Son of Stuck Funky – Page 323 – Son of Stuck Funky

Initial Impressions

This is going to be an exhausting week of fact checking. But I’m under some kind of sick compulsion to turn into Batiuk’s own personal Snopes. Every single statement turns into an hours long internet deep dive. Because, despite my name, I don’t have some kind of massive encyclopedic knowledge of all this feminist comic book history. Prior to this week all I really knew was Phantom Lady, Gail Simone and Women in Refrigerators, and I knew Metamorpho had been made by a woman. So I’d like to start the week off by thanking Batiuk for sending me on a Google/Wiki Safari that taught me more about awesome ladies like Violet Barclay, Ramona Fradon, Tarpe Mills, and Toni Blum.

So today, we’re talking about pseudonyms, and women using initials to hide their gender. This is, of course, still something done today. Authors like JK Rowling, NK Jemisen, EL James, and KA Applegate used their initials to hide from young men that they were girly women who would invariably fill their stories with relationship drama and angry and aloof woobies. Others like A.C. Crispin and C.L Moore used their initials so rabid nerd fanboys would accept their entries into Star Wars, Star Trek, and Weird Tales.

Of the early female comics writers and artists, I can confirm that many went for at least part of the careers by initials or pseudonyms, such as June (Tarpe) Mills, Lily (L.) Renee, Ruth Ann (R.A) Roche, Isabelle (B.) Hall, and Margaret (M.) Brundage, whose artwork on the covers of Weird Tales in the 30’s were so salacious they actually outed her as female to calm some of the controversy. But women also went by their full names, even very early on. Lily Renee was working under her own name in the 40’s, Ramona Fradon worked under her own name as well as initials in the 50’s, and I couldn’t see that Marie Severin also working in the 50’s ever obscured her first name.

So I’m going to give today’s strip’s claims a 50/50 on accuracy. Many female comics creators did and do obscure their gender with initials, but a woman’s name on a comic wasn’t unheard of in the early days either.

Of course there is a flipside to this coin, of men who adopted female or neutral pen names to write ‘girly’ things like romance novels, or just to be ambiguous.
I found a great quote by male author Sean Thomas in this article.

As I was going to write from a female perspective, I didn’t want to put off any readers who might presume that a male writer could not carry a female voice. So I shifted sex. I became a gender neutral author.

Sunday, August 25

Today’s strip was not available for preview.

As usual Sunday’s strip wasn’t available for preview. Should’ve had a betting pool going on if it’s going to be a sideways comic book cover.

I’m going to a minor league baseball game Saturday night. Unfortunately/fortunately it’s not the Toledo Mudhens, but one thing Batiuk gets right is that minor league baseball is a fun way to spend an evening.

Horrors await us on Monday. I’m gearing myself up to beat them back with cold hard facts and wacky observations.

Sufferin’ Sappho

Link to today’s strip

As Professor Fate used his powers to presciently foretell yesterday, it does appear that we are in for another week of a nebbish old maven and a klutzy shikse kvetching about kitschy comic schlock and schmoozing all schmaltzy while having a nosh. This shtick is dreck.

Am I the only one choosing to see this strip through a weird romantic lens? I blame the use of coffee. ‘Want some coffee?’ was the ‘Netflix and chill’ of the 80’s and 90’s. And the GTA: San Andreas Hot Coffee controversy only solidified this in my mind at an impressionable age.

And if Mindy weren’t engaged, and the other person weren’t roughly Pre-Cambrian in age, there wouldn’t be any other interpretation of this strip. Look at that side-eye smile Ruby is giving Mindy in panel one. By panel three things have already gotten physical! It reads meet cute!

I mean, if Mindy wants to leave Mopey Pete for some May-December, girl and granny, colorist on penciler action, I for one would be the first cheering her on.

In Search of Lost Lines.

Link to today’s strip

Poor Ruby looks so sad in panel 3. Like she is distraught over the memory of her lost creations, a metaphorical mother missing the beauty she had given life to.I’m calling it right now, Chester Hagglemore has some of her original stuff in his collection that Mindy will twist him into gifting back to her in return for her doing some variant Atomik Komiks covers.

She’ll be so happy to have her poor stolen progeny back in her possession once more! Except, you know, she sold those babies for money, knowing full well that the original pencils would likely be destroyed.

And yet her work remains, in every copy of her comics that still exists. Why don’t they just blow up some old panels, and put them on the wall?

At the time, comics artists and writers were workers for hire, with the understanding that the company that hired them owned what they produced. I think it’s nice, and fair, that today comics artists are returned their work, and are even allowed to duplicate some of it, so they can resell it to collectors and fans. Every TFCon and Botcon I’ve attended has had comic artists there selling posters of covers, prints, and even the original line art.

But I don’t think it was an gross injustice when the comics companies considered the art their property, and no longer the original artists, since it was bought and paid for by mutual agreement.

I know that I’ve been Wiki linking all week, and sorry to those of you who would prefer me to pick apart the art or go off on wacky tangents. Or just post a short paragraph and shut up. But, honestly, fact checking this plotline has become a compulsion for me. Because I know that Batiuk has a deep knowledge of comics history, and I also don’t trust him for an instant to not warp that truth to suit his own narrative.

Here’s the wiki article for Creator Ownership in Comics. Most notable:
“Up to the mid-1970s, most comic book publishers kept all original pages, in some cases destroying them in lieu of storing them safely… By 1975 or 1976, both DC and Marvel also began returning artist’s original pages to them.”

Oy Vey! Vetik in di Tuchus!

Link to today’s strip

Ruby, your Yiddish is showing. I don’t know if Batiuk is using the word tuchus to tell us that Ruby is Jewish, or just from New York. I’d give him some minor props if its the former since Jews had an proportionally outsized influence on early comics. For more information see great books like Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero and Up, Up, and Oy Vey! How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped The Comic Book Superhero.

But then again Yiddishisms have migrated their way into the common national slang, especially in New York. For more research on that read The Joys of Yiddish. Either way, one word has hinted at more character and backstory than Mindy has gotten in decades of serving as a prop to display Crankshaft on.

Now that the Amazon deep dive is over, what the frag does Ruby mean by ‘as a woman’? I seriously hope that Batiuk intends to delve into this further with specific examples of how her gender made things more difficult. Otherwise this phrase is empty and meaningless. Because comic creating has always been a pain in the ass, regardless of gender, both in reality and in the reality of this strip.

Batiuk has drawn from the well of comic creators’ misery many, many, many, many times. We had Pete raked over the coals for writing ‘The Amazing Mr. Sponge’ while Lord of the Late loomed over him, and the comic company made demands for a ‘Clone Saga’. We had all those implied-to-be-canon musings by Darin and Pete over how hard it was to be in the Batom pool ‘back in the day’. If either of those situations could have been made appreciably worse by a bra, I’d like to see it. Sure the bosses could have been sexist, but we’ve already seen that they’re willing to bully, demean, and steal the ideas of males.

It’s not that much worse if someone treats you with the same callous regard as the men, but with the addendum that they’re doing it because you’re a woman. That’s not sexism, that’s a sexist who treats everyone like crap.