Caption Contest!

What is Keesterman saying?

This is just the last panel of today’s Crankshaft strip, with the tail of the word zeppelin pointing where it should. (And with a ridiculous coloring error fixed.)

The GoComics version.

The artwork looks more like Keesterman should be speaking, doesn’t it? It’s practically a reverse angle of the May 19 strip, where Batton and Skip are the foreground characters. Which they should be, since they’re focus of the dialogue monologue. Today’s strip has the background characters doing the talking, even though they’ve been the focus characters this entire week.

This is such a grade school-level composition failure, that it looks like Tom Batiuk is passive-aggressively making a point to the “where’s Crankshaft?” crowd. “Oh, you want more Crankshaft? Fine! I’ll make him the biggest character on the page, while I continue talking about what I want to talk about!” I wonder how Mr. Batiuk, the young art teacher, would have graded this if one of his students submitted it.

Also: why do Ed, Ralph, and Keesterman all look like they’re talking? Only one of them should be talking. Ralph appears to be taking a bite. But his expression doesn’t match that action, unless that is the wryest piece of apple pie in culinary history.

When I made that Luann crossover parody, I spent a lot of time editing mouths, so that only the person speaking had their mouth open. And Tom Batiuk can’t put in that level of effort? Even when his entire comic strip can be built from Colorforms at this point? And when he’s getting paid to do this, and I’m not?

The Game Is On!

That insufferable jackass Batton Thomas is back to drone on about nothing while Skip pays rapt attention. Which means it’s time to evalulate the bets I solicited!

G1. When will the next week of the Batton Death March begin? May 18. One point if you got it right.

G2. Will Skip start the week by making a comment about “continuing the interview”? Skip said “so you talked the last time about…,” so that’s a Yes. One point if you got it right. He doesn’t have to say those exact words.

G3. Where will they meet? Not 100% confirmed, but it looks like Montoni’s, which is worth half a point. I’m sure Mindy will be by on Wednesday to drop off the pizza. (TUESDAY UPDATE: The presence of Ed, Ralph, and Keesterman in the background suggests they are at Dale Evans instead. And maybe that Batiuk is feeling some pressure to at least pretend Ed Crankshaft is still the main character.)

G4. What recording device will Skip use? Skip’s cell phone is visible. Half a point.

A7. How many times will Skip smirk? Wow, twice already, and it’s only Monday. We’ll count again at the end of the week.

M4. Who will Batton name-drop? Nobody yet, but I’m going to make a ruling that it has to be a real person. His “band director character” is obviously Dinkle, but that’s not what I’m looking for here.

M6. Will Batton act like a complete jackass at some point? Of course, he already has. Take your .0001 point and get out of here.

M7. Will Batton talk about doing actual work on Three O’Clock High or The Wrinkles? He mentions Bizarro Dinkle becoming popular, but that’s not the same as doing actual work. So not yet, but it could still happen this week.

M8. How many of the seven deadly sins will Batton commit? I’m counting today’s strip as Gluttony. Batton has spoken at so many potluck dinners that he got Tupperware poisoning, implying that he must have consumed a massive amount of the food there.

Also, I’m going to make a general ruling here: simply meeting at Montoni’s counts as Gluttony. Dale Evans, by itself, doesn’t count as gluttony, since they have some non-gluttonous offerings. Even if they’re just things Ed Crankshaft orders to do one of his stupid puns.

That’s everything I can evaluate so far, because the others are weeklong totals, or they are for events that can still happen later this week. By the end of the week (including a possible Sunday), this post will be a complete list of all the wagers that were offered. And I’ll tally up a winner of those of you who made selections.

Ian’s Drunken Beard is the early leader:

G1 – May 18

G2 – Yes

G4 – cell phone

M6 – Yes

That’s 2.5001 points! And some of his other plays like “7 smirks” and “6 deadly sins” look pretty good so far.

After this week, I’ll calculate the totals, and standardize the set of offerings going forward.

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: We have a sideways panel, and some early artwork. That would fulfill the following:

A5. Will there be a sideways strip? 1 point, of 5 if there is a second one later this week.

A6. What early Tom Batiuk artwork will appear? This appears to be real-life pre-Funky Winkerbean artwork, which is worth 1.5 points if we can confirm it. Let me know if you can, or there’s a blog post explaining it.

THURSDAY UPDATE: Today we learn that “Harry Finkle” will straight-up commit murder, Crankshaft-Pop Clutch style, to sell band candy. Surprisingly, this doesn’t violate any new deadly sins. It’s not Wrath, because it’s not motivated by hatred. There doesn’t seem to be a deadly sin that covers what we would modern law would call “criminal negligence” or “involuntary manslaughter.”

Which makes me question whether the 7 Deadly Sins bet is viable. Batton either breaks them constantly (Pride, Sloth); never breaks them (Wrath); or are things Tom Batiuk would never have one of his own “good” characters do (Lust). Gluttony is largely a function of where/what they’re eating. Greed only manifests itself in the Funkyverse in the form of highly valuable comic books. As for Envy, Batton doesn’t commit this sin so much as he inspires others to commit it. The encounter with his wannabe rockstar neighbor right after he got his cartoonist gig is a perfect example.

I’ll honor the wager for this week, but I don’t think it’ll be part of the game going forward. (And yes, there will be a game going forward.)

FRIDAY UPDATE: We have the Batton face! That hits the easiest target on wager A1.

SATURDAY UPDATE: That word zeppelin isn’t quite big enough to fulfill A2. Will there be a word balloon that is more than half the size of the panel?

I will post a final tally after Sunday’s strip. (Sunday strips count, if the strip is related to the Batton Thomas interviews.)

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us

I went to all the trouble of setting up a Batton Thomas betting pool, with options like “Will Skip start the week by making a comment about continuing the interview?” And the prick just rudely shows up on a Wednesday, hijacking a harmless week at Komix Korner. And re-uses that same smug drawing we’ve seen a dozen times by now.

How on earth did I fail to offer the option “yet another smug, insufferable book signing and not the actual interview”? In retrospect, that should be a standing offer in this wagering house. The Funkyverse is an endless parade of book signings for books no one would ever ready, by people who are incapable of writing them. My joss paper theory seems more plausible by the day.

(To make a house ruling: this week will not count as a Batton Death March week. So none of those wagers will be evaluated until the next fully-focused Batton Thomas interview week.)

If Tom Batiuk fulfills any promise to his readers, it’s the meta-promise he inadvertently makes to us snarkers: that his unhinged storytelling choices will be bizarrely entertaining. Who could forget Zanizbar, the talking, cigar-smoking murder chimp? Or Darrin’s decision to make a child’s toy of the handgun that killed that child’s own grandfather? Or Cindy’s late-life pregnancy, which was never resolved in any way? Or that this tiny town would have two people with almost-identical amputations, and no character would ever once comment on that? Or Timemop, and “humanity is our nation”?

But this kind of crazy is becoming less and less frequent. I often compare the Funkyverse to the infamous movie The Room. Crankshaft now feels more like 2010: The Year We Made Contact. Stanley Kubrick’s original 2001: A Space Odyssey could be dense and tedious at times, but it was also memorable and trippy, and told a strong story if you put the effort in. The sequel lost all the weird stuff, and told a straightforward, So Okay It’s Average story about interstellar Cold War cooperation, 20 years after the Soviet Union ended in real life. (The John Lithgow space walk scene is outstanding, though.)

The Funkyverse seems to be undergoing entropy. Its internal structure, what little there ever was, seems to be breaking down. I’ll tell you what I mean.

On June 1, 2024 – almost two years ago now – this blog made the decision to continue publishing, on grounds that Crankshaft was looking like a continuation of everything we that made the Funkyverse so compelling. And sometimes, it lived up to that meta-promise. The Burnings was probably the high/low point: an overhyped story about an out-of-date controversy, that did little more than demonstrate Les Moore’s complete immunity to the tiniest amounts of pushback.

But Batiuk has not been fulfilling that meta-promised. He has left certain tropes, like Atomix Komix and even Dead Lisa, mostly in Defuncty Winkerbean. Narshe recently gave an updated rotation of the frequent topics in Act IV Crankshaft:

– Batton Death March week
– Ed malapropisms week
– Jeff as a stand-in for Batiuk to lament something related to his interests week
– Montoni’s week
– [Emily and Amelia] manager for [Lillian] week
– Dinkle week
– Idiots at a book signing week

Narshe

That’s pretty accurate, though I would add two more to that list. The first one is a category I call the Legitimate Crankshaft Week. These are weeks that were just like what this strip contained before Funky ended. “Ed malapropism week” is the most common of these, making it a super-category to one of Narshe’s categories. But even native Crankshaft stories are less creative than they used to be. They’re usually propping up some lame premise like “bus driver shortage” for another milking.

The other new type is the miscellaneous week. These used to be rare, happening mostly at year’s end. But we’ve seen more and more weeks of generic, unrelated gags. And weeks that simply don’t adhere to the traditional Monday to Saturday schedule. The recent “Ed tries to scam eclipse observers” story ended on a Monday.

On a related note, I’ve been updating the “Act IV” menu that summarizes each week of post-2022 Crankshaft. And there’s barely anything to write anymore. If I can describe a week of this comic strip as “unrelated gags,” is the whole thing even worth talking about anymore? Is the entire system breaking down too much to be recognizable, even by our own definitions of what is entertaining about it?

Happy Mother’s Day!!!

My life has been a chaotic mess lately. Last weekend saw the passing of the mother of my dearest best friend, roommate, soul sister, and the Blue Beetle to my Booster Gold. So much of the week was tied up in funeral and funeral reception planning.

Now planting is in full swing, and my Dad has decided he completely feels up to putting the corn in as long as someone else is loading the planter for him. So those lower on the farmer pecking order than him are getting really up close and personal with 50 pound bags of seed corn a half a dozen times a day.

Still, didn’t want the day to go unremarked upon. So a little snapshot of a momentous time in the story of the most complex, fraught, and toxic relationship in the Funkyverse. Jeff’s relationship with Rose. Someday, when the world calms down a bit, the crazy old bat is due for a deep dive!

Ohionana OH MY OH!

First of all.. that Sadie Summers breakdown will go down in history as one of, if not THE, greatest introductory series of posts by a new host ever. Narshe…we stand in line!

Been so out of the loop the last couple months I didn’t even clock that the Ohioana Book Festival had been cancelled for 2026. Anyone else hear about this? Any one else comment about this already and I was so gassed out on rotten silage fumes I blocked the memory?

So I guess Batiuk can scratch 40% of his hard cover book sales for the year. What he’ll do with the surplus three volumes of The Complete Funky Winkerbean that he manages to pity sell to footsore festival goers, I have no idea. But I’m sure some door in his home will need propped open sooner or later.

But the strips were already written and pasted together a year in advance, so Ohioana Book Festival 2026 exists only in Crankshaft form.

Channeling my inner Iansdrunkenbeard…

On the family and farm front, my dad is recovering well. To the point I literally had to throw him out of a cattle sorting pen by pointing at the gate and barking ‘GO ON! GIT!’ at him like a misbehaving dog. Weather has been too cold and wet for planting, but the cows and calves are mostly out to pasture.