Last week, Tom Batiuk’s blog re-ran his five-week story on the May 4, 1970 Kent State shootings. This is probably his strongest story after Act I, and is well-regarded even by readers of this blog. It has a few problems that are too big to ignore, though.
Pam has no reason to continue hiding her “involvement” from her own father.
What’s her motivation? That’s not an acting joke, it’s a sincere question. Funkyverse characters are always doing things that make no sense from their perspective, to drive the story where Tom wants the story to go.
This arc was from 2001. If Pam was a college student in 1970, that makes her about 50 at the time, and is also consistent with her having near college-age children. She’s way, way, way too old to still be keeping secrets from her father. Especially when she did nothing that warrants hiding! All she did was cover a news event that got out of hand. Sheesh, how does he not already know this? Having covered that kind of huge event would be a boon to any journalistic resume.
Every single character in the Funkyverse has a severe case of arrested development. They became adults at the end of Act I, but they never grew up. They’re all high school kids in adult bodies, and still treat other adults from that perspective. Funky acts like an obnxious, disruptive kid who wants to be sent to detention. Holly was bullied by her own mother into doing a performance 60-year-olds are incapable of, got seriously injured, and then apologized for getting hurt! Cindy has ridiculous degrees of insecurity. Les can’t move past his high school relationship with Bull, despite the massive effort Bull put into atoning over the decades. Dinkle, who was already an adult in Act I, seems to have learned nothing in his life. Almost all characters are obsessed with children’s media, or have jobs creating it.
“Involvement” is in finger quotes because:
Pam was never actually involved.
When you’re a journalist, covering an event is not “getting involved.” If anything, it’s the opposite. Ideally, the journalist’s role is to report the facts as completely and as objectively as they can. I’m aware that modern media lowers the bar of objectivity quite a bit. But this was 1970.
Pam’s presence was never a conscious choice to side with, or against, anyone. But Ed characterizes it this way, and nobody corrects him. Certainly not Pam, who doesn’t dare question her father for a nanosecond, even at age 50 and when he’s completely clueless. The only decision Pam made on May 4, 1970 was that this on-campus ruckus was newsworthy. Which it absolutely was. Again, why does Pam even feel the need to hide this?
By concealing the truth about what happened to her that day, Pam is doing a disservice to her children.
The premise of the story was a trip to Kent State for her nearly college-age children to check out the campus. This is a great time to have conversations about adulthood. And Pam can speak authoritatively on that topic.
“Kids, the choices you make on this campus will have real consequences. Up to, and including, your own death. You see those markers? That’s where Kent State students, not much older than you right now, were shot and killed by soldiers of this country. Because they attended a protest rally. They weren’t even the leaders of it. I never told any of you this, but: I was there too. And I was lucky not to be killed that day. If the perfect person hadn’t come by at the perfect moment, I would have been killed. And you never would have been born. So take it seriously.”
That would get everyone’s attention. And it would shut Ed’s insufferable piehole for a second. Then Pam could tell her story. And it would be all the more powerful, since nobody’s ever heard it before.
By concealing the truth about what happened to her that day, Pam is doing a disservice to everyone who was affected by that event.
In the Funkyverse, at least one national guardsmen defied orders, and helped a student to safety. I’m not aware of any real-life incidents of this happening at Kent State. It’s plausible, because we know only a fraction of the guardsmen present fired their rifles. But, this world is “a quarter inch from reality.” Or, as most people call it, historical fiction. So it can build its own stories off from the real-life event.
Timmy’s compassion changes the overall narrative of May 4 in this universe. Historically, soldiers refusing to shoot civilians is a major catalyst to the fall of evil regimes. It would have made the National Guard look even worse than they did in reality. By keeping this secret, she is inadvertently covering up things the world needs to know. Again: why? Don’t forget: she was a credentialed journalist, and reporting important facts was her very job.
By having Pam conceal the truth about what happened to her that day, Tom Batiuk threw away a great story.
We can see the name on the soldier’s uniform: Meckler. This is Timmy Meckler, the son of Crankshaft’s close friend Ralph Meckler. Timmy was later killed in Vietnam, because Tom Batiuk loves pointless tragedy. The only thing he loves more than pointless tragedy is writing his way out of anything interesting.
It’s plausible that Pam didn’t see the nametag, or make the connection. But if Pam had an inquisitive nature – for example, if she was a journalist in college – she might have wanted to find out who her savior was. If Tom Batiuk had any skill at storytelling – say, if he was a writer – Timmy could have told his father a little something about the incident before he died, in one of those flashbacks Batiuk loves so much. It would spur Pam to piece the connection together.
And what a powerful story that would have been. Ed could have learned, for the first time, that his friend’s son saved his daughter’s life. Would it show him he’s been in the wrong all these years? And how much would it mean to Ralph to learn that his son didn’t die pointlessly, but saved a life first? And, made a correct moral choice in refusing to shoot unarmed Kent State students?
We’ll never know.
This was all done because Ed’s feelings and behavior never be questioned.
Ed doesn’t like protesters, and that’s that. Even though a generation has passed, and history has strongly judged his side as being in the wrong. It’s “protecting Lisa” all over again. It’s the universe indulging an awful character’s need to control the narrative, when we can see for ourselves that it isn’t justified.
Poster Rusty Shackleford recently called Ed Crankshaft a “cheap ripoff of Archie Bunker.” He’s right, but it’s even worse than that. Other characters would actually tell Archie he was wrong. This conflict in attitudes drove the show. While some viewers misunderstood the show’s intent, most of us sympathized with Edith and his other targets. We saw Archie for what he was: a noisy, pathetic old man the world left behind.
Tom Batiuk has no clue of this. And it’s one of the most disgusting things about the Funkyverse. Batiuk writes his stories into a pretzel to avoid questioning the sensibilities of his favorite but most awful protagonists. Even when they’re clearly in the wrong.
Imagine if All In The Family went on for 37 seasons and nobody stood up to Archie once in all that time. And, Archie also enjoyed causing property damage, and nobody stood up to him for that either. That’s Crankshaft.
This story was Tom Batiuk at his Act II best… and it shows how bad that still was.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I remember watching a video of people saying that they should have shot more protesters. The general idea is that people have to get behind a meaningless imperialistic quagmire that did nothing good for America’s image or get dead. Lose to Hitler and he’ll blow up your cities, have your wives raped and turn your children into lab animals. Lose to Ho Chi Minh and you look like a goof. It’s not the same thing.
Thing is, you can’t tell an Ed Crankshaft this. For all of his defiance towards other people, he doesn’t question the nonsense people who make him feel important tell him. Vietnam is Red but the Commies aren’t dancing down Main Street USA but he doesn’t realize he got conned.
And then, there was the stupid Just Say No arc that leaned way too heavily on the old Hanna-Barbera PSA that has a guy take a hit on a joint and turn into a Scooby-Doo villain. What happened there is that Jeff caught Max with a reefer and showed him some dude who got a damn lobotomy after a bad trip. I guess Fifties Doctor from Family Guy was still around stalking Woodstock Nation.
And then, there was the stupid Just Say No arc that leaned way too heavily on the old Hanna-Barbera PSA that has a guy take a hit on a joint and turn into a Scooby-Doo villain. What happened there is that Jeff caught Max with a reefer and showed him some dude who got a damn lobotomy after a bad trip.
Wait, that happened in the Crankshaft comic strip?
Yes, it did. Jeff didn’t do the sensible thing and simply say “It’s not legal” because Batiuk was in the mood for another quarter-of-an-inch from total bullshit Afterschool Special. There was this ‘great’ guitarist who got a taste for the brown acid who had a big freak-out on stage and melted his brain because Jack Webb is the bomb.
It’s like that damn idiocy with Saturday Morning characters lecturing about the evils of Stimucrank: kids are stupid enough to take drugs but they’re not stupid enough to believe anti-drug propaganda. They want something that might turn them into a mutant snake person because that looks bad-ass.
Thanks BJ, you captured my thoughts on why Ed is a cheap ripoff of Archie Bunker. I guess it doesn’t matter because Crankshaft is turning into Funky 2.0 anyways.
I like what Beware of Eve is doing on GC where she compares the current strip to a random one in the past.
At least this way, we won’t have Big Important Story Arcs that highlight the author’s many failings as a storyteller.
Batiuk clones Archie Bunker, but doesn’t have the first clue why Archie Bunker works as a character. And we see this pattern in everything he does.
He realized “cancer stories are sad” and spent decades on a boring, overwrought parade of unlikeable characters who do nothing. And wonders why he didn’t win a Pulitzer Prize for it.
He doesn’t even understand how his precious silver age comic book stories work! Those stories are fun because they have outrageous characters, tension, stakes, and don’t let plausibility get in the way. He pouts at the Batman TV show, not realizing it was made in the exact style he loves so much. He hates the Comics Code, not knowing how much it did to drive that style.
He doesn’t even understand why Barry was at pains to keep Iris in the dark about his being The Flash. I see a man trying his best to keep a loved one from ending up becoming just another cop wife, worried sick that this will be the time he doesn’t come home. Batiuk sees a guy putting one over on a dumb GORL.
The most annoying thing about all of this is that Lear and O’Connor knew what Archie was. Batiuk doesn’t even understand his own creation.
Of course, Archie is the Americanized Alf Garnett, Johnny Speight’s creation on Til Death Us Do Part. Archie was Alf with some of the edges sanded down … American audiences weren’t ready for a complete racist and misogynist like Alf, who really was reprehensible. (And they had to really water down the son-in-law: on Til Death Us Do Part, Mike’s not a liberal, but a full-on socialist Trotskyite.)
Oddly, some of Crankshaft’s worst character traits would have been beyond the pale for even Archie and Alf. In particular, they do not share Crankshaft’s delight in doing his job as poorly (and even dangerously) as possible, while making as many people as miserable as possible in the process. Whatever else you may have to say against Archie and Alf, they tried to do their jobs well and took some pride in their work.
Lear was fond of saying various versions of “There’s a little bit of Archie Bunker in all of us.” when interviewed about the show. I think this doesn’t even need to be said to understand when watching the show, but TB clearly missed the flashing neon sign.
Heck, he even misses it when he actually tries to redeem Crankshaft (paying for the “Rough Riders” college education, his warm embrace of integrating minor league baseball, and his other occasional bouts of decency). Archie Bunker’s general decency was supposed to mirror the viewer’s self-image as a decent person, and have us confront our own prejudices as we watched this otherwise pretty OK guy television character struggle with his. But when TB tries to soften Crankshaft, he does so aimlessly. Why is he suddenly not-so-bad? Is he learning or growing? Are we supposed to see the hidden desire to set up college funds for poor kids in other curmudgeonly oldsters? His heart of gold comes out of nowhere, and when the story is done it returns to exactly where it came from.
Ed’s “Pet the dog” moments are random and make no sense for his character. The Rough Riders thing I could maybe give a pass to, because Ed was illiterate and wouldn’t want others to go through that. But he only paid for one semester – a problem he should have foreseen – so it’s questionable how much good he even did them.
The rest of it is inconsistent with his character. Ed’s not a racist, but he’s not a pro-integration activist in 1947 either. His motto is “it sucks to be you.” He’s the type who would keep quiet and not get involved, because baseball was his only marketable skill. It’s in his interest not to upset his team.
I second the huzzays for BWO Eve Hill’s random retrospectives – that’s making the GoComics Crankshaft comments section required daily reading for me.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Max: I dunno, Mason. I had to close the theater in 2021 because for some reason, nobody came to see old serials, not even the movies that featured the Three Stooges and Ted Healy.
Mason: I think you had to close is because nobody wants to go into a theater that only shows movies from the first half of the 20th century.
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Mason: I don’t think this week will amount to anything at all.
Meanwhile in Mary Worth: Wilbur’s pet fish have died and he’s sobbing uncontrollably just like that one time he had a meltdown in a karaoke bar
Mary Worth is horrid lately. The estate of Marlon Brando has to be suing Moy/Brigman over today’s strip.
it’s all over the place! Somehow we went from “dawn leaves for Connecticut to reconnect with her mother” to “wilbur inadvertently saves lives” to “wilbur lies about his appearance in an online dating app” to “his date (justifiably) ditches him to hook up with the waiter” to “his goldfish dies.” What next, Wilbur joins the San Diego Padres, where he solves a drug smuggling conspiracy?
Was really hoping the story would be about Dawn, but here we are.
Ugh, Batty’s latest blog update feature Funky’s failed pizza shop in NYC. Hey Batty, not everyone thinks you have to make it in New York. I know 2 restaurant owners who moved from NYC to open restaurants here in Northeast Ohio. Why? Low costs, and little competition. One brought New York style pizza to Akron, but Batty wouldn’t know it as he only knows Luigi’s. The owners are from Brooklyn and are old school Italian Americans….I love them. I prefer Italian style pizza over New York style, but their sauce (gravy) is great.
But… but if you make it there, you can make it anywhere. Liza and Frank said so and they wouldn’t lie about such a thing! Would they?
But seriously, all this talk about New York style pizza is making me hungry.
If Montoni’s had caught on in New York, then it probably could have been successful elsewhere in the U.S. But it didn’t.
The corollary to what Liza and Frank sang is, “If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere! But if you can’t make it in NY, you might not be able to make it in other places, either!”
(If you can’t make it in New York, then I can’t definitively say you won’t make it anywhere; that would be a logical fallacy. Maybe you could still make it in Hoboken or Bridgeport, just not in NYC.)
Seriously, in New York City, which already has, probably, hundreds of good pizzerias, nobody is going to be impressed by the best (the only?) pizzeria from a small town in Ohio opening a franchise.
If memory serves me correctly, the *Howard the Duck* comic strip featured a villain who wanted to be sultan, but not of the whole world.
He would be content with Cleveland.
Sure, if you can make it there, you have a high probability of success elsewhere.
The whole NYC thing was so unnecessary though, why couldn’t Funky just expand locally. Ah, but then Batty couldn’t pepper the strip with his NY trivialities. Sure he met with his publishers there on many occasions, who cares.
With a little help from their friends, John and Fred,* of course!
(John Kander and Fred Ebb, that is…*Cabaret*..*Chicago*…)
(Swimming pools and movie stars must enter the equation, but I don’t think black gold and Texas tea do…)
*
Not to be confused with John Fred and His Playboy Band, who sang of “Judy in Disguise.”
Also the blog post/book extract touches on Wally’s story again, and oh boy does he push the buttons on that one:
“If you’re thinking that this is the second time Wally has gone MIA and had to deal with trauma on his return, I’ll give you a nickel not to.”
Sorry, no, a nickel’s not worth shutting up about it. Plot repetitiveness like that isn’t something worth applying MST3K Mantra to. He not only repeated the story, but both upped the stakes of his trauma yet somehow undermined it. Casually made Wally a record-long POW just for an easy twist and teasing Becky’s family life, barely touching on the “while you were gone” losses before sidestepping them to just focus on general PTSD issues frankly most veteran stories could do. To say nothing of the timeline headaches that were made worse by IRL comparisons and TImemop.
And for good measure he admits fairly that his mind was “drawn elsewhere” due to his recovery and fitness goal of Kilimanjaro climbing, so he was going the easy route of ripping out the headlines for his quarter-inch realism and “bringing it down from the global to the local”. All well and good for his health, but that still means he utterly screwed over the Winkerbean’s hopes and dreams just for “timeliness” narrative points. All while the author avatar started working on his book deal and two girlfriends.
“”Hasn’t earned MST3K Mantra” is exactly it. (For those who may not know: “it’s just a show, you should really just relax.”)
what Tom Batiuk likes to call “beady-eyed nitpicking” are actually responses to massive storytelling errors. The story is always contradicting itself, or undermining itself, or changing.
for example: he recently got “buried the lede” wrong. I can give this a pass, because it’s not important, and they’re supposed to be speaking out loud, where the listener wouldn’t detect a spelling error.
but i won’t ignore how Mason asserted his position as theater owner on Monday, and then spent Tuesday and Wednesday begging his employees to pretty please with sugar on top host the movie premiere. He should be telling them they’re hosting the premiere, not asking their permission. On top of this being a more extreme employer-employee relationship than usual.
there are two New York-style pizzerias in Omaha. They’re both highly regarded. The one in my neighborhood even gets their water shipped in from New York instead of using local water, because they claim it makes a difference in the taste of the pizza. I don’t know if it does, but I respect that level of commitment to the bit.
I’m going to reiterate what some of the commenters here have said.
There are certain resemblances between Ed Crankshaft and Archie Bunker. Both are older white men, grumpy, who live with their daughter and son-in-law. And both are World War II veterans, although that was a lot more common when “All in the Family” was on the air 50 years ago.
On the other hand, one of the things that best defines Archie is that he was a bigot. Specifically, he believed in pretty much every stereotype of racial and ethnic groups that existed in America in his lifetime. But Crankshaft is not a bigot — note his friendship with a black teammate during the early days of integrated baseball.
Meanwhile, though, Crankshaft has some decidedly sociopathic tendencies that Archie would never endorse. He’s a school bus driver who intentionally tries to prevent children from boarding the bus. He repeatedly destroys Keesterman’s mailboxes intentionally — and Keesterman is a member of his friend group, not someone he actually dislikes. He revels in driving so as to back up long lines of cars behind him — and even did so when driving his mentor to the hospital after a heart attack, thus resulting in his mentor’s death. If Archie, Edith, Gloria, and Mike could agree on nothing else, they would all probably agree that Ed is a menace to society who should not have a driver’s license, much less drive a school bus.
Joshua:
Actually, Mike and Gloria Stivic lived with Archie and Edith Bunker, not the other way around. The house at 704 Hauser Street was Archie’s and Edith’s, and the mortgage for it would be paid off later, after the Stivics moved into the house the Jeffersons left for that “deluxe apartment in the sky.” (Archie took out another mortgage soon afterwards, in order to buy Kelsey’s Bar and set up “Archie Bunker’s Place.”)
Otherwise, a most astute analysis, which reminded me of my family watching “All in the Family” on Saturday evening.
As a certain opening song would put it, “those were the days…”
True, it’s a different family dynamic, in that it was Archie and Edith’s house and not the other way around.
Archie had a lot of resentment toward Mike just from Mike living in his house. But I don’t sense much resentment from Jeff or Pam toward Ed living in their house, except with regard to the destruction Ed causes in and around the house.
Jeff and Pam jolly well SHOULD resent Ed, for the massive amounts of damage he’s done to their home! He just acts like he owns the place, and they don’t say a word. Pam’s silence is appalling enough, but Jeff? Why does he tolerate this? “In-laws from hell” stories on Reddit are way milder than what Ed does.
We’ve seen the roof on fire. We’ve seen massive water damage. This would be financially devastating for people of their means. And they just don’t care. “Quarter imch from reality”, my ass.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
CRANKSHAFT WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU WE NEED YOU RIGHT NOWWWWWWWWW
Related to the Batiukverse: I made a image about my headcanon on the heights of the characters
Chart 1 (Left to right: Crazy Harry, Mooch/Sir Nuts-A-Lot, Cindy, Funky, Holly, Dick Facey, Mopey Pete and Wally)
chart 2 (Left to right: Darin, Ally and Chien)
Worst “The Usual Suspects” remake ever.
Still Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Hannah, it’s because nothing humorous happened in this strip since 2003
If anyone ever wants to add new quotes to the header image, I think the second panel of the May 16 Crankshaft would be ideal for that.
Probably because you’ve read the comic before, Generic Blonde Woman.
I’ve been posting these ‘Random strip from Crankshaft history’ comments in the discussion of the Crankshaft strip on GoComics for a few days now. A few folks have asked me why I haven’t been posting these on SoSF.
I had the impression that weren’t too many people here who appreciated what Crankshaft used to be. Perhaps I’m wrong.
Here’s Thursday’s comment.
=========================
I’d like to take this opportunity to sympathize with the readers who expect to see the titular character featured in his own comic. By my count, Ed Crankshaft has had a mere two appearances since April 14, an entire month ago.
With the disappointment I feel in the new direction the cartoonist is taking, I’d like to create a new type of comment. A Random Strip in Crankshaft History. I will obtain a random Crankshaft strip utilizing the feature’s ‘Random’ button. I will comment on the random strip and render a verdict if it is better, IMO, than the present-day offering. I will stop if I ever discover a random comic strip that I judge to be worse or more offensive than the present day’s offering.
Today’s Random Strip in Crankshaft History: Crankshaft from January 3, 2007.
During a New Year week of one-off comic strips, this comic features an agitated Pam explaining to Ed how she was driving when a deer suddenly jumped out in front of her car and hit it. Her car shows damage on the right-hand side of the front end. The headlight is mostly missing. Crankshaft assesses the vehicle and replies, “Yeah… It’s definitely got that headlight-caught-in-a-deer look.” Ewwwww!
Verdict: The random comic strip features a joke that made me chuckle. Ed humorously mangles the English language. The artwork by Chuck Ayers is impressive. Pam’s car doesn’t resemble the typical baby blue Lego/Playskool Batiukmobile we’ve become accustomed to. Once again, Pam has an active role in the strip and is not just asking, “What are you doing, Dad?”. Early January 2007 was a good week.
The 05/16/2024, the Crankshaft strip doesn’t do much to advance the current story arc. If these three characters could stop teasing each other, the story might actually progress. It has only been four days and I am starting to become annoyed. Cindy had some important news – where is she and what is the news? Has that statement been abandoned? Are we supposed to guess? Abducted by aliens? Has she joined a convent and taken a vow of silence? Also, we’re supposed to guess when the new Starbuck Jones will premiere? GET ON WITH IT!
Winner: Random comic.
Number of days without an appearance by Dr. Harry L. Dinkle: 5
=====================================
Why am I posting these? This past Monday, after an entire month of Dinkle, Lillian, and Batton Thomas, I expected to see a comic strip featuring Ed Crankshaft. Needless to say, I was disappointed to see the start of yet another FW inspired story arc with the appearance of Mason Jarre. On Tuesday, when Mason Jarre implied seeing Dinkle about the score for his new movie, I almost felt like screaming. Clearly, Dinkle has replaced Ed Crankshaft as the main character in the strip.
I was so upset my cursor was hovering over the button to unfollow Crankshaft (remove the strip from my reading list) when I decided to create the random Crankshaft strip of day comment instead. I wanted to show the readers who complain about the snarkers, that we’re not just doing it to be mean. We’re insulting the mockery of a strip Batiuk has turned it into. Sure, it’s a festering heap of dung now, but several years ago, it was a decent strip. One of the better features on the Comics Kingdom. I wanted to prove I could pull any strip out of the Crankshaft archive, and it would be better than whatever drivel Batiuk was producing that day. 3 for 3 so far.
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
The last 3 days, I actually read GC just to follow you and the other SOSF stalwarts. You have come up with a winning combination:
💥Crankshaft, come for the snark. Stay for the excellence!💥
Wow! I didn’t know Crank could be good, and be funny! The other day with Meckler running for mayor, you made me jump ahead to November for the election conclusion. I laughed out loud! I’ve been stimulated!
Chef’s kiss! 🐳
BWOEH,
Apparently, your innocent comparisons between the most recent CS, and a random earlier strip is getting attention on GoComics. Both JJ O’Malley and you put a trolling doom goblin to shame. I will quote you, and add it to my own vocabulary.
* Go for walkies, you yappy dog. *
(Priceless!)
Well, their profile pic was of a dog. I thought it was a nicer way to tell them to go pound sand.
These are fun, please keep doing them!
Keep it up! I only remember Crank as a mildly funny strip. Funky burned itself into my brain with its pompous ego. It’s good to remind Ed’s fans that That Eddie’s Dead. You remind them that they’re mourning a strip that is gone, a victim killed by its creator. I wonder how it hits these Crank-stans when myself and others describe FW’s plots, simultaneously weird and utterly dull, and all what that entails.
The only readers who can enjoy this garbage are people totally unfamiliar with the over 80 combined years of established canon. Small wonder why Batiuk changed syndicates. So he can dump this self-indulgent pap on a new unsuspecting audience.
Now, here’s the thing about having the premier be the rushed mess it is going to be. It’s not that Mason is a dick to his employers. It’s not that we don’t see the title character. It’s not that we have to deal with Batiuk’s baffling issues with a Hollywood that wants Crankshaft to act like a God-damn human being. It’s that we ain’t gonna see it!
We build up, we see the reaction but his lack of imagination means that we don’t see the premier. He says “I can’t do it justice” but there’s a word that needs to be removed.
I’m betting that Wilburp clogs the toilet.
Wilbur is still carrying the dead fish around, but at least he’s not standing over the toilet today. Will he bury Stellan instead? Will he have the fish stuffed and mounted?Is this the final blow for Wilbur after Dawn’s departure followed by being ditched in a date? Stay tuned!
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Same here, Hannah, Same here
Related to the Batiukverse: more Miis i made of the characters
Funky Winkerbean (Act III)
Funky Winkerbean (Act II)
Jessica Darling
Darin Fairgood
Ms. Lee
Rolanda Mathews
Wally Winkerbean
Chien
With the disappointment I feel in the new direction the cartoonist is taking, I’d like to create a new type of comment. A Random Strip in Crankshaft History. I will obtain a random Crankshaft strip utilizing the GoComic “Random” button. I will comment on the random strip and render a verdict if it is better, IMO, than the present-day offering. I will stop if I ever discover a random comic strip that I judge worse or more offensive than the actual strip of the day. I am purposely leaving out details because I want to invite you to read those strips. Comments and critiques are welcome.
Today’s Random Strip in Crankshaft History: Crankshaft from August 9, 2013.
The random strip was part of a two-week story arc featuring a week of bad decisions and a following week-long epilog full of jokes. Ed has a couple boxes of documents he needs to get rid of. He calls a shredding service but decides he can save his money and do it himself, WITH FIRE! He carries the boxes out to his fire pit and soaks them with lighter fluid. The rest of the week, including our random strip where Ed trips on his shoelace while attempting to move his beehive, is a series of unfortunate events caused by bad decisions. The following week features a visit from the Centerville Fire Department and a discussion with family and neighbors.
Verdict: The random comic strip was part of a series of unfortunate events and a resolution I found entertaining. Ed’s penny-pinching ways come at a cost. Lillian hasn’t become her nauseating near-perfect Batiuk author avatar yet, she’s the oft-put-upon victim of Ed’s shenanigans. A role that I believe suited her better. This was a good story arc. This is a classic Crankshaft.
The 05/17/2024, the Crankshaft strip answers the question of when Masone allegedly expects the premiere to happen. Max and Hannah’s deer-in-the-headlight glares in panel #1 elicited a chuckle. Her grawlix-filled response was unexpected. Why is Masone smiling? Is he just teasing about the date? If so, enough with the teasing already! A Hollywood movie premiere in a matter of weeks seems silly. Is this humor or Batiuk’s alleged quarter-inch from reality? 🤷♀️ This story arc feels like deja vu.
Winner: Random comic.
Number of days without an appearance by Dr. Harry L. Dinkle: 6
“Oh no! Not the bees! Not the bees! Ahhhhh! Oh, they’re in my eyes!”
This summer, Nicolas Cage is “Crankshaft.” This film has not been rated.
Funny you should use the word “grawlix.” I used it just a bit ago when posting about Cranky on Comics Curmudgeon:
“Again, you morons work for Mason. He’s your boss. You don’t get to question his sanity and hurl grawlixes at him. You no longer own the theater because you ran it into the ground and buried it so deeply that a different set of owners couldn’t even resurrect it as a strip club. The only reason Mason doesn’t sack you both is because he’s clearly an even bigger idiot and quite likely on hard core narcotics.”
Ah, yes, Grawlixes. Mort Walker’s biggest contribution to the comics page.
When I first read Crankshaft this morning my coffee hadn’t kicked in yet. With the grawlixes I thought I was looking at a mock up on SoSF.
This whole Hollywood movie premiere at the Valentine premise is retreading old ground. How many times this has come up on Batiuk’s spinning wheel o’ plots? Starbuck Jones once or twice? Lisa’s Story? Somebody please correct me if I’m wrong.
This isn’t new territory. Shouldn’t the couple be more prepared? What happened to the red carpet and velvet ropes from the last time? How long does take to change the marquee? Are they whining because they’ll need to vacuum the carpet and mop the floor? Stuff they should be doing anyway? It’s a small movie theater. How big of a shindig can it be? Wouldn’t Masone be handling most of the details?
Masone can’t fire the couple. They’re all just one big happy Batiukian family. Places everyone! Put on your best smirk or idiotic grin. You live in a world without pain or strife. Everything will work out just fine in the end. Because it’s called writing.
The thing is, we established on Tuesday that Masone wants to use Claude Barlow’s music in the movie. If they haven’t even finalized the film score, how the frick are they going to have a movie ready to premier in a few weeks?
You are correct that they have done this before, so they should know what to expect. I think it was done before the first sale of the Valentine, so the velvet ropes and red carpet were probably worn threadbare by the strip club.
Also, as noted, if this is a blockbuster space fantasy movie, they would have been already selling Starbuck Jones III happy meals for the past month and posting the trailer on TV/Hulu/Prime with Coming Soon. There’s NFW that Max and Hannah are just now learning about this movie.
How was Tom ever a schoolteacher?
I’ve 3 teachers in my immediate orbit, doing much harder work than “middle school art teacher.” (1 teaches poor kids, another special needs students, and 1 who is the superintendent for several ‘at-risk students’ schools)
For a teacher, Tom is…remarkably incurious. I too saw The Phantom Empire, on PBS’s Matinee at The Bijou, and I was fascinated. I kept watching 30s/40s serials for decades because I needed to know MORE! (I quit when I said “This isn’t getting topped” after seeing Manhunt on Mystery Island. Not just stunts coordinated by Yakima Canute, but the loser who keeps needing to be rescued is the *male lead*, who only survives because of the *female lead*, the wonderful Linda Stirling who likely didn’t even top 5 feet tall.) Tom saw Phantom, didn’t bother to learn more.
Tom loves comics! So do I! But Tom decided early 60s DC were all he needed to know about. *shrugs* Oh Well, more X-Men for me!
Tom hears about Fatty Arbuckle, and…that’s it. I really think he set that arc in the 40s, when silent movies were not a thing, because he realized that Cliff Hangover would have to be 120 years old. Like Ed, it’d be ridiculous to have anyone over 108!
Why didn’t he set it in ANY other era? Ayers knocked that art OUTTA THE PARK; imagine him doing sets, costumes, cars from the 60s or 70s. Did Tom think the 1920s was the last time Hollywood had a scandal?
I did some teaching a bit, in corporate retail when a new store would open. The most fun teaching is when the students WANT to learn (and are being paid to do so). I was teaching a group of newbies in a CD/VHS store (I’m old!) and asked who applied for the job because they really loved music. All hands went up! I said “That’s why you’re working in a record store”. And asked “You ever buy an album and it was so good that you listened to it 5 times in a row, then told your friend ‘You have to hear this! It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard!’ And 2&1/2 songs in, your friend says ‘That’s not music, that’s just WEIRD!'” All hands went up, albeit with rueful nods. “That’s the REAL reason you work here. Music makes you want to know more. It’s like a fractal, a Mandlebrot set, your tastes just keep expanding. Did you ever get into some ‘weird’ music, and suddenly wondered how you even discovered it? And you think back ‘This led to that, which had led from THIS, to THAT’ and then you’re not sure how that happened?”
Tom has no curiosity about anything. Learns one thing, gives up, then makes it up. Anything involving Hollywood is always wrong. (“THE KILL FEE!”) He thinks his strips are reality, because he has no interest in finding out if he’s right.
Before Masone’s announcement on Tuesday I joked on GoComics, “Will Masone hire Dinkle and the Bedside Mannerisms to play in the orchestra pit for a silent movie?” I can still see something like that happening. Instead of a silent movie, why not play for this travesty of a movie?
As puddleglum1066 joked on GoComics, after Lisa’s Story bombed in the box office, Masone Jarre is now box office poison. He’s paying for the entire Starbuck Jones movie out of his own pocket. He’s probably taking on all aspects of the production himself. Production values are low. Masone Jarre is the new Ed Wood.
The movie is premiering in Podunk, Ahia rather than Hollywood. The cast is full of Hollywood Boulevard panhandlers. The sets are made out of cardboard. The special effects probably involve a model spaceship, an aerosol can, and a bic lighter. The soundtrack can be Dinkle and the Bedpan Mannerisms playing live. Or recorded on a cassette playing boombox.
Max and Hannah could just be hearing about the movie now because it’s production has been completely under the radar.
Batiuk has his grandiose version of the movie and I have my mine. Since Batiuk won’t show us the movie in the comic strip, who’s to say I’m wrong?
Yakima Canute
I have no idea who that is, but that is the most awesome name I’ve ever heard. He sounds like a defensive end for the Seattle Seahawks who’s also a tribal chief and a poet.
He’d fire them, but he can’t find anyone else willing to run the place. (And he still needs it for tax write-off/money laundering purposes.)
Haha! I writes a posting about Tom not doing any research, and don’t notice that the name is Yakima Canutt! Close, though. Same amount of letters. (does a Jean-Lucy Pickard Face-Palm d’Or)
He basically invented stunt choreography. Before him, guys would just run out and flail at each other, which caused injuries but also looked boring. Imagine Marvel movies where Thanos and the Avengers are basically slap-fighting, but also with the actors getting hurt.
The stunts are the height of Manhunt on Mystery Island, if Linda Stirling’s not onscreen. Is there furniture in a fight scene? Doesn’t matter if it’s a 7 foot tall bookcase, someone will climb it! And smash it to its constituent balsa. There are scenes when anything that can be smashed, does get smashed. There’s only sawdust on the floor after these.
LINDA STIRLING vs QUEEN of MURANIA: The only serial that lasted half an episode, cuz Linda KIX ASS. In real life, she retired and became a college English teacher.
LINDA vs BATUi oh, give me a break. Over in the opening credits.
Funny you mention the Seahawks, BJ6K. Enos Edward “Yakima” Canutt was a Washington-born rodeo rider who went to California in the 1910s and for the next half-century was the top stuntman/stunt coordinator/second unit director in Hollywood. He was good friends with (among others) Douglas Fairbanks, Clark Gable, Roy Rogers, and John Wayne (that’s Canutt leaping from horse to horse in “Stagecoach”). He was given a special Academy Award in 1967 and a film about his life would have more action than all three Starbuck Jones movies combined.
Is there a word that describes the deep sense of shame one feels for accurately predicting a moronic plot turn?
Tom, you CAN’T have someone attend their 50-year high school reunion and then simply forget how old they are. You just can’t. (Maybe if he had stuck with the 1988 graduation date, he could MAYBE pull it off. 54 would be questionable, but not nearly as absurd as 70.)
According to wikipedia, there are six known women who bore children at age of 70 or older, and every single one of them was conceived via post-menopausal IVF, which means that Masone and Cindy had to really want to have a child,