Today’s Crankshaft is one of the most incoherent strips in recent memory. To give you a text description:
Ed can’t find his cell phone. He asked Pam to use her cell phone, so he can call his own phone to locate it. His friend Ralph is on the other end of the phone. Ed says “Ralph, what’s my phone doing at your house?” Ralph says “your phone isn’t here.” Ed says “I can hear it ringing.” Pam’s husband Jeff walks into the room wearing a Winnipeg Blue Bombers shirt and carrying a ringing cell phone, and says “somebody looking for their phone?”
At first, I thought the joke was “it’s surprisingly difficult to dial your own phone number, because you’re so used to dialing other people’s phone numbers.” I remember this being true when I was in high school, when I had to do things like call my parents from a friend’s house. But the way cell phones work negates that. You save the number under the person’s name, and pick the name out of the contacts list when you want to call. I don’t even know my friends’ or family’s phone numbers anymore.
Also: Ed never actually dials from Pam’s phone. So Ralph being on the other end of the call only makes sense if Pam is already in a conversation with Ralph. But that doesn’t make sense because Ralph is Ed’s friend, not Pam’s. She also appears to be mid-dial when Ed interrupts her, so there isn’t an active conversation going on. By the same token, Ralph’s number wouldn’t be in Pam’s phone – it would be in Ed’s phone.
The punchline is that Ed’s phone rang in the other room. But why is Ed’s phone ringing if he called Ralph? Why is Ed’s phone ringing if he’s even talking to Ralph? Ed could have done the cumbersome “put one call on hold and dial another call” maneuver, but not enough time passed for that to be possible. It’s also contrary to Ed’s usual befuddlement with technology. But we also just saw him build a sophisticated AI gardening system, so who knows?
Speaking of AI, that’s exactly what this strip looks like. The joke starts with a relatable premise, but then forgets to include an important plot point (Ed dialing his own number), and the punchline contradicts the setup. This looks like a joke an AI would write.
So I decided to fight fire with fire. I asked Galaxy AI’s Joke Explainer tool to tell me what in the hell is going on here. I fed it the textual description above, plus a few clarifications like Pam being Ed’s adult daughter and Jeff being her husband. I called it “American humor” and asked for a simple explanation. Here’s what it said:
This joke is funny because it plays with the idea of confusion and unexpected twists.
Well, I can’t argue with that. “Unexpected and confusing” is Tom Batiuk’s later work in a nutshell.
Setup and Expectation: The joke starts with Ed losing his cell phone and asking his daughter Pam to help him locate it by calling his phone. This sets up a relatable scenario—everyone has misplaced their phone at some point. We expect that Ed will find his phone soon.
Okay, fine.
Miscommunication: When Ed calls his phone, he talks to his friend Ralph, who insists that Ed’s phone isn’t at his house. This creates a little tension because Ed can hear his phone ringing, leading us to wonder where it could be.
But Ed didn’t call his phone. We never saw him do that. And if he did, he wouldn’t be on the phone with Ralph. The AI fails to detect that this series of events makes no sense.
The Twist: Just when you think the situation is getting serious, Pam’s husband Jeff walks in wearing a Winnipeg Blue Bombers shirt (a Canadian football team) and carrying a ringing cell phone. The humor here is in the surprise—Jeff is the one with the ringing phone, which is revealed to be Ed’s phone.
Classic example of “garbage in, garbage out.” The AI has ideas about how humor is supposed to work, and is trying to make this humor-like sequence of words fit that model the best it can. It can’t see Ralph’s involvement for the non sequitir it is. (Or more correctly, non ducit.) It’s an unnecessary detail that confuses the reader. Batiuk’s writing does this all the time.
It’s also not surprising that Jeff found Ed’s phone. The whole scenario implied that Ed misplaced it somewhere around the house, because that’s the only scenario where dialing it would be any help. The actual surprising part was Ralph being on the phone, but the AI had to assume that was an important part of the story.
Visual Humor: The image of Jeff walking in with the phone adds a visual element to the joke. His casual entrance contrasts with the confusion and urgency of Ed trying to find his phone.
Batiuk got “show don’t tell” right today. He visually delivered the punchline instead of having Jeff yell it from off-panel. One point for that, I guess.
Cultural Reference: The mention of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers adds a layer of cultural context. While it might not be essential to the punchline, it gives Jeff a character…
And there you have it. Jeff’s personality is Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
…and adds a bit of humor through the absurdity of the situation—why is he wearing that shirt while holding Ed’s phone?
The AI correctly identifies why we continue to be fascinated by the Funkyverse: it’s so absurd, it adds humor to itself.
Son of Stuck Funky 
By the way, if you have a Google account, https://myaccount.google.com/find-your-phone is great at locating lost phones.
Only thing I can think of that makes sense, in terms of what was going through Tom’s addled mind:
1. Ed, in attempting to dial his own number on an unfamiliar phone, somehow dials Ralph’s phone and gets caught in a conversation with Ralph.
2. Simultaneously and totally coincidentally, someone else decides to give Ed a call. This unknown party calls Ed’s phone.
3. Hilarity ensues.
BONUS YOCKS: Ed’s phone is under the paper in the throwaway panel!
I mean, okay, it’s still not funny. But I think that’s what’s supposed to be happening.
Yes, when I tried to work out what might have happened, I came up with the same scenario.
However, my version of the “bonus yocks” is that Ed claims that he can hear his own phone ringing at Ralph’s house. Ed doesn’t realize that if he had called his own phone and it was at Ralph’s, the phone would have stopped ringing once Ralph picked up! What a laugh!
“You know how (insert really mundane thing here)? Well, I think it’d be very funny if (insert nonsensical take on really mundane thing here)”. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Batiuk Premise Generator (or Batiukinator) in a nutshell. Try it! It works with literally anything!
I wonder how it would describe Pam’s personality. I would say asking Ed what he’s doing when it’s kind of obvious to anyone who’s ever met him but wonder what its algorithm would come up with.
“You know how you call your own cell phone to locate it? Well, I think it’d be very funny if you were somehow talking to your friend at the same time.” I think that’s exactly what happened here. The story is just Ed dialing his own phone to locate it, and succeeding. But that fails to constitute a joke, even by Batiuk’s standards. So he added the random detail of Ralph being involved somehow.
“You know how some people read comic strips for entertainment? Well, I think it’d be very funny if they were completely befuddled instead!” Hey, it works!
I had lunch with my 92yo mom yesterday. She kept getting pings on her cell, and at 1 point got a call on her landline.
See? Ralphie boy has both a cell and a 1970s Princess phone. When Ed interrupted his obscene cell phone call to Pam, he got annoyed and called Ed’s cell on his landline. NO THAT IS NOT A REACH
I like that the phone is under a pile of those old newspapers on the shelf that Jeff likes to listen by himself. Good things to hoard when you live with a pyromaniac!
Today’s Crankshaft
csroberto2854.exe has stopped working and needs to be rebooted
Le Chat Bleu Screen of Death!
I decided to test Joke Explainer by giving it a comic strip description where a less informed person might actually benefit from an explanation. This is from Mark Pett’s “Lucky Cow” strip in the early 2000s.
This is a comic strip. The scene is Lucky Cow, a fast food restaurant. There is nobody in the restaurant except for a few employees. The manager says, “How strange! It’s lunchtime on a weekend and we haven’t had a customer all day!” Indicating the bola tie he is wearing, he says, “I thought our ‘free bola tie’ promotion would have people beating down the doors …” He asks Neil, an employee, “Neil, did you put ‘Get a free bola tie with your meal’ on our sign outside?” Neil responds, “Um… I started to … but I ran out of letters.” The final panel shows the restaurant’s sign outside. It depicts the restaurant’s logo, a cow’s head with the words “Lucky Cow,” and the message “GET E BOLA WITH YOUR MEAL”.
I identified this as “American humor, workplace humor,” and asked for a detailed explanation.
Here is what Joke Explainer came up with.
***
This comic strip joke employs a combination of workplace humor, wordplay, and visual gags to create its comedic effect. Let’s break down the humor elements step by step:
In summary, the humor in this comic strip arises from a combination of workplace dynamics, wordplay, visual gags, and cultural references. The absurdity of the situation, paired with the unexpected twist in the promotional message, leads to a humorous outcome that highlights both the quirks of fast food marketing and the often chaotic nature of workplace communication.
***
So Joke Explainer eventually noticed that the sign said “E BOLA” which resembles the name of the Ebola virus … but it didn’t mention that item until paragraph 4. Furthermore, Joke Explainer said that “E BOLA” sounds like “ebola,” when it should have said that it looks like “ebola” since that phrase was posted on a sign for potential customers to read. Joke Explainer also failed to explicitly say that a sign suggesting that one could get “ebola” with one’s meal would have scared away customers rather than attracting them to the restaurant as a “free bola tie” might have.
The moral of this story is that Joke Explainer doesn’t do a great job when there is clearly a joke to be explained, so it could be completely at a loss when there isn’t a joke to be explained.
I also think it expects jokes in the question-answer format, as opposed to a narrative that happens to have jokes in it. I kind of want to try it with some good comic strips, like “The scene is Bob’s Pet Shop. There is a piranha in a fishbowl priced at $24.95. There is a cat looking on from a distance. The cat’s front legs are wooden.”
Speaking of artificial jokes: no marriage or trip to Winnipeg in Crankshaft this week. It’s going to be a standard week with Ed’s adorable malaprops front and center! But today’s strip really gives the game away.
First of all, Ed is drawn way too cutesy, as if he just got into Chinpokomon. Second, he’s prompting Pam into being the straight man for his joke, rather than it happening naturally in conversation. He might as well have said “what am I doing, Pam?” Third, all he did was change “volumizing” into “volumizer”, which is just a different word form. It’s lazy, and isn’t even that wrong. I guess the joke is that Ed used it to spike his hair, but the visual joke isn’t exaggerated enough to work. If you’re going to do this bit, give him a full mohawk. He doesn’t have enough hair for shampoo to make a detectable difference anyway.
This strip has the feel of Funky Winkerbean hijacking the AA meeting to workshop his lame standup material. It’s trying to way too hard to be funny, and not succeeding. Ed’s wordplay is usually one of the tolerable tropes in the Funkyverse because of its earnestness. But Ed acting like it’s Open Mic Night takes a giant dump on that.
You can almost see Batiuk’s writing process at work. “I need something that sounds like ‘volumizing.’ Volume, volume, volumizer! That’ll work.” Type it up, send it to the artist, go to the comic book store.
The wordplay/malaprop is really incidental to today’s strip. The main joke is that Ed thinks that using volumizing (or “volumizer”) shampoo will make a difference to the very limited amount of hair on his mostly bald head.
That…that was a pun? How? Just “er” instead of “ize”? My sister the hairdresser wouldn’t see that as a joke.
“Hey, Pam! I rubbed your fake shit on my head!”
“…It’s called shampoo, Dad.”
Today’s Crankshaft
WHO GIVES A FUCK ABOUT YOUR HAIRLINE WHEN IT’S BEEN THE SAME SINCE 1987, ED CRANKSHAFT AND WHY ARE YOU USING SHAMPOO WHEN YOU BARELY HAVE ANY HAIR LEFT
AI’s fixation on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers makes me wonder if TB himself is some sort of AI creation.
Regardless, I think ‘Shaft is now well into late stage Apt. 3G territory now. I’ve joked about that before, but I seriously didn’t think it would get quite this bad.
I still don’t get where 7/7 has a joke. “Volumizer” instead of “volumizing”? I thought the “joke” was that he had so little hair…But there’s nothing to indicate that.
How about using another angry, pale, miserable, impossibly ancient, nearly bald hideous goblin with a few stray hairs, and have Crud say “I used your Gollum-izer, precioussss!”
Or have his hair look Ionic or Doric and have Crankshaftopulous say “I used your Greek columnizer!” (Look for these not-jokes to appear in Brevity soon!)
I think the true test of A3G territory is the “prestige” arcs. Stuff like this doesn’t ping my alarm, because it’s just filler, and Batiuk has padded his output with incoherent filler for decades. I’ll worry about TB’s mental state the day I notice that a Comic-Con, Ohio Music Educators Association, or book signings arc doesn’t make sense even by Batiuk’s standards for making sense.
The Blog has another John Darling strip. Trivia question: What city did Archie and Edith Bunker live in? A: Queens!
ERRT! Wrong, Queens is a borough, not a city.
Hey, Tom! In what US state is Winnipeg located, where monkeys talk and give away Oscars like they were Pulitzers while dead comic book artists come back to life, as depicted in the molecule-rearranging Flash #122? A: Nunavut!
I’m not even sure how many mistakes I put in there (it’s not a state, or a province, it’s a TERRITORY, and Winnipeg is in Arkansas), but I’ll bet TB would’ve zeroed in on one mistake. It’s Flash #123, DUH!
In what US state is Winnipeg located?
How can I answer that question without breaking the “no politics” rule? 🙂
Winnipeg is in a state of grace.
Easy. There’s a Winnipeg in central Missouri, south of Jefferson City.
The Bunkers actually live in Astoria, which is in Queens.
With nothing worth commenting on in the “joke” itself, I paid attention to the artwork, in particular the final panel. Dangerous Dan did a great job here, with Pmm stuck between Ed and Jff and the phone’s ringing arching over her head. This one goes into the museum, with the title Stupidity In Stereo.
Today, Ed delivers a proper Crankshaft mixed metaphor in the first panel. Normally that would be enough for the frugal-with-humor Batiuk, but today he goes a little crazy and inserts a second joke in the final panel. It flops because “Lester of two evils” isn’t a malaprop or a mixed metaphor or some other accident; it’s a deliberate pun, the kind of thing that should be delivered with a “look how clever I am” smirk. Ed’s vaguely downcast expression suggests he (or Davis, when he chose the mouth part from the Crankshaft Reusable Art Portfolio) knew this was out of character. Is Ed being demonically possessed by that Les-est of all Batty’s characters, the Smirkmaster himself? And if so, is it too late to call an exorcist?
Today’s Crankshaft
MAKE THE RANDOM JOKE WEEK STOP
IT’S SO PAINFULLY BORING
What would you prefer?
– Skip Interviews Batton Week?
– Lillian At Her Bookstore Week?
– Lillian At A Book Signing Week?
– Harry Dinkle Ego Gratification Week?
– John Talks Comics Week?
– Masone For Some Reason Drops By And Doesn’t Mention The Pregnancy Of His 70-Year-Old Wife Week?
– Bus Driver Shortage Week?
– Meanderingly Pointless Tales Of The Wisteria Ballroom Week?
– Les Moore, Long-Suffering Genius Week?
After two or three of these, you’ll beg for Random Joke Week. BEG for it!
either the Winnipeg Blue Bombers storyline or the Mindy-Mopey McMopester Wedding storyline just to get those over with
Mason drops by and doesn’t mention Cindy’s pregnancy. That would be prime snark material. Though Winnipeg Blue Bombers week will also be fun, due to how out of left field it is.
I have every confidence in Batiuk’s ability to make both of these weeks crushingly dull disappointments, in a way that is both unexpected and thoroughly humdrum. Batiuk seldom fails to deliver something that utterly fails to deliver.
TB has an amazing power: No matter which of the above you get, you’ll be pleading for any of the others within a day.
But I’ll put in my vote: I vote for Dinkle. Because he’s the only one with a pretty consistent character that doesn’t change every time TB comes up with some shitty pun. He doesn’t become humble on Tuesday and go back to arrogance on Wednesday. He doesn’t become musically illiterate on Thursday and return to World’s Greatest Bandleader status on Friday.
And he’s a tiny sliver of a reminder of the glory days of FW, when there were actual jokes and actual characters.
But I admit: After a few days of Dinkle, I’m begging for a reprieve. It’s not all Dinkle’s fault — it’s that he usually comes as a package deal with Lillian now, and she ruins all she touches.
I’m with you – Dinkle should be a breath of fresh air, but having him boss around little old ladies is so misaimed.
Hey, whatever happened to the verdict in The Burnings trial? We know who did it, but what’s Les’s sentence?
The trial (here) was reality-based, so does he get what he deserves? Or is it a Batty version?
“Minnie Cameron, here with the biggest story of the year, if not the century. After his exoneration after a witch hunt proved he burnt some steps, beloved teacher and fucking asshole Lester Moore was carried through the streets on the shoulders of cheering throngs of his supporters! He’s been awarded the Pulitzer, another Oscar, the Nobel Pizza Prize, and a new one invented just for him, the Golden Smirk. He has been given every comic book in the world, but only if they’re MC/VG+ and bagged & slabbed. He has received marriage proposals from Scarlett Johansson, that French chick from ‘The English Patient,’ and Princess Diana, who came back from the dead just for this. He has slain all his enemies, and made a mountain of their foreskins! All Hail LES!”
It took me a lot of restraint to not say this on GC today:ED: “I’m getting a bad feeling about this Lester whose nickname is ‘Child Moe’!”No you shut up.
The story will be continued soon.
“Oh, pater! Mayhap we gaze upon this compendium of…’Loonie Terns’? It is surely about the Canadian $1 coin with birds on it!”
Crank farts. “Wait, are those the things I spend on beer when watching the--Winnipeg Blue Bombers?”
“Indeed! The–Winnipeg Blue Bombers!”
“We do so love the–Winnipeg Blue Bombers!”
“Indeed! I can smell my husband’s shirt from here!”
Crank: “Good.” (farts)
“Oh my stars! Who is this rambunctious varlet?! He vexes me! Do you know who that cartoon character is?”
I love how Tom works his jokes in organically.
Today’s Crankshaft
To answer Pam’s question, the characters with the big red mustache is Yosemite Sam
“Do you know who that cartoon character is?” doesn’t come up in conversations a lot. It might be a question in talks about cognitive decline due to dementia.
“Do you know who that cartoon character is?”
“Bosko the Doughboy!”
“It’s… a bunny, eating a carrot. His name has Bugs in it.”
“That’s what I said! Bosko the Doughboy!”
“Dad, dad…do you know who this other woman is?”
“Hi, Dad!”
” …Betty Boop!”
“OH GOD! I’m your only other daughter! We were just in New York last month!” She runs crying from the room, Pam racing after her. Three men walk in. He and his two very large coworkers all wear blue scrubs.
“Hey! It’s Woody Woodpecker!”
“I’m Dr Kafka, and these are your nurses, Gregor and Samsa. Just sign here, and we’ll continue this exam at Bedlamside Manor.”
“YABBA DABBA SCOOBY DOO!”
If you’re wondering, here it is. Remind yourself that this was made just 12 years after WW1. It’s a thousand times worse than making a cartoon in 2013 titled “Bosko at the World Trade Center.”