Batiuk does love his little in-jokes. For the second time this month, we get a reference to a certain “old bus driver” whom everyone remembers but nobody can name. Something else that TB loves is really lame wordplay, and having his FW characters invoking Ed Crankshaft lets him double his output of malaprops.
23 thoughts on “Interest Adjustment”
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Son of Stuck Funky 
Let’s see how many times we can use the word “die” while building up Cory’s return, no way that could be foreshadowing or anything.
And what it is with this strip constantly referencing Crankshaft lately? You’d think there was a new book out or something that Batiuk’s trying to boost sales of.
Crankshaft was Holly’s bus driver too? That settles it, he must have some deal with the devil going. Extended lifespan for as long as he maintains his toxic, misanthropic personality.
“Died Back Up…Lisa’s Story Part II”: a recently deceased woman simply refuses to leave an obscure comic strip. Adult situations.
Thank God Batom reminded me that the Corporal is in Afghanistan. I might have forgotten that fact after hearing it just those two hundred other times. He expects us to remember who Bull’s f*cking kids are after two decades but he doesn’t trust us to remember a prominent plot point of the last few years. What a dick.
And enough with the desperate Crankshaft references. No one f*cking cares. I don’t remember ever seeing that jerk in FW, not even once. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t, I don’t care, it’s just profoundly annoying to hear about him all the damn time.
Batom® is as subtle as a sledgehammer. It’s blatantly obvious that he’s going to kill Cory off, after all, why make the Funk Man unironically happy with an aborted storyline about flying… and tests… and stuff. I still have my money on the Christmas strip showing Holly in a stupor, staring at the Starbuck Jones collection that Cory will never be able to read ’cause he’s dead.
I guess Batom® is always desperate to cross-promote Crankshaft. Hell, if he could weasel in My Daughter, Jessica Darling to talk about her full-name basis father (he was murdered, you know!) I bet she would.
@Epicus Doomus: Ed Crankshaft was a bit character in Act I FW prior to 1986. IIRC, he drove the marching band bus. When he got spun off into his own strip, he left FW proper.
I’ve got a bad, bad feeling about this strip. It’s setting up to be over-the-top depressing and overwrought right through Christmas.
I almost want to believe that Brenden Buford talked Batom® out of another ridiculously depressing arc with the Funk Man and… whatever last week was… but I’m not that dense.
Oh, I know he was a bit character, but what I meant was he was a BIT character, as in “I’ve read this thing since the 70s and I don’t remember any Crankshaft”. I must have missed it on those days.
“and as that guy you spent all week before last complaining about and trying to forget used to say,….”
So, why was Funky flying last week? Unless he has some super-rare medical condition, any tests he needed to take could have been done locally, and it seems he didn’t go to pick up Cory either.
Yeah, I don’t expect we’ll ever know.
Leave it to Vampire-Bat to use anything involving death as a “punchline”. And an impossibly unfunny one at that.
Another thing: Why do they always act as though they even cared about Cory?
It wouldn’t surprise me if this was just copied straight from an old Crankshaft strip. Batiuk’s been doing this a lot, where the entire supposed humor is “something my school bus driver used to say”. It’s like the comic strip equivalent of a clip show.
Prepare for YEARS of Mr and Mrs Porkerbean referring to their late son as “My son, Corky, who was killed in Afghanistan” every time his name comes up.
Will Jessica Darling, whose father, John Darling, was murdered, go to A-stan to shoot a documentary (on her iPhone, no doubt) about his final days? Will she interview the Camel Effer who planted the IED that blowed him up reeeeeal good? If so, will she indignantly storm out of the room during the interview?
@Hadda:
Heck no. The documentary will be about Holly getting comic books.
Get prepared for St. Les the Righteous Smirker to approach the Funk Man and Holly at the wake for Cory and tell them, “one word… Hollywood.”
Given Batiuk’s love of the seventies, how likely do you think it’ll be that the guy telling them that his plane got shot down over the Sea of J….Khyber Pass will look like what’s supposed to be Gary Burghoff?
I’d actually be pretty darkly amused if Batiuk killed Corey off on Christmas. I’ll take melodramatic inanity over Mary Sue treacle any day of the week.
It occurs to me that TB’s going to have to hurry this along, as the US troop drawdown is already underway. Thanks, year-ahead schedule!
@bad wolf: If called on it, he’ll hide behind his being a writer who writes writing.
So afterwards will Funky whose son Corky was killed in Afghanistan, and Les, whose wife Lisa died of cancer, sit on adjoining park benches and talk to the departed? And what of Jessica who’s father John Darling, was murdered? or will they all sit together? And would Les be upset if Lisa started making out with John Darling or worse yet Corky cause the afterlife is a long time and it can get boring? And is there some idiot thing in the syndication agreement that prevents the Author from mentioning C-kshaft by name in this strip?
Panel 1 shows Flunky trying to figure out how to strangle Holly with Christmas lights. “That little fweep of hair she alway has hanging down in her eyes is making me CRAAAAZY!!!!”
Panel 2: softball sized snowballs fall from the sky! Aaaauuuugghh!
Panel 3: Lyndon Johnson unbuttons the top button of Holly Porkerbean’s blouse.
Come back tomorrow just in case Flunky explains why he flew out of town for medical tests.
@bad wolf: This could have been deliberately timed to coincide with the real-life drawdown… the usage of two crappy Dinkle storylines, a wasted week disguised as a Crankshaft crossover, and an aborted storyline about Funky mysteriously flying somewhere because Batom® chickened out of something so over-the-top ludicrously awful… it’s far from coincidental. IMO.
But hasn’t the drawdown timeline from Afghanistan been common knowledge for well over a year?
I believe the “writing” excuse worked for Coleman Francis when he released Red Zone Cuba in the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco…
@Professor Fate: “And is there some idiot thing in the syndication agreement that prevents the Author from mentioning C-kshaft by name in this strip?”
King Features handles both comics, so the answer should be no. My guess is, Batom® does it because he doesn’t think that his remaining fanbase – blue-haired subscribers to the Elyria Chronicle Telegram – possesses any cognitive memory skills to speak of.