Some selected final panels of book signing-related strips, from as far back as 2010:
Notice how similar these all are, even though they’re different characters. Because they’re all here to indulge Tom Batiuk’s fantasy: that he’s an elite writer who attracts long lines at his far too many book signings. Then he laughs at his own unfunny/incoherent joke. And then he belittles you, because he’s a writer and you’re not. Next, please.
All of these were responses to perfectly reasonable questions or to harmless banter, from genuine fans. And they all got Bitter Les Face in response. Though it was kind of nice to see Les on the receiving end from Dinkle that one time. Look at his shocked, unhappy expression. You can almost see him thinking “wow, is this how I come off to people?” Of course, Les’ heel realization is never explored, because the Funkyverse can’t have that.
I get why an author might find book signings annoying, and mine a few jokes from the experience. But we’ve had several book signing weeks over the years, and it’s always this same collection of conceits: annoyance, self-aggrandizement, intellectual superiority, and the author’s rude dismissal of people who are fawning over him. And as is standard for the Funkyverse, not one of these fans ever responds to being insulted by someone they admire. If anything, they’re too dumb to even notice.
Which makes me wonder what Tom Batiuk’s book signings are really like for him. From the book signing pictures we see on his blog, I infer that he doesn’t get many takers. Which can also lend itself to comedy. But he never subjects his stable of writers to this treatment. “No one came to my book signing” stories tend to be discussions of things that happened off-panel, like in fall 2017.
Batiuk loves to control the narrative about his work. But he can’t make real-life convention visitors be interested in him. Especially when he appears at the same handful of local venues every year without fail; those venues are awkward fits for his audience; and he never sets foot anywhere else. He’s setting himself up to fail.
So what we get instead is a different kind of fantasy. “Batton” gets plenty of visitors, but they’re all mind-bogglingly stupid. Even though they’re flattering him to an absurd degree, like someone mistaking his work for Archie. And we’re the snarkers? It seems to me that Batiuk is venting at his fans for being idiots, when his real complaint is that there aren’t nearly enough of them.
If these stories are an accurate description how Tom Batiuk treats his fans, it’s no wonder he doesn’t have very many.
Son of Stuck Funky 
