This week’s story in Crankshaft actually offends me.
It offends me because I was a news journalist once upon a time. So I know firsthand what a huge amount of work goes into creating video content. Even a simple 90-second TV news story means you have to write scripts, schedule, shoot, edit, add on-screen graphics, mix sound, fix errors, and manage the whole project.
And YouTube content can be even more complex than that, with fancy animations and the like. Don’t let the lo-fi, “I shot this in my apartment” aesthetic of YouTube content fool you about how much effort it requires.
Computers make these tasks a lot easier now, but that just means you have more competition. Almost anyone can be a content producer nowadays. Which is a good thing! YouTube is full of great stuff, from people whose voices we never would have heard otherwise. It turns out, the world is full of Hal P. Warrens. And they’re making broadcast-quality stuff. (There should be a Warren Award for do-it-yourself filmmakers.)
But Tom Batiuk has decided that Lillian needs to be a media star for the 25th time now, so now she’s going to become The Reluctant YouTuber. As if this were even possible.
This week is a great example of something Epicus Doomus often says: Batiuk never runs out of new ways to be infuriating and boring at the same time. It’s recently become a sport for commenters at this blog to try and guess what the next week of Crankshaft will be about. Known future stories include the upcoming Pete-Mindy wedding; the trip to Winnipeg for a Blue Bombers game; a likely trip to San Diego Comic-Con in late July, even though post-Funky Winkerbean has pivoted away from Atomik Komix; the endless Skip-Batton Thomas interview; Cindy’s pregnancy at Age 75, which is entering its fifth trimester; and standard Crankshaft plots.
But no, Lillian needs to be rewarded for doing nothing again, when she’s one of the most vile characters fiction has ever created.
Never mind all the practical problems with the story. In today’s strip, it looks they’re shooting a TV commercial for Lillian’s Murder In The Blank series. This book has a limited appeal, and has already been out for months. A promo would serve little purpose. And they’re shooting it with a cell phone? The video quality is going to be crap.
It’s like they’re trying to do a BookTok thing. But BookTok is a community for readers to talk about what they read, not for writers to promote what they wrote. And Lillian’s work is probably self-published, which is another hurdle to clear. Book reviewers usually have a policy against reviewing self-published/vanity press works at all, because they insist that a book have survived the winnowing process of being selected by a publisher. I can’t imagine the BookTok community would be receptive to this old self-promoting crone.
Another thing that annoys me: the girls work for Lillian, not vice versa. Especially after the recent week where they demanded to be paid. I think she hired one, because the other one still works at Centerview Sentinel. (Well, at least we know how the paper is still getting made, while Skip sits in Montoni’s with Batton Thomas for months on end.) But as we all know, no Funkyverse character can refuse to do something some other character wants, even when they’re that character’s boss.
But what galls me the most is how dismissive the Funkyverse is of every profession that isn’t teaching high school, writing, comic books, or pizza.
Making web videos? Pfffft. Easy stuff that anyone can be famous at. Remember when Bingo the Cat wandered into a video, and St. Spires church raised enough money to pay the national debt? Remember when Frankie was handed a reality show to slander and humiliate his sexual assault victim who died of cancer? Remember when Hollywood just stood around and let Les Moore make all the decisions for “his” movie, paid him a bunch of money, and probably took a loss when it failed? Remember how Cindy Summers became a national TV news reporter despite being a lazy, vacuous idiot?
Remember when Funky humiliated that investment planner for no reason at all? Or the many times he was a jackass to a doctor and their staff? Or when he abused his position as support group coordinator to workshop his lame standup? Remember the “Toxic Taco”? Remember “FleaBay”? Remember became how Crazy Harry and Donna/The Eliminator became world champions of a notoriously difficult video game, despite rarely picking up a joystick otherwise?
And before this week is over, Tom Batiuk will make a YouTube star out of a 105-year-old woman who doesn’t even want to be one. Who also can’t even make her own website, or write her own biography. That’s a slap in the face to anyone who’s picked up a camera.
To answer Lillian’s question from Monday’s strip: yes, Lillian, you have lived far too long. But technology has nothing to do with it. Dieplzkthx.
(UPDATE: As of Saturday, Lillian had only two YouTube followers, but still manages to be smug and insufferable about it. The whole week was an exercise in phony humility. “Oh, poor little old me doesn’t know anything about YouTube.” Then starting on Thursday, she knows she needs a professional voiceover artist, and knows what a follower is.
Which speaks to the underlying problem of it all. All the books, all the videos, all the signings, all the awards, all the interviews that get created by the dozens of characters in the Funkyverse serve only one purpose: an ego wank for the creator. We never even see them creating the content, or even having any real desire to create it. Just like we didn’t see it this week. The plot is always: 1. Declare self a writer. 2. Receive praise.)
Son of Stuck Funky 
Be Ware of Eve Hill often tell me that I am very proud of my ignorance. She is so right. I have a lot to be ignorant about. I have spent many years honing my ignorance. Today, I get to display it.
Dieplzkthx
Dieplzkthx
Dieplzkthx
I have no idea what this means. But I was smart enough (See, Eve: I is got smarts!) I googled it.
It did not help me one bit. Originally, I just thought BJ6000 skipped some keys, but I took a chance. Not one. Not one of the Google answers made any more sense. Except it might have something to do with music. The clearest answer was in Korean. I do not read Korean. Yet it was more precise than anything in English.
So, somebody. Please! (ComicBookHarriet, I am looking at you!) Raise me from this Stygian mire and bring into the bwoeh land of Enlightenment!
“Die please, okay? Thanks.”
Lillian, not you.
Banana Jr. 6000,
I am so glad you clarified!
I appreciate you!
Happy 4th of July.
🧨🔥🎇 🎆 🐦🔥💥
Mindy’s pregnancy at Age 75, which is entering its fifth trimester;
It’s actually Cindy Summers, not Mindy Murdoch
I’ll fix it. Thanks.
Today’s Crankshaft
Day 3 of Lillian Becomes a Youtuber
Make it stop make it stop please make it stop
I thought Crazy Harry and the Eliminator played videogames obsessively.
Was I incorrect about that?
In Donna/Eliminator’s debut strip, she was playing an arcade game
Not nearly as much as he obsesses over comic books. And elite video gaming requires a lot of skill. Harry joked about becoming a “video game champion”, but that’s a real thing now, and there’s no way he could have done it.
I was just waiting for csroberto to tell us that no one his age uses YouTube anymore and it’s all on TikTok.
I have heard Twitch (Switch? i can never remember) streamers do some retro games. Hmm, a week of Crazy Harry and Donna discovering streaming video game players, then getting drafted into it themselves, might have been amusing.
Seriously though isn’t Batiuk’s progeny a local TV producer or something?
Twitch is the platform that is used for streaming games, Switch is a Nintendo handheld console.
You can stream from your Switch on Twitch.
You just know that the only person not anticipating people channeling Phineas Flynn and saying “Yes, yes, you have” is going to be Batiuk himself.
Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Finn? I know I just got up, but I don’t remember that.
Phineas Flynn is from Disney’s “Phineas and Ferb” cartoon.
Ah. Serves me right for not keeping up with Disney crap.
Points for Trollope reference, which was gotten by me.
I’ve an appetite for fiction
No post-modern work can slake
I refuse to buy a book
Unless it’s thicker than a steak
Now Gordon Lish and Barry Hannah
Have their partisans and shills
But I prefer Victoriana
For my literary thrills
And of all the British authors
Who were writing at that time
There’s one special British author
I find especially sublime
Now Austen is awesome
And Dickens is a kick
But no one packs a wallop
Quite like Trollope
Yes Trollope is the one I most adore
But my days of reading Trollope are no more
I was sitting in a quaint café
With a favorite tome and some café au lait
But my luck ran out when you came my way
Now I’ll never read Trollope again
You spied the cover as you slithered near
And said “The 1800s–that’s my favorite year.”
And then you sat right down and now I fear
That I’ll never read Trollope again
Armed with Trollope and a cup or two
I could while the day away
Now just a dollop
Makes me think of you
And that’s too high a price to pay
I’ll read Kafka’s tale about that lonely vermin
I’ll read every Jonathan Edwards sermon
Hell, I’ll read Emmanuel Kant in German
But I’ll never read Trollope again
I used to read him with a friend or two
I used to read him by myself
But to read him now only makes me blue
So I’ve tossed him from my shelf
I’ll read Don Quixote five or six times through
I’ll read Jackie Collins till my face turns blue
Hell, I’ll even read Bukowski too
But I’ll never read Trollope again
No I’ll never read Trollope again
That’s Dave’s True Story’s “I’ll Never Read Trollope Again.”
Phineas Finn is the Irish Member in Trollope’s sextet of Parliamentary novels. He has certain issues with a gentleman named Robert Kennedy.
I should have up those copies of *Barchester Towers* and “The Prime Minister* I found on the sidewalk in Astoria even though I’d read both.
I learned pretty early on in life: Almost everything is harder than it looks. And making something look “easy” is the hardest trick of all.
We see the rock star lazily sling the guitar across his chest and blast out a legendary riff. We don’t see the years of practice, sitting on his bed, changing broken strings, developing blisters on his fingers. The weeks in the studio, workshopping the songs through arguments, outbursts, and trial and error.
Part of the joy of a great band, or a great movie, or a great comic, or a great artwork of any kind, is that the effort is invisible. It looks easy. It feels light, as if it just flowed, and it was meant to be just as it is, and just fell into place.
I don’t know if TB ever figured that out.
Thus we get low-effort work, depicting other low-effort work — all of which will turn out polished and perfect.
It’s blatantly obvious that he never figured it out. Not that Batiuk’s own life would have taught him this. He got a nationally syndicated comic strip very early in life, created an immediate hit, and has refused to learn anything since. The failed comic book interviews should have been an opportunity for him to grow as an artist, as a person, and realize that he had to more than just show up. Not Batiuk. He chose to stick his head in the sand and pout that they failed to recognize his genius.
“If you do your job right, it looks like you didn’t do anything at all.”
“But what galls me the most is how dismissive the Funkyverse is of every profession that isn’t teaching high school, writing, comic books, or pizza.”
He’s dismissive of those, too. The Greatest Comics Writer on Earth-TB, creator of the Funkyverse’s MCU, can also full-time run a pizzeria with only 1 other employee. That real life place TB visits? I wonder what they think of his caricature of their livelihood is. Maybe they roll their eyes every time he comes in.
I could have worded that better, like “the only professions who are treated with any respect.” Because you’re right: he makes writing, teaching, comic books, and pizza look just as easy and half-assed as everything else.
In the Kay Scarpetta novels, pizza-making looks easy when Kay does it.
Author Patricia Cornwell never suggests that it doesn’t take a lot of skill.
Batiuk claimed he and Ayers met twice a month at Luigi’s (the restaurant Monotoni’s is based upon) to discuss the comic strips. After Chuck’s retirement, I wonder if they still meet socially.
I was going to joke that Ayers lets TB’s lunch invitation go to voice mail, but we all know that’s not the way things work in the Batiukverse. Batiuk eschews having conversations over the phone and will simply show up at Ayers’ front door. That is the Funky Winkerbean way.
Ah, now it makes sense! Batiuk drags Ayers out to Luigi’s so he can talk incessantly about his own life. That’s the basis for the tortuous Skip/Batton interview segments! It all fits!
(Or maybe not. Although I wouldn’t be surprised, honestly. “Chuck, I’m going to talk about my life so I can adapt this into the comic, so that makes this a business expense!” “Kill… me…”)
I like the new avatar/profile pic. Only a super villain could connect the dots like that. Life imitating art, or vice versa in this case.
I wonder if Crankshaft illustrator Dan Davis lives close to Akron, and if he meets with TB at Luigi’s. His website’s about bio says, “Dan resides in Ohio with the Lovely Lisa.”
TB: Did you say your wife’s name is “Lisa”?! You’re hired!!!
I wonder if Dan Davis dislikes pizza. It sure would explain the unappetizing way he draws a Montoni’s pizza. A yellow mass covered with unrecognizable black chunks. Bleaah! It resembles yellow mustard topped with charcoal briquettes.
Batton Tomas: Mmm. Tangy… and crunchy!
For a shining preview of what Lillian’s YouTube will be like, look at his blog. It’s reprint of a Batman cover that Tom bought because he liked the cover. His YouTube would be 10 minutes of him holding it, saying “I like this cover, so I bought it.” It will surely go viral. As Lillian’s video will.
Cardboard standee of Jay Sherman, “The Critic”: “BUY MY BOOK! BUY MY BOOK!”
Kiss your viewership goodbye, Skibidi Toilet Dude!
Came here to comment on the incredibly lousy artwork and lettering on that cover. Me, I like it. The same way I would like my 7 year niece’s version of Batman. “Oh, good work!”
The art is clumsy because it’s likely from the 1940s. What I like is how Bruce looks all “NO, not me! The kid! SHOOT THE KID!” And Dickie Bird’s realizing “I’m a human shield! Now I know why he goes through sidekicks like most people go through paper towels!”
Anybody else remember that Tiny Toons ep with Batduck and “Hamton the Boy Hostage”?
Today’s Past Batiukverse Strip: A Random Dinkle Week in Act I
The bus driver looks soooooo done with Dinkle’s shit
Dinkle: Band director behavior……..
Random Band Kid: ABSOLUTELY FUCKING REVOLTING!!!
The Westview Band: YEAAAAAAA!!
(Holly throws the flaming baton onto Dinkle’s house, setting the whole thing on fire and burning Dinkle to death, but not before Harriet and Hallet sprint out of the house before hand)
Dinkle: AAAAAAAUGHHHHHHHHHHHHH! IT BURNS! IT BURNS! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME, THE WORLD’S GREATEST BAND DIRECTOR WHO HAS EVER LIIIIIIIIVEEEEEEDDDDDDD!?!?!?!?
The spit valve emptying is a real thing. Yes, it’s gross, but it goes with the job if you play an instrument you have to blow into.
I think I took more pride in knowing how to discreetly empty the spit valve of my trombone with my foot during a concert than I did in my actual playing of the trombone.
Yeah, well, I was better at emptying the valve with my foot than I was at playing…
This week’s Crankshaft story arc clearly supports Batiuk’s claim of an 11-month lead time. Last year, at about this time (July 14, 2024), he announced the creation of his YouTube channel.
After a fairly respectable start of two videos, TB’s YouTube channel quickly withered and died. No new videos have been added since day one. It has ceased to be. Any reference TB made to the YouTube channel on his website has disappeared. There is no longer a YouTube link in the upper righthand corner of TomBatiuk.com, along with the links for Facebook and Instagram. The blog boasting of the new YouTube channel has been removed.
TB has obviously lost any interest in maintaining his own YouTube channel. Perhaps he discovered how difficult it was to create content. Or how expensive. Those videos were of professional quality. Those videos were clearly not created by the hired help on their iPhones.
Why would TB write a new story arc around a social media platform he no longer has any interest in? This Lillian YouTube story arc has been in the can for almost a year. It’s not like TB would pull the story and replace it. First thought equals finished product. Hit send. Collect pay.
In real life, Lillian’s YouTube channel would suffer the same fate as TB’s. An old spinster hawking her books. What’s she going to do? Discuss the dust jacket and the quality of the binding? Honk mimimi. (It’s a simulated sleep sound meme, SP)
How’s Lillian’s TomBatiuk.com like website doing? We never read anything about it since its creation, have we? Who’s been updating Lillian’s website since the twins (younger versions) created it? Does Lillian write blogs like TB?🤷♀️
Much like his YouTube channel, TB lost interest in Lillian’s website.
Does Montoni’s still use Dullwad’s ten-year-old phone app?
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
After a long night of Honk mimimi! I awoke with finger in hand to rejoin your ‘aside’. (Truth in telling: originally, I only saw the ‘mimimi’. So I was clueless! [Quick! Someone revive bwoeh! She has never seen me clueless before! Now quick! Quick! Put some clues on that boy! He’s nekkid as a jey burd!]
So I googled it and it had the same prefix as the illustrious bwoeh. HONK! It all makes sense. The comedy giants, the 3 Stooges make that sound in their sleep.
Eve, that’s the key to SP. Give him cultural allusions that he can relate to. Now it so happens, my daughter when she was younger, pretended to sleep, she went with the tried and true:
Honk a Shoo! Like ComicBookHarriet, I always go with the classics!
*
*
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
Prepare the Kraken!!!! 🐉 or 🐙
Today, July 3, 2025
I thought Crankshaft was funny!
SP:
For you, Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Kraken”:
Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
I owe a Janeite friend an email, and thinking of Austen always reminds me of the Poet Laureate in Lyme Regis (the setting of *Persuasion*) telling his friend:
Don’t talk to me of the Duke of Monmouth; show me the exact spot where Louisa Musgrove fell.
I shall have to read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel about the Monmouth Rebellion (*Micah Clarke*) one of these days.
Anonymous Sparrow,
For you from Lewis Carroll, *the Jabberwocky*
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
You are loved, sir. Happy 4th of July!
SP:
If you haven’t read it, look for Fredric Brown’s *Night of the Jabberwock,* in which he draws on Lewis Carroll’s Alice books very imaginatively.
Brown cites the diet of the bread and butterfly in it and in another of his novels, *The Deep End.*
After fortifying yourself with weak tea with cream in it, I suggest that you have a glorious Fourth of July, even if one of the day’s activities doesn’t involve hunting a snark.
Catching a bandersnatch is much less dangerous (boojum!).
Anonymous Sparrow,
I can (boojum!) with the best of them!🧨💥🐦🔥
Just don’t forget that it’s English you speak.
Happy 4th of July to all!
I think you need a little samba in your life, sp. Since we’re already discussing YouTube…Submitted for your approval https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7OfTadnY5E&list=PLwJGzzuFeH1IyVr24s4lzO3JAIxxEjJMo&index=1
I wanted to post this instead of just a plain link.
Here’s a little bossa nova for all.
I enjoyed, Sir Ian!
I will take that samba.
I especially liked the scattin’ after the 3 minute mark. Her audience enjoyed it also!
Happy Independence Day, my friend!
Does Lillian write blogs like TB?
No, she asks Pete to write them.
Pete writes Lillian’s blogs, and most likely her mysteries too. Mindy has him totally whipped.
Actually, I figure Lillian’s mysteries utilize a boilerplate. Just enter the location, murder weapon and some unique names. Hit enter. Bestseller!
I just find it difficult to believe Loathsome Lil, considering all her eye-popping, air sucking dotage, can suddenly flip a switch and go into full-bore Agatha Christie mode. Not buying it. Nope.
“Honk mimimi.” That is great writing, eve! As soon as I saw it, I heard The Three Stooges in my head! Of course, I frequently hear The Three Stooges in my head.
Does Montoni’s still use Dullwad’s ten-year-old phone app?
Yeah, because app development is idiot work anybody can learn to do in their spare time. That was another disrespected profession I could have mentioned.
Wow. It was arduous to get through that 3 minute YouTube, and I’ve watched “Food Fight!” twice. (Never ever watch “Food Fight!”) At least it explains why he called it YouTube, and not GooLube or something. He likes it!
And he sat on this shit for a YEAR? I’ve never understood why he thinks “I have no editor!” is a flex when this junk is what he’s barfing out. Does he mean even he doesn’t edit himself? What do the ideas he doesn’t use look like? “Yeah, I’m going to have a week of someone not opening an envelope. RIVETING! Hey, I should use that–AGAIN!” Why would he not get rid of this arc? No way his scripts take longer than 5 minutes to do. And it’s not like he actually drew it. Not that the strip is “actually drawn” anymore.
Never forget: He got a therapy dog to hate him on sight. What a delightful man he must be in RL!
“Do you take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?”
“I DO!”
“Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife?”
“I dunno! Does she bite?!” (smirks, waiting for the appreciative laughter to come after the gasps)
billthesplut,
Oh, Bill! I have never heard the story about TB and the therapy dog. 🐶 Please tell me more?
Splut me, baby!
I think this is it: https://sonofstuckfunky.com/2025/02/08/synesthesia-ii/#comment-174617
Banana Jr. 6000
Thank you! billthesplut is hilarious!
Yeah, I enjoyed his take on The Swarm.
I couldn’t even get through one of Tom’s two YouTube videos. Yes, they’re professionally done, but this kind of turgid self-puffery is exactly what withers and dies on YouTube. It reeks of the 80s.
I know people have all kinds of feelings about a guy like Scott Adams, but he makes content that at least some people want to watch. Regardless of how you feel about his personality and opinions, at least he *has* a personality and opinions and he shows them. Almost anything is more compelling than the flat corporate “expo booth video loop” Tom’s put out.
Two years on YouTube and under 200 views? OUCH.
One has to wonder how many of that 200 views came since yesterday, from here.
flat corporate “expo booth video loop”
Maybe that’s exactly what it is. Maybe this plays in the background at the many Akron Ohioana Music Educators Comic Book Book Bookity Book Fair-Con shows Batiuk does signings at.
Ha, ha, so true. I have accidentally been interviewed on our local news (Fox8), because the house across the street was raided by the Swat team. I told them I didn’t know anything about the people living there, but after capturing 30 min of footage, you see ol Rusty saying I don’t know those people. Yep a whole 10 seconds.
Batty is so infatuated with old school mass media and marching bands (aside from comic books). Yeah I’ve made that two hour trip from Cleveland to Columbus and nobody was singing. We were busy with our girlfriends, passing around some booze or weed. Ah those were the days.
Wait, none of this is funny at all.
Yeah, the 180-to-1 ratio sounds right for on-site news stories. You shoot a lot of footage and end up using very little of it. Which is another challenge for YouTubers: you’re constantly having to buy consumables like batteries and storage media.
“It’s recently become a sport for commenters at this blog to try and guess what the next week of Crankshaft will be about.”
I can say with some authority it’ll always be “about” six days long, unless he thinks it’s entertaining enough to drag out for a second week, which it never is. I’m still dumbfounded by “Crankshaft’s” continued existence. It’s like FW’s imbecilic offspring, which shouldn’t even be possible. Yet, here we are.
I do have to admit, though, that in a sick way, it’s (cough cough gulp) good how “Crankshaft” still exists. What Tom Batiuk does is unique, and an art form unto itself, and it’s sort of comforting to know we can still get that daily glimpse into his, uh, thought process, I guess you’d call it. The Batiukiverse simply couldn’t exist in any other realm, and in today’s generic, homogenized world, I suppose it’s something, kind of. Or it could be, if only it wasn’t so confoundingly dull. But that’s a whole other topic.
It’s like getting new issues of Sonichu. The only entertaining thing about it is that it’s a window into a fascinatingly fucked-up mind.
Today’s Crankshaft
Day 4 of Lillian Becomes a Youtuber
According to a post on Tom’s Blog: https://tombatiuk.com/komix-thoughts/john-darling-take-373/, the guy that Lillian is talking to in today’s strip is Kurt Cameron, the son of Minnie Cameron (who debuted in John Darling)
Of course he is. Everybody in this town is related to everybody else.
“Minnie Cameron” is his only “name matches job” joke that works, because it’s not bludgeoning you over the head like “Amicus Breef.” What’s his partner’s name, Abie S. Corpus?
(“Mini-camera on,” Sorial)
“Jack Stropp” wasn’t bad. I think there were some other long-forgotten Act I characters who had decent punny names.
billthesplut,
I admit I am ignorant just once. [Although, truth be known, it’s like the tip of the iceberg.] Then good people like you start interpreting for me. Thank you!
I’ve been splutted!
On the blog, he calls him “Kurt Cameron”. In today’s strip, he’s “Curt Cameron”.
Don’t ever change, Tom.
Hey, remember Pitch Meeting? You can, it’s super easy, barely an inconvenience!
I haven’t seen Ryan George around for a while. He’s now doing weird news bits. Ask yourself: would you rather watch Lillian’s Tom-like book promo filmed on an iPhone 2 by teenagers, or ones like this?
That’s kind of the point I was trying to make; there are a billion things on YouTube better than an old crone shamelessly promoting her own crappy book series.
7/4:
Attenborough voiceover: “Clearly, the aged lizard knows this is her last mating season. Strutting her pathetic plumage of ‘Murder at the Waterhole with All the Skeletons Around It’, she makes one last attempt. Her miserable cry is hoarsely gasped. ‘Buy My Book! Buy My Book!’ Despite it being on YouTube, it gets not one view. The male Cameron, normally a lickspittle, yells back: ‘Are any of us getting paid for this?!’ She sadly collapses, knowing her bookstore gets less customers than it does arsonists.”
Obligatory Fourth of July post!
The greatest one-panel Sunday strip in FW history, and possibly my favorite individual FW strip of all-time.
My all-time favorite is “Worst case of test anxiety I’ve ever seen!”
IMO, the funniest is “WHERE’S FATHER?!” Uncle Duke from Doonesbury called TB and asked “What drugs are you on, and where can I get some?”
Weirdest was New Years with Les, dancing with invisible Dead Lisa. His suitors Susan and Cayla exchange glances that anywhere but this strip would mean “Umm…You can have him.” (they dial 911; Les spends New Years through Easter in Bedlamside Manor)
IMO the New Year’s Eve strip was the nadir of Act III, at least until the end. The Dead Lisa stuff was already totally out of control at that point, but that time, he took it too far. Seeing Les making out with himself was viscerally disturbing, and having TWO women desperately pining for him at the time certainly didn’t help.
My favorite Act III strip was one where Funky was talking to Les about Cory’s big army adventure. It wasn’t because I liked the strip or anything, but because the last panel featured Les and Funky exchanging a look that equaled parody strip gold. All you needed to do was erase the dialog, and you could put any number of things in the word balloons, all of them hilarious. Oh, that one was fun.
Today’s Crankshaft
Day 5 of Lillian Becomes a Youtuber
“SNORE”
Today’s Crankshaft
Day 6 of Lillian Becomes a Youtuber
THANK GOD THIS STORYLINE IS OVER (i hope) cause it’s been so boring
7/6:
Really? It took 6 panels for this crap? It could be two.
“Ralph! Did I leave my phone at your place?” “It isn’t here.” The next panel is the same as it is in the strip.
Except SHUT UP ABOUT THE BLUE BOMBERS ALREADY
Is this product placement? Is he getting $1 every time he mentions them? Is it in Canadian or US?
GORDON, in Ottawa: “I told him $1US was worth $1.36C!”
(Wayne and Pierre laugh. Out of politeness. Like me, they have no idea how to make a conversion rates joke)