Looks like we are finally, FINALLY, at the end of this summer’s Big Blue Bomb. Thank you to everyone who carefully took us through a play by play of the hideous stupidity in the comments. I can’t wait for next year’s edition of “Batiuk Takes a Tax Deductible Vacation,” when Dinkle is inducted into the Grand Ol’ Opry for being the most authentic country music sensation since Lil Nas X.
be ware of eve hill said in the comments on the last post, “Sadly, to Batty, any stakes that could result in drama are irrelevant. The only important thing to him is ensuring his characters receive the rewards he believes they deserve.”
While I agree that this arc was devoid of any emotion or interest, I feel like that is more a symptom of bland reactions than bland situations. Pam destroying Jeff’s shirt, Cranky accidently running out on the field, heck Cranky spilling poutine, these all could have had some punch to them. If the damn strips had any kind of punchline. And if the art wasn’t a nonsensical copy-pasted mess.
The bare, bare, bare bones elevator pitch of the story has drama. The execution is like watching 12 Angry Men performed by a retirement home for the lobotomized.
And why is Cranky so darn chuffed about Hank Hilling his way into a CFL game ball? It’s just another insanely undeserved sports trophy for his cluttered sports case. This man has scored better.
Many years ago, when I was doing my research for the very special racism arc of 2022, I went out and bought Strike Four: The Crankshaft Baseball Book. This was mainly to confirm to myself that Batiuk had either intentionally or accidentally conflated two black baseball pitchers in his mind: Jefferson Jacks, an integration era pitcher who played with Crankshaft; and Smokey Williams, Cayla Moore’s father, a pro pitcher Crankshaft coached.
When the book finally came, it not only confirmed my theory, but I got to read a multi arc, multi YEAR, storyline from maybe 25 years ago where ol’ Ed Crankshaft had his own Best Actress Oscar moment.
The Smokey Williams arc ran for big chunks over dozens and dozens of strips and multiple years, so just the cliff notes version for you guys. ( And I apologize for the picture quality. Maybe I need to invest in a scanner…>.>;)
What year did this start? I wish I could tell you; both Strike Four and Roses in December do this baffling thing where they delete the year and copyright from each strip and then do not indicate at all when they ran. Roses in December even prints things out of order of date printed to change how the stories flow. Weird? Weird.
What I do know is that three or so years from the beginning of Cranky and Smokey’s friendship, he invited Cranky to a Fantasy Baseball Camp that was dated 2001. So this all ran in the late 90’s.
It starts modestly enough, with human speed-bump, Jeff, purchasing some tickets to a Minor League baseball game.
At the game, we learn that Cranky has a longstanding habit of spilling concessions on his lap. I do want to point out how this strip does something that almost no Crankshaft strip of the modern era does (or can do): It trusts the reader to get the joke.
It is at this game where Cranky first sees, and meets, Smokey Williams. Seeing the young Minor Leaguer struggling on the mound brings back a ghostly young Ed, Jffy style, as well as memories of the time Cranky almost quit before being counseled by a classic Magical Negro.
Ed realizes that since it’s the 90’s, and color blind casting is in vogue, it’s his chance to be the Magical Negro, and Cranky and Crnky stay after the game to offer Smokey some advice.
Seemingly a year later, a mysterious man shows up at the bus barn dressed like he’s about to kill some vampires in a rave.
When Smokey begs for help, Cranky is actually able to somehow convey to him some useable advice for better control over the plate.
The advice pays off, an Smokey is called up the majors in the same season.
But Smokey struggles in his first game, and after being pulled, calls makes a call using a quarter in an old timey pay phone, which seems about as archaic these days as using a bonfire and a wool blanket.
I like Jeff in this last panel. Actually I hate him. He’s a smug little shit that looks like he has to use a monkey wrench to open a pickle jar. But this strip is telling us that Jeff knows Crankshaft, and knows that Crankshaft– no matter his pissy mood now– will actually relish this experience and Jeff won’t let him pass it up. It’s simple, but it is writing a relationship. Not two grinning bobble-heads talking to themselves.
For the playoffs, Cranky becomes Smokey Williams official personal pitching coach.
The advice he gives isn’t anything revolutionary it’s stuff any armchair coach with a remote in one hand and a beer in the other can grasp. But it’s at least recognizable as real baseball fundamentals: pitchers who rely only on speed wear out too fast, having a good change up and knowing when to throw it is a potent weapon in an elite pitcher’s arsenal.
Smokey then asks Cranky to come to his next playoff game. And offers him, legitimately, a seat even better than the one he’d illegally stumble into on the way to the bathroom decades later.
So, as Les Moore and Funky Winkerbean look on in horror, Crankshaft coaches a professional Indians player to throw a change-up by making a gesture like a proctologist gently cupping a patient’s balls.
To the chagrin of the whimsical homeless lady who would go on to become Lillian’s book agent, the Cleveland Indians are headed to the World Series. But Cranky can’t be bothered to go. Guess that coaching bench is too hard on the hemorrhoids, and he’d rather watch the Indians win from his Lazy Boy.
Like a dime store discounted version of the 2015 Cubs winning it all in Back to the Future 2, we see here in Crankshaft a fiction destined to never become reality. The Cleveland Indians as World Series Champs.
And now comes Crankshaft’s ‘Les Moore’ moment. A celebrity flying out to the middle of bumfuck Ohio to give a protagonist an insanely rare prize.
LOOK! LOOK LES! CRANKY KNOWS HE DOESN’T DESERVE SMOKEY’S RING! HE DECLINES TO TAKE AWAY HIS PROTÉGÉE’S PRIZE!! LOOK AT THIS YOU DUMB SELFISH SMUG STUPID ASSHOLE FUCK AND KNOW HOW INFERIOR YOU ARE TO CRANKSHAFT.
Furthermore, as Smokey says, World Series rings are usually given out to coaches, managers, anyone who played for that team the entire season, even if traded away before the playoffs, but they can be given to anyone the team owner considers contributed to the win. Each team gives away hundreds of these.
That Cranky coached a Major League Pitcher in any capacity is outrageous, that he received a World Series ring for doing so is comparatively sensible.
While I’m on the apologetics wagon, it doesn’t bother me that what should be a lifelong feather in Cranky’s cap isn’t mentioned in the strip 30 years later. It’s a comic strip. No one remembers this, and trying to explain to the tiny audience of genuine readers that Cranky has a Cleveland Indians World Series Ring would be pointless and confusing. But we’re not casual readers. We are pathologically obsessed nitpickers. We have a duty to remember the golden years, even when Batty himself cannot.
Smokey would show up for a few more arcs in the coming years, going through a slump that saw him sent back down to the minors where he called on Crankshaft’s help again, then the aforementioned fantasy training camp arc, before mostly disappearing and then reappearing in 2011 as a college-aged Cayla’s father.
The Moore You Know…
Son of Stuck Funky 
Talents decline. People need to know when to step away before they become self-parodies. Batiuk doesn’t realize either thing.
Also, the hunger for validation has warped his thinking. Reason: he fell prey to a bullshit artist who made him feel bad about what he’s good at and he doesn’t realize that Byrne bullied him.
Weird exchange. “I’m here to see Smokey Williams.” “That’s what they all say!”
Would make more sense if he said something like, “I’m one of the coaches”, or “I’m a friend of Smokey.”
Dialogue that sounds natural to us looks wrong to Batiuk.
What do you call a baseball pitcher who helps another baseball pitcher become successful?
A friend.
That’s what’s happening here. Crankshaft isn’t Smokey’s “personal coach.” Any MLB organization employs an army of coaching specialists to do that. And some of them (both teams and individuals) don’t want outsiders interfering with their player development plan. Crankshaft is just an older player who took interest in a younger player, and passed along some sage advice. Baseball lore is replete with stories like that.
And if there’s one thing Tom Batiuk doesn’t understand, it’s friendship. A friend doesn’t refuse to join you in your biggest moment, when he still needs your help. It looks like Batiuk was trying for a “you are now a Jedi and no longer need my help” moment. But as CBH says, it doesn’t work. It just looks like Crankshaft is too lazy/selfish to finish the job.
I don’t see a person who has friends. I see a person looking for excuses to not have friends.
You mean Ed? Yeah, that’s the problem with all this. Batiuk tries to give him Pet The Dog moments, but they’re contrary to his personality. He’s lazy, grumpy, selfish, and indifferent to other people. Also, even in 1990, Crankshaft was at least 70 years old. Far too old to be squatting down and catching major league-caliber pitches like depicted here.
I meant Batiuk himself. Look how Les slapped Bull’s hand away because high school is everything.
Les’ future father-in-law was an up-and-coming minor leaguer in the late 90s, while Les and Lisa were a young, but established, married couple…
Solid work by TimeMop fitting all that together, but is he also responsible for the Cleveland Indians’ scouts and coaches failing to realize that their hot pitching prospect can’t throw a changeup? Nah, that does sound like something that would happen to the Indians/Guardians in real life. Take your quarter-inch for this one, TB. And for that Apple Annie cameo, that was well-executed.
Also, the guy was feted as the hero of Cleveland’s first World Series title since 1947, getting carried off the field, and yet no one in the FW cast knows that he’s Cayla’s father. Also, there were plenty of suggestions over the years that Cayla depended on Les and Lisa’s Story financially, when her father had been a pitcher for Cleveland. Even mediocre pitchers back in those days made 3-4 million a season, but then Batiuk has him pitching the close-out games over the Yankees in the ALCS and the World Series, so he’s probably above mediocre.
Even if that’s all he did for the team, that they trusted him to pitch deciding-games in the playoffs despite not being any good, he’d never have to buy a drink or pay for dinner in Cleveland for the rest of his life. He’d be huge on the convention circuit and could expect a lifetime job in the Indians’ FO if nothing else. Car dealerships would pay him enormously to put on appearances.
What I’m trying to say is that he’d be rich, and Cayla wouldn’t need Les for his money unless she alienated her father somehow, which was never in evidence.
Major league minimum salary in 2001 was $200,000 — and as a rookie, that’s all Smokey would get paid. And even that’d be prorated to account for the portion of the season Smokey pitched, so more like $100,000 if he got called up halfway through the season. BUT you can add $300,000 to that tally as his share of the World Series pool money.
ML salary minimums got a big bump the next year to $300,000. (Where it stayed for both 2002 and ’03.) If Smokey got sent down to the minors again that year (and then came back up again), there’s maybe another $150,000 he received in major league pay. Note that he’s not going to draw more than the minimum until he’s served a few years and is in a position to negotiate his contract.
CBH, was there any indication how long Smokey’s major league career was?
There really isn’t. As far as I can tell the Smokey associated strips ran for three or four years before petering out. What’s really weird is that when Smokey shows up again in 2011, he looks middle aged and paunchy, so unless he went full Bartolo Colon or CC Sabathia he’d have to be retired. Like 15 years had passed for Smokey, while Cranky never ages.
I didn’t see that he was a rookie when the story began. The idea that he’d be pitching the closeout of clinching ALCS and WS games becomes even more absurd in that case.
Still, the apparent closer or starter of Cleveland’s first WS winning team in over 5 decades, who was instrumental in the team’s victory, would still be well-recognized and wealthy, even if his actual MLB salaries weren’t particularly high. I’m trying to imagine David Ortiz’s daughter working as a secretary in a high school in the Boston area with nobody in the school knowing who she is. Hell, Les had proposed to Cayla before he found out who her father was.
Also, if he was supposed to be a rookie in 2001, the timeline for Les marrying Cayla becomes a little problematic. I know Les is supposed to be older than her, but there was no indication that he was supposed to be ~20+ years older. That would merit some sort of mention, I would think.
Seems absurd to go from rookie to World Series closer, but I remember sitting watching the 2014 World Series and the Royals were using this infant of a kid who had pitched in the College World Series earlier that year. It happens.
The poor kid, Brandon Finnegan would go on to struggle through his career and spent the majority of it in the minors and Mexican league.
The peak of some baseball players’ careers can be measured in weeks.
It can very well happen that way. MOST major leaguers spend less than four years in the bigs. The baseball record books are littered with players who were hot for a short period of time, and were even the toast of their city for a few weeks — and whose careers were over within the next year or two.
Maybe they end up picking up some extra bucks at autograph shows, fantasy camps, and so forth, and some will make a career of coaching in the minor leagues … but while the major league pension plan is some assurance that they will be comfortable as they get older (if they stayed on a major league roster for at least 43 days post-1981), most won’t be truly rich. There’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to assume that Smokey Williams had a whole lot of $$ after his major league career ended.
But I do agree that if he was a World Series hero, he would be recognized from time to time, especially in the state where he played!
CBH’s article mentioned the World Series rings, but the playoff money shares are actually the bigger deal. Players vote on who gets a share of the World Series winnings, which was a nice windfall in the old days (and might still be for a rookie). Shares have occaisonally been voted to non-players, like for the family of Willard Hershberger. That’s a sad story.
Batiuk doesn’t see obvious stuff like that. It’s like how he doesn’t see how stupid everyone in the doomed by their own absolute bleeding mental insufficiency romance is.
Even if that’s all he did for the team, that they trusted him to pitch deciding-games in the playoffs despite not being any good, he’d never have to buy a drink or pay for dinner in Cleveland for the rest of his life. He’d be huge on the convention circuit and could expect a lifetime job in the Indians’ FO if nothing else.
Chris Davis has entered the chat.
Today’s Crankshaft
“Deep Fried Sugar Cubes Dipped in Butter Gravy” sounds like a food would be so drenched in bad cholesterol that it would make all of the foods at the Heart Attack Grill look like the healthy alternative
S’funny, I always imagined that “Deep Fried Sugar Cubes Dipped in Butter Gravy” was the working title for “For Better or for Worse.”
So, we’re on the county/state/whatever fair arc once again. Will this be where Mopey Pete tries to win Min-dull a wedding ring set on the ring toss game as a prelude to the big wedding story for this fall? One can only hope.
Oh, God. Watch the Pizza Monster be an ordained minister.
Well, at least the “Starbuck double wedding” will have prepared us…
It also prepared us for Batiuk’s obvious belief that most women don’t get funnies.
I was thinking Kudzu.
That’d be better than a fanboy wedding.
A normal person would sympathize with the woman rolling her eyes in frustration when faced with men who hope their meal will kill them before they have to pay for it.
The dullard writing this wants us to join him in whining that women hate fun and joy because they want more than they’re supposed to have.
It’s like Batiuk just learned about the deep-fried butter at the Iowa State Fair and tried to exaggerate it. A better joke would have the characters turn to the camera and say “yes, this is a real thing.” Or come up with something exaggerated that at least sounds real. This is just nonsense. What the hell is “butter gravy” anyway? Does he mean “sauce”? Because that’s what it’s usually called.
I suspect sugar cubes would melt in the deep frying process, and unlike sticks of butter, you can’t exactly batter them up to prevent that. It’d just turn into a mess.
I’m still trying to figure out how deep fried ice cream works.
I’ll defend it as a goofy exaggerated concept. You can imagine, for instance, a Bloom County in which Opus is lamenting how hard it is to keep fit — and in the third panel, the Deep Fried Sugar Cubes with Butter Gravy he ordered show up.
Of course, in addition to being worth a mild grin, it would work because of the characters involved, and because Breathed would follow it up in panel four with an actual joke, and not a monumentally lazy repetition of an already lazy reaction (“Genius!”) he did only about two weeks earlier.
The problem isn’t the joke, it’s the context. It’s a goofy exaggerated concept in a world that brands itself on its refusal to be goofy or exaggerated.
You’re right that it would fit into Bloom County. But everything else in Bloom County would be just as goofy and exaggerated.
Then Batiuk oversells the goofiness. In BC, the goofiness would have support to make the whole strip work. In the Funkyverse, the characters blandly wander into the scene, say the goofy thing, and then smirk at each other like they just had you click on Obscurest Vinyl for the first time.
Crankshaft regularly launches his grill into space. This is not a strip that refuses to be goofy or exaggerated.
It IS a strip that can’t settle on a tone. Sometimes it’s goofy and exaggerated — something that Batiuk at least at one time had a talent for. Sometimes it’s wannabe ‘realistic’, and just ends up being tedious.
Anytime Batiuk leans into the goofy? That’s, comparatively speaking, his strength (at least in my eyes), and should be encouraged. I mean, anything that gets us away from another week of Batton and Skip, no?
Oh, there’s another Flash Fridays up? Let’s see what Tom has to say…
Who? Do you perhaps mean SAM Scudder there, Tom? Betcha Mopey Pete and Flash Forgothisname would know Mirror Master’s real name. (To be fair, according to Who’s Who in the DC Universe, Mirror Master’s name was “Samuel Joseph Scudder”. But, honestly, before looking that up, I had no idea that was his middle name, and don’t recall ever seeing ANYONE use it in the comics. It could be a “Robert Bruce Banner” thing, I suppose, but mostly it looks like Tom doesn’t care about the details of the things he holds most sacred.)
And… who might “she” be? Typically, one uses pronouns to refer to someone previously mentioned. But not Tom! I suppose we’re just supposed to guess who this is in reference to. (My guess is Cecile Horton, Flash’s lawyer, but… it’s not like her name appears at any point in the post prior to that sentence.) (Also, I think the word you’re looking for is “precedent”, Tom, not “president”. Or maybe she decided to start reading about Rutherford B. Hayes or something, I dunno.) (Proofreading is for chumps!)
Luckily, Tom would NEVER resort to such cheap writing cheats.
(The “out of left field” appearance was of The Monitor, set to be an important part of the upcoming Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover. Batiuks’ previous blog post talked about that one as well:)
Hm, yep, modern comics over-promising and under-delivering on completely contrived, nonsensical plots. Good thing comic strips don’t do that sort of thing. (*Cough*Cough* The Burnings *Cough*Cough*)
Guess he only gets 12 more of these, unless he plans on covering the Wally West era. I kind of doubt that, though.
If he can’t be asked to remember a character’s name, his claim to be a superfan falls apart faster than someone’s ligaments would if they ran at Are You Kidding Me Speed. All he is to me is a dolt who doesn’t like thinking.
In Batiuk’s defense, the Mirror Master began as Joe Scudder in *Flash* #105 and continued with that name until the character showed up in *Justice League of America* #111 as one of the Injustice Gang.
That issue contained a guide to the six villains in the group (the other five were Chronos, Poison Ivy, the Scarecrow, the Shadow-Thief and the Tattooed Man) and the entry for the Mirror Master called him “Sam Scudder.”
A reader — perhaps one of the original beady-eyed nitpickers! — pointed this out, and while DC generally said “oops” in such cases, the Mirror Master went on to become “Samuel Joseph Scudder” and remained that until *Crisis on Infinite Earths* killed him off.
Names with *Flash* characters are subject to change. Jay Garrick’s first name is actually Jason, Barry Allen is actually Bartholomew and in a story featuring the Mirror Master in *Flash* #219, the Top, whose name is Roscoe Dillon, is called Roscoe Neyle.
A few years after the interesting president, James Robinson would have the Shade muse on “social morays” in *Starman.*
It amazes me that Batiuk doesn’t understand the storytelling purpose of multiple universes. It’s so the stories can have greater stakes. A character can die,and still be used in future stories. Batiuk thinks there shouldn’t be multiple universes, and characters who die should stay dead. He doesn’t see how self-destructively stupid it would be to a make great character like the Joker unusable to meet some weird old man’s idea of “realism.”
“Akron Aeros“! See, i learn something here everytime. I managed to catch a game of the Akron (now) Rubberducks last year after seeing the Mudhens the year before. I found the AA league at least as nice as the AAA let alone MLB; well at least as good at entertaining my family. Sadly i moved out of the area last fall and am now stuck in a much less baseball-intensive part of the country.
I’ve been thinking about picking up this book for a while and i gotta say, this is even better storyline than i would have expected. Everyone acts in character, things happen, and as CBH says it expects something from the reader. Chef’s kiss for the Apple Annie cameo. I guess my only note is that it went too far–leaving Smokey getting in to the AAA or finally called up to the Indians would have been enough of a payoff for the stakes we’re expecting here. To go to the majors and then save the day in the World Series? Um, maybe let’s keep one foot on the ground here buddy.
Still, as a troll to squeeze some Hollywood deal out of your second or third syndicated strip, would have been worth at least a shot.
(The fall-off from the strips presented to the sad spectacle on display today is left as an exercise for the reader.)
If you have a soft spot for Crankshaft and baseball it’s a decent book to pick up. Flipping through it just hit home how much I miss Ayers. Did he get sloppy in his later years? Yes. But when he was good he was charming.
I can’t believe there was a time when I praised Davis over Ayers. That’s like praising a Beatles cover band for their songwriting ability because you hate Wings.
“When he was good he was charming” indeed, looking at the range of expressions and POVs there it’s quite astonishing how we have lowered our expectations over the years to such a minimum. That level of craft was just invisible when we had it all the time.
More random points: the Aeros only started under that name in ’97 so the beginning of the arc is post that, and current prices for a Rubberduck season ticket range from $650 to a cool $1K. I would much prefer it if TB extolled the glories of his hometown team than some rando summertime footballers!
Everyone in the Funkyverse must constantly have their genius validated at the highest level. As you said, helping a struggling guy make the major leagues should be a good enough payoff for this story. But no, that’s not good enough for Tom Batiuk. Smokey must become instant to World Series MVP, eclipsing everyone else on the team. Crankshaft can’t simply call a play; it has to be a game-winning play, and he has to demand a permanent place in the playbook. Les can’t simply write a book about his dead wife; he most go on a months-long media tour so the world can fall over itself kissing his ass. Or the main character’s aspirations must be callously rejected, to reinforce their Stage 4 case of Dunning-Kruger Syndrome, and the planet-sized chip on their shoulder.
I went to Huntsville, Alabama recently, and the local AA baseball team is the Rocket City Trash Pandas. I meant to buy some team gear while I was down there.
6/27: The appearance of Ed’s rival/superior Max Axelrod reminds me of something Batiuk doesn’t realize he’s revealing: Big Walnut does better because they don’t put up with incompetent idiots like Les or Lena and when faced with adversity, they do stuff instead of standing around moping about catastrophes they could avoid if they actually wanted to.
A keen insight on today’s ‘Shaft strip, thank you for it. All I could get out of it was “this is basically Heathcliffe at this point, isn’t it?”
I had the same thought about today’s Gil Thorp… but I suppose that is a comment for another blog.
It’s not Heathcliff. It aspires to be Heathcliff.
There’s only one thing left for this week: is Batiuk going to repeat his “Fair Thee Well” joke?
Today’s Crankshaft
Max Axelrod makes his first appearance in a long time (I think we’ve last seen him during Crankshaft a few years ago)
a question for ComicBookHarriet: What happened to the Chien deep dive?
Very good question! I had intended to continue it, but farm life and commenting on Crankshaft have gotten in the way. I can certainly start it back up again! Would y’all like that?
Of course we’d be happy to see you start it up again if you have the time and opportunity. I was getting worried that you might have discovered that a deep dive on Chien didn’t wind up requiring the bathysphere you might have originally thought it did…
6/21: To my way of thinking, today’s strip makes far more sense than the Bombers arc ever could. It’s based on something we know about Ed and it’s borderline plausible in a way the being rewarded for being stupid isn’t.
Oh look, he won another award.
That’s one more than Batiuk has.🤣
One CFL game ball and one blue ribbon vs. one Inkpot Award… yeah, you’re right. 2 to 1. Assuming Ed doesn’t win another award by the end of the week.
Most likely for largest number of purchases from Beans End.
Not sure what’s worse, that Smokey Williams was deployed for a “cranky old school bus drivin’ whatshisname” gag in Crankshaft’s namesake strip decades ago… or that Crankshaft now smirks. Pretty dire either way.
Today’s Crankshaft
Achievement Unlocked: Most Used Tools And Useless Shit Bought From Bean’s End
Now this, this is Human Heathcliff. The Bombers arc was a hallucination.
8/22: Achievement unlocked: failing probability forever
Today’s Crankshaft
Now those were Eds you could really relate to.
Ooh, we got a real treat on Batiuk’s blog. At the risk of violating the “no politics” rule, he’s chosen to use current events to rerun the 2020 “ICE” story from Funky Winkerbean. Of course, so far, his only commentary is to explain… well, what I just said. That’s he’s running them due to current events. We’ll see if he has anything further to say, or if (as usual) he just thinks the message is so self-evident that no commentary is necessary. (And if he offers any explanation for why the ending is so idiotic and annoying, of course.)
Also another Flash Fridays is up. Nothing much to say about it, except the usual “proofreading is for chumps”.
“Brutality” is a noun, Tom. “Brutally” is the word you want there.
Okay, it’s an easy typo to make, but still. Proofread, Tom!
Pretty sure that should be “on the trail“, not “train”. Also, Tom, you really don’t get to mock other writers for the names of their characters. Cary Bates may have given us “Norris Dreed”, “Roy G. Bivolo”, and “Dufus P. Ratchet”, but you gave us “Amicus Breef”, and thought “Rocky Rhodes” was such a clever pun you used it for two completely separate characters. Glass houses, Tom.
He’s right that Norris Dreed sounds like a Dickens character.
Perhaps Dickens initially planned for *The Mystery of Edwin Drood* to be *The Mystery of Norris Dreed.*
Or two decades earlier thought the successor to *Martin Chuzzlewit* should be *Dreed and Son.*
(Paul Dombey would understand, if not his father.)
If Norris Dreed were not to be the title character in a Dickens novel but a supporting one, I think he would most likely appear in *Bleak House* or perhaps be part of Mr. Waldengarver’s* theatrical company in *Great Expectations.*
“Do not saw the air thus…”
*
Mr. Waldengarver was originally Mr. Wopsle. Their
I meant to write that “their production of Hamlet leaves a lot to be desired.”
In contrast, the Crummles Company’s production of Romeo and Juliet in the Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.
Admittedly true, but I think “sounds like a Dickens character” is far, far better than “sounds like a Batiuk character”. One might mean your name sounds kind of old-fashioned, the other’s just an insult.
When a person slips a clutch that consistently, it’s time he steps away willingly before he has to be pulled away.
That ICE story was a piece. of. work.
We could, and did, critique it for weeks. But the one thing that really got me was: Obviously, there’s another Adeela out there with the same last name, who presumably did eventually get deported. So nothing at all was actually resolved in the story.
Did Bill Clinton make a call to save that other Adeela? And we never found out why that other Adeela was earmarked for deportation. Verified membership in an active drug-smuggling, human trafficking, or terrorist operation? Or just random persecution of someone totally innocent, a legitimate citizen or visa holder fully qualified to be in the country?
Whatever. Tom Batiuk has Taken a Brave Stand Against Injustice, he’s One of the Good Ones, and that’s all that matters. [APPLAUSE light flashes.]
Send Pulitzer in care of Andrews McMeel Syndicate, Kansas City, MO.
You know, since he is in the middle of Ohio, if TB had used last summer’s memes to build a story about local wildlife being eaten by recently arrived migrants (one can imagine that this is all a huge misunderstanding in Westview/Centerville ofc) it would have unironically made me laugh. Ah well.
To me, TB is just “boomer politics”. The last time i checked his blog he was blowing pretty hard about his “McCarthyism” arc. I just consider the source and, well, ignore it.
Wait a sec, i forgot about Adeela getting her driver’s license. Is… is he bringing up “you probably know why” because of the migrant with a CDL that just killed a family in Florida? I mean, that’s just sick, dude
One of his dumbest Act III contrivances, featuring one of his dumbest Act III characters. Adeela was annoying, and her premise (an architect working in a pizzeria) was downright moronic. That stupid ICE story was as predictable as the tides, then took a turn so absurd it just defied all belief. He might as well have had a genie pop out of a bottle to rescue Adeela, as that would have been equally as believable.
8/23: A classic joke ruined by a modern phenomenon: the generic styling that does to vans what Leavitt did to two-story houses and bungalows.
Sat. 8/23’s ‘Shaft: To sum up, Jff and Pmm presumably looked around for the car with Ed, then followed him into the Security office and watched as he asked them for use of their CCTV cameras. And only now is Jff asking what’s going on? Makes perfect sense.
Also, Ed is a canonical WWII veteran who thus must be at least 96 years old at this point. What excuse do Jff and Pmm (who earlier in the week was shocked to learn she qualified as a senior citizen) have that neither of them can remember where the furshlugginer car is parked?
Ed is a canonical member of the Toledo Mud Hens, which makes him at least 106 years old. This is also consistent with a baseball career that saw the early days of integration, and playing in pre-revolution Cuba. The fucker shouldn’t be able to feed himself. Much less garden, bowl, drive a bus, and cause grill explosions.
1940 Toledo Mud Hens
Timemop! Cranky now canonically grew up as a kid watching Vic Power play, shaving about 20 years off his previous age.
This would also make him now longer a WWII vet … maybe he’s a VietNam vet now?
I guess it’s necessary to shave 20 years off everyone’s age to keep the title character alive. Pam and Jeff are now written as roughly my age, when they should be a couple of years younger than my parents. And Crankshaft, as others have mentioned would be 100 plus. My grandfather, who was a WWII veteran, would be 107 if he were still with us! But now Cranky is written as my parents’ age, and Timemop has muddled my ability to keep track of how old the younger kids are/should be.
If the answer is “Timemop!”, then everything is canonical, which also means nothing is canonical. Personally, I assign more value to months-long storylines that only work in very specific windows in history, than I do than a one-off joke strip that references a baseball player Batiuk was too conceited to look up on Baseball Reference.
Ah, but Timemop was also a months-long story line, which has been referenced in Crankshaft itself. So don’t be a beady-eyed nitpicker — embrace The Elegant Solution™! It’s canon now that everything is canonical, and nothing is canonical! Crankshaft is an immortal being who lives in any number of parallel multiverses!
Uh, even though according to Batiuk, multiverses are bad! Okay, wait, hang on…
.
.
.
Got it. You see, in some multiverses, multiverses aren’t bad! It stands to reason! Because if multiverses are infinite, and every possible possibility is occurring in some multiverse somewhere, then somewhere, Tom Batiuk has a warehouse full of Pulitzers! And that multiverse can’t be bad, right?
Therefore, while the concept of multiverses is bad, there must be some multiverses where the concept of multiverses is good! Like the multiverses Timemop oversees! Get it? This is easy to understand!
We have always been at war with Eastasia!
Obviously Batiuk is just biding time until June of 2027, when–to celebrate the strip’s 40th anniversary–he will introduce his grand “Crankhaft of Two Worlds” arc. This cosmos-spanning story will show that there are multiple Eds of varying ages living throughout the multiverse, from WWII vet/nursing home resident Ed to Vietnam vet Ed who was one of the National Guardsmen on the Kent State campus in 1970 to modern-day minor league ballplayer Ed who saw “Bull Durham” as a child. They’ll all team up at the behest of Timemop to help him save existence from his evil counterpart, the Anti-Timemop. Eds will live, Eds will die, and nothing will ever be the same…or funny.
Sounds awesome! But if there’s one thing we can count on, it’s that in THIS particular multiverse Tom Batiuk will find a way to do it that’s both dull and actionless, in a specifically odd way we can’t predict … while also being simultaneously both rambling and truncated.
Meanwhile, over in multiverse #3098547-¬ºAAΣ³–ñ¾308.aab, Batiuk will collect his 338th Pulitzer, and 117th EGOT, for just the first panel of “Crankshaft of Two Worlds”. After that, it’s Nobels and Distinguished Military Crosses all the way, baby!
Today’s Crankshaft
the joke here in today’s strip is that Ed is too fucking stupid to remember where he parked the car
Boy, is he so very fond of the “put pants on one leg at a time” phrase for coaches to say.
Oh, I’m here. Thank you for the great look at that book. Both TB and Ayers used to have much more energy and investment in their work.
Today’s Crankshaft
I have no idea what’s going on in today’s strip
What’s going on is that Jeff/Tom is flashing back to a Grade D stinker sports film.
Maybe today’s strip is Roses In December II. Maybe it’s the beginning of Crankshaft’s long-overdue death arc. Maybe it’s wacky comedy. Your guess is as good as mine!
Be Ware of Eve Hill
ComicBookHarriet,
On a far, far happier note, Berke Breathed announced on OUTLAND, August 25, 1991 that today is Opus’s birthday!
Happy Birthday, Opus!
(and many more!)
Today’s Crankshaft
Why is Crankshaft, a man who revels in his own cruelty over letting the kids miss the bus, refusing to do his damn job?
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING
Because Batiuk doesn’t care about continuity if it gets in the way of a punchline.
Okay, first off: as a one-off joke Monday wasn’t that bad.
On the other hand…”Was that about our grandson, Mitch?” has to be one of the clunkier exposition dumps Batiuk has made in a while. Couldn’t Jff have just said “our grandson” or “little Mitch of indeterminate age” and let the reader make the connection? Or is he afraid that Pmm won’t remember the kid’s name now that she’s a senior citizen?
Is Mitch the same kid who was conceived in the Valentine Theater? And who is Skyler exactly? I can’t keep track of all the constantly-changing-but-nearly-identical offspring.
And who is Skyler exactly?
Skyler is the son of Darin “Boy Lisa” Fairgood and Jessica Darling Who’s Father John Darling Was Murdered
Yeah, “our grandson, Mitch” is up (down?) there with Les talking to Summer about “your half-brother, Darin”. Like… how many Darin’s do you think she knows? And even if she did know more than one, wouldn’t she assume that any “Darin” referred to would be her brother, unless otherwise specified?