that blog of his – Son of Stuck Funky

Beethoven’s Fifth

The Batty Blog has been slow lately, but there’s something to talk about this week.

In addition to Funky Winkerbean, Crankshaft, John Darling and the thankfully never-published Dick and Jane, we now learn that Tom Batiuk tried foisting a fifth comic strip onto the world. Meet Rusty:

*When you were at* *Roger Bollen’s house, did you tell him were planning to do **this**?!*

Tom Batiuk confirms what you’re already thinking:

Basically a hipper Yogi Bear, a cartoon that was long in the review mirror by that point.

Clearly Yogi’s hipness was only updated from 1961 to 1973, since one of the three example strips we’re shown was a fondue joke.

I’ll let Batiuk tell you the rest of the story as only he can:

I’d only been doing Funky for a few months when Bob Votjko showed up at our apartment wanting some advice on his work and wanting to know how to get syndicated. I was barely started myself at that point so I don’t know how much help I was (none),

Through Batton Thomas, Tom Batiuk has told us at great length how he went to a cartoonist’s home, wanting some advice on his work and how to get syndicated. And now he’s received the same visit, and he’s being all self-deprecating about it? Did Batiuk fail to recognize the role reversal from his own life, just a few months ago?

“Oh, I’m sure I was no help, even though I did the exact same thing, and could have easily passed along all the information I collected from much more accomplished cartoonists than myself.” He’s so quick to play the self-deprecating card that he doesn’t notice when it makes him look like an asshole.

We didn’t have any luck syndicating it, although it did prove providential in a couple of ways down the road.

“We were unlucky, but we were lucky.”

Its strong ecological bent probably wouldn’t fly in today’s political environment, but nevertheless it holds up rather nicely.

“It didn’t age well, but it aged well.”

But just because we couldn’t get it in the papers, doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy it.

This sentence seems like another instant self-contradiction, but it’s actually completely meaningless. Being in the papers and being enjoyable have nothing to do with each other.

There are comic strips in the newspaper that you can enjoy (Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side, Peanuts). There are comic strips in the newspaper that you can’t enjoy (most of them these days, especially the Funkyverse, except for the perverse enjoyment we get from it). There are comic strips not in the newspaper that you can enjoy (Penny Arcade, dozens of other good webcomics). And finally, there are comic strips not in the newspaper that you can’t enjoy (because many talented creators never got the exposure they needed to reach you).

I’m going to roll it out day by day just like you would have seen it had it appeared in your daily newspaper.

In 17 days, we’ve gotten three strips that don’t appear to be in any kind of chronological order, or look like an introduction to the comic strip. So Lord knows what he’s even trying to say here.

Synesthesia II

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It’s time for another visit to Tom Batiuk’s wacky blog!

In Match To Flame 221, we get the continuation of Batiuk’s trip to North Carolina. During this trip, he discovered he has synesthesia, but didn’t realize this was the only interesting thing that happened to him. Nor did he care enough to learn that the condition had a name.

“Who Art Thy Daddy?”, Sayeth Paul To The Galatians, While Splitting Aces

Tom Batiuk’s latest blog post Match To Flame 219 starts with one of the most bizarre sentences I’ve ever read.

It was another one of those road to Damascus–double down–who’s your daddy moments.

I have so many questions about this. What life event could possibly be described by all three of these cliches at the same time, especially when the first two contradict each other? A “road to Damascus” is a sudden, major change in one’s beliefs. To “double down” is to increase your commitment to something you’re already doing. So, it’s one of those “change while emphatically not changing” moments in life? And how often does this happen to Tom Batiuk? It must be a lot, because he introduces it with the phrase “it was another one of those” moments. As if he’s rolling his eyes from the sheer boredom of it all.

I want to rework George Carlin’s “fine and dandy” bit to be about these three phrases instead. “I never use the phrase ‘road to Damascus–double down–who’s your daddy moments.’ Why? Because I’m never all three of those things at the same time! Sometimes, I am indeed on the road to Damascus. Just the other day, I was flying from New York to change planes in Dubai. But I never double down during those trips! In fact, I’m pretty sure blackjack is illegal in Muslim countries. And I never use the phrase ‘who’s your daddy?’ Unless I find a lost little girl at the park, and I’m trying to find her parents. Then I might ask, ‘who’s your daddy?'”

Match To Lame

On July 20, thwarted lover Eugene rowed into the middle of a lake for reasons unknown, and hasn’t been seen since.

On August 11, Tom Batiuk explained on his blog what happened to Eugene. It’s called writing. Let’s dissect:

I take flack now and then from fans(?)

I didn’t put that (?) there. Tom Batiuk did. This may be the first time he has acknowledged the idea that his readers might not be “fans” in the traditional sense. Though I think he’s implying that anyone who would question his writing is not actually a fan. All criticism is a mortal offense to Tom Batiuk, and he makes you guess what he’s upset about. No wonder he likes Les so much.

who are perplexed and flummoxed by the fact I deliberately try not to engage in linear storytelling.

I’m mostly perplexed by this sentence. The man is simply incapable of saying anything straightforwardly. Try it with me now: “I consciously avoid linear storytelling.” When your writing is so bad I have to decipher it, it doesn’t matter how linear or non-linear you are.

Crashing Ugly Cars

So I checked in on the BatBlog, and saw a new “Match To Flame” entry regarding an automobile accident involving our favorite comic strip, uh, writer, I guess. Based on the pics he posted, it looked like a pretty bad one, involving an airbag deployment (those really hurt. On TV it’s a big fluffy cushion of helpful air, but in real life it’s like being socked in the face with a giant cartoon boxing glove) and paramedics and whatnot. And I felt bad for the boring old coot, and genuinely hoped he was OK and all.

Then, however, I got to the part about his PT Cruiser, and I thought wait a minute, BatYam is still driving a PT Cruiser? And I figured OK, I suppose that if anyone still had a PT Cruiser, Batiuk would be a good candidate, because you know. And then he was droning on about his coat, and how months later it still had the indentation from the seat belt, and I realized that he was in fact jabbering about an old car accident he’d had years before.

And apparently, this sequence of events was the inspiration for the now-legendary “black panel” Funky Winkerbean & Cell Phone Girl car crash arc, which led to the creation of Starbuck Jones, which forever altered the course of the Funkyverse in stupid, tiresome ways no one could have possibly foreseen. But, thanks to his unique writing style, it took me a while to ascertain this, as the story could politely be described as “meandering”, at best.

So he wrote a nearly incomprehensible story about a chain of events that led him to focus more on his writing, and, just like always, it was written in a weird, strangely circular, and really annoying way, that made everything less clear than it was before. Some things never change.