What is Keesterman saying?
This is just the last panel of today’s Crankshaft strip, with the tail of the word zeppelin pointing where it should. (And with a ridiculous coloring error fixed.)
The artwork looks more like Keesterman should be speaking, doesn’t it? It’s practically a reverse angle of the May 19 strip, where Batton and Skip are the foreground characters. Which they should be, since they’re focus of the dialogue monologue. Today’s strip has the background characters doing the talking, even though they’ve been the focus characters this entire week.
This is such a grade school-level composition failure, that it looks like Tom Batiuk is passive-aggressively making a point to the “where’s Crankshaft?” crowd. “Oh, you want more Crankshaft? Fine! I’ll make him the biggest character on the page, while I continue talking about what I want to talk about!” I wonder how Mr. Batiuk, the young art teacher, would have graded this if one of his students submitted it.
Also: why do Ed, Ralph, and Keesterman all look like they’re talking? Only one of them should be talking. Ralph appears to be taking a bite. But his expression doesn’t match that action, unless that is the wryest piece of apple pie in culinary history.
When I made that Luann crossover parody, I spent a lot of time editing mouths, so that only the person speaking had their mouth open. And Tom Batiuk can’t put in that level of effort? Even when his entire comic strip can be built from Colorforms at this point? And when he’s getting paid to do this, and I’m not?
Son of Stuck Funky 
He should be saying that the band director’s parents made him.
Of course, Davis is responsible for the artwork, not Batiuk … it’s Davis who can’t be bothered to deal with the mouths open/talking issue. It’s also quite probably Davis who blocked the scene this way. Out of boredom? In protest? As a cry for attention? Some combination of all of these?
Meanwhile, over at Keesterman’s table:
“Did you see today’s Wrinkles? They’ve finally written out Grandpa Wrinkles … and replaced him with somebody called Flatulent Dumbass!”
How much decision-making responsibility does Davis have, though? We know Batiuk well enough to know that he dictates everything to be to his preferences at all times. So I’m more inclined to assign blame for the poor staging to Batiuk. Same goes for Ayers and Byrne, when they were the artists.
“That blowhard across the aisle hasn’t stopped talking since he got here an hour ago. If the one-armed guy only had two hands, he’d probably have strangled him by now. Or strangled himself.”
My version is: “I’m pretty sure that’s a gay couple. I’ve seen them here like five times.” Which is too short for the word zeppelin, but I favor clarity and conciseness over logistics.
Not that there’s anything wrong with it!
Are you guys going to come to my one man show, “Give ‘Em Hell, Donald Nixon!”?