The Crankshaft Awards 2023, FINALE!

Are you feeling the Euphoria? After a Succession of awards, stretching over nearly two weeks. We have finally reached The Last of Us.

The final award.

The Worst Crankshaft Strip of 2023. As voted on by YOU the blog commenting audience.

Your Nominees:

1.) Dinkshaft

2.) Remember, No Politics!

3.) The Cancer Spreads

4.) Pink Slime

5.) Enjoying Comic-Con

6.) Actual Manslaughter

7.) What Women’s Lib Doesn’t Know…

8.) Taksies Backsies

And the winner of the Worst Crankshaft Strip of 2023 is…

The Cancer Spreads

Things we DIDN’T get this year from Crankshaft.

The Garden Club.

Baseball of any kind.

Crankshaft’s other daughter, Chris.

KESTERMAN’S MAILBOX

Yet, we couldn’t go ONE YEAR without sight of Cancer Death.

Truly it’s The Eternal Death of Lisa Crawford-More.

Thanks for all the fun with the Crankies this year folks. I know that it took a lot longer than the last couple years I did this. Most of that was being unable to go back to daily posting, as my parents once again celebrated President’s Day by running away to play with grandkids, leaving me alone with the cows.

I think that poor Epicus has suffered with Crankshaft nonsense long enough. So for his sake, and in the interest of really sinking my teeth into some juicy history again, expect more Funky Winkerbean retrospective material coming your way soon!

56 thoughts on “The Crankshaft Awards 2023, FINALE!”

  2. Another worthy winner, even if it’s not the one I voted for. (I went with “Taksies Backsies”, just because it was the monumentally stupid capper to a monumentally stupid story, whose sole purpose was to effectively undo Batiuk’s slipshod ending to Funky. There was no reason to have that development in Funky, and even less to undo it in Crankshaft, ESPECIALLY with those characters and for that motivation. There were numerous ways Batiuk could have gotten to a similar point without getting Mopey and Trophy Girlfriend involved, most obviously Funky retiring and turning things over to Wally and Rachel. But… nope, let’s burn the whole thing to the ground, then put everything back together again with one of the most ill-fitting characters for that role!) (Bonus points for Lillian giving back a six-figure lamp like it was… well, any of the other pieces of crap these yutzes are giving away.)

    Still, can’t argue with Mason ego-stroking himself AND serving as YET ANOTHER “buy Lisa’s Story” shill by Batiuk.

  4. Yep, that’s one I voted for. Smug face actor smuggling over the story everyone knows there’s a three-book set to hog out makes for a very easy target.

    Also old man’s gardening supply addiction on full display this week

  5. As always, Batiuk never quite understood why people hate the whole stupid mess with the cancer arc. It’s not just Les and his habit of curating his wife’s story while blanking out on what it’s doing to his kid, it’s that Lisa didn’t care enough about Summer to do more parenting than aping Hari Seldon.

    1. Les and his habit of curating his wife’s story

      …while never actually doing that. Not once did he provide anything of value to the production. All he did was stand around and pout at anything anyone tried to do. Then he left after the Point Dume fire, never to return. Apparently no one missed him.

        1. This is why Les is so damn punchable. The smug insistence that he’s the real center of attention might go a long way to explaining his reluctance to tell her story……most people would no doubt cast as the supporting character he actually would have been in real life.

      2. Which says volumes about the man. He never once articulated why he saw something as being wrong and thought that being a big wet blanket did his talking for him. In the real world, he’d be the laconic avatar of moping negativity.

        1. And nobody ever asked him! All these Hollywood people ever did was go “uh-oh, Les is making his pouty face, we’d better guess what the problem is and try again.” This is Manipulative Narcissist 101. Which is why he’s Tom Batiuk’s hero and personal avatar.

          The idea that anyone would put up with this behavior, much less powerful Hollywood movie executives who paid for his dumb book twice and don’t owe him jack shit, is straight-up insulting.

          1. What always annoyed me about the endless cancer book arcs was the obnoxious (and transparent) author avatar thing he was doing with it. The real life “Lisa’s Story” made a minor splash, then quickly faded back into obscurity, which obviously upset BatYam to a point where every single FW “Lisa’s Story” arc was a diatribe based around the idea that no one was taking the gravity of what Les went through seriously enough. And it was really all about Batty being bitter, and his stupid story not being heaped with appropriate piles of praise. Namely, that Pulitzer he was nominated for, but did not win.

            Those arcs still irritate me to this day. Like the original book launch tour arc, where cruel radio hosts and unfeeling airports mocked Les’ endless internal struggle. Or when “they” optioned his cancer book into some sort of soft porn flick. They were all thinly-veiled attacks on what Batiuk felt “Lisa’s Story” deserved, but never got.

          2. But it didn’t deserve it. It didn’t come close to deserving praise. It was the story of a manipulative ass trying to gain attention from his wife being too passive and spineless to want to live for their child. Acceptance is great if you have nothing else to lose but Summer, she’s a whole lot of else and Lisa should have seen that.

          3. These are people who’d give Hitler a development deal for three movies if he said he knew how to do Die Hard on an oil tanker so it’s not as if they’d care about Les’s hurt feelings.

          4. Or when “they” optioned his cancer book into some sort of soft porn flick. 

            @ED and when Hollywood isn’t full of straw enemies, it’s full of straw friends.

            Remember when Tom Batiuk’s blog said “I was certain they’d hire me for Spider-Man when they saw how good a writer I was”, even though he was just some 25-year-old off the street with no relevant experience?

            The people Les meets in Hollywood act exactly as if this were true. They give him everything he wants, because they see how good a writer he is.

            Les is treated in a way that implies he’s a transcendent, irreplaceable talent. They invite him to important meetings, kowtow to him, tolerate his overt rudeness, and give him absurd levels of oversight despite having no official role.

            Les implicitly had final cut, a power granted only to the biggest directors in Hollywood. Not the source material writer of a C-list Lifetime TV cancer drama, who’s already destroyed the movie once! Even people who are transcendent, irreplaceable talents eventually wear out their welcome. (See: Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond.)

            If this Twinkie represents the amount of unrealism in Lisa’s Story, the egotism in Lisa’s Story would be a Twinkie so big you’d need to use tetration to measure it.

  6. I voted for the OMEA strip because it has absolutely zero reason to be a part of Crankshaft. Unlike Batty, I actually performed at an OMEA event to a receptive audience. (I played marimba in a percussion ensemble.)

    My second choice was “The cancer spreads” for similar reasons. WTF Masone and Lisa doing in Crankshaft? 

  7. You know, I can’t even remember which of the hateable nominees I found most loathesome! All I can say is that the winner certainly earned the (dis)honor fair and square. Any strip with Skip is exponentially more despicable, and then add Lisa and Cancer and you’ve got a nice radioactive pile of excrement.

    The real winner is us, CBH, thanks to your indefatigable work. It must be that farm-girl work ethic. You never complain; you just get on with what needs doing.

    I stand, as always, in line.

  8. I voted for “Actual Manslaughter”

    but congrats for “The Cancer Spreads” for winnings

    1. I also voted for Actual Manslaughter. All the nominees are appalling in their own way, but Ed Crankshaft straight-up killed a guy. For a stupid joke. In a comic strip that runs on cancer cancer cancer death cancer realism give me awards.

      1. Actual Manslaughter also got my vote, but there were so many great candidates. Dinkshaft’s “I still feel like a high school band director” sums Dinkle up in one sentence. The Cancer Spreads gave us yet one more shameless self-promotion, and Green Luthor has already skewered the illogic of Taksies Backsies.  But Crankshaft’s disregard for his friend’s own life was the deciding factor for me.

        This has been fun, everyone. CBH-thank you for all you do, both on this site and on your farm too! 

  9. Today’s Crankshit:

    (Crankshaft is lying dead next to a cardboard box)

    Pam: Dad, what’s going on!? Dad!? DAAAAAD!!!!

    (Metal Gear Solid Game Over music starts to play

    1. Replace “Bean’s End” with “omnibus comic books” and it’s the same shit we see every other day in the Funkyverse. We’re supposed to feel for a grown man who can’t function without a constant stream of new toys.

    3. Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean:

      Pam: Dad’s going through the heroin-withdrawl-like symptoms that Phineas Flynn had in that one episode of Phineas and Ferb (Bully Bromance Breakup). I hope he doesn’t no clip and enter the backrooms–

      (without warning, Lillian noclips through reality, and ends up in the backrooms, and notices a blue hedgehog who’s wearing grey shoes, Lillian walks towards the being, and it opens its eyes, revealing pitch-black sclera and glowing red pupils, before he flies up to Lillian snaps her neck like a weak toothpick)

      X: I’VE BEEN WAITING A LONG TIME DO TO THIS

      (X/ Sonic.exe was created by JcTheHyena and is currently co-owned by JoeDoughBoi, by the way)

      1. oh fuck I misstyped Sonic.exe’s dialogue

        It was meant to read “I’VE BEEN WAITING A LONG TIME TO DO THIS“

  10. Sorry to interrupt this beautiful awards ceremony — I’mma let you finish, but I happened on something mildly interesting to add to our recent discussion of the Reuben Award and the other awards TB has never won.

    A post by the Comics Curmudgeon led me to the bios section of the National Cartoonists Society web site. TB is listed as a member, but… his bio doesn’t seem to have been updated for years, though it appears to have been written by TB himself.

    https://nationalcartoonists.com/author/thomas-m-batiuk/

    One thing that strikes me is that this capsule bio chose to use space to highlight episodes I wasn’t even aware of:

    His stories often involve strong drama elements combined with generally rosy outcomes or ending with a pun. They also show a strong belief in God, as well as sympathies for the American military. On the other hand, Funky Winkerbean dealt very critically with Intelligent Design, and two students in the strip even did a pro-evolution take-off on Johnny Hart’s B.C.

    Does anyone remember any episodes where anyone shows a strong belief in God? If anything, I’d say the tone is agnostic/fatalistic, verging on irreligious (especially in the Dinkle/St Spires arcs).

    And does anyone recall the episodes critical of Intelligent Design? If he did take a ringing stance against it, I’m surprised — simply because when he tackles a “controversial” topic he tends to plant himself smack in the middle of the fence and stand there, expecting applause for his bravery.

    1. The NCS member directory in which that bio appears leaves a lot to be desired. Many of the cartoonists don’t have biographies at all — including big names like Matt Groening, Cathy Guisewite, and Garry Trudeau.

      And this is clearly supposed to be current membership, else big names of the past would appear too; yet a few of the supposed current members have been deceased for years, including Henry Scarpelli and Leonard Starr.

      1. Excellent point. Perhaps those famous names were asked to submit a bio and never bothered.

    2. And not to belabor the point, but I don’t particularly recall a trend of “drama elements” ending with “rosy outcomes.”

      If anything, in Act III, there has been a lack of outcomes altogether. Los Angeles burnt to the ground — never mentioned again. Lisa’s Story released — no one in Westview noticed it or talked about it, not even Lisa’s own daughter or son, or anyone who knew her. A world-famous action star makes a big deal out of rehabbing a run-down strip joint in East Buttcheek, OH, and the only interested party is some right-armed lefty and his iPhone.

      1. I’d say there are things that do qualify as “rosy outcomes”, except that they tend to be so over-the-top ridiculously unrealistic that they really only serve as snark fodder.

        Lisa’s Story gets released as a movie, no one talks about it, and it’s a complete flop… until it hits streaming, and the lead actress wins an Academy Award, and then GIVES it to Les! A “rosy outcome”, but one that fails the reality test at almost every turn. (That it was a complete flop is 100% believable, but everything else… not so much.)

        Funky loses his “thin-crust profit margins” due to the pandemic and has to close Montoni’s… but then Mopey (who’s only worked as a writer for the past 30+ years and has no experience owning or running a business) decides to buy it (along with a guy in a costume made of pizza boxes who Mopey doesn’t even know), and then everyone who bought anything from the liquidation auction decides to return it for free! Certainly a “rosy outcome”, provided Batiuk ignores how Mopey is almost guaranteed to fail in this venture (which, let’s face it, Batiuk IS going to ignore).

        Bull develops CTE and decides to take his own life? Well, if you count “intentional insurance fraud” and “Les gets to be a petty asshole at the funeral of a guy who considered him a friend” to be a “rosy outcome”…

        Jessica Darling Whose Father John Darling Was Murdered wants a memento of her father, John Darling Who Was Murdered? Let’s give her The Gun That Murdered Her Father John Darling Who Was Murdered, and have it melted down into a toy for her son! A rosy outcome, as long as you ignore how many decades of therapy that kid’s gonna need once he realizes what his favorite toy is.

        Dinkle going deaf and is forced to retire? Now he gets to terrorize old women and his deafness has completely cured itself! A rosy outcome!

        Morton develops dementia and goes to a nursing home? Now he gets to terrorize old women and his dementia has completely cured itself! A rosy outcome!

        And, let’s face it, Lillian gets to rid herself of the sister whose life she ruined, then becomes an award-winning author AND proprietor of an illegal book store (pretty sure zoning laws wouldn’t allow you to just randomly open a shop over your garage like that). A rosy outcome!

        So there ARE rosy outcomes, they’re just blatantly idiotic (if not offensive) in every conceivable way.

        1. Everything you said is absolutely correct, of course. It’s just that I have trouble seeing those events as “outcomes.”

          Example: Joe has a gambling problem. One day he gets fired and then loses what’s left his money at the track. He goes home and tells his girlfriend he’s broke and jobless. She leaves him. He sits on his bed and cries.

          The next day, Joe walks outside and locks eyes with a woman strolling by. They fall instantly in love. The woman tells Joe she is a supermodel and a billionaire. They elope that very same day and fly off to the Côte d’Azur in her private jet for their honeymoon.

          Rosy? Yes, it is. But is the second part an outcome of the first? It doesn’t flow in any way from what happened in the first part of the story. It’s just a random happy event.

          I think it depends on one’s definition of what an “outcome” is (vs just an event that happens after another event). But there’s no hope that TB would make a distinction like that…. so “rosy outcomes” it is.

    3. The (alleged) Intelligent Design strips were August 30 to September 4 of 2004 (possibly one extra day, but I don’t have the Sundays from back then). Jim Kablichnick was angry that the state was mandating that he teach ID along with evolution in science class, so Mopey and Boy Lisa did some “Sophomoric Sightings” strips about evolution. (They were, it probably doesn’t need to be said, not funny or particularly insightful.)

      (Let’s see if posting them all together on Imgur works…)

      https://imgur.com/a/tKsFA1v

      1. I’ll give TB this, he really knew his characters in Act II. If someone asked me which FW characters were the most likely to use innuendo to talk about fish sex, I would definitely answer Boy Lisa and Creepy Pete.

        And then I would get very very far away from the person who asked me that question.

      2. Ugh. Yeah, there could have been an interesting story here, but Batiuk (predictably) found the least interesting aspect of it, and proceeded to tell it in the dullest way possible — a way that also somehow inevitably involved comics — before deciding to stop. (Not end the story, mind you…just stop.)

      3. Hawt dawg, he did take a stand, via his mouthpiece Kablichnik! Amazing.

        I don’t really understand the “Sophomoric Sightings” strips or what they had to do with President Bush. This isn’t a political question, but I’m trying to make sense of the last strip you pasted. Did Bush famously throw some fish into water? Was this a metaphor? If so, for what?

        As an aside, I personally think it’s kind of tacky for a cartoonist to attack another cartoonist by name the way TB did. I know there have been plenty of parodies of FW by other cartoonists, but I don’t recall any of them mentioning the name of Tom Batiuk. Especially when the strips made by Pete and RePete were in no way the “anti-Johnny Hart.” Puzzling to say the least.

        1. I think that was a reference to some strips Hart had posted around that time, some of which were … you know… his fish or turtle or whatever just talking about their absurdity. I think? TBH, i can barely remember any of this anymore.

        2. I was frequently ‘in the main’ with the other awards but this time i had few fellow travellers. What can i say, i found the guy who spent weeks going over his memories of Kent State shootings producing the ‘no politics’ strip (in spring 2023) to be a little tiresome. I’ll just say ‘OK Boomer’ and move on.

      1. Or even cared enough to get the story right. TVTropes includes this sharp takedown:

        “Pretty much everything relating to the storyline with Wally is a slap in the face to anyone who has even a smidgen of knowledge of the military, POWs, and basic procedures for declaring a soldier killed in action. (Hint: they tend to involve identifying the body and not grabbing random corpses without even the most basic of forensics testing).”

        It goes on to speculate that Batiuk latched on to some dubious news story about sloppy indentification of Vietnam remains, and applied it to the entire military. Which is exactly something he would do.

        1. Probably, considering his entire treatment of Wally as a POW seems to be based on Vietnam, not the actual Middle Eastern conflicts of the 21st century. Like the idea that Iraqi and Afghani militants would hold a US service member hostage for years without telling anyone they were a prisoner. Lots of POWs were held for long stretches of time in Vietnam, but not the Middle East. The captured soldier would be paraded around publicly, making sure the whole world knew they had captured an American soldier. And then they’d probably be executed on a live stream, not kept as a hostage. Especially for ten freakin’ years. (Why were they even holding Wally? What was the purpose? Was there a purpose? I mean, a purpose other than to allow Becky to marry Skunkhead and ruin Wally’s life even more. Somehow I doubt Middle Eastern insurgents would have it out for Wally personally like that. Les, maybe, especially if they had gotten copies of Lisa’s Story, but Wally?)

          Basically, I think Batiuk watched Rambo and/or those Chuck Norris Missing In Action movies and decided to just do a search and replace on “Vietnam” for “Iraq”. (Research? We don’t need no stinkin’ research!)

          1. That was back before I got ban hammered for being too candid about how fucked up the Patterswine from FBORFW are.

  11. Ya know, when I said I was “100% sure” that this week’s Crank would NOT be making fun of mental health–WAS I CRAZY?
    Mon, Tues, Weds–“HA HA MENTAL ILLNESS!” Now Crank’s having a HIGH-LARIOUS seizure! Yeah, years of mild smirks directed at CTE and cancer and date rape, Lisa’s AND Wally’s entire lives, and TWO suicide attempts, BOTH by attractive young women–Susan Smith’s crush over her decade-plus older teacher; Marianne Winters over the extremely much older writer of the book that the screenplay was kinda based on, that he blatantly sabotaged at every turn, AND THEY’RE BOTH LES WHO IS TOM…All *very* funny, very super NORMAL topics!

    WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?
    WHO IS THIS TOM GUY?
    I’m gonna huff some glue like Crank for now.

    I might imagine getting a Best Actress Oscar, idk…Crap. Instead, got me a talking monkey with a bazooka. Thought I sprayed for those.

  12. Wow, this one was the closest finish of them all. Many thanks to putting what I’m sure was hours and hours of work on this.

    A whole year of no mailbox being run over? Is it possible he decided to retire that long time running “gag” of malicious property destruction?

  13. Hey, I actually voted for the first-place finisher this time! 

    There were lots of deserving candidates, but I’m surprised “Enjoying Comic-Con” finished as low as it did — it’s bad in so many uniquely Batiukian ways. But yes, “The Cancer Spreads” is truly, truly cringe-inducing.

    Thanks for organizing all this CBH … and for your always entertaining insights and graphs!

  14. He might not understand he is doing it but he’s showing us the mental processes of the goomba who joins anti lockdown protests. It does feel like jail to have to think about why they need to run off.

  15. Today’s Funky Crankerbean:

    Ed: OH WOE IS ME! I CANT GET MY BEAN’S END SO I MUST WHINE MY WAY THROUGH LIFE NOW!

    Wally: You think you’re life is bad!? I was deployed in army against my own will and never got to see either Rana or Wally Jr. grow, and ended up with PTSD, but do you see me whine about it?! No, I don’t.

    1. Related to The Batiukverse: Still More Miis

      Ralph Meckler

      Roxanne Rhodes

      Cory Winkerbean

      Emily Mathews

      Ameila Mathews

      Andy Reed (bus driver)

      Rocky Rhodes (bus driver)

      Lena

      Mary Marizpan 

      Dead Saint Lisa

      Chien

      Rolanda Mathews

  16. Latest blog entry: Akron, 12 years old, Rexall, comic books, The Flash, rack, rearranged my molecules, The Flash, praises his dad for helping him buy comic books even though he didn’t see the value, “the things in life that matter most.”

    You can piece together the rest.

    1. The notion that an issue where the Flash is magically turned overweight in what someone claims “rearranged my molecules” and shaped their future tastes in what “matter most” is something that would suggest to me that their intrigues would be shaped by the overweight thing itself moreso than Flash and superhero comics in general. At the very least it’s funny to hold that cover up as a childhood treasure. Jeff idealizing over that one Superman comic of him becoming a lion man feels like it had slightly more dignity, at least (though equally comes with its own awkward implications)

      1. “Jeff idealizing over that one Superman comic of him becoming a lion man feels like it had slightly more dignity, at least”

        I feel like Jfff has much less dignity than that

  17. Oh, Leroy? LEEEEroy?

    I thought I’d seen the end of my comments being eaten up, but I guess not.

  18. @Comic Book Harriet

    I’m not sure if you’ll see this, as the blog is a couple of days old now. In any case, I hope you do because I wanted to expand on my thoughts on the Cranky Awards. My first post may have come across as a bit terse, but I really appreciate the effort and time you must have put into it. This must have been a labor of love.

    I believe you mentioned last year you used the Worthy Awards of Mary Worth & Me as a model of inspiration. IMHO, what you have created here is far better than any of Wanders’ lists. I wonder what he’d think if he read your version.

    Wanders: Gee, I wish I thought to write one category a day instead of all at once. And to include pie charts to show the vote distribution. That was clever.

    I too, stand in line. (humble bow with folded hands)

    1. 😀

      Thanks so much bwoeh!

      I was a little worried about dragging the awards out for so long, since I was posting every few days rather than all in one week, but I wanted each award to have its chance to be discussed on its own. I’m glad y’all still enjoyed them.

      Wanders was great at what he did, thinking of one snarky and funny thing to say about each day’s strip, and he kept it up for such a long time. That’s one way to avoid burning out too quickly.

      The other way is getting a whole crew going, and not trying to post every day. And I know that I wouldn’t have been able to keep up this last year if I didn’t have Epicus and especially BJ6K providing content too and if you guys weren’t all patient enough to wait a few days between posts, and a few weeks between magnum opuses.

  19. The artwork in today’s Crankshaft appears to be markedly better than recent efforts, especially panel #1. I wonder from where and when Dan Davis stole it.

  20. Today’s Crankshaft:

    Being able to order things online and get same-day delivery = excuse to assault random female passerby.

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