Score one tiny point for comedy I guess. As old folks playing for a box of Boost got a real chuckle out of me. My Aunt used to push that stuff on my Grandma like it was the magic elixir of youth. And we’re still using old Boost boxes to store knick knacks.
But I don’t know if Ol’ Cranky had ever played pickleball back in the Ayers era. So where are these dynamic panels from yesterday’s strip coming from?
To Google!
‘Pickleball Stock Photo ‘
LOL
Son of Stuck Funky 
Ha! So do you think he even drew the actual cartoon? Or did he just run the stock image though an AI-generated Crankshaft filter?
Mind you, either way, I still maintain Davis gives the visual aspect of this strip exactly the amount of effort the scripts he’s given deserve.
If this is really a thing then we clearly live in the worst timeline.
Wow… I guess Davis skipped past “Rob Liefeld” straight into “Greg Land” there. It’s honestly impressive how little he must care. (Zanzibar knows I wouldn’t, either, given the quality of the “scripts” he’s given…)
Today’s strip is also from the planet Clip-Art.
Yeah, in my opinion, people who complain about Crankshaft’s artwork clearly don’t read the strip.
The bearded gentleman doesn’t need Boost, he needs a chiropractor!
Today’s Crankshaft
a case of boost costs $67.22 on Amazon
wait, what was the strip again?
So… did Crankshaft get hustled?
‘shaft got the shaft.
The art might have been an AI generated nightmare.
But at least the concept of a Cranky getting hustled for Boost was mildly amusing, and didn’t involve any Batiukian avatars smugly salivating all over themselves.
Wow, Crankshaft really did get hustled. And that was this week’s entire joke.
Shouldn’t a 106-year-old former professional baseball player, with a history of scamming others (see: eclipse arc) know not to fall for this? And given Ed’s extensive history of online purchases and property damage, is a case of Boost really a financial problem? I’ll take another case of the Funkyverse having no underlying reality.
Today’s Crankshaft
YAWN
Meanwhile over in Judge Parker: Randy is still crying and screaming like a spoiled kid who doesn’t get what he wants all because Ann is gonna go to jail AGAIN
I liked Ralph’s bit in today’s ‘Shaft, describing one of the hustling Bedside Manorisms’ paddles as if it were a pool shark’s cue. It makes negative amounts of sense in regards to how a pickleball paddle could feasibly be constructed, but there is a spirit of an idea behind that gag that we don’t see too often in the Batiukverse any more.
I am eager to read your takes on other shit comic strips. Especially Luann and Pluggers.
https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/match-to-flame-224/
Hey, kids! KOMIX! Yes, it’s another Match to Fart! Opening sentence:
“My Holy Grail search continued to run around, through, and under the other stories you’ll find in this volume. Post–Lisa’s story, however, the work had changed. First, Lisa had raised the bar quite a bit, and there was now a lot more thumping of stories to make sure they weren’t hollow. This would lead to stories such as” and he lists all the terrible, maudlin, Pulitzer-pandering arcs. Bonus points: he says “kind of an elegant solution, so, to double down” and talks about comic books and how he gets his own characters’ names wrong. It’s okay, says the self-proclaimed Toolshed Hemingway, Stan Lee did it too!
This hilariously bald-faced lie should be the highlight, but it is somehow only the tip of the iceberg. This may be a top 5 most Tom Batiuk-y Match-To-Flame of all time! Jan and Jeff were retconned to be siblings because TB forgot Jan’s maiden name when naming Jeff? What other explaination could there be?!
What does this say about the Andy Clarks and the Rocky Rhodes-es and the Petes? “An elegant solution”, indeed.
10/10, TB played all the hits in their tone-deaf perfection.
Is he thumping his stories to make sure they’re hollow enough? Because after he says that, he lists off the hollowest things of his career. The gay prom teens, Lisa being retconned into a rape victim so Frankie and reality TV could be straw villains, Jeff’s stroke that had zero permanent effect on him, and Jeff being Jessica’s uncle because Batiuk wouldn’t admit he mistakenly reused a surname.
Here’s a writing tip: if you make a continuity error, just fucking fix it. Or acknowledge it, and move on. Don’t invent yet another family relation when your world is already more inbred than the Blue Fugates.
It was Fred who had a stroke, not Jeff
Thank you for the correction. I’d edit the post if i could.
Here’s a writing tip: if you make a continuity error, just fucking fix it.
In fiction, it would be confusing if 2 characters had the same last name and weren’t related. In real life, it happens. I went to college (in Lorain County!) when the top 10 list of common American surnames included mine, Young. At a small party, we freshmen were asked to give our names. One girl was Kathy Young. “Ooh!” said someone, “are you related?”
I deadpanned “Yeah, I’m her father.” She looked at me, and said “Why are you so behind on child support? Mom and I are starving!” And then it just became an improv routine (she might’ve been a theater kid). “My mother is a SAINT!” “Your mother is a WHORE!” with us coming up with an angry, escalating, on-the-fly family history. We ran into each maybe twice more at parties, and on sight we’d start an over-the-top dysfunctional family argument. The fun part was we kept straight faces, but the rest of the group would look worried, then confused, then laughing when they knew it was pretend.
So you can use matching surnames for humor, especially as an offhand joke. For instance, Babs and Buster Bunny on Tiny Toon Adventures: “No relation!” But there I go, mentioning Act III Tom and humor as if they’re the same thing. It’s easier to retcon your whole world-building than it is to be funny.
Batiuk writes himself into problems that would be easy to solve, if his ego didn’t get in the way. He is intellectually incapable of saying the words “I made a mistake.” So he comes up with these “elegant solutions” that are inelegant and solve nothing, and actually make the problem bigger than it was.
Ha ha, well played!
Batty imagines most of these problems, it makes him feel like an artist struggling to create his art. This problem is incredibly stupid, I mean just use a different name, who cares. And after all this analysis, the resulting story still sucks and is devoid of anything interesting. He uses so many words, yet he says nothing.
What? Just… change a character’s name with no explanation? I don’t think real writers – like, say, Pete or Flash – would ever do something like that!
Who would win in a fair fight? The Kentucky Blue Fugates or the Winnipeg Blue Bombers?
I’d say the gay prom arc wasn’t merely hollow, but nearly a complete vacuum. Yes, it technically began with a premise involving a same-sex couple wanting to attend the prom, this is true. Then, however, it IMMEDIATELY devolved into a “story” about everything BUT that aforementioned same-sex couple. In fact, I don’t think they appeared, or were even mentioned, again. Summer, that meddlesome old bag Roberta, her annoying cameraman husband, Principal Nate, the WHS handbook, and prom scenery wrestling with its budding sexuality…that’s how I remember it. Man, what a mess.
And Frankie Goes To Westview, where Boy Lisa became background fodder in his own arc, Frankie displayed his overall lack of stick-to-itiveness, and Lenny mysteriously changed races. Oh, yes, and the gang found (sigh) another secret Lisa diary. No, not the VHS tapes. They came later. I love how he pretends these were all real stories he put real thought into, when they never came close to being “stories” at all. We’ve been wise to his little self-congratulatory hustle for some time now, but it’s still funny nevertheless. If Batom ever really tested his stories for “hollowness” by “thumping” them, those thumps would still be detectable to this day.
I think we have a new addition for the Batiukitionary: “elegant solution” means “ridiculous gibberish pulled out of one’s posterior”. (See also: Mop, Time.)
Daredevil’s alter ego is Matt Murdock. Franklin Nelson’s nickname is “Foggy,” because when he snores, it sounds like foghorns, (Especially to the ears of someone with radar senses.)
In Sgt. Fury #11, we have a story called “The Crackdown of Captain Flint.” In the promotional material in a letter column (the “Mighty Marvel Checklist” hadn’t yet come into being), the title was given as “The Crackdown of Captain Storm.”
Marvel didn’t go the “Robert Bruce” route but called it a mistake plain and simple
It’s not that hard, really.
Mike W. Barr and Marvin Wolfman both had characters with earth-based powers in series they were writing (Barr with Geo-Force in The Outsiders and Wolfman with Terra in The New Teen Titans), and the solution was to make them brother and sister (half-siblings, actually).
Given that Barr thought that his only recourse was to kill Wolfman and hide the body, I would call that a true “elegant solution.”
Definition of “elegant”:
pleasingly graceful and stylish in appearance or manner
There are many antonyms for “elegant.” I’m partial to “maladroit.”
“Marvel didn’t go the “Robert Bruce” route”
The question about the TV show’s change from Bruce to David:
“Where things get really groan-worthy though is with an alternative explanation for the name change offered by both Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno. They claimed that CBS executives demanded the name Bruce not be used because it was “too gay,” and feared that the audience would believe Bruce Banner was a homosexual character.”
In the 60s and into the 70s, yes, “Bruce” automatically meant the character was flamboyantly gay. It made no sense whatsoever–so, if I name my spawn John Ronald Wayne Reagan X Æ A-12 Van Damme, he’s automatically straight?
It was a staple of Laugh-In. To the point when even they stopped using it as a near-slur. According to TV Guide, a viewer sent a simple letter: “Please stop using ‘Bruce’ to mean homosexual. My son is named Bruce.”
Doubt the story? Grandpa Google for “big bad bruce” on Youtube. That song charted on Billboard.
E. Nelson Bridwell touches on this in his introduction to Batman from the ’30s to the ’70s: thanks to Dr. Wertham’s analysis of the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson in Seduction of the Innocent, “Bruce” carried a strong whiff of homosexuality about it
Bridwell rightly notes that Bruce Wayne has never lacked for women in his life: Julie Madison (he was going to marry her!), Selina Kyle, Linda Page, Vicki Vale and Kathy Kane. And since that introduction there have been even more, with one of them giving birth to his son.
One wonders how Australians feel about this, given the popularity of the name “Bruce” Down Under.
Anonymous Sparrow,
1. *Finding Nemo* has Bruce the Shark. Nothing weak kneed about Bruce! (It helps that Bruce does not have knees either strong or weak!)
2. We celebrated our 50th Wedding Anniversary this weekend. I do not know if Crankshaft ever celebrated an anniversary? I do not even know how long he was married. As for us, we could have spent it on hotels, expensive meals, wine, champagne, flowers, cards, and expensive gifts. But we did not. We went to the Gem and Mineral Show in Kansas City. Had just as good a time. At one point, I was sure I saw ComicBookHarriet. But alas I was mistaken.
3. You waxed poetically on the name ‘Bruce’. One of the things we did this weekend was watch “Gettysburg 1993” the extended version. Great film. Great actors. A lot of southern boys had similar names like Bruce.
Here is a TV example. *Yancy Derringer 1958*. He had a 4 barrel derringer pistol. Quite creative. He has a love interest played by Frances Bergen, the mother of Candice. In the very first episode…spoilers…she attempts to kill Yancy. It was not love at first sight. Yancy was played by Jock Mahoney. He starred in 3 Tarzan films. Once as a villain. Twice as the lord of the jungle. His film *Tarzan goes to India* might be the smartest screenplay for a Tarzan film. Yancy has a mute Pawnee accomplice played by X Brands. The letter ‘X’ was passed down thru his family. No one could take the letter until the previous ‘X’ died. He grew up in Kansas City. Then moved out West.
4. I am curious about the length of Crankshaft, marriage. I told Mrs. SP, that I did everything she wanted for the first 50 years. She is obligated to do so everything I want for the next 50 years. It would mean a lot to one of us, if you would post:
**Mrs. SP, it seems only fair. Perhaps SP might even take 20 or 30 years off of the next 50?**
I am willing, AS, if you are willing!
Today’s Crankshaft
We do NOT need another week of Crankshaft’s back problems
How does Crankshaft even have back problems? He sure doesn’t have them from carrying the story arcs in his namesake strip…