The Horrifying Return of Dinkshaft.

41 thoughts on “The Horrifying Return of Dinkshaft.”

1. 62 too many speaking panels for Mopey Pete, and 136 too many for Skip Rawlings.

2. No, he doesn’t know that. He has no clue how the readership thinks and doesn’t want to.

3. I’ll tell you what Batty was thinking after he created this strip: Nailed It!

4. Today’s Funky Crankerbean:

   Crankshit: I told you, I dont need to exercise. I feel fine

   Cassady McCarthy: Your daughter told me that you need to keep doing this.

   Crankshit: I DONT GIVE A SHIT ON WHAT PAM SAYS! I’M LEAVING!

   (crank tries to walk out but his spine folds three times upon itself)

   1. Alternate ending:
      Crank tries to walk out but falls on his face because he still has the bands on his legs. Nah, that wouldn’t happen, it’s too humorous.

5. Curious about Pam’s 93 speaking panels. If you eliminate the panels where she’s asking a question to set up the “joke” or the other character’s important lines, what does that leave her with? Maybe a dozen panels?

   1. Harriet just did a count of all Pam’s “question panels”, of which there were 32. If that’s all of them, that would leave 61 non-question panels.

6. Think that today’s Crankshaft strip is probably the best of the year so far from a joke perspective (the art’s pretty shit). Actually got a single huffed chuckle and an eyeroll from me.

7. Hi, CBH. Inquiring minds want to know. How do you tell the difference between Emily and Amelia?

   I wonder why Batiuk made Emily more verbose? Because she was born first?

   1. One of the twins is generally shown in a black shirt, the other in color. Due to the aborted attempt in later Funky Winkerbean to give them two different personalities, with Emily in pink being bright and bubbly and Amelia in black being dark and snarky, I just always assume Amelia is the one in black.

      1. That’s so funny! The idea that Tom can give his characters personalities! Les is God, Crank is an asshole, Dinkle is an asshole, Lena we all hate and Lillian we all love because…reasons, Les is God! There, done and done!
         Everyone else is Pizza and Comics. Triple Done!

      2. In one of the Crankshaft strips ( https://www.gocomics.com/crankshaft/2015/12/11 ), Emily has a peanut butter allergy

         1. CBH said

            “Amelia in black being dark and snarky, I just always assume Amelia is the one in black.“

            By your link, that assumption is CONFIRMED.

            Thanks @csroberto2854!

   2. One of the Dumb-ole-bint Twins was supposedly into Annie Oakley. No shit. Not marksmanship. Not Fortnite. Not “self-defense.” Annie friggin’ Oakley. That may have been a random trait that was added for just that strip, but it was an attempt to make them different.

      1. I remember that now. The county fair Sunday strip, where one of the twins walked away with an armful of stuffed animals due to her alleged sharpshooting prowess. I believe it was the same week a carny gave a hapless Mopey Pete a stuffed tiger to go away.

         C’mon, Batiuk, let’s have a story arc featuring the Engagement Tiger. It couldn’t be any worse than another story arc featuring Mopey Pete. What is Engagement Tiger up to nowadays? Will Windy Mindy dump Mopey Pete for the Engagement Tiger?

         Windy Mindy: The Engagement Tiger is more of a man than you’ll ever be!

         1. The county fair Sunday strip, where one of the twins walked away with an armful of stuffed animals due to her alleged sharpshooting prowess.

            Yeah, that was it. Trying to remember an individual Funkyverse comic strip is like trying to remember a bite of oatmeal you had. Except when it had a live cockroach in it. And that happens so frequently you can’t tell those bites from each other.

            C’mon, Batiuk, let’s have a story arc featuring the Engagement Tiger.

            Never happen. Because Batiuk likes to ignore all his story problems, and act like they got fixed off-camera. Just like he did with the time skip. “Oh, Lisa would be proud of the young woman you’ve become.” Even though we know 10 years of single parenting from Les would have made Mother Teresa homicidal.

            Mindy has long had the right to ask Pete when he’s going to propose for real, what’s taking so long, why money was a problem when he makes an absurd salary, and why he’s more interested in comic books than he is in her. The story had her gleefully accept his proposal, and his ridiculous plan to buy the worthless Montoni’s, even though she expressed valid concerns every step of the way.

            The idea that Mindy could want to marry Pete, but still have some worries about it, is far too nuanced for Batiuk’s black-and-white brain.

            1. Yeah, I know. It will never happen. Who created the series “Scenes we’d like to see”? Was it MAD magazine?

               To write a story like Mindy eloping with the Engagement Tiger would require a sense of humor, and Batiuk seems to have lost his in a poker game. A humorectomy?

               Here’s another scene most of us would like to see. Pizza Box Monster solemnly enters the first panel.
               Pizza Box Monster: “Mopey Pete’s Montoni’s has blown up due to a gas leak. The entire block is a total loss. There were no survivors.”

               And another. After receiving a request for a wellness check on Lillian McKenzie, police enter her home only to discover her half eaten by her two cats.
               YaY! 👏

            2. I think Lillian deserves a fate far, far worse than death

               The fate I’m talking about? Lillian being endlessly tortured by Sonic.exe (a creepypasta character created by infamous individual JCTheHyena and currently co-owned by ASTRANOMICONX and JoeDoughBoi) until the end of time

            3. “Centerview police did a wellness check on residents Ed Crankshaft and his neighbor Lillian McKenzie earlier today. Unfortunately, both were unharmed. They will try again tomorrow.”

8. There’s a billboard I pass every 2 weeks or so. It’s for a personal injury lawyer (who’s not surnamed Breef). It always has lame dad jokes on it. Today’s: “Did you slip and fall on the ICE ICE BABY?”
   Tom would steal from that all the time, possibly faster than he did with “Chemo Sabe.” Assuming he got the reference. He’d likely think it was something the Flash said to Captain Cold, because all culture flows from 1962 DC.

   1. I’d doubt that Batiuk knows about Vanilla Ice (the rapper) and “Ice Ice Baby” (which baseline was fucking stolen from Queen’s “Under Pressure”

      1. See, I would think that Vanilla Ice would be the sort of pop star Batty WOULD know about, at least to a point where he’s heard the name before. In fact, someone like Vanilla Ice is probably one of the first rappers he thinks of while pondering these kids today, and the crazy music they like, as he just doesn’t know any better.

         1. The other day, “Ice Ice Baby” came on the loudspeaker at the retro-themed restaurant I was having lunch at. I guess it had a goog sound system, because I thought “man, I forgot how cool this song used to be.” It was the soundtrack of my first year in college (along with “Groove Is In The Heart”).

            I tuned out all the snark, paid attention to the song, and honestly enjoyed it. Probably for the first time in 33 years. It’s a legit banger, despite also being the symbol of a dreadful era in pop music. I feel the same about that overproduced British pop song from 1987. You know the one I mean.

            1. Actual court testimony:
               “Mr Ice, you stand before me accused of plagiarism!”
               Mr Ice: “No, your honor! The original went ‘dow-dow-da-da-dow-dow’. Mine went ‘dow-dow-da-da-dow-dow…dow!‘”
               (slams gavel) “Case Dismissed!”

9. Today’s Funky Crankerbean:

   Sheesh, it’s been three fucking weeks that this story arc of “Crank falls and busts his ass on top of a grate and is being a fucking asshole about it” has been going on

   1. And yet, through the magic of Batiuk’s writing skills, against all odds there will be a Crankshaft arc next week that will somehow be worse, and will make you wish the comic would return to focusing more on Ed.

      I have not seen this arc, yet I know this to be true, for it is one of the eternal truths of Batiuk: The current arc is always the worst, except for the ones that follow.

      Past arcs? They were the worst, too.

      1. Marvin the Paranoid Android: “The first ten million years were the worst, and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn’t enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.”
         Yes, he was reading these strips.

10. Has TB ever said out loud what he thinks about his readers? It seems to me that he…um…I don’t know what he thinks of us.
    Are we Sages of the Old Lore, who know instantly why Jeff had that…thing talking to him? Oh, it’s not a manifestation of schizophrenia? Fooled me!

    Are we all dumb rubes? Two weeks screaming about Crank falling on the ice are followed on day 1 week 3 with “You fell on the ice, Dad!” Are we the guy from “Memento,” except all our tattoos begin with “JOHN DARLING WHO…”?

    Or are we beady-eyed, picking the nits out of the what we catch in his writing that he doesn’t? Because it seems like all of those, and it can’t be all of those.
    This is why I read him. He’s an enigma wrapped in a riddle that’s wrapped with a fish in yesterday’s newspaper.
    Someday “newspaper” is going to be a thing you say that just gets blank looks. And Tom helped!
    OK, I also read him for the envelope openings, but who doesn’t?

11. Batiuk Blog has a new match-to-flame excerpt, and it’s a pretty somber one all things considered, Tom talking about getting into a car accident. Don’t think there’s too much there that can be snarked on, that kind of thing’s always rough, though while he doesn’t mention it, seems like this leads on to explain why Funky eventually had his own brush with vehicular tragedy.

    Curious to see how his logic over interpreting the ordeal involves highlighting someone cellphone-while-driving being the other party never being seen again and also the whole time-travel coma thing.

    1. None of us — not a single, solitary one of us — would wish on anything even remotely like this happening to Tom Batiuk. We’ll snark on his writing skills, but ultimately, he produces a comic strip that we happen to think could be done better. That’s it. There are far, far worse sins. I’m quite certain even the severest critic here would genuinely hope for Batiuk to be able to produce his crappy work in injury-free comfort.

       And hey, if any of us remember Batty’s blog post and take a few seconds to remember that we don’t have to get where we’re going THAT fast? And as a consequence, we don’t take stupid gambles when we’re driving that increase our chances of getting severely injured (and/or severely injuring others)? Maybe Batiuk HAS (at least once) written something worthwhile….

       1. I am so glad I don’t live in Ohio anymore. What a scary time to drive

       2. Despite that, I remain extremely angered by how much of a disconnect there is between the actual physical and mental pain which he writes about in his strip, how much of that he makes no effort to depict correctly, and how little of it he has seemingly endured in his own life.

          Yeah, Tom, I wouldn’t want prostate cancer either, but where the hell do you come off writing about Lisa as you have when you personally know god damned well how much of it wasn’t applicable to your own life and wouldn’t match what you or any other human would do in a similar situation.

          Why is so much of your content reliant upon people being miserable or being assholes when so little of your life has had you truthfully confront actual suffering and misery.

       3. I certainly wish Tom Batiuk nothing but good health and long life. After all, it was his work that brought us here together, so we owe him a debt for that. I’m not among those who wish he would hang up his metaphorical pen; I hope he goes on forever.

          However, I do recall thinking it odd how dull and unimaginative his “car crash” arc was. A brush with death when you’re middle-aged should bring up all kinds of thoughts and feelings:

          What if I’d died? What would have been my legacy? Did I use my time wisely? Should I now rethink my priorities? What would have happened to my family if I’d died? What is life, anyway, if it can end in a split second like that? Is there truly an overarching meaning to life? Is there an afterlife? Is there a God?

          … and I could go on. But from what I remember, Funky’s accident was just a chance for Tom to return, once again, to his old milieu. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Funky really grappled with the Big Questions. Another missed opportunity from Mr. “Comics Don’t Have to Be Funny.”

          1. It came up very very briefly.

             

             I don’t think it’s necessary to have gone through a trauma to write about a character going through it, as long as you’re giving those things the proper weight. And while Batiuk has been a lucky and privileged man by objective metrics, he’s had his dark spells of pain and tragedy. He writes about how in the 90’s he massively struggled with anxiety and depression brought partially about by his Hashimoto’s disease.

             But in late Act III he failed to give the trauma he inflicted on his characters the proper fallout and weight. And that is worthy of criticism. Which is why of all his plotlines, Bull’s death angers me the most.

    2. Don’t think there’s too much there that can be snarked on

       Oh, give me a chance. 🙂

12. I think this current arc is an example of the strip at its best though. Crankshaft is in a situation and he reacts to it-either with a crabby old man attitude or bad pun. I don’t mind the puns-some are actually amusing and others are just groaners.
    I don’t even mind Jff dancing around creating bad parodies-let him have a goofy happy moment. Yes, Lillian is horrible, Pam and JFF should have taken Crankshaft’s grill away from him years ago, and Crank himself is an ass most of the time. But when TB sticks to the gag a day thing, it really does work best. billthesplut has already quoted Marvin the Paranoid Android, so I will add to that by saying that I’ve always considered the strip “mostly harmless.”

    And here’s a somewhat interesting tidbit courtesy of my mom. During a conversation with her this past weekend, she mentioned that our local newspaper just dropped a bunch comic strips and added some new ones. I asked her if they kept Crankshaft, and she said they did. When I told her about this FW site, she said, “the paper doesn’t carry that one anymore.” She didn’t know that FW had officially ended nor did she know how it ended. When I tried to explain the jump into the future with Summer’s granddaughter (or whoever she was), she had no idea what I was talking about. So we’re assuming the strip was dumped even before the finale. Maybe even years ago…

    1. It continues apace with Ed being nervous about the new fangled therapy dog. That’s the Crabby Old Guy Behind The Times scratched off the week’s bingo card.

    2. But when TB sticks to the gag a day thing, it really does work best.

       Too bad Batiuk’s ego won’t let him do that. That Pulitzer nomination made him disavow gag writing and embrace heavy drama, even though was he decent at writing gags and incompetent at drama. And he stuck with that choice for 30+ years.

       I’ve often said Tom Batiuk’s Pulitzer nomination ruined him as a creator. But that’s not really accurate. Tom Batiuk ruined himself. Because good creators don’t let accolades or criticism dictate their career path.

       1. Yes, but I would go back to his first prestige arc, Lisa Gets Teenage Pregnant. My paper offered free copies of Lisa’s first story to educators in high schools.
          Which got retconned to Lisa Gets Date Raped and Punched, Lisa Gets Cancer, Lisa Doesn’t Have Cancer Oh Wait She Does, Lisa Wilts and Dies.
          And then Susan and Bull. I guess he had to check suicide off the list eventually!
          Also, chain smoking cures dementia and something something makes you not deaf. Also, the Flash, COOL RIGHT?
          Tom: “GIVE ME PREZZIES!”

          Hearing that Lynne Johnston was also nominated for a Pulitzer raised her in my estimation. And how many times/decades has she whined about not getting one?
          Canadian: (shrugs) “Sorry, maybe zero times, I dunno, eh?”

13. Today’s Funky Crankerbean

    Crank: Does he bite?

    Cassidy McCarthy: No, unless you’re an cranky asshole like you.

    (the dog bites Crank in the groin and starts chomping at his face while Crank screams in agony)

    Cass: WAIT NO NO NONONONONONONO-

14. FWIW, Crankshaft was dropped (along with other strips) from THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL. An article about the comics says, “The refresh of our comics offerings, was based, in part, on reader feedback from across the country, which shaped the offerings in newspapers that are part of the USA TODAY NETWORK.”

    This to me means Crankshaft was dropped in all Gannett owned newspapers.

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