Ending The Crankshaft Awards 2025, and giving out the award for the worst strip, during a Batton and Skip arc feels appropriate, doesn’t it?
After expressing my personal affection for Ed Crankshaft as a character yesterday. Today the more objective part of my brain has to admit that Crankshaft as a strip this year was pretty meh. Davis is phoning in the photoshops like never before. The GoComics colorists are similarly lazy. Cranky was more befuddled than properly cranky, and almost all the best jokes were recycled.
The only thing Batiuk shows any passion for is pandering to whoever will give him a nod and breaking his back shoving his nose into his navel for another abysmal Batton interview arc.
Where is Batiuk taking us this year? I have no idea. But we’ll be here to point and laugh, and reminisce about old times good and bad. And who knows, maybe next year it’ll be harder to pare down the list of shitty strips to just eight.
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
And your winner is…
Dinkle’s Wet Dream
The nitters have spoken. In a year with a month and a half of Batton strips and given four, FOUR, Batton strips nominated, you all decided, albeit not in a landslide, that a sweaty somnolent Dinkle having Old Testament flavored dreams of his own greatness was worse.
Now, you all want a Homer deep dive? Because that’s what I’m working on next!
Son of Stuck Funky 
As I’ve said before, the worst of it is that he forgot what made Dinkle funny: being a deluded, power-crazed obstruction.
2/26: While he finally mentioned his wife, it’s just only to talk about not really growing up.