Your Nominees for the 2025 Crankshaft Awards:
Vote Often!
Voting will be open through Valentine’s Day!
Drumroll Please…
Outstanding Performance by a Talking Building
Unenthusiastic Bedside Manor
Acquiescing Village Booksmith
Investigative Montoni’s
Reminiscing Dale Evans
Public Address Princess Auto Stadium
Depressed Bus Barn
Revelatory Apartment
Home Shopping Home
Sympathetic St. Spires
Dangerous Dan Award for Best Tracing
Black and White Warbler
Captain Ez Confectionary
Greyhound
House Under Construction
Howard Johnson’s
Jason Miller
Mayflower II
Napoleons
Scaffolding
Pickleball
Table Tennis
Twistee Treat
Winnipeg Skyline
Mike O’Shea
Honorary Les Moore Backpfeifengesicht Award for Most Slappable Batton Thomas
Homeless Batton
Unironic Batton
‘Hardworking’ Batton
Rose-Tinted Nostalgia Batton
Unbearably White Batton
Neurodivergent Batton
Part-Time Imposter Batton
Unapologetic Batton
Most Pointless Strip of 2025
That Isn’t Even a Real Place
And Who is She?
And This. Definitely Needed. Three Panels.
Mindless Binging
Hopping Times at the HoJo.
Invasive Weeds
This Strip is Sponsored by Shillcon
Grounds for Termination
Panel of the Year
Blind Charge
Memory Lane
Batman Burns Batton
Lifelong Work Ethic
Driving Gear
I’m Your Huckleberry
Pillow Talk
Soap On A Dope
The Best Crankshaft Strip of 2025
Suave for Men
May the Fourth Mayflower Be With You
Chiropractic Cosmic Irony
Going Nutmeg
Famous Last Words
Don’t We All
Acer Insomniatias
Who Counsels the Counselor?
The Worst Crankshaft Strip of 2025
Nostalgia Blinders
Dinkle’s Wet Dream
A Fitting Memorial
Check Please!
No Politics
That’s Not Humor
Linus’ Blankie
Trigger Happy
Son of Stuck Funky 
Shouldn’t there be one for “Most Brazen Ass-pull”?
Isn’t that every strip?
(For real tho, I am always open for nominees and categories for next years awards)
Glad to be of assistance.
I notice that every single Batton face in “Honorary Les Moore Backpfeifengesicht Award for Most Slappable Batton Thomas” is the same. And that’s not even all of them.
Oh, to the untrained eye they are the same. But the trained eye looks past the surface to view the myriad subtle indications of the Batton Thomas beneath, the presence that exists on a plane beyond that which is visible to mere ocular appendages, and then uses those mysterious senses without name to “see” the character in dimensions that are represented in ways that transcend ordinary, mundane visual representation….
…. and discovers that he’s a smug, punchable jerk in those dimensions too.
Somehow both truth and tracery. The duality of Batton Thomas.
He sucks.
I’m weighing voting for “Unironic Batton” over and over because it is the only one where he’s not flexing his thumb (or maybe he is, but his hand is not visible) like a shmuck or voting as often as possible for every other Batton panel for the same reason.
Okay, I have a serious question about “Dinkle’s Wet Dream”. Does Tom Batiuk not realize that the point of bringing two of every animal onto Noah’s ark was to ensure the survival of the species? And if they only had one band director, band directors would quickly die out? Or is Dinkle implicitly immortal? Or is he expected to breed with one of the extra female band members? (SEE ALSO: Epstein, Jeffrey)
And does he realize that if they have three people for each musical instrument, it creates awkward situations that will ultimately inhibit the survival of the species? (On the plus side, the descendants of three people would only half-inbred at worst.)
The “Black and White Warbler” panel really deserves its own prize: the James Allen Memorial Giant Wildlife Award.
I didn’t vote for it, because I felt another traced panel was more unnecessary (c’mon, Dan, you can’t just sketch up what a half-finished house looks like?), but I liked the HoJo panel because Dan primly removed the word “COCKTAILS” from the sign, just like Batty seems to have removed the bar from the pizza joint he copied from Luigi’s in Akron. This is a family strip, so no drinking! (Well, other than Funky’s alcoholism and Lizard Lil’s high-octane rum balls, anyway).
Or maybe Dan interprets the word to mean dirty jokes (insert rim shot here).
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 3 of Jeff’s Computer Problems
It’s day 3 of this shit (Jeff having problems with the computer) and I’m already sick and tired of it
The suspense is unbearable! Will Jeff be able to go to the Marshall Crenshaw concert? Will he find a way for Ed to go with him? Will Marshall Crenshaw award Ed his Gold Record (for having co-written The Gin Blossoms’ “Till I Hear It From You”), in deference to Ed’s hollered suggestion that he play that “Sun Ray, Some Say” song that Ed likes? All this and more, in this week’s action-packed Crankshaft…
(Wait, hold it — did I say the suspense is unbearable? Sorry, I meant this strip. This strip is unbearable.)
Will Marshall Crenshaw award Ed his Gold Record (for having co-written The Gin Blossoms’ “Till I Hear It From You”)?
Well, I learned something today. “Hey Jealousy” and “Found Out About You” are still their only two good songs, though. It’s sad what happened to the guy who wrote them.
Here’s what I think the real problem is:
I’ve worked in end user tech support. It is blindingly obvious that “Jeff’s” struggles are his own fault. He’s so completely baffled by the process that he can’t even describe it in words. You wonder how he even got to the payment page. You have to ask questions like: what is on your screen right now? Have you purchased Internet access? Does your house have electricity? Do you realize that if I help you transfer the balance of your Apple card to Crimea, you’re just being scammed? If I buy you the Marshall Tucker tickets, will you hang up? Then he gets offended and berates you because it’s Marshall Crenshaw.
“Jeff” is a nightmare tech support caller. Can’t follow the simplest instructions, makes unreasonable demands, and views his inability as everyone’s fault but his own. Lots of people think they’re computer illiterate, but most people can be helped if they’re willing to listen.
Lord knows nobody in this strip uses the computer or the phone for anything else. It probably won’t be long until Masone and Cindy fly in from Los Angeles to collect the $46 their movie theater earned last week.
I can’t help but be reminded with all of his insufferable whining about air travel. It’s their fault he’s a moron too.
I know it’s not worth mentioning, but has anyone brought up the fact that–back in August of 2024–Jff went online and had no problems purchasing tickets for Peter and Gordon…er, Chad and Jeremy… I mean, Peter and Jeremy? Has he forgotten over the past year-and-a-half how to use a computer, or is the demand for Crenshaw tix that much greater?
It very much is worth mentioning. As is the fact that his own father buys huge amount of shit online all the time. And the fact that Jeff had a career that would have given him some familiarity with computers.
Apropos of nothing but it turns out that Kristen Stewart bought an old and recently closed theater for the purpose of renovating and reopening it. You doubted him but Batty wins again! A quarter-inch from reality? Or, perhaps, does reality bend to reflect the Funkyverse?
https://variety.com/2026/film/news/kristen-stewart-buys-highland-movie-theater-los-angeles-1236652423/
I can’t wait to see the next Mason/Valentine arc now. Maybe we’ll finally see his and Cindy’s mutant too.
Is she going to be showing The Phantom Empire repeatedly, or will she branch out into Flash Gordon?
2/5: Another day, another reminder that Batiuk wants to be allowed to be stupid.
Going to write up my votes here since I’m not sure if I’ll remember well enough by the end of the polls.
-Talking Building I give to Dale Evans. It takes a great actor to handle that kind of word zeppelin strip, and associating Bob Evans with that pumpernickel bread story seems oddly amusing to me.
-Dangerous Dan was a tight competition. Almost gave it to the table tennis room, but Mike O’Shea was so egregious for being a featured guest character (in contrast to the Jason Miller cameo) that it’s worth calling out. We’re at the point that Davis is throwing away the Ayers artstyle to phone in new characters with human-accurate traces rather than even a mild caricature, and that’s honestly the most disappointing thing about his work. Give it a few more years and they might refresh the Batton Thomas references by just having Dan trace Batiuk’s photos (or at least his modern ones).
-Slappable Batton was tricky; his wordplay didn’t really make me want to dope slap too hard, surprisingly, so I gave it to his part-time joke for being just a little lame and also bemusing with his composition with his banners.
-Pointless strip I gave to the “real time” drawing for definitely being a stretched out joke, even if it is a two-in-a-row for the Akron comic con arc.
-Panel of the Year I give to Memory Lane. There’s reasons that go into my thoughts on later options, but that one panel is rather amusing for the strip it comes from and some of the things you could say it symbolizes (like the contrast of the Crankshaft strips of old to today)
-I’d honestly call the Fitting Memorial/Memory Lane strip my best of the year for the above reasons, but with the options given here I vote for the “Don’t We All”. Even if it was a strawman strip of calling out the “comics should be funny” accusations that one strip was very satisfying just to see Ed on the warpath with Batton, even if we knew he wasn’t going to be saying what we’re saying.
-Worst strip I honestly would’ve voted for the Mayflower gag. It’s very Act 1 coded which I should like, yet even when we’re in an era where Ed saving the world from an asteroid with his grill antics (after causing the crisis with said antics the first time) is treated as not-a-dream canon, it feels almost too ludicrous for me. The characters are acting too casually about it, it’s almost random in an internet humor kind of way that seems out of place here, and seeing the pilgrims on the boat I feel like there could’ve been a week of gags he could’ve tried that makes the scene feel wasted. Just a throwaway gag that leaves me feeling unsatisfied.
That said though in absence of that, I voted Trigger Happy as the worst. “I don’t get it” is a milquetoast complaint even for Batton/Batiuk (though if he had shouted out to the Far Side’s “Cow Tools” incident it would’ve been more funny to me), and the fact that the punchline is lacking in the Funkyverse Smirk ™ and DSH John and Harry seem to be taking him seriously makes the whole thing seem even more eye-rolling in a negative way.
I actually voted for the Mayflower gag as best strip, because I liked the Act I-style absurdist feel of it. And it was executed about as well a such a forced joke could be. But frankly, it was the best of a weak field.
My worst strip was “Invasive Weeds”, because it hits so many notes of what sucks about the Funkyverse.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 4 of Jeff’s Problems With The Computer
(Jeff then gmod ragdolls out of anger)
I think I’m going to GMod ragdoll out of anger.
Today, the dynamic prices have been driven up. Dynamic pricing reacts to and what’s been sold and what’s still available, not failed attempts. Unless your failed attempts let everyone else buy up the supply, driving up the prices for what’s left. Which would be 100% Jeff’s own fault.
In previous days we’ve seen Jeff enter his credit card, and retrieve his tickets. This implies that he bought the tickets, probably multiple times. Which means he could resell the extras in front of the venue the night of the event. Which is probably legal to do for face value. Or he could use one of the many ticket resale websites that now exist. But oh no! He’d have to use that dastardly Internet again! We can’t have THAT in the Funkyverse!
And, dare I say it… why wasn’t this in the Winnipeg Blue Bombers arc? Struggling to buy tickets online makes a lot more sense when you’re dealing with a faraway, unfamiliar venue; a foreign currency; a high demand event; and a limited number of seats available. This shit makes no sense for a niche 80s act playing at the Kent State University Whatever Theater they’ve been to a thousand times. Jeff can just drive to the ticket office and buy them in person. Which is what these people do all the time anyway!
RE: Fri. 2/6’s ‘Shaft: Those mean old computers used “dynamic pricing” and quadrupled the price of the Marshall Crenshaw tickets? So, Jff wound up paying $12 each, then?
Still, it’s about time something “dynamic” happened in this arc.
Yet again , we have him try to wrap his head around an unfamiliar phrase only to end up looking stupid.
I think he’s just randomly spewing every vague, scary Internet term he can think of. Dynamic pricing! Timed out! Security codes! Robots! Aritificial intelligence! Russian hackers! (Which I still think was bowdlerized from “Nigerian scammers.”) Maybe tomorrow will be “oops, I accidentally bought the tickets with Bitcoin, and they changed into a NFT! I’d better get some ethernet cable!”
This is like watching an Open Mic Night comedian do five minutes on “what’s the deal with airline food?” when he has absolutely no idea what the deal with airline food is. And didn’t think researching it was a good use of his time.
The whole week reeks of his complaining about something he’s never done.
The funniest thing about this whole arc is not anything that Jeff is doing, but the very idea that scoring Marshall Crenshaw tickets requires the focus of a bomb defuser and the speed of the Flash. I mean no shade on Mr Crenshaw, of course.
Also, fantastic job finding *anything* interesting or worthwhile in this year’s dross, CBH. As always, I stand in line. We are not worthy! Every category inspired a muttered “all of them” from me, but I’ll do my civic duty and vote, and save my rationales for award day.
Should we be grateful or exasperated that Puff Batty’s missed the obvious joke? –> Crankshaft comes in and says, “Marshall Crenshaw? When did they promote him from General?”
I’ve been wanting to make a running joke about this being Marshall Tucker, Marshall Mathers, Marshall Thundering Herd, or whatever Marshall you can buy tickets to see. Since it makes no difference to the story anyway. Marshall Crenshaw probably signed Batiuk an autograph in 1982 or something.
Don’t forget Marshall Chapman, whose repertoire includes “Why Can’t I Be Like Other Girls?” and “Don’t Make Me Pregnant.”
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 5 of Jeff’s Computer Problems
Pam: WHY DO THE TICKETS COST $4,500?!
2/6: Ed? Camera three? PAM DOESN’T KNOW WHAT TRICKLE CHARGING IS so don’t play your stupid muddled aphorism game.
I’m so old I remember when Marshall Crenshaw was only a deputy.
And so we bid a fond farewell to Marshall Crenshaw week, with … uh … well, it appears even Batiuk got bored with the whole thing and abandoned it.
Whatever godawful ticket shenanigans he could have come up with — could they have been worse than the car-re-charging ‘joke’ we actually got? It’s a philosophical conundrum, all right. Given the material that makes it to print, could Batiuk’s reject pile possibly be even theoretically worse?
(Okay, for the most part, I don’t think he HAS a reject pile … we get almost every idea he has. But you know given his proclivities for week long arcs that he must have been trying to come up with the final daily cartoon to bring this arc to a close. And whatever half-formed quasi-idea he had? It wasn’t even good enough to meet his own standards. Chew on that for a while….)
Today’s Crankfuckery
Ed: So, how did Jeff deal with the ticket issue?
Pam: He ran the computer over with the bus you use to destroy Keesterman’s mailboxes.
Today’s Crankfuckery
(Ed whacks Jeff in the face with the remote, leading to Jeff and Ed to engage into a fistfight with each other)
2/9: Oh, jocularity…..more creeping on young people for the glowing rectangle addiction forced on them.
Does any school system anywhere police phone usage ON THE BUS? That’s exactly when the students SHOULD be using their phones. And from what I hear, it’s hard enough to keep students away from their cell phones during class time and exams. Also, they might die horribly for no reason, because they missed a notification from their blood sugar monitoring app. This seems somewhere between invasive and dangerous.
Not to mention skull collapsingly stupid. Leave it to that old fart not to consider any of the thousand ways someone’s high-handed numbskullery would turn the sky legal pad yellow.
According to Grandpa Google, school districts in Indiana, New Mexico, and New York have instituted full or partial phone bans on school buses. Other places are considering it. Weird as it seems, Batiuk didn’t simply pull this concept out of his tuchis.