Today’s strip features the two dippy Crankshaft girls in a phone-related joke intended to show just how stupid the two of them are. It succeeds on that level, I guess. Otherwise, it’s totally unrelated to anything else in the strip. I guess it’s remarkable in one sense that it shows their father, but I don’t know enough about their appearances in Crankshaft to know whether he’s ever been shown in the past. I think their mom showed up at some point.
Have at it!
Son of Stuck Funky 
That would explain it all.
And cousins. I don’t know how that happened but neither does Batiuk, so we’re even.
Still, they’re cousins,
Identical cousins and you’ll find,
They laugh alike, they walk alike,
At times they even talk alike —
You can lose your mind,
When cousins are two of a kind
Exactly what I was going to say! Errgghhh…..
It’s always annoying when the BanMan assumes we’ll know who these Crankshaft people are (or be interested enough to find out) but as usual he’s wrong wrong wrong on all counts. I don’t care, never have, never will.
Yes, the ol’ landline sure is slipping into obsolescence these days all right. Another timely observation and right on top of his “hot take” on copy machine click counters, no less. Let’s hope he doesn’t get into blu-rays or high powered laser pointers, we’ll never hear the end of it.
What Technological Blindness Man fails to realize is that his attempts to name-drop an irritant only serve to remind us of how little he has ever known of the world. After all, he started out reminding us that he confused the woman’s rights movement with the United Girls Against Jughead.
Another 1/4″ reality strip about teenagers. Yep todays teens think to be a home phone number has to be a landline. Another home run TB you really have your finger on the pulse of todays tech and teens.
Just another point about this strip that annoys me. The parents are more in touch with how we interact with tech than their teens.
The twins were not funny in Crankshaft, but in FW, they are just sad. I am sad for them too as they haven’t gotten any smarter as they have grown up…but they go to Westview schools so …
The gimmick surrounding these twins is supposed to be they’re twins… BUT THEY’RE SOOOOOO DIFFERENT!!! One dresses in black and is usually all snarky. The other usually dresses in pink, but is a real Mary Sunshine.
One is a guitar rocker (somehow playing guitar in the marching band) and the other plays flute, violin, or some similar more “girly” instrument. (Relax. I know they’re not REALLY girly instruments. I’m speaking from within Batty’s pointy little bald head.)
Maybe the Hubble Telescope can find the punchline in today’s installment. I can’t. Is the “joke” supposed to be that it’s not a “home” phone unless it’s a landline? In that case, why can’t you use the “house phone” at an airport to call your house? I’ll bet Batty could do two weeks of that, featuring a VERY indignant, inconvenienced Goatee Boy.
Nice to see Batty doesn’t mind taking a page from the playbooks of such superstar cartoonists as Ray Billingsley and Lynnuck Johnston by having a character overreact to the punchline. But do you really think 80’s Mom’s facepalm went far enough? Why not have her exclaim something like “HOOOO BOY!!!” and have her bang her head repeatedly on the kitchen table while 80’s dad does an eyes slammed shut, sticky-out tongue laugh? I mean, even the lameness in this cartoon is lame. If you’re going to be lame, go all out, full-on lame!
I doubt the Hubble would have much luck locating today’s “joke.” Maybe the LIDO instrument–it’s designed to see into black holes.
“One is a guitar rocker (somehow playing guitar in the marching band) …”
Perhaps TB saw “Take the Money and Run” where there was a scene showing Woody Allen playing the cello in a marching band and thought he could do better.
Haven’t seen it, but that’s gotta be funny just reading the description.
Batiuk’s an avowed Woody Allen fan, so that’s a possibility!
Wait. That’s not funny!
The art is really odd today, but I kind of like it. It doesn’t look like someone dashed it off in 20 seconds before rushing out the door to get to the airport.
Except for Amelia and Bedelia’s creepy 80’s-holdover parents, particularly the dad, Les Moore hairstyle and all, giving his daughter the stink eye.
While cord-cutting is something that’s happening, my experience is that a landline is pretty much bundled into most cable and fiber-optic “triple-play” packages and wouldn’t be a cost-cutting issue for people of the twins’ patents’ generation. I think the real practice of cord-cutting is more likely with millenials who have cell phones, don’t regularly watch traditional television and can easily dispense with 2/3 of the package.
I agree with beckoningchasm that the art today is much better than the daily strip.
If Batty had two brain cells to rub together, he’d have Slutty Susan return as some sort of District Supervisor, or whatever the Hell they call higher-ups in the public school system. (Apparently, she’s put her career back together again!) She had been called in to resolve this copier dispute that was in all the papers and had become a national news story. Encountering Les, the creep who caused her to be run out of town on a rail, and mocked her as he left, the case was quickly decided as she fed Les’s copier access card into the shredder.
“Use carbon paper. And Les — Heck of a receding hairline!”
The parents have been seen recently, over in Crankshaft, when Lillian had Thanksgiving dinner with the family. At that point the twins had not developed distinct personalities, but the Flowers in the Attic vibe with the parents was in place: https://comicskingdom.com/crankshaft/2017-11-23