My Snarkers and Nitpickers, Dissectors and Shitposters, Haters, Apologists, Defenders, and those of you who just check to see if I post pictures of cows.
Welcome, one and all, to the long awaited 2024 Crankshaft Awards Show!
And WHAT a special Awards Show it is. For this year, for the first time (I think) since TFH promised HeyItsDave a signed copy of Lisa’s Story, we have an actual physical award to hand out!
BEHOLD, IN ALL HIS PLASTICINE GLORY!
Yes, after years of comparison shopping Ebay listings, one was a tempting enough price for me to bite the bullet. This little gem is number 1304 of 2016.
You read that right. There are only slightly more than two thousand of these in the world, Maybe even less now due to accidental or intentional destruction by their original owners.
Two thousand! Surely not nearly enough for the myriads of rabid Crankshaft fans that surely exist out there in the world. Surely.
But who is coming away with this precious piece of Funkyverse memorabilia?
Stay tuned to find out. Because now, without further ado,
Your nominees for Slimiest Salesmanship.
1.) Buy My Merch!
2.) Buy ‘Roses in December’!
3.) Buy a Volume of ‘The Complete Funky Winkerbean’!
4.) Buy A Reprint of an Old Dinkle Collection!
5.) Buy A ‘Flash’ Omnibus Containing my Childhood Letter!
6.) Buy a Newspaper Carrying ‘Crankshaft’!
And the winner is!
So Dinkle comes away with his first award of the event. He was nominated for quite a few. Will he sweep the Crankys this year? Did anyone check his Twitter history before voting?
Come back tomorrow for another exciting award!
Oh,
And,
Because I know some of you will complain if I don’t.
Cow Tax.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I must admit, I am a proud purveyor of posted cow pics. Thank you! 🐄 🐮
That’s what makes Dinkle so annoying: how brazen he is in his monomania.
I didn’t have Dinkle winning this one. I thought it’d be the tacky barbecue apron, or Linus tweaking on meth in #5.
But Dinkle and Les have no business being in Crankshaft so that is why I selected this one.
Aw, does Black Beauty have a name?
(Dinkel poster packs – a horrifying thought.)
Nope, he would be pretty hard to pick out from all his brothers! Lots of solid black boys in that bunch. We ran our fall calves through and vaccinated them on Friday.
Our little SnowBelle from November got her shots too, but I didn’t get a picture. She’s growing really well, so I’m hoping to pester my dad into keeping her.
This is the one that got my vote. Naming all eleven books in a single unfunny word zeppelin is what took it over the top for me.
I think I voted for the apron, due to the fact he actually had his website listed on a freaking comic strip. I think we can all agree Bathack is a huge tool.
The cow is cool and I gotta admit, having a crankshaft bobblehead would be pretty awesome.
Today’s Crankshaft
ha ha it’s funny because Crankshaft’s back problems have returned
TB missing a chance to reference the late Ben Gay, a backup RB for the Browns in the early 2000s? Disappointing.
One of the great old-school football player names of all time. His parents must be a real hoot. I wonder how old he was when he figured it out?
What Browns fan can forget a name like Ben Gay? I have an Australian friend who follows the Browns, but to whom I had to explain the “analgesic heat rub” angle of his name.
I was unaware that Mr Gay had passed but according to Wikipedia, he died in a traffic accident last July at age 44.
Today’s Past Batiukverse Strips: A 1993 Funky Winkerbean Storyline where Mickey is deemed illegible to play Football because of poor grades
Mickey: I’m going to be deemed illegible to play for the upcoming football game, aren’t I?
Les: WAIT, HOW DID YOU KNOW!?!?
John Stropp, just go ahead and fall on your knees and scream at the top of your lungs already
Bull: Our football team has only won 12 games within the past 20 years, and 5 of them are from this year.
This automatically makes’s Bill Miller’s (Matt Miller’s dad) threats of violence towards Matt if the Scapegoats lost so much worse
Les: Mickey, Principal Fairgood gave me a living will and a organ donor card. are they for you?
Mickey: No. They’re for you. I overheard Coach Bushka telling Coach Stropp that he’s gonna kill you.
Ha ha it’s funny because Les’s car is going to be vandalized
Bull: Ah told yah to raise Mickey’s grades, WHY DIDN’T YAH LISTEN TO ME!?
Mickey: Let it go, Mr. Bushka!
Coach Stropp: GOD FUCKING DAMMIT!!
Yikes! Even Tom Batiuk got in on the act of dunking on the 1992 Houston Oilers for blowing that 35-3 lead to Frank Reich. That loss was not an insignificant factor in the Oilers’ eventual move to Nashville, as Oilers owner Bud Adams struck while the iron was stone cold… trying to get taxpayers on the hook for a new stadium just months after that embarrassing loss.
Okay, my knowledge of sportos is negligible, but…wouldn’t Mickey have needed to get a field goal 33 times for the team to win? And at no point in the game be targeted by Deez Walnutz Tech? For once, I looked it up:
“Although kickers are protected from direct physical contact on field goal attempts, this is not generally true on kickoffs, and a kicker can see significant contact during a kick return. Kicker Björn Nittmo notably suffered severe brain damage from a hit he sustained on a kickoff in 1997.”
Tom! You could’ve done the CTE arc decades earlier, and destroyed the life of a teenage girl! Oh, right, this was during your “funny comedy strip” phase and not your “pointless misery for Pulitzer points” phase, sorry.
Look at the difference between this story and the Fahrenheit 451/bookstore burning one. Les stands his ground, refuses to change Mickey’s grade, and bears some consequences of that action which are actually rather funny. Compare that to his decision to teach an unapproved text, where he knowingly puts Lillian’s bookstore at risk yet is nowhere to be found when the protests start. I miss the days when Les was tolerable and was someone I could sort of root for.
I voted for the Crankshaft apron, as I thought it was the most brazen of these efforts. The rest had the decency to be built into the Batiukverse in some (generally asinine) way, but ‘Shaft grilling while wearing an apron with a picture of him grilling on it was completely and 100% unveiled shilling. I guess I should appreciate the honesty?
I won’t quibble with the Dinkle voters, though. It is arresting to see just how many FW collections over the years were headlined by Dinkle. Back in early Act III, when everything was all Lisa Lisa and Cult Flam, we were flabbergasted by the unending oversaturation of who we had come to consider TB’s signature characters. But oh how we had forgotten TB’s original overexposed breakout “star”, something he got back to reminding us about in the later stages of Act III by healing Dinkle’s deafness and pandering to OMEA. If not for the strip leaning just a little bit harder into Starbuck Jones and Atomik Komix and da movies, “somehow Dinkle returned” would have been THE defining irritant of late Act III. Absent much of the comic book shtick over in Crankshaft, Dinkle is well on his way of reclaiming the crown he once held for so many years… and here’s TB gladly reminding us of that in the winning strip.
Personally, I voted for “Roses in December”, because of how loathsome Batiuk’s erasing Lillian’s monstrousness comes across there (“I think I’ll happily reminisce about ruining my sister’s life! Buy the book!”). But I can’t argue with Dinkle taking the award, because… well, anything with Dinkle is horrible on its own. (And that word zeppelin… good dear Zanzibar, that HURTS to look at.)
A HeyItsDave reference, well done. HeyItsDave was truly a parody strip prodigy the likes of which we haven’t seen since, and will never see again. Wherever he is, I hope he’s still funny.
All excellent choices, but I voted for Dinkle and the word balloon that took up half a panel in order to list all 11 titles. And CBH-I love the cow pics and farm tales!
Schnikes! I didn’t think ComicBookHarriet was going to name the winners so fast. Time to catch up!
Well, I’m 0 for 1. I voted for ‘1.) Buy My Merch!‘ because it was unique. Unlike the other nominees, this one wasn’t TB’s typical obligatory huckstering of his books.
TB: In the name of God, buy my books! I’m dying here! I won’t be able to buy comic books!
I decided not to vote for the winner,’4.) Buy A Reprint of an Old Dinkle Collection!‘. I refuse to see Dinkle win anything other than a well-deserved punch in the face, which is a later category.
Boo, Dinkle! Boo!
Rather than shilling for all eleven compilation books in one giant word balloon, Batiuk should have had Dinkle mention only a few of the books with titles that were intended to be funnier. “Sunday Concert” and “Music Is Worth It” could obviously have been dropped because they weren’t even intended to be amusing titles.
And “Live at the Carnagie Hall,” as a title, was funnier in my imagination than it actually is; I envisioned Dinkle getting excited about his band being invited to play at “Carnagie Hall” only to find out that it was not the famous venue in New York which is actually spelled “Carnegie Hall.” But, in fact, Batiuk actually has a compilation book titled “Live at Carnegie Hall,” with the correct spelling.