The Crankshaft Awards 2023, Part 5!

First of all, a very happy Valentines Day to all of you out in Funkyville. I hope all of you out there spent some time with a loved one. Maybe some of you don’t have a romantic partner, but that’s fine. Love just as deep and just as powerful exists between parents and children, brothers and sisters, friends, companions, crazy cat ladies and their felines, old men and their lap dogs. And never underestimate the insane affection that can exist between a part time blogger and the assortment of anonymous cartoon icons and wacky user names that fill the comments section.

“Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”
… It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision – it is then that Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.”

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

However you spent the day, it had to be better than poor Becky and Wally’s Valentines back in 2006.

Sure, swear in front of your toddler…it’s not like you bothered to teach her English yet anyway.

Even if you spent the day pining over lost loves, or bemoaning failed romances of your past, you couldn’t have been more pathetic than Eugene and Lucy.

I mean if Eugene was really the one sending them, he’d certainly have the courtesy to actually visit and also to tell me, Lucy’s sister and guardian.

If you do have a spouse or lover, I hope you remembered to do something nice for your significant other. Unless, like my parents, you have a prior arrangement to ignore Diabetes, Dying Plants, and Overpriced Cardstock Day. Hope you didn’t wiff it like Jeffy here.

Cranky, you have met Jeff’s mother, right?

Though even when Jeff remembers his wife, he half asses his affection by ordering flowers over the phone from his flesh-toned work cave.

What’s one more lie on a day of pandering?

Boy, Jeff sure looks smug and annoying in that strip… wonder why it looks so familiar? Have I seen it more recently than 2013?

Like maybe in March of 2023?

And smug, dickish Jeff brings us to today’s award. I thought a long time about how to follow up on the Punchable Les Moore award. On the one hand, Les Moore reached levels of punchability seldom seen outside of amateur boxing rings or pillow fluffing factories. I sense that people who had never seen him before in their lives would still feel compelled to cross the street in order to feed his smirk a fist.

All Les would have had to do to win this award for 2023, would be to show up for one panel where he wasn’t a scribbly black outline on a badly photoshopped movie poster. But, mercifully, we had a Les free year.

Yet, we still had so many punchable characters having slapable moments. For a while I considered making it a mixed character pool. After all, we had punchable Dinkles, and punchable Mopey Petes, and punchable Skunk Heads, and punchable Lillians.

But as I went to pull those awful smirking, frowning, grinning, moping faces…one face quickly dominated the shortlist. One familiar face.

Kudos to Beckoning Chasm for this bit of art.

Okay, no. I don’t actually want to punch Tom Batiuk. Far from it. Instead I’ve developed an almost parasocial fondness for Tom Batiuk that would probably have me gushing at him like a starry-eyed fangirl if I ever met him. I’m guess similar to the way a lot of famous filmmakers might half-ironically swoon over Neil Breen or Ed Wood.

But whatever my fondness for the man, the avatars of himself Tom Batiuk inserts into his universe are always just the most punchable little twats.

And, surprise surprise, the character I most wanted to punch this year was a Tom Batiuk avatar.

So, your nominees for The Les Moore Memorial Backpfeifengesicht Award For Most Punchable Jeff Murdoch.

1.) Losing His Only Friends

2.) Hyperactive Inner Child

3.) Egocentric Insanity

4.) A Special Kind of Hell

5.) Inhalant Abuse

6.) Nebsplaining

7.) A Load of Crop

8.) Relatively Speaking

And the winner of Most Punchable Jeff, 2023?

Nebsplaining

55 thoughts on “The Crankshaft Awards 2023, Part 5!”

  1. I had to go out of town for work this week. So I’m not with my wife and daughter this Valentines Day. 

    It sucks.

    Reading this post, though, I am reminded that it doesn’t suck nearly as much as Lillian McKenzie does.

  2. I was somewhat confused by Hyperactive Inner Child. Was the punchable Jeff the adult Jeff, Jeff’s Rictus Homunculus, or both? Double K.O., two for the price of one?

    I’d never condone socking children in the face, but in this case I’d consider smothering the vile little creature with a pillow. That grin. It’s the stuff of nightmares.

    1. Don’t worry, eve. You only have to punch adult Jfff in the punim. Once he loses consciousness Hyperactive Inner Child Jff will immediately vanish, just like staking Dracula will free all those he’s bitten and placed under his thrall.

    2. I tend to overuse the phrase “vile creature” to describe unpleasant characters. A more appropriate phrase to describe Jeff’s Rictus Homunculus would be “Creepy Little Bastard.”

      1. It is impossible to overuse the words “vile creature” when describing Inner Child. God, where to begin?

        1. The straightforward punchability. He’s smug and condescending, and acts like he’s beaten you in a debate you didn’t even know you were having.
        2. The existential punchability. He’s the manifestation of a punchable character’s worst punchable qualities.
        3. The meta punchability. He’s also the manifestation of Tom Batiuk’s need to tell his “comics book saved me” story over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. A story absolutely no one, not even comic book junkies, cares about.
        4. Everything I wrote here about how poorly conceived, poorly executed, and poorly deployed the Inner Child character is.
        5. Inner Child’s appearance is always presented as positive, when it’s actually EXTREMELY negative. This one has sub-parts:
        • All Inner Child’s dialog is really just Jeff talking to himself. It’s the mental health equivalent of long-dead Lisa interacting with Les. He’s a hallucination/imaginary friend, which isn’t healthy. Jeff even imagines him doing physical tasks for him.
        • Inner Child is Jeff’s anti-conscience. He’s the devil, in the old “angel and devil on your shoulder” cliche. He exists to badger Jeff into doing things he knows he should’t be doing. Jeff’s idiotic fandom (egged on by Inner Child) should have gotten him killed in Bronson Canyon.
        • Jeff’s need to ask his wife for permission reveals that he knows, on some level, that he’s unhealthy. But Inner Child is always there to talk him into it. He’s an enabler.
        • Which makes Inner Child also an enabler of Jeff’s/Tom Batiuk’s mommy issues. He’s constantly begging for permission to read comic books, when there’s no reasonable person stopping him. (Not even when they should.)

        6. This last one’s nasty, but it needs to be said. What does this look like?

        It looks like Inner Child is giving Jeff a handjob. Look where his left hand is. Look at their faces. Pete looks like he’s wandered into the wrong bathroom stall at a truck stop – a truck stop in 9 Chickweed Lane. And he’s trying not to imagine the dialog before “Say yes! Say yes! Say yes!”

        This was already squicky enough, with this child talking to Jeff about his underwear, and no hints that he wasn’t a real child. This makes it sooooooooo much worse.

        Though I will say: Jeff using his own childhood to jerk himself off is an exquisite metaphor.

        1. FYI: I have notifications turned on for SoSF replies.

          This is weird. What I received in GMAIL differs in appearance from what you posted here. It looks like you wanted to create a numbered list, but for some reason it bizarrely converted to bullet points midway through until point number 6, where it decided not to indent. I can see the ‘Hyperactive Inner Child’ image in the email but not here. 🤔

          WHAT’S HAPPENING!!! 😱

          Here’s a partial snapshot of the email I received of your reply.

          I can’t wait to see how that appears.

          Thank you so much for these updates, WordPress. /s

          1. Yep, WordPress has decided that it knows best how to do numbered lists, so it takes them over and then screws them up. Mama always said WordPress formatting is like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re gonna get.

          2. Upon further review, you meant for the bullet points under point #5 as sub-points. That was your editorial decision, not a formatting bug. Also, after refreshing the webpage, I can see your image now, too.

            I still don’t understand why neither the numbers nor bullet points are displayed above but do in the email.

            Please feel free to ignore my rambling.

            (insert confused woman gif here)

          3. @The Drake of Life

            WordPress should sufficiently test the modifications before inflicting them upon their users. It’s a typical IT tool to use the users as software testers. I’ve encountered this situation countless times in my business career.

            WordPress: If you are experiencing an issue, please submit a problem ticket, We’ll get to it. Some day. Maybe.

            Case in point, my problem ticket submitted to Comics Kingdom Customer Care on 11/30/2022 is still marked as “PENDING”.

          4. The WYSIWYG editor made it look like I was getting a numbered list, but when it posted it looked different. #6 was not formatted like a numbered list, because you can’t start with #6 as far as I know. But it’s more or less what I tried to post, and I’ve long since given up on getting the formatting to work.

          6. Oops. Included a link rather than an image. I wish the submenu was included with menu at the top. Why should I have to open it manually.

            Test test test

            I’ll get the hang of this eventually. Some day. Maybe.

          7. Well. That’s F’ing useless. You can’t zoom.

            (throws up arms in frustration and storms out of the room)

    3. I’d never condone socking children in the face, but in this case I’d consider smothering the vile little creature with a pillow. That grin. It’s the stuff of nightmares.

      There is this one character I wanna beat the shit out of more than Skppy, and it’s Nate Wright from Big Nate (Nate is 11-12 years old), he seems like the kind of asshole who would want to ruin your life

      1. Yeah, Nate sure is full of himself, but unlike Batiuk’s heroes Nate always receives his comeuppance. Two minutes after acting smug, Nate falls flat on his face. Contrast to Les Moore, who acts smug and everyone gives him a big smirk.

        I kind of miss Big Nate: First Class on GoComics. They were often better than the regular strip. I wonder why GoComics is phasing out some classic strips, i.e., Garfiled Classics, Stone Soup Classics. Wizard of Id Classics hasn’t updated since New Years.

        1. Nate would probably thrive in the Batiukverse and it’s smug citizens or he would be driven out of Westview

          I think Nate would treat Chien, Owen Miller, Cody Fletcher, Wally, Lena, Mary Marzipan, and Mooch like crap and he would call them a bunch of losers

  3. Jeff is why his mother is an irredeemable villain: he’s an author insert. Jeff is Batiuk as the dough-head who ascribes his mother’s fear of his being too damn into silly nonsense to be able to function in the real world to being full of hate.

  4. Today’s Funky Crankerbean

    Min-Dull: Mom, there’s a video of Gramps using a chainsaw to dismember Ian Watkins and then slice him in half and the whole world is cheering him on! What did Watkins do to deserve this?

    Crank: He did some depraved shit to minors.

    1. Min-Dull: Mom, there’s a video of someone using a chainsaw to dismember Gramps and then slice him in half and the whole world is cheering him on! What did Gramps do to deserve this?

      Crank: He did some depraved shit to minors and seniors. Left them at bus stops, made their grandmothers whore themselves out for a ride, left his friend to die while he caused a traffic jam.

    2. Pam: How depraved?

      Crank: Ian Watkins raped a bunch of children just because he was a famous musician. He showed ABSOLUTELY NO remorse for what he did, which is why I cut him in half.

      (Pam reaches for the wine cellar, while Min-DUHHH looks like she’s about to puke)

      1. “Min-DUHHH looks like she’s about to puke”

        That means she’s going to buy a pizza place!

  5. Another wonderful post, CBH. I love your philosophizing and digressions; they put some meat into this thin gruel that Batiuk gives us. At a certain point it becomes hard to even snark, but you always something trenchant and amusing to say. How do you do it? And I continue to be amazed by your photographic memory of stolen art.

    Re: Valentine’s Day, I’m very amused that your parents intentionally ignore it. It’s always been the same in my marriage, since we started dating. Neither of us ever liked the holiday, so we just skip it. But I have no objection to anyone else having a big celebration of love, so I hope those that celebrate had a ball with it.

    As far as the voting goes, I backed the runner-up. I mean, they were all worthy, but something about a full-grown man with a wife and children saying age 12 was “his golden age” — it’s pathetic, but it’s being portrayed as triumphant.

    We all know Jeff is an author avatar. And Batiuk actually believes this: that life never got better, or deeper, or more meaningful, than when he was a child sitting alone in his attic with cookies, having his “molecules rearranged” by the latest issue of the Flash.

    Slappable? Yes, because of the haughty smirk. But really, it’s just very sad.

  6. I’m five-for-five, voting for the eventual second place finisher! Though the “Nebsplaining” face is pretty damn punchable.

  7. Punchable Lillians? A gentleman would <i>never</i> punch a woman. Strangle her with drapery cords, yes, but he would never punch her.

    1. (Goes out to Lillian The Lizard’s house, and uppercuts her head off, and then drags the body on top of Crankshaft’s grill, and then sets the body on fire)

    2. Punchable Lillians — I remember seeing them at CBGB back in ’84. I liked their album “Who, Little Old Me?” and the single “Hen on my Head,” which got a lot of airplay on the local college stations. But their live show was mostly repetitious screeching, so I lost interest in them after that.

  8. I honestly can’t even remember which one I ended up voting for, because they’re all making me think “I really want to punch this guy”. I think it was probably one of the Rictus Homunculus ones, for serving up a double helping of punchable Jeffs, but that obviously doesn’t narrow it down a whole lot. (If I had to guess, I went with “Egocentric Insanity”, because of how smug Jeff looks, although the creep factor on the Homunculus in “Hyperactive Inner Child” and especially “A Special Kind of Hell” are way off the charts.)

    1. Same here, I also dont remember what i voted for except for the last category “Worst Crankshaft Strip of The Year”
      (my vote was “Actual Manslaughter”)

  9. Again, all fine choices, but I voted for Nebsplaining. Jeff’s condescending “she’s beneath us because she doesn’t live and breathe comic books” expression while his wife just smiles at him made me want to punch both of them. It might have been a funny line if Jeff were kidding around, but we all know he isn’t.

  10. I believe “Egocentric Insanity” had my vote; one thing to have Jeff talking up his silver age biases but his imaginary past self friend acting like an entourage was quite another. Though it’s hard to beat a middle age man who actually looks like he has his life together acting like the typical “ACTUALLY” nerd, I give the winner that.

    Shoutouts to “Special Kind of Hell” for also raising the further questions of imaginary Kid Jeff helping his real self carry his book haul. Even in the logical case he just has his own imaginary bounty, wouldn’t it be fitting if it was him holding an armload of comics like the kid fantasy of buying the whole spinner’s rack worth of issues with a month’s worth of pocket money?

  11. My valentines day: I’m 17 and I’m still single (I haven’t asked ANYBODY for a date because I dont have the courage or reason to do so)
    I just sat on my bed and played on my Wii U (which I’ve owned since 2015)

    1. Still Gabby says

      Everyone’s life plays out at a different speed and not always at the same speed

    2. You’re not missing anything. “Young love” is really overblown. Look at the relationships your fellow 17-year-olds are having. Odds are they’re shallow, full of drama and BS. You’re much better off waiting till the dust has settled; you won’t be worn out and cynical when a real opportunity comes along. Signed, someone who married a late-blooming nerd. We’ve been together 38 years and still happy.

      1. Exactly this. Concentrate on becoming an interesting, well-rounded person who has done different things, worked different jobs, maybe traveled some. Do this, and in making yourself an interesting person, the dating opportunities will take care of themselves. Promise!

    3. I struggled with the same thing when I was 17 (and for too long after that). You can develop that courage. Approaching potential romantic partners is a skill, and like any skill, it can be improved with practice and knowledge. Just realize that you’re going to fail a lot, and that’s okay. It’ll get easier each time. 

      And be selective who you take advice from. There are a lot of bad advisors and toxic communities out there. I’m a fan of YouTuber emilywking.

      1. BAH, I say BAH!! to all this SoSF advice!

        DEVOTE YOUR LIFE to getting a Pulitzer nomination, so you can spend your Golden Years WHINING when you don’t get it!!

        Write comics abusing…Well, every character. Except the ones that are actually you–WAIT! Create an in-story avatar who is YOU, but better than everyone else! Abuse them not! Just everyone around them!

        Remember: Whiners aren’t WINNERS! They’re TOM! Yes, your guidance counselor will never say that, but piss and moan for DECADES because your strip is, I dunno, not considered as good as MAUS! A comic strip about MICE gets the Pulitzer?! The HECK?!?!

        /s

        Be yourself. Be a good person. Kindness to others leads to kindness to you. That’s all.

    4. I really don’t have any great dating advice, but I’d like say you never know when the sparks will fly.

      After completing my college education, I moved into an apartment with a roommate who was in a committed relationship with her boyfriend. They would often try to set me up on double-dates with their friends. However, none of these attempts ever resulted in anything, and I began to worry about the possibility of never finding a partner. The thought of becoming a spinster started to weigh heavily on my mind.

      Unfortunately, around that time, my sister-in-law passed away. It was at her funeral that I met my future husband, who happened to be her brother. We hit it off right away and started dating. After two years, we got married and have now been happily together for 37 years. While it may have been an unconventional way to meet, we are grateful for the love and happiness we share.

  12. @Comic Book Harriet,

    Howdy.

    Enquiring minds want to know. Assuming each vote represents one punch. Tallying all the votes for all of the nominees, what is the sum number of times Jeff has gotten punched in the face?

    🙂

    3. Ancient Chinese secret, huh? Can’t reveal how the sausage is made? You could tell me but you’d have to kill me?

      Perhaps the Baroness is too busy in her laboratory creating The Crankshaft Awards 2023, Part 6 for tonight. I can’t wait! YaY!

  13. Oh no, Crankshaft is banned for life from the ice carving festival. Can’t wait until we see him there again next year!

    1. I have to question the logic behind this week’s Crankshaft strips. Suppose that Ed had not been at the ice festival at all. I find it unlikely that the sculptor would think, “I’m creating a delicate, fragile ice sculpture. How can I get the spectators here to be interested in what I’m doing? I should probably give a chainsaw to one of these untrained amateurs and ask them to help improve it.”

      1. Exactly! There’s no reasonable expectation that giving a random person a chainsaw and setting them loose on a nearly completed ice sculpture would not result in a disaster. I’d probably destroy the statue too if he gave me the chainsaw. He should be starting with a fresh block of ice and ask the volunteer to try starting an ice sculpture if he didn’t want to lose his precious porpoise.

        1. The premise is ridiculous. I don’t think anyone even offers scheduled classes for ice carving, where attendees could be insured and background-checked beforehand. Much less a walk-up demonstration any passerby could join in, and immediately attack a sculpture somebody wants to preserve. 

          But it’s the story Batiuk wanted to tell, so here it is in all its unrealistic, illogical glory.

      2. I have zero knowledge of using a chainsaw, so if the sculptor gave me the chainsaw, I’d probably either decapitate myself, end up cutting one of my limbs, destroy the ice sculpture, or end up accidentally killing one of the people beside him

        1. As always, TB takes a poor and boring idea and totally fumbles the execution, even though a decent execution would have been just as easy.

          The sculptor could have turned his back or been called away, and Crankshaft could have thought he could “improve” the sculpture. Or he could have said “I could do better” and Pam could have mocked him, motivating him to try to show his stuff. Those ideas took longer to type than to think of (so about 15 seconds tops).

          It is saddening that 15 seconds of thought is more than TB is willing to put into his sole surviving strip.

          1. Heck, have Ed show up with his own chainsaw. Anything that doesn’t involve some schmuck offering to allow any rando access to a chainsaw with a literal child standing right there. (Like, seriously, if little Future Generic Blonde had asked to use the chainsaw, would that moron have given it to her?) (Honestly, that probably would have been more entertaining than what we did get.)

            (Also, to show just how much Batiuk pays attention to details: Future Generic Blonde wasn’t holding her phone until AFTER Ed hacked up the sculpture. So who uploaded the video of the hacking? No one else there was recording. If FGB was shown holding her phone the entire time, there wouldn’t be a plot hole, but… nope, Batiuk, with a year’s worth of lead time, couldn’t be bothered to fix even that tiny detail.)

  14. Even for a latter-day Crankshaft arc, this week was lame. And puzzling. Why the flashback format? It added nothing; every single thing that happened was predictable and hackneyed.

    1. Why the flashback format? Because Batiuk saw it being used effectively somewhere, and thought “Hey, I can totally do that too!” 

      I mean, of course he couldn’t — not effectively at least. But that has never stopped him before!

    2. Clearly Batiuk saw the Indian wedding/Harold Pinter episode of “Seinfeld” and thought doing the same joke four or five times would keep readers in stitches.

      To be honest, I think the ice carving arc might have been salvageable if he had gone full Seinfeld and opened Monday with Mindy asking why Ed had been banned from the festival and then going back each day to show the outrage over the dissected dolphin, the carving, Ed taking the chainsaw, and the bozo asking for volunteers. It would need some rewriting, of course, but it could have flowed better and would have offered some suspense as it’s slowly revealed what happened and how it started. But that’s just me.

      Can’t wait to return to Montoni’s (I’m just guessing) next week!

      1. i’m guessing “Pete freelances at Atomik Komix” just so Batiuk can give double middle fingers to continuity.

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