Dilly Tally!

72 thoughts on “Dilly Tally!”

1. Harriet, I have a question

   

   what is this one strip about? I’m confused on what’s happening

   1. It was part of an arc where Cranky got dangerously sick from the flu and had a near death experience. He literally flatlined with his daughters watching, and it was only Pam putting a baseball into his hand and him imagining he was pitching to the soul of Hank Greenberg that made his heart start beating again.

      1. Now that you’ve mentioned it, can you send me the whole arc so I can see what happened in those strips?

         (I know it’s a repost but I forgot to comment under this one the first time)

      2. imagining he was pitching to the soul of Hank Greenberg

         Ed Crankshaft and Hank Greenberg are separated by denominational differences.

         1. It was an exorci-bition game, to borrow Ed’s description of the matchup.

   2. Wait… so Ed’s wife was named “Mary”, and his (possibly) current girlfriend is also named “Mary”?

      At least Ed’s deceased wife wouldn’t need to leave a video to “the other woman” about what to do when Ed calls out the wrong name… you know what, I’m not finishing that sentence, it’s too gross.

2. Now that you’ve mentioned it, can you send me the whole arc so I can see what happened in those strips?

   1. crap this was meant to go under CBH’s response to my first comment on this post

      1. You might have to buy Strike Four:The Crankshaft Baseball Book to see it. As a Crankie,I’ve only found one paper that carries the pre-1999 strips on Google Archives,and they skip Sundays.

         1. Alexa is right, I photoed it from my Strike Four volume. Right now I’m focused on tallying up Cranky lines, so we’ll see if I get time to get it all photographed.

3. We begin the year with another example of Lena Wants To Help But Is Totally And Destructively Inept But They’re Afraid To Tell Her.

4. That 1st “Tick Tock” panel–I assume Private No Class Crankshaft has finished basic training, and is waiting to shipped off in WWII. So why is he listening to a 1970s style transistor radio? Ayers never drew a 40s cathedral-style radio for Davis to steal? The “VHS tape of things that happened before the Vietnam war” could sort of be awkwardly explained as transferred home movies (why Ed has a tape of someone else’s memories is inexplicable). But wouldn’t a transistor radio require, ya know, transistors being invented? And then the USA rebuilding post-war Japan so that Hitachi starts making them? (And naming their first one “Transistor 666,” a name I don’t think would play well today)

   Then again, I foolishly think that silent movies were extinct in 1940, so what do I know.

   1. It’s a Nakashuma.

      1. Is your son a folksinger?

         Mine’s a Westinghouse, from maybe 1967? Coolest thing a kid could own back then. Still works, last I checked.

         It has a pop-art sticker on it, and all the chew marks my dog gave the leather case. When I checked it 25 years later, it was still tuned to my fave station.

   2. Actually, Ed having the video did make sense (or at least as much sense as the existence of the video at all could make). When we see the actual video (in the December 25 strip), it’s the Mecklers AND the Crankshafts celebrating Christmas together, so it’s also Ed’s memories.

      Why he would only label the tape “Christmas with Ralph, Helen, and Timmy” without mentioning his own family, or just say “Christmas with the Mecklers”… who even knows. (Or why it wouldn’t say “Christmas 19whatever year”.) Also unclear is who exactly was running the camera, since we can see all of the two families there, though it’s theoretically possible they just set up the camera on a tripod or something and taped the entire thing, I guess. (Personally, I’m going to theorize that Timemop was taping them. It’s a Very Elegant Solution™!)

5. Tthe ticktock chimera shall scoop up the whirly giggle of all us frolicking whippersnappers!

6. Interesting that Crankshaft appears in less than half of the strips bearing his name.

   Isn’t Cindy’s pregnancy due like now?

   1. I think Batiuk forgot about that

      1. “Cindy’s preggers” is increasingly looking like that line from “The Room,” wherein Lisa’s mother screams “I HAVE BREAST CANCER!” Pause a beat while Lisa looks confused, and then just ignores it. Everyone does, for the rest of that movie-like object. Mr Director Man, it’s called “editing.” Or even “Take Two!”

         Funny how both FW & The Room were made by Tommys.

         1. “I did not hit her, it’s not true! It’s bull! I did not hit her! I did not! Oh hi, Funky!”

         2. And both Tommys were torn apart by Lisa!

         3. Maybe months from now Cindy will show up non-pregnant with no new children, and her former pregnancy will never be mentioned again. Wouldn’t that be the most Batiuk thing ever?

7. Harriet, your work as always is stellar!

   But I must ask … of Ed’s 167 appearances, how many were actual speaking appearances? There were a non-trivial number of strips in which Ed, placed off to one side or in a corner, just looked on uselessly as other characters nattered away in the foreground. I’m guessing his number of speaking appearances for the year would drop to below 150?

   1. Last year I did a breakdown on these, and I am definitely going to do it again, because you’re right, he’s a background player in a lot of the strips he’s in.

8. So, the title character did not appear in his own strip 199 times in 2024. That sounds a lot like Funky Winkerbean–once the title character has exhausted his ability to star in a prestige arc (illiteracy for Crankshaft, alcoholism for Funky) and fails to win any awards for it, he gets pushed into bystander roles.

   By the way, speaking of illiteracy, what exactly is Crankshaft doing in that second TICK TOCK panel?

   1. IIRC, it’s the 1950s and he’s telling bedtime stories to his little girls. He can’t read the words, so he makes up stories that match the pictures. I find that both heartwarming, and a bit sad.

      Or not. “Ed is Illiterate” has been retconned into oblivion. He learned to read in the 1950s, he learned in the 1990s, who even cares anymore. Ed is 65, or he fought during D-Day so he’s 105. Whevs, dude.

      Tom expects everyone to know his canon by heart, while he himself doesn’t know anything about it. “YOU MAY NOT KNOW–this anchorman was killed by a guy dressed as a fern, and this homunculus is young Jeff–Wait, which one do I expect no one to remember and then never explain? Eh, here’s a generic blond.” She is right–What, indeed, is the underlying ontological syllogism? What IS Dad doing?

   2. Speaking of illiteracy, Batiuk, not surprisingly, screwed up. The way he showed Crankshaft being illiterate is not how illiteracy works. I have no doubt that Crankshaft, no matter how illiterate and how dunderheaded, would at least be able to recognize his name even if he couldn’t read it. He’d recognize the symbols that are the letters that represent his name, even if he doesn’t know how to technically read it. Especially when his livelihood depended on it. People can recognize words long before they learn how to read. That’s what functional illiteracy is all about.

      Batiuk portrays illiteracy like a super bad case of dyslexia. Not surprising that he whole-assed the research on one of his prestige arcs and didn’t understand basic fundamental details of what he was writing about.

      1. The way Batiuk presents illiteracy is basically similar to color blindness. Actually, it looks a lot more like someone having an LSD trip. But illiterate people can recognize shapes just fine, so he should know what his name looks like. But when you’re trolling for awards, never let facts get in your way.

9. RE: That last panel of Masonne’s signing (Boy, even non-authors get to do signings!) at the Komix Korner: Are we certain that’s not, in fact, the only 2024 appearance by Curly Joe DeRita from the 1960s Three Stooges?

   1. Curly Joe probably appeared somewhere else… but perhaps not in comic form though. The company that prints Stooges comics appears to use only the original three (and occasionally Shemp) and, for some baffling reason, the robotic versions of the original three that appeared posthumously in the slice of processed Hanna-Barbera late 70s cheese that was The Robonic Stooges.

      1. Although when the Stooges appeared in the New Scooby-Doo Movies, it was Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe. (Hm, but that show was from 1972, and Moe and Larry both passed away in 1975, whereas Jerome “Curly” Howard passed away in 1952 and Shemp Howard in 1955, so maybe they wanted to use the still-living Stooges, even though they weren’t providing their own voices? I dunno.)

      2. Don’t forget the Gold Key Three Stooges from the 1960s, which featured Curly Joe as the Third Stooge and sometimes included adaptations of the trio’s feature films from that time. Not to mention the bizarre Little Stooges series from 1972-74 that starred the “mod” sons of Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe. That series featured artwork by Moe Howard’s son-in-law, Norman Mauer.

10. Today’s Crankshaft

    FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GIVE ME A TRULY SHITTY STORYLINE I’M SUFFERING SNARK WITHDRAWAL

11. If I remember correctly, about half of Dinkle’s 53 appearances were between the middle of April and the end of May. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the comic strip’s title was changed to Our Daily Dinkle.

    Ah, yes, June 22, 2024. A day that will live in personal comic strip infamy. The appearance of Harley Davidson, TimeMop. The very sight of him disturbed me so much I took a month off from reading Crankshaft.

    I assume Jffy is the Homunculus Rictus.

    Help. Who is Angie?

    1. I assume Jffy is the Homunculus Rictus.

       Jffy is definitely the Rictus Homunculus itself/Jeff’s Inner Child/Jeff’s Version of Elliot Alderson’s Mr. Robot Split Personality

       Help. Who is Angie?

       Angie is a waitress at Dale Evans, which is the diner Keesterman, Ed and Ralph go to

       

       Angie is the pudgy blond woman with a pony tail and no bangs

       1. Thanks, @csroberto2854. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Cranky at the Dale Evans.

          I wonder if Nancy Koos ever received her Crankshaft Topper. That and $3 will get you a cup of coffee.

       2. Does anyone have another acronym for Ed and his cronies?

          I posted this last July, but of course I posted it an hour before a new page went up.

          1. 

    2. Jffy = Jff’s inner child, also dubbed Skppy.

       1. I originally called Jffy “Chomper” because of his massive jaws. That gaping maw filled with unnaturally large teeth appeared to give him the ability to bite through masonry, wood, or possibly even steel. Chomper could decapitate a human being with one chomp. The stuff of nightmares.

          My favorite nickname for the vile little creature was when somebody coined the nickname “Creepy Little Bastard”, abbreviated as CLB.

12. News from the Comics Kingdom! Tea Fougner, Editorial Director – Comics, and King Features Syndicate part ways.

    I guess Tea’s failure to retain Tom Batiuk for KFS has finally caught up with her. /s

    1. Oops, my bad. Wrong pronoun.

       I guess Tea’s failure to retain Tom Batiuk for KFS has finally caught up with h̷e̷r̷ them. /s

       1. I’m curious if Tom’s insistence of taking his only semi-successful strip and turning it into a failed one has caught up with him. Suddenly, it’s Crank every day! Maybe someone at GC sat Waiter Tom down and reminded him that they ordered the chicken salad sandwich, not the live toad.

          It can happen. Remember when the Sally Forth guy took over that slog of a strip, Judge Parker? He tried to make it a parody of itself, and that lasted about 3 months. Then, it was back to stern-faced white men and women almost as identical as Tom’s Generic Blonds.

          1. As many suggested, TB was in breach of the ‘Crankshaft’ contract with all the FW story arcs. It’s easy to imagine someone at GC telling him to knock it off, or they’d terminate his contract.

             Wouldn’t it be nice if TB has gotten all the Dinkle, Komix Korner, etc. FW nonsense out of his system? It was all just unfinished business. A gal can dream, can’t she?

             I’d love to know what events led to the end of FW and TB’s affiliation with KFS. I doubt anyone buys his yarn about not being able to find an artist to replace Chuck Ayers. You can’t tell me he couldn’t a young artist out there who’d love to list working on a 50-year-old comic strip on their CV. Heck, I’m sure Dan Davis can copy and paste two comic strips just as easily as one.

             I’m familiar with Ces’s work on Sally Forth. Not so much with Judge Parker, as I’m not a fan of soap opera strips. When were those three months?

             1. Batiuk postured about the end of FW being his own decision. But he made some blog posts where he more or less admitted that it wasn’t his preference. The guy can’t keep a simple bit of PR straight; it’s no wonder he can’t write believable characters.

             2. Wikipedia: “Francesco Marciuliano became writer as of August 22, 2016.^[17] Marciuliano has given the strip a darker tone.“

                I don’t know if the old Judge Parker writer retired, or was forced out. (This was around the same time the Dick Tracy team was sacked, for turning the strip into a joke) I think there might’ve been some acrimony. It was basically a self-parody at that point. “Rich guy gets richer” was the plot. Middle class couple gives Parker a $30,000 Italian shotgun; he says, annoyed, “Throw it in the room with the other antique guns.” The writer left the new guy with a mountain of unresolved cliffhangers, and it sure seemed like he was thinking “Write your way out of THIS, punk!” Yeah, real mature. It’d be like having your strip about a vain talk show host get cancelled, so a guy dressed as a ficus kills him so no one else can restart the strip.

                Most of what Ces did was minor. He made a reference to the song “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” being long. The bloody, near-fatal car crash that ended the other’s run involved a driver named Panini, and the cops made jokes about his sandwich name more than investigating the crash. Which is exactly how people in high stress jobs act.

                The last arc of the previous guy involved millionaires who open a sweat shop in Florida. They only hired seniors on Medicare so they didn’t have to pay health insurance, and paid minimum wage. They didn’t put them in a building; they stuck them in unventilated shipping containers in an abandoned parking lot to save more money. And the millionaires were the heroes! Ces solved this by having a sinkhole open up and swallow the sweat shop. God did I laugh! But he said on his blog that lots of people angrily complained about there being any humor in this sociopathic strip, so he bowed to the syndicate and made Parker the bland garbage it is today.

                So maybe GC is leaning on Tom to de-Funk Crank. They don’t want to eat the live toad.

             3. For those interested, you can follow the reboot of Parker from the writer’s VP by going to

                http://www.medium-large.com/

                and scrolling all the way down until you see August 2016 on the right. To prove I didn’t hallucinate it, the “Seniors in a Sweat Shop” arc is described by some guy named “Green Luthor.” These kids today and their weird screen names!

             4. Sorry, I posted too early. Go to October 2016 and see who’s in the Halloween strip! It’s…ED!

                Yes, he appeared in Sally Forth once, while less than half the year in his own 2024 strips! Also features Obnoxious Halloween Kid, a regular Forth Halloween character far better than PBM!

             5. Banana Jr. 6000:

                TB can’t keep a simple bit of PR straight, or maintain what should be easy to remember continuity in his own comic strips. Does he have a bad memory, or does he knowingly manipulate the facts to fit whatever narrative he wants to tell at the moment?

                Did TB change the narrative about the end of FW when it was obvious to everyone that his effort to blow smoke up our collective asses was so incredibly transparent? I maintain, that if KFS wanted to continue FW, you can’t tell me they wouldn’t have made some effort to find him an illustrator. Heck, one aspect of Tea Fougner’s reign at KFS seems to have been accruing young talent.

             6. billthesplut:

                Thanks for your write-up detailing Ces’s early tenure on Judge Parker. So sorry I made you go through all that effort. I have no way to look up those strips on the Comics Kingdom. My paid subscription perks with the CK ended a year ago last September. If I had read Judge Parker, it would have been between 04/01/2021 and 09/30/2023, when I was padding my favorites list in an attempt to get my money’s worth. Yes, I first subscribed to the Comics Kingdom during an April Fool’s promotion. The irony is not lost on me.

                The medium-large .com link doesn’t work for me. Maybe I can find a strip, or two, that Josh featured on the Comics Curmudgeon. Thanks, anyway.

                The odds of TB ever admitting on his blog that he bowed to syndicate pressure are infinitesimally close to zero.

                Tom Batiuk is a poopy head!

             7. if KFS wanted to continue FW, you can’t tell me they wouldn’t have made some effort to find him an illustrator.

                Maybe they tried. It’s easy to imagine that no artist was good enough to meet Batiuk’s absurd standards, or would put up with his ridiculous demands.

             8. The URL I have for Francesco Marciuliano’s site is https://mediumlarge.wordpress.com/

                No idea who that “Green Luthor” guy could be. Never heard of him.

             9. Eve:

                “The medium-large .com link doesn’t work for me.”

                Huh, weird. What browser are you using? I ask because there’s a daily site I read that wasn’t updating, and I eventually gave up and told the owner, “Your site has been stuck on the 12/31 post for a week.” Today, poof! it’s back to normal!

                Except it now contains audio of an AI written version of itself. Yeah, no fucking thanks. Did they test in Chrome and not Firefox? I don’t want to go back to 1998 and have to deal with “Optimized for Netscape 1.1” again.

                Also, sorry about linking to it at all. I read it every week back then, and Ces went into detail about the JP reboot for 3 months. All those posts seem to be gone. I stopped reading it after it turned into “Sally Forth from 2 Weeks Ago.” Maybe we’re giving the syndicates less credit for their power over their content creators than we think they have. Crimeny, they’re called “The Syndicate”! They ain’t liking a reduction on their returns, capice?

                “Hey, nice pizza place ya got here. Be a shame if you losing readers meant something BAD might happen to Montoni’s!” “Oh no, Boss! Dis Band Box just felled offen da wall! Hope I don’t drops it!” (CRUNCH) “And then steps on it! With my Dinkle-brand jackboots!”

             10. To be honest, I don’t see the problem with Batiuk merging “Funky Winkerbean” characters into “Crankshaft,” or at least I don’t think it was inherenly wrong for him to do so.

                 There are lots of characters and plotlines I didn’t like in FW, but then again, there were lots of characters and plotlines I didn’t like in pre-merger CS.

                 Meanwhile, there probably were some readers who liked FW as it was before the merger. So why not please them by keeping some of the FW characters active in CS?

                 Now, do I like what Batiuk has done with CS post-merger? No, but then I didn’t like what he was doing with CS pre-merger, either, so he hasn’t lost anything in my eyes.

                 And the fact that Ed Crankshaft appears in the strip less than half the time, I see as a good thing. There aren’t any characters on the list in this post that I’m really enthusiastic about seeing, but the fact that the more loathsome characters aren’t overstaying their welcome is a plus.

             11. Green Luthor:

                 Thanks for the link. I’ve seen that Green Luthor guy somewhere before. Seems like a nice guy. 😉

             12. billthesplut:

                 Eve:

                 “The medium-large .com link doesn’t work for me.”

                 Huh, weird. What browser are you using? I ask because there’s a daily site I read that wasn’t updating, and I eventually gave up and told the owner, “Your site has been stuck on the 12/31 post for a week.” Today, poof! it’s back to normal!

                 I reported I couldn’t read your link while I was using the Brave browser (neither shields up nor down). Didn’t display Google Chrome, either. After reading your latest reply, I tried Firefox. Lo and behold, the webpage displayed! It appears to be the same content as the link @Green Luthor supplied.

                 Anybody else have nine web browsers installed on their home PC?🤪

                 

                 It’s possible Ces deleted those posted strips because he felt embarrassed by the syndicate.

                 I think you may have found the reason why Batiuk fled from King Features. Yikes!

       2. I kinda lost track after the editor before <s>they</s>them; i think he went into real estate? Brendan Buford–had to look that one up–was IIRC married to one of the 6 Chix cartoonists. The combination of nepotism, poor management, laughable creative talents and that NYC lifestyle must have taken its toll on all of them.

          Seriously if any place could be replaced by AI…

          1. An internet search shows Brendan Buford is married to Rina Piccolo. I like some of her work. She was one of the better Six Chix and also created Tina’s Groove. Rina is now credited as co-cartoonist with Hilary Price on Rhymes With Orange, which I’d argue is one of the better CK titles.

             I presently read Six Chix for the snarky comments. It’s neurotic women, depression, wine and cats (pumpkins and sub sandwiches). It’s hardly a showcase for talented women cartoonists, and women everywhere. The current Tuesday and Thursday Chix were… curious hires. They display imperceptible artistic talent and produce incomprehensible panels.

    2. TEA FOUGNER ANNOUNCES SHE WILL NO LONGER BE PAID TO NOT EDIT COMICS

       NEW YORK, NY (AP) — Tea Fougner, a legendary figure in the field of newspaper comics, announced today that she will no longer be paid for not editing comics. “The past 16 years with King Features have been a wild ride,” stated Fougner, “but I’ve never wavered in my commitment to not edit comics. Nor will I do so now. I will continue to not edit comics for as long as I live! But now, in addition to not editing comics, I will now also not get paid to not edit comics.”

       Fougner’s wide-ranging remit for King Features had her not editing a vast array of comics. And while being noted for not editing reliably unfunny properties such as Beetle Bailey or Hagar the Horrible, it’s Fougner’s not editing The Phantom‘s astonishing seven-year slog through “The Death Of The Phantom” storyline that may be her most widely heralded achievement. “That was a unbelievable job of not editing,” stated a long-time Phantom reader who, after thinking about it, decided to remain anonymous so they wouldn’t be outed as a long-time Phantom reader. “There were so many points where a lesser not-editor may have succumbed to the urge to ask the Phantom writers to …. maybe, y’know, move things along a little? Not Tea. She was ‘all-in’ on not editing.”

       The industry lined up to pay tribute to Fougner. “Who?”, said Marcus Hamilton, co-author of current Dennis The Menace strips. “I mean, we just write any crap we want … as long as it fills the page, the syndicate seems to be happy. So I guess her job was to make sure we weren’t just submitting blank pages?”

       “Tea was an inspiration,” enthused Tom Batiuk from his Ohio studio, where he drew something called Funky Winkerbean for several decades before someone finally noticed and put a stop to it. “Tea was completely into the idea of cashing a paycheck for the absolute minimum amount of effort. Tea taught me a lot about not just half-assing it, but about hemidemisemi-assing it — and I think it shows in my work.”

       Fougner will continue to not edit comics in retirement; it’s expected comic writers and artists will not be aware of any difference in their creative processes.

       At press time, it was made clear that Fougner prefers they/them pronouns. However, inspired by Fougner’s years-long example of not editing, we aren’t going back to change a word of this piece.

       1. Excellent.

       2. Why are you all freaking out about pronouns? The article refers to her as she.

          1. The article never uses the words “them/they.” Are you imagining this terrible affront to your senses? Did your clutched pearls break when you fell on the fainting couch?

             1. Near the top of the linked article, there’s an image of what looks like Fougner’s social media profile, which includes “(She/Her or They/Them)”.

             2. Warning: We’re veering close to breaking couple site rules here. I don’t like deleting comments, but let’s drop the subject, eh?

13. Today’s Crankshaft

    So in addition to being both a terrible baker and bowling ball player, Lena is also a horrible driver who probably makes SpongeBob look like a competent driver

14. “Warning: We’re veering close to breaking couple site rules here. I don’t like deleting comments, but let’s drop the subject, eh?”

    Thank you, Harriet, and Banana, for your continued policing of SoSF and upholding our long-established standards. CBH is correct, no back and forth, off-topic arguments and no personal attacks.

    1. I apologise if I set something off here. Please delete my post if it has caused problems.

15. Today’s Crankshaft

    Day three of the 2025 Bus Driving storyline: make it stop make the boring stop

16. Well, as paralyzingly boring as the current C’shaft strips are, the real world is unfortunately just the opposite. Like anyone sane, I’ve been horrified and saddened by the fires currently raging around LA. However, unlike anyone sane, my mind wandered to the way TB handled the “Great FW Los Angeles Fire.” Seeing a real uncontrolled fire — not even half as bad as the one Les made all about himself — really brings the insensitive, solipsistic, cack-handedness of that arc home.

    Not to mention the fire was never spoken of again, despite the stark ways it affected Les and Jff and Homunculus Jeff and Masonne and Cindy.

    I had to post these thoughts here, because there are only about 20 people in the world who wouldn’t call me flat-out insane for thinking of Funky Freakin’ Winkerbean while LA is being savagely burnt, and all of them are here on this site.

    And for anyone here who’s threatened by these fires — hell, for anyone anywhere who is — I pray you and yours will stay safe.

    1. Back in the CA PG&E fires, a friend in NoCal posted a photo of her backyard. The flames went to the sky. Taller than the trees. “GET OUT!” I said. She said “Why? It’s still 5 miles from here!”

       She stayed. With her 93-yr-old father who was a legit Crankshaft-aged WWII vet, and from her descriptions, the same as Ed in attitude. (They lived. And her cat)

    2. Holy mackerel, I was just thinking about that arc today. One of the most stunning and weird Les avatar/author wish-fulfillment arcs in Act III history. Les rescues the beautiful young starlet from a raging wildfire, and spends the night with her on a yacht…what a squirmy turn of events that thing was. The “Lisa’s Story-The Movie” mega-arc turned out to be Les Moore’s last Act III stand, which ended with him receiving an Oscar statue. In hindsight, I should have been a lot tougher on that whole thing than I was at the time. Perhaps some Dick Facey fatigue had set in by that point. There’s only so much a person can take, after all.

    3. I’m glad I’m not alone in this. I was on blog duty for part of that arc, and I remember trying to draw up a detailed map of what was and wasn’t burning back then, and trying to figure out where Masone’s boat was. So crazy to look at the wildfire maps now and recognize the same landmarks actually in danger this time.

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