Okay. Holy Crap. What the heck is going on in this panel? Can someone explain it to me?
This is a non-Euclidian nightmare. Allow me to draw with my mouse, in paint, how it appears this is working…
But Crankshaft simply cannot be standing that way, half in the back with his foot sunken through the floorboards, his ass embedded in the side panel, wedged behind the front seat. It looks like the passenger door is open just a crack. Is he flat? Is he compressed like a squid squirming through a tiny gap in a bulkhead? I haven’t seen clipping this bad outside of free to play mobile games.
And if he’s putting the pizza in the back seat, why is he facing the front? It looks like he’s about to slide the box into the driver’s side seatback pocket.
My detailed research on the subject has proven to me that Davis was always a copy pasta king, but he’s gotten abominably LAZY in recent years. Completely unable or unwilling to put together a new scene or layout and have it make sense. Compared to his early days of 2017/2018, it’s night and day.
Is this flawless, or even above average? No. I mean, look at that pony tail, hairline, and hat combo in panel 4! It’s obviously still made of a bunch of clipped out paper dolls with new clothes pasted on. But the art fills the panels without weird crosshatched voids taking up the space where larger speech bubbles used to be. At least the car doesn’t randomly turn into a pickup truck in one panel.
The art may have gotten worse and worse, but I have to admit, it was easier to find a collection of decent strips to compete for this year’s ‘Best Strip’ award than last year’s. Last year, any strip I though was okayish made the list, and even then it was a very short list. This year, there were strips that gave me at least a smirk that didn’t make the cut.
Crankshaft is still, in this very late stage, a strip that 60 percent of the time is trying to be gag-a-day, and 20 percent of those gags kinda land. Late stage Funky Winkerbean was one anemic and backward thinking attempt at plot after another. The repeat gags in Crankshaft may be as tired, threadbare, and recycled as a Goodwill bathrobe. But at least they were designed for comfort in the first place. As opposed to a hair shirt made of cancer.
So here’s your nominees for, The Best Crankshaft Strip of 2023.
1.) Left Out In the Cold
2.) Ancient Aliases
3.) ED
4.) It’s Funny Because It’s True
5.) Uncanny
6.) Take A Hike, Girly!
7.) The Song of My People
8.) Occam’s Chainsaw
And the winner is…
NUDITY WINS AT LAST!!!
Son of Stuck Funky 
I was tempted to vote for Ed’s crankshaft, but in this case I honestly found it… kinda gross. I mean, this can’t be the first time Ed’s had to wear a hospital gown, so clearly he should know which way it goes. So it seems he’s INTENTIONALLY showing off his junk to an unsuspecting doctor, and that’s not cool.
Not that I’m going to argue with anyone who did vote for it. It’s at least a more solid joke than most Crankshaft strips nowadays.
(My vote was for “Left Out In the Cold”, mostly because it rings true. Do we really need some poor shlub standing out in the storm to tell us there’s a dangerous storm? Poor guys don’t get paid enough for that.) (Though “Ancient Aliases” was a contender; the joke is pretty solid, and instead of the usual wry “oh, you’re so silly” grin, Generic Blonde’s expression is more “but… how does that work…?”. Basically, a more accurate reaction to Ed’s lunacy, which can make a huge difference in how a joke lands.)
(Also, if “Uncanny” is what it looks like when Ed smiles, I’m kind of glad he’s grumpy all the time. Between that panel of Ed and almost every appearance of Rictus Homunculus, there could have been a “Creepiest Imitation of the Joker” award. Yikes!)
I think I also voted for Left Out in the Cold, but I may have voted for ED (which was definitely my vote for Panel of the Year-the “leave it to your imagination”factor was truly horrifying). It’s one thing to show how icy the roads are during a snowstorm, but quite another to have a weather reporter outside freezing just to say “it’s cold out”. Or worse, having one barely able to stand up outside during hurricane force winds just to illustrate how windy it is.
(My vote was for “Left Out In the Cold”, mostly because it rings true. Do we really need some poor shlub standing out in the storm to tell us there’s a dangerous storm? Poor guys don’t get paid enough for that.)
I think it was the best comic strip of the nominees, but I didn’t vote for it because it wasn’t a Crankshaft strip; far as I could tell, none of the regular cast appeared in it. Just a generic gag that could turn up anywhere. Batiuk & Davis didn’t even bother to frame it with Ed watching it on his TV; it just appeared as two random people delivering a joke that Batty heard somewhere, The End.
(incoherent screaming from GC Comments, from people complaining about people who complain)
ME: (hides wasp-nest poking stick) What?!
You did seem to be more agitated than usual today.
Oh fah, I hit Reply for bill’s post. Dammit.
Well, while I’m here. I voted for Take A Hike. That’s pretty much in the spirit of the strip. Also, while that other strip is there and in light of the prior week and the subject of art, what’s with Dan Davis always drawing chainsaws at like 60% of their actual length? What’s that about?
Thank you for the awards week, it’s been a good time.
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Mindy: Gramps, why are you sitting like that?
Ed Crankshaft: Dan Davis is way too fucking lazy to draw his own artwork, and is using Chuck Ayers’s artwork.
Today’s Crankshaft made me furious. “Has he tried calling a mental health hotline”? Oh, fuck you, Lillian. Who the fuck are you to talk to anyone about mental health, after you drove your sister into catatonia by pointlessly sabotaging her marriage proposal? In fact, stay the fuck on your side of the fence, and I don’t ever want to see you speaking to any of my family members again.
This is another manifestation of Drake of Life’s mini-rant from yesterday. Drake said the Funkyverse “[wildly] swings between self-righteous ecological doomsaying and insane overconsumption of resources.” Similarly, it wildly swings between mental illness being a joke, and being a source of heavy drama.
The same goes for Bull Bushka’s CTE. Oh, that wacky Bull is washing all our clothes again! That’s not funny, you sick bastard.
I felt the same. I despise Lillian and wish nothing but the worst for her. May she get cancer and have to deal with Les Moore’s awkward advances.
Lillian McKenzie is Les Moore in drag. She’s got the same unearned writing career, the same unearned awards, the same unearned book signings, the same unearned fans, the same unearned smugness towards them, and the same blood of a loved one on their hands. Which they very much earned, but never acknowledge. And everyone’s too cowed by them to ever call out their atrocious behavior.
The difference between Lillian and Les
Lillian ruined Lucy’s life by hiding a letter from Eugene, which caused Lucy to have a mental breakdown.
Les couldn’t (and still can’t) get over Lisa’s death.
As annoyingly maudlin as Lillian’s thing with Lucy was, her writing career is miles more ‘earned’ than Les Moore.
Les Moore wrote two, TWO books. In like…30 years. Both about real life dead people. And one of them was a massive flop, and the other milked his wife’s death for fame.
Lil has written a series of multiple FICTION books. At least five titles, maybe more. All in a span of what has to be less than 10 years of strip time. And the books, while we know very little about them, are in a genre that has real world popularity, the cozy murder mystery.
And at least she doesn’t treat her books like the maxim opus that will touch the world, win Oscars, and inspire others to write world-government creating tomes.
Lil is designed to suck up to the Ohioana crowd of self-published or small market writers, she’s written like ‘them’ The way she secured Apple Ann as an agent is unbelievable, and unearned, but everything else she’s at least shown putting some work in.
That is the problem. Batty should be writing characters to tell an interesting story, instead he creates them to appease others.
Dinkle must live on for the OMEA crowd, and Lillian must exist for the Ohioana crowd.
Eh… fair. Though I still think Lillian’s author career is the same level of Informed Ability that Les’ is. The only work I’ve seen her put in is that she bought a Special Writing Desk for herself. Much like Les, her talent is self-declared and enabled by the story, rather than being apparent.
She’s simply the surviving member of a trio of very stupid people. Having read the saga in depth, you can’t help but realize that all three hearts in the sappy ending machine are dumber than a sack of hammers and kind of deserve their fate. She was just the most active and least rational of the nincompoops involved in the clusterfuck.
Stupid, lazy, and passive. The Funkyverse loves to celebrate passive acceptance of life’s obstacles; that’s the center of Lisa’s Story. But Lucy’s story illustrates perfectly why passive acceptance is no way to live, and isn’t admirable. Eugene and Lucy could have been together if either of them had bothered to write a second letter, or even cared enough to ask why the communication stopped.
This is why I find Lisa’s Story so disgusting. Even if she was doomed by a hospital error, she still could have made her life worthwhile. Or Les could did have lifted a finger to suggest that there were still things worth fighting for. Like their own child. But Lisa’s death gave Les his muse, and we all know where his priorities were. Then Tom Batiuk solved all his problems by skipping ten years.
Which is why Lillian is the least objectionable of the three of them. Granted, she acted for the stupid reason that she was supposed to have a boyfriend first because she was older but at least she did something.
I feel like dying of cancer is a fate far too kind for Lillian McKenzie
Instead she should have her soul ripped out of her body by Sonic.exe and tortured until the end of time
An edit I made about Lillian about to be killed by Sonic.EXE/X
This is why we had the silly “Why did they sell off all of the stuff if they were just going to give it back anyway?” thing about Montoni’s decor. It would make actual sense to hand the reins to Wally and avoid all of the Mindull is dead inside because she doesn’t want to indulge the whims of a dough-headed male who has no idea how big a pain in the ass he is cacaraca.
I’ve long argued that Tom Batiuk is neurodivergent. His need to put every last piece of Montoni’s kitsch back onto the walls, while completely ignoring the storytelling implications of its closure, is another symptom of that.
Pete and Mindy got all the junk back on the walls, but never bothered to hire any employees. Even though several employees were important characters (Wally, Rachel, Rocky, Cory, Adeela). And the loss of their jobs would have been good subject matter for what’s supposed to be a realistic look at small-town life. Less than 3 months later, Mindy was riding in a car to pick up a pizza from the restaurant SHE OWNS.
This could explain the persistent image of an angry woman doing something over the top at random and pointless intervals. He’s got no real idea in his head that his behavior can be annoying and stupid so ascribes people getting tired of him with bullying and mindless aggression. Heck, even the C & D orders we used to deal with are his not realizing that having a legitimate beef with his more questionable decisions wasn’t bullying him somehow.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH!? YOU’RE THE MONSTER WHO DESTROYED HER SISTER’S LIFE JUST BECAUSE YOU WERE JEALOUS OF HER DATING THE GUY YOU LOVED!!
(Marches over to Lillian and snaps her neck)
I honestly don’t remember which of these I voted for, but they’re all pretty decent.
I really was rooting for the one with the geese. Geese are mean and they outnumber ‘Shaft in that final panel, it’s an appealing ratio.
Unless… Ed can now control geese by blowing his nose.
Explaining Ed’s car, and the seemingly weird spatial anomaly that allows it to fold into several non-Euclidean dimensions at once?
Easy.
Space and time intersect, as we all know, and they are constantly affected by each other. This means that when time dilations occur in Central Ohio (as the echoes of minute and precise timestream alterations made by a certain Westview janitor), it’s only expected that some of these dilations would manifest themselves spatially as well.
Fortunately, the creator of these dilations also has the power to ensure that the people affected by them will not notice them, and will in fact alter their own reality to accept these anomalies as perfectly normal and unremarkable. Hence Ed and his passenger find it completely logical that a 104-year-old man can physically occupy the same space as the floor of a car, while his pizza box occupies the same physical space as a car seat.
And remember, it’s all temporarily necessary for this to happen! Without these subtle changes to reality, the book that will save humanity could never be written in relative ease and comfort and published in a fine presentation-bound cover, available from Kent State University Press.
Oh yes, and one other thing! Using the same reality-altering technology, our Westview agent’s covert timestream manipulation meant that for the duration of this specific pizza picking-up enterprise, Mindy wasn’t working at Montoni’s, wasn’t the co-owner, and never had been.
Of course, this may be fixed by the next time we see Mindy at Montoni’s. But don’t count on it … a Timemop’s work is — quite literally — never done.
I cannot thumbs-up this post hard enough.
Not sure what I voted for this time, but the chainsaw one I feel was likely it as it did feel a little by dynamic by Davis’s standards, even if the poses are mostly traced.
Victory for Frontal Crank, at least, good for him.
Also Bean’s End shenanigans this week in Funkyshaft. Easy to cruise through, at least.
*Bean’s End shenanigans this week in Funkyshaft*
You’re likely to be 100% right, but it could also be Tom mocking mental health for exactly 6 days while seething that his MOTHER cut up his COMIC BOOKS with a carving knife, all 3 Blind Mice-ish!
Tom: Only you believe that story happened. But yeah yeah sure, as always you’re the victim, and everyone else is the bad guy. Whevs, my dude. Cuddle the rock you and your nightmare child stole from Bronson Canyon.
I forgot what I voted for but congrats for the full frontal Crankshaft strip for winning
I voted for “It’s Funny Because It’s True.”
A real anomaly in the recent Crankshaft canon — funny and true.
Although “The Song of My People” was also a strong contender.
The winner… well, to me, it felt excessively Mort Winkerbeanish in its harassment of the unwilling.
One of the ways Harvey Weinstein asserted his dominance over young women was to have them over to his house for some plausible work reason, and then walk into the room with his robe open and his giant gut hanging over his exposed junk. He got off on their horror and revulsion.
I’m getting the same vibe with “ED,” the winning strip. Gross.
I went back and forth on that one. But I think it’s plausible enough to be in-bounds. They don’t exactly instruct you how to wear that silly garment, and this situation could genuinely arise from that.
Yes, it’s technically sexual harassment, and Ed’s pose suggests he knows exactly what he’s doing. (Imagine Peter Griffin in that situation. This is exactly the pose he would assume.)
The doctor’s low-key reaction helps. She’s not horrified, just mildly annoyed. Unwanted crotch shots are a daily hazard when you’re a doctor, and her reaction suggests that. This is a rare case of Tom Batiuk getting a tone right, so I’m willing to give it a pass.
Well, I think reasonable minds can differ on whether this is ha-ha-old-men-are-confused-ain’t-that-the-cutest vs ew-this-creep-gets-off-on-flashing-women-and-feigning innocence.
However, my experience has been different re: the robes. I’ve certainly worn those robes well over 50 times for various reasons, and I’ve always been told which way the opening should face. The last thing a doctor wants to do during an already potentially awkward exam is mess around with a robe that’s in the way.
I’ve also been trying to give the Funkyverse a little more benefit of the doubt lately. I’m told I come off as a harsh critic, but I want to remain fair.
Yes, Ed should know how those robes work. And it looks like he’s feigning ignorance so he can show his little crankshaft to the doctor. But I’ve criticized Batiuk for having no ability to use tone, so it would be hypocritical of me to now say I find his tone offensive. Especially in a strip where I think he got the tone right for once.
I confess that my reading of the strip is colored by my gender and my life experiences. “Flashing” is, to me, a threatening act, an act of dominance and aggression.
Can you imagine Crankshaft being shown taking that literal balls-out stance toward a male doctor?
Would it still be “funny”?
Perfectly valid interpretation. Maybe this strip should offend me more than it does. Because Mort’s treating Lillian like a groupie, and Dinkle using his wife to practice his “embouchere” certainly did.
This week’s delivery driver strike tends to lend credence to the idea that Batiuk might actually be neurodivergent. It’s not about the crappy life the drivers lead, it’s about Crankshaft not getting to do what he wants. Climate ‘damage’ is bad not because children Batiuk doesn’t know have a crappy world to grow up in but because Jffff is inconvenienced somehow. Either he’s got his head up his ass or his head don’t work and it never did. He can register emotions in himself, can reproduce what he sees but seems incapable of understanding how other people think.
incapable of understanding how other people think.
That’s “no theory of mind,” and it’s rampant in the Funkyverse. Characters never form their own opinions about anything. All characters exist solely to enable whatever the main characters want, no matter how ludicrous or narrowly specific it is.
Which leads me to issue #2: Monotropism. Funkyverse characters are obsessed with comic books and writing, but only in narrow, hyper-specific ways that mirror Tom Batiuk’s own narrow and hyper-specific interests.
Finally: “doing things correctly” and preserving things as they always were, are pervasive themes in the Funkyverse. Batiuk spent weeks restoring the Valentine Theater and Montoni’s to their original states, and then did nothing with either setting. Hell, he never even did anything with closing them! Except make sure Funky and the theater owners both got soft landings, even though their business failures should have wrecked them financially.
I could go on, but those are the big three symptoms of neurodivergence in the Funkyverse. No theory of mind, monotropism, and the need to restore/protect the status quo for no reason other than preserving the status quo.
This leads to the insane misinterpretation of what other people want. Never does he understand that he isn’t being picked on.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Pam: Dad, just calm down! Take a few breaths!
(Ed takes a few breaths, and then screams at the top of his lungs)
Related to FW and Crankshaft: I made Mii versions of Holly, Les, Funky and Crank
Les
Funky (Act III)
Ed Crankshaft
Holly Budd-Winkerbean
I love this kind of thing. I wish I could make Sims of the Funkyverse characters and watch them interact. (Obviously, they’d all get the Bestselling Author aspiration.)
That rendition of Les makes me want to punch my monitor into shards. In other words: great job capturing the smirky loathesomeness of Goatee Boy!
Related to Crankshaft: comparing my headcanon of the heights of the Crankshaft characters with my actual height (I’m 5’9”)
Crankshaft: 181 cm (Taller than I am)
Pam Murdoch, Lillian McKenzie, Emily and Amelia Mathews, Mary Marzipan and Ms. Lee: 166 cm (shorter than I am)
Jeff Murdoch and Pop Clutch: 179 cm (slightly taller than I am)
Rocky: 187 cm (taller than I am)
Lena and Andy Clark: 176 cm (exact same height as mine)
Mindy: 173 cm (slightly shorter than I am)
Max Murdoch: 182 cm (taller than I am)
Max Axelrod: 202 cm (much taller than I am)
Kurt Cameron: 180 cm (taller than I am)
Skip Rawlings: 163 cm (shorter than I am)
Still related to FW/Crankshaft: Mii versions of Batiukverse characters
Cayla Williams
Mindy Murdoch
Owen Miller
Pedoskunk John Howard
Darin Fairgood
Pete Roberts-Reynolds
It’s not Owen without the chullo.
Still Batiukverse Related: More Miis
Funky (Act II)
Jessica Darling, The Daughter of John Darling, Who Was Murdered
Matt Miller
Ms. Lee
Linda Lopez-Bushka (Act II)
Batton Thomas
The only Mii with a frown is Linda Lopez-Bushka. That tracks.
I love these. Well done.
On Sunday I stared at the strip and concluded that Davis couldn’t find the shot he wanted in the Crankshaft Reusable Art Portfolio and so used a picture of Ed getting into a pickup truck. For reasons I still don’t understand.
The strip is archetypical Batiuk: all setup with no punchline; all premise, no story. Consider what he could have done with it, particularly if he recognized that heated rear seats are seriously rare things in the automotive world. For example, he could have banished Pmm to the back seat, carefully strapped the pizza box into place with the seat belt, and for the piece de resistance flipped on the seat heater. It would have been somewhat funny, though also a bit uncomfortable because it would codify the pecking order of the Batiukverse: that women are somewhere below komix and pizza (of course, we’ve known this all along).
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Crankshaft: (screaming like Poofesure does after getting a 299 in Bowing in Wii Sports)
UGHHHHHHHH CAN’T THIS STORY ARC MOVE ANY SLOWER
I KNOW IT’S A WEEK-LONG STORY ARC BUT IT FEELS A SNAIL CAN MOVE MUCH FASTER THAN THIS
Re: Davis’ art swiping: Since I assume TB owns all the art Ayers did for him, I don’t personally have a problem with Davis swiping on behalf of Batom, per the Wally Wood dictum of never drawing if you can copy, never copying if you can trace, and never tracing if you can cut and paste.
The problem is what Wally Wood didn’t add, which is “Yes, we’re all trying to make a living, but have a little pride in your work, for god’s sake, and don’t sign your name to embarrassingly bad crap.” He probably thought that would be self-evident.
Davis’ swiping has become so lazy that we frequently see what appear to be random poses and expressions that don’t match the writing or the situation.
The writing is already inadequate. If the art were brilliant, perhaps that would elevate it slightly, but the asleep-at-the-wheel cutting and pasting just drags it down even further.