to gaslight the public en masse into believing that Tom Batiuk’s work is at some kind of high level of creatively inspired art, and there’s only a handful of people out there who don’t just blindly accept this as truth.
WHO BELIEVES THIS? OK, Tom Batiuk believes it, sure. Yes. OK. Who else. Who the fuck else. Anyone? ANYONE?
The sales figures for “The Complete Funky Winkerbean, Volume 14” should give you a rough answer to that question. It’s currently sitting at — and I swear I’m not making this up — position #1,622,366 on the Amazon “bestsellers” list.
So it made Amazon’s bestsellers list, what an accomplishment!
28 October: Life ain’t high school civics.
Thank you for sharing this gem, Y.Knott! “The thing I like about the approach to this storyline,” Batiuk explains, “is that I don’t really say anything.”
Tom Batiuk is Spinal Tap.
Leading this arc with Les claiming “America means a safe place” is pretty rich considering that Les spent his teen years worrying about being bullied when he was not actually bullied, having near-panic attacks around girls, and freezing with terror atop the high dive. How safe was Westview? A teenage girl was impregnated through a date r***, a musical prodigy lost her arm, her prestigious scholarship, and her career to a local drunk driver, and the town’s post office was blown up.
What is the structure of this week’s heavy-handed moralizing? Is Tom’s avatar reading the essay to the Skipper and then pausing to rant about ICE? Or are these strips the storyboard to an upcoming After School Special the cuts back and forth from the “interview” to A Very Important Issue?
I don’t recall Gary Trudeau or Berkely Breathed ever talking about “challenging the idea that the art form is simply for laughs.” If they or their syndicate did not talk about it, then Tom must be the first. (A tip of the CheesyKun pen to wherescrankshaft for providing that quote. Seriously, thank you.)
CheesyKun2. CheesyKun. Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. A long time.
Welcome back!
Thanks very much for your kind words, Drake. Yep, CheesyKun2- The Better Cheddar. It has been a while but I’ve been lurking and enjoying post-Funky Son of Stuck Funky immensely.
How he reacts to pushback is to say the least fascinating. To say the most, it’s doubling down. The parents who reacted sensibly to the abysmally bleak play weren’t talking a stupid woman out of a bad idea, they were dumb people who wanted to blind to the world.
And they think Fahrenheit 451 sends the wrong message! What message does it send, and why do they think it’s wrong? Eh, don’t sweat the details. They questioned the Almighty Les, that’s all that matters.
Creeping out because something is banned reminds us that Batiuk has mommy issues.
Obviously a cabal of Canucks representing the Committee of Canadians for Converting to Celsius. “We’re aboot to crash this school board meeting, eh, ’cause ya hosers oughta be teaching Celsius 233!”
It makes more sense than anything Puff Batty would have come up with.
How much longer until Bathack Thomas breaks into an off key rendition of The House I Live In? If he is Jimmy Wilson I have a pretty good idea why his Mom drinks so much.
I will go against the grain a bit and say, whether I or anyone here agrees or disagrees with the point he’s trying to make with this week, at least Batty is actually making some kind of point and seemingly taking an actual stance for once with one of his “I’m talking about important issues” stories. As I’ve pointed out before it’s usually just some kind of milquetoast crap that’s so committed to not drawing any potential ire that it either amounts to nothing (like the gay prom story) or backfires and comes off as insulting, like the Adeela story that’s already been mentioned.
I’m not saying that how he’s doing it this week is good mind you because in typical fashion it’s just awkward and messy and unintentionally funny in its execution. But at least he finally seems to have grown a spine and realized if he’s going to do something that’s going to be politically charged he may as well just be upfront about it and not do stories where he undercuts his entire point when the day is saved by Montoni’s pizza or Funky acting flippantly, almost dismissively, towards a major change in an old friend’s life.
Of course there’s still three more days left in his week so there’s still time for Pepper to show up and charm ICE with his wacky pizzabot antics.
Agreeing with all of this. But of course the crucial point isn’t “will Batiuk screw this up?” — it’s “how will Batiuk screw this up”? A Montoni’s-related gag (or series of gags) is a reasonable bet. With Hallowe’en approaching, will ICE try to deport the Pizza Box Monster back to Pizzastan, but learn just in time that we’re all brothers under the sk — er, um …. under the cardboard?
My money is on a terrible pun in the last strip that undercuts whatever emotion Batty was trying to convey. He can’t help himself.
Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Do not collect a Pulitzer.
I chose a heck of a Tuesday to skip checking in here. Crankshaft actually is getting daring by attempting to comment on the state of American affairs beyond the “government is taking away all disability-assisting services” gag, how about that?
Without getting into the message that’s gotten the GoComics comments aflame (that’s one way to guarantee activity), so far the observation I make about this was hit on the head early on by Doghouse Reilly’s comparison to I Accuse My Parents. It’s one thing to pull the “adolescent innocent words on county’s ideals vs the harsh reality” card, a tried and tired message that MST3K also riffed on, but to use your own high school essay’s excerpts and frame that as something noteworthy through your self-described self-insert (as per his GC puff piece) has an air of weak self-importance that really demeans the intent of the strips. That we’re also getting Funky flashbacks alongside it that raise some seriously confusing continuity problems that makes one wonder what exactly we’re reading here. Is this even trying to be a fitting and timely check-in with Barton and his work, or is this the kind of Very Special Episode where the cast all breaks character at the end to implore viewers to call the number or check the website on the screen to help the cause?
Narshe, your critiques of Batiuk’s work pull no punches so your praise deserves our respectful attention. (Nixon goes to China, and all that. In fact, I wrote an essay about Nixon and Mao for a high school contest. Won first prize but I gave it to Les Moore. He promised to read the essay to Cayla when he took her to Hong Kong.) You’re right that this week is a sincere attempt to do something serious and that it’s done badly. TB undercuts his point. Whatever anyone’s opinion on ICE, Batiuk’s methods (here and in the “banned” book “story” (insert Chris Farley air quotes here for best effect)) don’t do his position any favors as they raise more questions than they answer. He asserts truths he holds to be so self-evident that no rational person could question them, even just for the Socratic exercise of it, like St. Lisa herself. Or, in this case, Teenaged Tom Batiuk.
Narshe, your quip about Pepper showing up this week also shows another reason why Batiuk’s Very Special Episodes fail- they go against the grain of what Crankshaft has been for a long time. You can’t just drop an image of a child detained by an ICE agent (it’s okay to profit off such images if your cause is just, Tom?) every now and then and proclaim, “The funny pages don’t have to be funny!” Once upon a time he wrote full arcs with serious points, e.g. Ed’s illiteracy, segregation in baseball, etc. Now he “is saying things without saying anything” and we’re supposed to reward him. With a Pulitzer, I guess.
Y.Knott, you’ve got a fine idea for converting Fahrenheit 451 to the metric system. We could even call it an “eloquent solution” to the problem of Imperial metrics not being understood in most of the world. If you wrote a screenplay, I bet the National Film Board of Canada would treat you and it with the respect Hollywood denied our humble Writer.
Plus, everything Andrew said!
Thanks, CheesyKun2, but whilst I am a Canuck, the Celsius 233 line was actually by The Drake of Life. Mind you, as we all well know, if the screenplay adaptation wins an award, all credit for the idea (and the award itself) should rightly go to You Know Who.
There you go again, Y. Knott, with your beady-eyed nitpicking, parsing through every millimeter of text. It’s called commenting! Ah, seriously, Y. Knott, thank you very much for bringing that to my attention.
The Drake of Life, I hope you will accept my apology. I am sorry. My two best friends are from Saskatoon and Edmonton and old enough to remember when Canada left Imperial for metric. They enjoyed your retitling of Bradbury’s classic.
As a proud Canuck and native New Yorker, I accept your apology.
(I actually am officially a Canadian citizen by descent, as I found out this year, thanks to my Canadian granny!)
Congratulations, The Dual-National Drake of Life! What a nice, and pleasant, surprise for you. Whenever I visit one of the US coasts on business trips, it always happens that a couple of people assume I’m Canadian when they hear my Upper Midwest accent. I always tell them I’m from the southernmost province, the one separated from the Canadian mainland by Lake Superior.
Did you celebrate Thanksgiving on the 12th?
Like the Brewers, Batiuk is going deep into his bullpen to deliver the fall classic that is this week’s arc. I have no idea who the woman who wrote an essay not as good as Les Moore’s, but I feel bad that she was called to the mound to deliver another clunker. Whether it’s BeansEnd or ICE enforcement, he just repeats the same ham-handed joke/point every day.
29 October: Upbeat statement, contradiction, Batiuk proving something people already knew and thinking he hasn’t, Take Three.
It’s good to see you back, CheesyKun!
Thanks so much for your kind words, iansdrunkenbeard. It really feels good to be welcomed back so warmly. Always have, always will, love your “fanfic” versions of the strips. The Sunday one above is genius!