Correct me if I am wrong, but Ed going to get a massage is it a new arc for Crankshaft? I find this story-line original and funny. How about you?
Sorial Promise, January 19, 2024
Funny? Tolerably so, for me at least. The last three have at least been within the same universe as recognizable comedy. This should be the baseline of Crankshaft, not a week of no jokes, no conflict, no real plot, as one hunk of stale toast hands the keys to a failure of a restaurant to another hunk of stale toast and his pretzel stick appendage of a partner.
Original? Well, Cranky is no stranger to a massage. Back in 2014, when he threw out his back, his resistance to a massage served as the concluding conflict of the plot. And by the end…things started to look pretty…familiar.
So, to answer your question, Sorial, even if this week has been almost funny, it’s far from original.
Son of Stuck Funky 
CBH,
1. Thank you for the mention. I appreciate it.
2. As for my standards of humor, they are very low when it comes to Crankshaft. But it is nice to see that TB can still reach funny.
3. Thank you for finding the strips from his first meeting the massaginist.
4. I would be interested in your opinion on why TB avoids humor. I know he is hooked on special episodes, still trying for that Pulitzer. But all of the In between strips, there is rarely any humor, and few if any interesting characters. I wonder what motivates him every day?
Stay warm, my dear.
Heya SP,
I’m doing my best to stay warm. Yesterday we were bedding down cattle in the barn and I was dressed in more layers than a deep dish lasagna.
I don’t think that Batiuk consciously avoids humor. Even in late state FW, there were often enough strips that attempted it. Don’t forget that he broke up Lisa dying of cancer with Crazy Harry stealing his old locker door.
Sometimes he goes for this humorish tone that would work if these characters were more distinct. He talks a lot about having some history behind his characters means that he could move into ‘character’ based humor rather than just going for a punchline.
The problem is that Batiuk long ago stopped challenging himself when it came to developing those characters. The lack of interesting characters that you noticed is what cripples his attempt at character based humor. It’s also what makes Crankshaft himself, IMO, the most successful of his characters. Because he went for a grumpy curmudgeon trope long ago and stuck with it, and added a few layers of tropes to it.
Think of how much we know about Crankshaft. We know his history, his former dreams, what he currently values, what he likes, even his hobbies, gardening, baseball, and bowling. And these things feel like things that not every single person in the Funkyverse similarly obsesses over. We can guess what his unique reaction might be. It’s why we demand to know ‘Where’s Crankshaft?’ because even at this terminally late stage he’s a hair better than everyone around him.
There are very few characters that Batiuk took this time with. Jess is indistinguishable from Hannah is identical to Mindy. And Max may as well be Darin. Pete can drop his entire lifelong comics career for a pizza restaurant. Pam is reduced to a series of questions. And Jeff is a smug manchild with a single obnoxious passion.
Thank you, CBH,
1. I agree that a lot of TB’s characters are indistinguishable and unidentifiable. I don’t even know who some of them are. I know there are 2 that are twins, but I don’t know their family, parents, or home city.
You make it clear why Ed stands out. TB goes for humor with Ed-centric arcs. I compare them to Funky arcs where mostly FW is incredibly aggravating in harmless situations.
2. This you may appreciate. My son plays a game that you are familiar with called “Death’s Door”. My son plays a crow known as Reaper. He probably lost over 50 times fighting a giant. Then he figured it out. My grandson watches him play. My son turned on today’s “Ravens vs. Texans” football game. My grandson saw the Ravens, and called out, “Reapers! Reapers!” He is now officially a Baltimore fan.
Love you! KC warms up tomorrow. I will send some heat your way. ♥️🧊💖❤️🫂🌺💐🌹
“Reapers” would be a great name for a football team. It’s too edgy for the NFL or college. But indoor football, absolutely. Lends itself well to a color scheme and helmet logo. There are some examples on Google Images.
Thanks BJ,
Oh yes. I checked them out. Pretty cool!
Davis hates doing this, doesn’t he?
Given the serious way Suicide Girl delivered her anti humor rant about how distracting people from reality by getting them to laugh was an awful thing, it seems to me that Batiuk believes that it’s not cool to laugh at a problem.
Been reading this since you wrote it, and I have not the slightest idea what you’re talking about.
Also, “not laughing at a problem”–Batshit treats suicide as a joke, like it’s someone’s “Emo Phase.”
It’s not something you “get over.”
I believe the reference is to Whatsername – Susan Smith? – Les’s former student who attempted suicide by pill overdose because of her unrequited love for him. She later became a teacher alongside Les, and defended his (and to be fair, his drama students’) choice of a play about choosing medically-assisted death with an impassioned speech about the Role of Art and the Need to Face the Hard Topics. Or something.
I can’t remember the name or author of the play, but it’s a real one and fairly well known.
The play is *Wit* and the author is Margaret Edson.
That, or he just completely missed the point of that Picasso “good artists copy, great artists steal” quote.
Is it stealing when you’re taking it from yourself?
There are times when I wonder if it’s more work for Davis to C&P his own strips than draw anything new. That just seems like…spite. Like your “creative” boss has always treated you like he does. Remember, it wasn’t that many years ago that Bats was pretending he was the artist, no byline.
I think the cut and paste we’re seeing is done in an effort to keep the art style consistent from how it used to be. So that Crankshaft still looks like Crankshaft and ect. It would be less work for a decent cartoonist to create the strip by drawing it fresh, yes. But potentially more work to draw a it so that the characters look just the same as they always have.
AND going full tinfoil here, by creating the art via clipart, Davis or whoever is in charge can outsource some of the work to interns to assemble while still keeping the art consistent.
It’s interesting how Batom Inc. has the ability to go back through the archives and find that previously-used art, but they can’t use those archives to pinpoint how old the characters are, what their last names are, or what race they happen to be. It strongly indicates that labor-saving is the main priority there at the home office in Medina. But we already knew that.
I think the cut and paste we’re seeing is done in an effort to keep the art style consistent from how it used to be.
Why? Funky Winkerbean abruptly switched to John Byrne for its final week, just because Mr. 11-Month Lead Time somehow created a situation where Ayers wouldn’t draw it.
So it would be awfully self-serving of Batiuk to delcare that the art style of anything in Funkyverse is so sacrosanct that copy-pasting exisiting art is the only way new strips can be produced. But it fits in perfectly with labor saving being the main priority, as below.
This fits in with my theory that he’s sanding off the edges of the strip, to make it a perennial space-filler. Dagwood probably had a lot of personality when Blondie started, and after a couple of decades… he didn’t.
I don’t know if Batiuk’s trying to interest his progeny into taking it over, or just trying to build a self-driving car for him to collect royalty checks from, but I think ‘striving for artistic achievement’ has given way to ‘how can we create an eternal present for this strip to live in’ and ‘how can the art do just enough lifting to continue.’ I don’t know if he planned anything before but time has got to be weighing heavily on him.
I mean, what are the options?
>Crankshaftdisappears, his family gets only income from collections that no one will want.
>Crankshaftcontinues in more or less the same way; years of steady income and the work can be outsourced.
>Crankshaftgets cancelled by the end of the year; nothing ventured nothing gained.
Ironically using clip art to make yourself a Crankshaft or Funky was also my suggestion for how we could amuse ourselves here.
I’m still Gabby says
Have to admit, I am 76, and can relate to using the hanger to put on my socks.
Of course, IRL I am appreciative of my therapist, and wouldn’t think of being nasty to him—not least because he could break me into two or three pieces.
Our university physical therapy center is a designated Olympic rehabilitation center, which is a nice resource. Probably at least equivalent to what Crank got with his 1940s Mudhens
You know, I want to be charitable. To as much as an extent as I can.
But seeing Crankshaft treated so that his pain is abated is like people being nice to Hitler. I mean, as human beings, we tend to want to bring succor to those who are suffering, but, on the other hand, as human beings, we want to cast a judgement or two.
Given the Batiukverse’s history with Lenny and Logan Church… are we sure that this message therapist is even supposed to be a different person as the one depicted previously?
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Pam: Dad, how are you doing after the massage?
(ed tries turning his head around, but ends up snapping his neck, instantly killing him)
I’m guessing he’s counting on people not paying attention to his doing stuff he’s done before. It seems like a thing he would do.
For a really long running mostly humor strip, I think it’s understandable to recycle a joke after sufficient time has passed. 2014 is ten years ago now, so I’m not really criticizing the concept of another ‘massage’ arc. Just having some fun by pulling up the massage arcs of yesteryear and finding the art swipes.
Drake of Life says below what the real problem is: “There (isn’t) a stark power differential like there was when (Dinkle) worked at a high school.” Adults simply do not have to put up with Dinkle’s rules. Members would quit in large numbers. Others would complain to the church leadership. Lawsuits and criminal charges would be threatened. Dinkle would be instantly fired, and never work again in his life.
Which would have been a much more fitting end to Dinkle’s music career. Remember when Batiuk tried to give him random ironic deafness? Imagine Dinkle just being himself, and getting fired from a music job because of it. He’d spend the rest of his life at home wondering what he did wrong. Because he simply can’t comprehend that it isn’t 1975, and you can’t treat schoolchildren like that anymore. Now THAT would been an ironic end.
By the way, making your band/choir practice until 1:30 a.m. isn’t a sign of a good music director. It’s a sign of a bad music director. Dinkle has zero time management skills, overworks his members, and simply doesn’t care about their needs.
I was reading today’s Comic Curmudgeon, and Josh is heaping insults upon Slim from Gasoline Alley. In one of his links, he takes us back to
June 14, 2018. There is a FW strip that Josh calls boring. Yet it has Crankshaft decrepit and catatonic at Bedsore Manor. 2018! That’s only 6 years ago. I thought old man Crankshaft was from 10-15 years ago. That’s recent. Timemop has been extremely busy.
Honoring the former Duck of Death:
[shaking fish] TIIIIIMMMMME-MOPPPP!
I had to laugh at the Pluggers comic on Josh’s post. While cleaning at my grandma’s I found a stack of ancient calendars, including one with an appointment for my own mother’s wedding dress fitting.
Re: Sunday’s (1/21) ‘Shaft:
How to Create a “Crankshaft” Sunday Strip in 2024:
Step One: Find old 1970s “Funky Winkerbean” Sunday strip where Dinkle complains about the WHS football team holding on-field practice while he’s trying to rehearse the marching band.
Step Two: have current artist change locale to St. Spires.
Step Three: Alter wording where needed to reflect new setting and situation.
Step Four: Sit back and bask in adulation of readers.
Warning: Step Four may take a while.
Yeah when I was in High School in the 80’s, our band director had a picture of Dinkle saying “Football fields are for band practice!”.
It was an ok joke that fit with the tone of the strip, but repurposing this joke in Crankshaft, terrible, just terrible.
Re: Sunday the 21st:
Yea, as the 2024 Ohio Music Education Association Professional Development Conference approacheth…
IT BEGINS.
I’m terribly curious, though: why is a chorus of grawlixes (grawlices?) coming up from the wedding rehearsal? These are the universal symbols for cursing in the comics. Sounds like they’re having a pretty hellish time rehearsing that wedding. I’d much rather see a strip about the wedding rehearsal that turned into a profanity-laden free-for-all than see Dinkle and his old biddies.
Way to bury the lede, as always, Batiuk.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Looks like Harry L. Dinkle has fallen back to his old habits. Unfortunately for the whole Funkyverse, those habits are him being an total asshole-
Harry L. Dinkle: SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU DISGRACEFUL SACK OF SHIT!!
Dinks, get the fuck out of here
(suddenly some guy in a hood walks inside the church, and takes his hood off, revealing it to be Varg Vikernes (if you dont know who he is, then Varg Vikernes is a Norwegian criminal/former black metal musician who burned several churches down between 1991 and 1994, and killed fellow musician and felon. Euronymous)
Varg: Such a nice church you’ve got here, Harry L. Dinkle, It’d be a shame if it were to suddenly burst into flames.
Dinkle: OH NO YOU DONT! (throws a rock at Varg’s head)
Has any man or men been shown in St. Spires choir, under Dinkle’s leadership or going back to whenever? I have seen many-a regular Sunday church choir and–except for special arrangement–never a single gender one.
The presence of men is St. Spires choir was actually a rare case of a real, deliberate, and admitted-to retcon.
Batty liked the joke about no men in the choir. Which can happen with a smaller, aged congregation, so much so that he introduced the first transgender character into the Funkyverse two whole years before Rolanda.
https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/st-spires/
Wait, but… that was when there was still the 10-year gap between the strips, and in Funky they referenced the guy quitting years ago, so… couldn’t he have been in the choir during the Crankshaft time period, but had quit by the Funky time period? Or am I missing something?
There’s an argument to be made that Batiuk was already intentionally dropping the time gap when it was convenient for him. Two months after this St. Spires mini-crossover was the “Valentine theater closes because we’re finally acknowledging the pandemic” story where Jeff brings along his Murania rock to the theater’s “final” Radio Ranch showing (5/24/21 if you want to check GC), even though with the presumed time gap he isn’t meant to have that rock until the Funky story a decade later during his wildfire-induced “maybe-hallucination” of being saved by the film’s villains.
Even so, the Funky half of the “quasi-crossover” the blog discusses firmly put the Cranky side of things in the past, bringing up the latter’s death of their last organ player mid-performance (3/2/21 for the funny moment) in past-tense. So it was definitely variable at that point, presumably the lead-up to Funky ending was when he firmly wanted to give up to keep his easy crossover storylines/Funky takeover of Centerville.
Theory: TB created the all-female choir because, consciously or unconsciously, he needed to have a power/pushiness imbalance. In his mind, little old ladies are flustered and helpless, easy pawns for a bellowing tyrant like Dinkle.
This way, he could recreate the original Dinkle situation: A remorseless martinet rides roughshod over his helpless musicians.
Yes, of course, old church ladies aren’t helpless and passive. And yes, of course, it would have been far, far more interesting to have men in the choir and/or to have some of the members butting heads with Dinkle in a situation where there wasn’t a stark power differential like there was when he worked at a high school — where everyone was an independent adult with a voice.
Yet here we are.
I’m impressed by the contrast between the 2014 “Krankus Gets A Massage” series and the 2024 version: ten years ago, a goodly portion of the jokes involved the massage itself; this time, it’s all build-up and then a direct cut to the post-mortem. I mentioned this over on GC, and got a couple wonderful responses about what “Titanic” would be like if Batiuk had written it (Jack walks aboard the boat, then we flash-cut to Jack and Rose floating in the water; then everybody goes for pizza and komix). The ten-year-old series shows he did not always do just buildup-and-aftermath while skipping the actual event, and demonstrates he does know a little bit about massage.
So I am back to my hypothesis that he’s attempting a sort of (in his mind, anyway) meta-humor: he spends a week building the expectation that there will be several strips of physical comedy, then skips to afterward as if to say, “Gotcha! Joke’s on you!! (Why aren’t you laughing?) Now fetch me my Pulitzer…”
Recycling massage jokes is certainly quaint, but incredibly funny to come back here to see just how recycled the art itself is from the last time it was done. As acceptable as this is in comics, I can only imagine if Ayers has some strong thoughts checking in on what Batiuk is still writing.
Also man, today’s Sunday has same vibes. Retailoring an old Act 1 gag with a recognizable panel layout all the way back from the “hype” of the Christmas choir performance. Still find it amazing that was newsworthy on local northeast Ohio news broadcast in the middle of a blizzard.
I noticed a discrepancy in today’s (1/22) strip: the “physical therapist” working with Ed looks more like the leader at a trendy franchise gym. Every PT I’ve ever worked with has dressed in scrubs or similar “medical” clothing, not tight workout wear. Makes me think Davis couldn’t find proper “physical therapist” clip art in the Crankshaft Reusable Art Pantry, and so lifted one from the many “FW” series in which Funky and Les go to the gym. CBH?
I took a look at previous strips with Funky and his personal trainer and couldn’t find the swipe from that. I’m wondering if the PT lady from today is from one of those Crankshaft Bus Training arcs.
Oops. I did it again. Just goes to show what comments you can miss if you don’t refresh the screen before commenting. We both thought of “Crankshaft CrossFit.”
Update: I’ve posted two comments this afternoon using a different email address. No torso chute interference. YaY!
Sorial Promise is right. WordPress must be a Lillian-Lover. They’re hassling me because of my No Lillian avatar.
That was my experience too. When I had physical therapy, the PT wore scrubs. No clipboard either. My therapy was in a hospital, not a clinic. Perhaps clinics run by different rules?
Today’s Crankshaft made me think of the “Crankshaft CrossFit” story arc from a few years ago. Boy, was that story arc dumb.