Thank the Lord! We have an ugly and abominable week of anemic puns and malaprops at Dale Evans! I do have to laugh at today’s strip, where there’s a weird fern hanging above Crankshaft’s head in an area that would be just kind of randomly hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the restaurant. I mean we’ve never seen that before! Right? The conglomeration of shoddy art stealing slaves using the name of ‘Davis’ is such a stupid collective moron.
Oh…no… wait… we have seen this before.
Don’t know what Ayers was thinking there!
But surely Ayers isn’t to blame for Angie’s terrifying lidless stare and the hideously askew ‘Menu’ from Monday.
HA TAKE THAT DAVIS YOU HACK.
More soon to come….
Son of Stuck Funky 
3/26: Today, a hyphen where hyphens do not go to set up someone else’s bad pun.
That’s not a fern. That’s the best the local Dale Evans can do for a “Make Your Own Salad Bar.”
Still, I’ll take a week of Cranky, “muddled aphorisms” at the restaurant booth over another day of having a certain cartoonist swoon over his beloved Bristol Board.
By the way, Ed, I know a bright young reporter from the Centerville Sentinel who’d be happy to interview you for your autobiography…assuming you have a few years to spare and you’re willing to spring for the pizza.
Ah, CBH you beady eyed nitpicker! The fern is there because the Jack Horner’s restaurant in Akron, Ohio had ferns. Or maybe I’m just making that up. But hey, I’ll take this week over Batty telling mundane stories from his life!
I suppose it was inevitable, but that doesn’t make this attempt to turn ‘Shaft into a writer any less dreadful. I suppose once everyone is a writer then no one will hate having written, or something like that.
It’s just going to be an excuse to plug Strike Four! The Crankshaft Baseball Book.
Artwork problem today. Why is Ralph facing Keesterman when talking to Ed? Could Dan Davis not find a previous illustration of Ralph facing the correct direction to cut and paste?
To show how we’re two people divided by a common language, in the UK tomato biscuit wouldn’t be soup but a cookie! Weird, wild stuff!
So this week’s Crankshaft puns have referenced:
Monday: Bisque, something Ed Crankshaft would never order
Tuesday: A bus driver’s contract, as if another “school levies” arc wase going on
Wednesday: A misspelled brand name
Thursday: Yet another character being encouraged to write yet another fucking book.
Tom Batiuk just loves writing gags that attract attention to his worst qualities as a writer. He’s proving he can humiliate himself without Batton Thomas’ help.
The horror that blankets Westview causing anyone who stays long enough to replace all their dreams with writing books of their banal lives in this banal city is spreading to Centerville in fiction’s most boring zombie outbreak.
I imagine it as a toxic pollutant from Lake Erie that turned the entire town into the Golgafrinchams from Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. They’re obsessed with making memoirs and documentaries about themselves, despite having nothing interesting to say, and not being very good writers anyway.
ComicBookHarriet and Iansdrunkenbeard,
Excuse me for continuing a discussion from your last post, CBH. I commented too late and I need to respond to the Iansdrunkenbeard. But CBH, I must dock you a point for zero calf pictures and no follow-up info on last year’s white calf. (-1 point deduction. Be Ware of Eve Hill handles all appeals. She is politely HARSH, yet fair!)
Here is the gist of Ian’s post:
🧿💠”I knew those calf pictures would bring you out, sp. You haven’t cracked wise in a while, and I’ve missed it.”💠🧿
Ian, you are correct. I feel a special kinship to CBH Cattle. It reminds me of helping my wife on her parent’s farm. She and I delivered a calf and got it to snort out the mucous. Admittedly, the cow did most of the work. The calf came out head and shoulders first. It began bleating. Momma heard her baby and kept turning to find the half delivered calf. The dangerous part was momma and baby were in an enclosed area. But none were hurt.
🧿💠”I remember reading some excellent work by Drake of Death and CBH, but I’ve lost those links. I would like to read those again and also request Harriet’s story about a sentient bbq grill.”💠🧿
Ian, I second that! SOSF LADIES! Please post how we can read your work. This includes Mela and Narshe. I keep encouraging bwoeh to write, but she keeps refusing me. Let me say, she is a #1 researcher.
🧿💠”The comics have been boring, except for Dick Tracy, which had an ultraviolent shoot-out, so I propose we bore each other.”💠🧿
That is my number 1 complaint about TB. HE’s got one maybe 2 years left if he stays healthy, but he wastes it on this drivel. And it’s not even good drivel. At least last year he sent Crank to Winnipeg. Now TB got rung through the wringer for the ridiculousness of that arc, but by golly, it was creative. It had a beginning, middle, and end. It was silly entertaining.
🏵️Dick Tracy. Boffo. Wow that is a great first act. What a prison break! What is it? There are 14 deaths so far? More’s a coming.
🥊Mary Worth. Moy has good beginning and good middle arcs, but boy! Oh boy! Does she ever ruin endings. She maintains a long history of bad endings. Then she wastes 2 or 3 weeks regurgitating the so called climax. I like the current story. Mary even got yelled at! Is that a first? But unfortunately, I know a putrid ending is right around the corner.
🧿💠”Is it against the rules to self promote? I think everyone should share their interests, passions, side hustles, and scams.”💠🧿
I mentioned I have written 13 books. Be Ware of Eve Hill is the pistachio loving villain in my 4th kids book,
*Dachshund Family Mysteries* I am writing my 4th fantasy story taking place before Noah’s Flood, called overall, *the Mindforce Saga.*. Then I have edited the KJV into so far, 4 easy to read compiled versions of the Bible books. Now here is where I can tie it into SOSF. JoshReads does the Comic’s Curmudgeon. Back on March 20, he presented an excellent description of how the first 5 Books of Moses were compiled. Now I do not agree with any of that. I think he is 100% wrong. Yet he does a wonderful job of presenting his info. I have spent many months to finish my Old Testament so far. Why have I done so? Because I believe all the Bible is the Word of God. I believe in almost all cases the books were written by whom they say they are. You make up your own minds, but give JoshReads a look at.
Ian, one last question. You posted several videos of a young woman performing in night clubs. Who is she?
Sir I appreciate you so much.
Sincerely,
SP
CBH, more calf videos please. 🙏
Today’s Crankfuckery
(Ed gets up and walks out the diner, only to get run over by Truck-Kun)
3/27: It’s as if Pam has no idea who Ed is.
Also, Holy clunky dialog, Batman.
Is Batiuk struggling to write a week’s worth of lame puns now? He historically doesn’t do “random weeks”, except maybe at the end of a year.
It’s too bad there wasn’t GPS when Pop Clutch had his heart attack.
GPS: “City Hospital. You will arrive at your destination in 12 minutes.”
Ed: “I can beat that!” (steps on the gas)
(I consider Ed driving slowly to the hospital to get a long line of cars behind him, while Pop Clutch was dying, to be when Ed crossed the Moral Event Horizon. Hence, I’m going to bring that up whenever it is relevant.)
Wow, great catch. Another one for the “attracting attention to his worst qualities as a writer” list.
In the Funkyverse, the death of Lisa is a tragedy, but the death of millions is comedy.
Ed, noooo!
Awesome!
Excellent! I love this!
I always imagined a conversation going something like this:
TB: This is the week where Bull kills himself by driving over a cliff on No Bottom Road.
Chuck Ayers: Great! A flaming car crash! I think the fireball should be orange and yellow.
TB: Not exactly. You get to draw a broken guard rail and one wisp of smoke.
CA: Can I draw two wisps of smoke?
TB: No!
CA: How about the moon?
TB: Well, okay. But only a crescent!
Ed and Pam’s cause of death was listed as “died after a long illness”, so Jeff could collect on their life insurance. The police also gave Jeff Ed’s blood-stained signature hat, which Jeff used to store the rock he brought back from Murania. Batton Thomas mocked Ed at his funeral, insisting that comics don’t have to be funny. The end.
Today’s Crankfuckery
The Daily Bleak
Local Old Asshole Causes A Massive Pileup of Cars Because He Thought That Speeding At 180 MPH On The Highway Was A Good Idea
Happt 54th birthday, Funky Winkerbean (to the comic strip, and happy 72nd birthday for the character himself)
Sometimes, when you’re away from the Batiukiverse for a while, and you return, it all takes on a sort of surreal, almost hallucinogenic vibe, like you’ve just stepped into some sort of alternate universe where nothing seems to make any sense. I mean, I know who Crankshaft is and all, but everything he’s saying just seems so alien and weird to me. I really pine for the days when BatYam would spend a whole week on Funky wandering around in some derelict house, or someone opening a letter. It was all so fraught with meaning, unlike this nonsensical patter.
I’m still amazed how he decided to keep this Crankshaft thing going after tossing his life’s work in an unmarked grave and throwing dirt and garbage over it. It’s somehow even more pointless than FW was. And man alive, that thing was pointless. Like a pencil with two erasers, with far, far less utility. But this meandering elderly folks’ humor, and that Batton (shudder) Thomas stuff…it’s why I still can’t bring myself to follow the damn thing. Unless it’s the bus driver, I never know who’s speaking anyhow.
And now he’s tossing Crankshaft into an unmarked grave and throwing dirt and garbage over it, just like he did with Funky Winkerbean and John Darling.
I think Batty might be starting to go a little Mort Winkerbean because the new Match to Flame is literally just an excerpted paragraph from the Match entry two entries before this one. But we do get a look at the mystical Battop where presumably all the magic of heady stories like “old man talks about buying a table and paper” and “a fat old man hallucinates a jogging robot” are written. Turns out it’s decorated in stickers like you’d expect from someone high school to college age.