So Tom Batiuk’s recent email newsletter started off with this December 2008 strip:
Comic Book Harriet wondered why Batiuk chose to highlight this seemingly random strip in his email newsletter. I have a different questrion:
Why did Tom Batiuk choose to include this absolutely disgusting strip in his email newsletter? Continue reading “Bad Parenting From Beyond The Grave”
Poster Y. Knott and I have been talking about Tom Batiuk’s history of Pulitzer Prize nominations, and I need to correct the record about something.
Tom Batiuk was a genuine Pulitzer nominee once, in 2008, for the year of work when Lisa died. You can view the list of Pulitzer winners and Finalists for the Cartooning category at https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/215. He was not a finalist in 1987, which I’ve long incorrectly claimed he was. So that’s my fault, and I apologize to poster Y. Knott for not checking my facts first. I have a journalism background and I need to be better than that. Continue reading “Is Tom Batiuk Really An Award-Winning Writer?”
Today’s TBTrope is about power dynamics. This is a subject I’ve wanted to explore for awhile now.
All fiction runs on Like Reality, Unless Noted. When we are consuming a story, we assume that the story’s world is like our own, unless the story says otherwise. We use our own knowledge to fill in the gaps about how things work. When we’re watching a rom-com, Emma Stone doesn’t turn to turn to the camera to explain to the audience how dating works. We all know how it works, from our own lives. And so it is with interpersonal dynamics.
In a story, one character may hold power over another. In the funny pages, the mechanics of this are often very simple. Adult/child, boss/subordinate, older sibling/younger sibling, aggressive person/timid person, and so on.
Funky Winkerbean used to understand this. In Act I, Bull was a bully and Les was his victim. Harry Dinkle was a hyper-demanding band director, whose students had no power to resist his orders. The characters made sense, even in the comically exaggerated world of Act I. We recognized these situations from our own lives. We understood the power dynamics in play.
By Act III, though, a new paradigm had emerged. I call it By The Power Of Batiuk. “The character in control of any situation is the character Tom Batiuk thinks should be in control of it, not the character who actually would be.”
Continue reading “Fight The Power!”Don’t forget to vote in the 2023 Crankshaft Awards! Voting remains open for about another 2 days.
I recently made my predictions of which Funky Winkerbean characters are likely to appear in Crankshaft in 2024. A major factor in these predictions was my guess at what The Burnings will be about, and which characters they will affect. And I already think I was wrong.
Don’t forget to vote in the 2023 Crankshaft Awards! Voting remains open for about another 5 days.
In Part 1 of this series, I predicted the seven Funky Winkerbean characters that will appear most often in Crankshaft in 2024. Here’s a recap of characters we’ve discussed so far, ranked by predicted most appearances:
Dinkle’s off to a fast start, while Les and Lisa aren’t out of the gate yet. Continue reading “You Don’t Have To Live Like A Refugee (More Predicted Funky Winkerbean Character Appearances In Crankshaft In 2024)”
Son of Stuck Funky 