“When I was in middle school and creating my own comic strips and comic books, I called my comic book “company” Batom Comics which was a play on my name.”
“Back when I was in middle age and doing regular daily posts at SoSF, I called Tom Batiuk “Batyam”, “BatBrain”, “Batty”, “BatHam”, “BanTom”, “Batty-Bat Bat Bat” and “Tommy Two-Shirts”, which were plays on his name.”
How fascinating! Why, I’d never made that connection before! Sigh. If these blog posts of his were any duller, you could use them to spread jam on toast. Just like the vast bulk of his work, it’s difficult to believe that he actually spent time on this post, or put any thought into it at all. He even makes his dearest passions boring.
Hey folks, time for another spur of the moment, breaking news-type post regarding everyone’s favorite blog, The Komix Thoughts. This time around, TomBan is doing a “deep dive” into FW’s final week (ugh), and the recent (and maybe even still ongoing, I don’t know) Crankshaft arc about that creepy stupid bookstore. As usual, he briefly repeats the obvious, but at the end, he drops this interesting little nugget in there:
“In the second panel of the Funky strip, Lisa’s mother alludes to the “burnings”. This makes reference to a story that will run in the Fall of 2024 in Crankshaft.“
Looks like SOMEONE will be traveling to the future! Now, I don’t read Crankshaft and I’m certainly not starting now, nor will I be starting in (sigh) the fall of 2024. But it is nice to know he’ll still be generating content for us, as that one oughta be a doozy.
Hey folks, it’s another The Komix Thoughts post post! Seems our ol’ pal Tom visited lovely Lake Erie recently, and graced his regular blog readers with a whole slew of delightfully Batiukesque pictures of various things. Fans of his uniquely mundane photography work need to check that out right now.
He also included this humdinger of an observation, which is just too good to not share.
“I’ve always been attracted by the Chautauqua commitment to the idea of lifelong learning, but I never followed the thought any further than that.”
Only one man could have penned a sentence that incongruous and baffling. While interested in the concept of “lifelong learning”, he never really went anywhere with it, which negates the entire point of lifelong learning in the first place. It’s almost zen-like in its own warped, demented way. Thank God for The Komix Thoughts, as shit like this really merits being preserved and archived.
It’s quiet around here…TOO quiet. I was poking around on the Batom Comics interactive comic book cover spinner rack (if you haven’t checked that out yet, shame on you), and I happened across this old gem, which I do not remember at all. This is “Fantastic Voyage”, from 1966. The guy comes up with a brilliant premise, like a scuba cop, and couldn’t think of a single original thing for him to do. Rip Tide should have been busting illegal dumpers, thwarting pirates and defusing old WWII mines, not ripping off old Raquel Welch flicks. Boo.
By request: a Comic Con attendee stuns BatYam by cosplaying as long-forgotten FW Act II character Cutty McCutterson, WHS’ legendary wood shop teacher. Remember his running gag about the tourniquets?
Hey gang, just a quick Wednesday night post for the hell of it. I was visiting The Komix Thoughts blog, and learned that our old pal BatYam was, of course, attending this year’s Comic Con. So I clicked to “read more”, and discovered that Comic Con mainly consists of cosplaying weirdos and standing in (or as we sometimes say out here, on) line. And after reading his five or six gripping sentences and seeing his handful of rather mundane photographs from the event, I began to ponder the question of what it would take to get ol’ TomBan excited about anything at all, as he always seems to be all low-key and barely amused in that annoyingly dull and tedious way of his.
“Today I was rooting around in the attic, and I found a mint copy of Action Comics #1. It was exciting.”
“Today an old friend gifted me with the actual suit Adam West wore in the “Batman” TV series. It was interesting.”
“Today I was bitten by a spider, and now I seem to have developed super powers. I wonder where this will lead?”
Comic Con is like his FAVORITE THING IN THE WORLD and he describes it like a trip to the DMV. And this, in a nutshell, is why we so mercilessly mocked his “writing” abilities. We should all chip in and buy the guy a bottle of No-Doz and a Benzedrex inhaler, just to maybe wake him up a little.
“Comic-Con isn’t nicknamed “Line-Con” for nothing”. Given his rare knack for hilarious insights and witty zingers like that, it’s easy to see how FW ran for over two hundred years. I love his random, mundane vacation pics. Like when he went to Hollywood and took pics of that one building. Great stuff.
Son of Stuck Funky 