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.
We also know Batiuk is lazy … if Batiuk was really micro-managing the artwork, would there be all the copy/paste work we see? Would he not say “C’mon, Dan, that’s the 15th time you’ve used that same artwork of Batton Thomas?”
While we won’t ever really know (unless Davis or Ayers publishes some sort of tell-all memoir), I’m inclined to think that Batiuk gives the artists a pretty long leash. It’s easier that way. And it allows him to concentrate fully on his passion: writing. (And attending book signings….and reading comix.)
Batiuk is lazy, but he’s also self-deluded that he’s got high standards to maintain. I can easily see him micromanaging the hell out of his artists. Remember the composition I mentioned, where Ed, Ralph, Keesterman are in the foreground for no reason? 100% chance Batiuk made that decision. Because no one else would!
I resemble that remark!
“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!
These are very old men in Ohio. They have a whole lot of trouble with that attitude.
I wouldn’t know. My whole family is steeped in gayness.
I didn’t mean to imply that there was. These two men have been on so many dinner dates to the same two places that it suggests some kind of ongoing relationship. In a small town, people would notice.
Are you guys going to come to my one man show, “Give ‘Em Hell, Donald Nixon!”?
I like how exasperated Crankshaft looks at that explanation.
He’s belching… long, loud and proud.
RE: Sun. 5/24’s ‘Shaft:
Hey, look, everybody, it’s Eugene, in his first appearance since last May, when we saw him drop wisteria off at Lucy’s grave which were promptly removed the next day. And he’s back to rowing a boat on Summit Lake, like he did back in July of 2024. And, just like he and Lucy used to laugh at old people tiring out from rowing 80 years ago, now he’s the object of derision by…I’m not sure if we should know the generic blonde couple or not (it’s not Max and Hannah, it’s not Darin and Jessica…who am I forgetting?). Does this mean still more wisteria on Lucy’s grave on Memorial Day?
As CBH so succinctly put it during his last popping up, “Eugene’s only purpose when he appears is to pine for dead Lucy and reminisce over a summer’s worth of Summit Park dates from 80 years ago.”
A bleak tragedy and jabbering about a cruel, uncaring world is manufactured out of the wreckage his idiocy left behind.
It’s that great Funkyverse continuity at work again! Batiuk must have a Eugene arc coming up, but he randomly remembers that sent Eugene into the middle of the lake and never brought him back. Gosh, I wonder what it will be about! Maybe it’ll be about how he never got to marry Lucy because of Lillian, and he’s still not over it, but also wont do anything about it!
Which is why it’s so hard to care. Not doing something isn’t the moral victory Batiuk thinks it is.
I think that’s the central theme of the entire Funkyverse. Ordinary small-town people are faced with ordinary obstacles, immediately give up, and whine and/or smirk about how hard their life is. In that sense, Lisa’s Story is absolutely Tom Batiuk’s magnum opus. And that “it’s okay for you to go” strip is its defining moment.
They act like they’re side characters in one of his funny books. Acting that way is freaking stupid….as Japanese Marvel Zombie Horikoshi proved.
Given how stupid he is, it’s hard to care about Eugene.
Dang, that strip has been worse than Crankshaft. Then again Tommie and Dawnie are two idiots that are made for each other. I like how Dawn creeps around like her father does.
This setup reminds me of the old Mark Trail strip, where the word balloons would be attributed to the cabin in the background, while gigantic squirrels frolic in the foreground.
Remembering those who gave their all.
Yeah, he’s a real scumbag, isn’t he?
Yesterday’s Crankfuckery
Day 6 of Interview from HFIL Week
Keesterman: Haven’t you heard the news?
Ed: ’bout what?
Keesterman: Homelander is finally dead. He was stripped of his powers and his head was split open with a crowbar after futilely begging for his life.
Ed: Good. He was a goddamn psychopath who should’ve never been given superpowers in the first place.
Today’s Crankfuckery
(sigh)
I’m getting kinda tired of Eugene, and he doesn’t appear very often at all
“Uh-oh! It looks like Crankshaft is about to light his grill!” And with that, I’m tuned out for the week.
Isn’t Cranky a Veteran? I know Memorial Day is for those that have served and are now gone and not really meant for just those that served, but you’d think a strip with a former serviceman as its main character would have an actual Memorial Day remembrance strip instead of just another generic “Haha Crankshaft sucks at grilling.” post.
Yes, he supposedly fought in World War II. After he couldn’t play in the Major Leagues because he couldn’t read.
Also, I wonder if Sunday was supposed to be the Memorial Day strip, since Eugene was a WWII veteran also. Which may be the most thematically complex strip in Funkyverse history. In honor of Memorial Day, here’s a veteran we should remember. Also, I remembered I needed to get him out of that lake!
5/25: Someone has just discovered the word implode.
I’m assuming a post is upcoming about the final betting results of the latest Batton Death March Week. I can only imagine how much time it takes to tabulate it all, so just know that we appreciate your efforts BJr6K!
No that we know the outcome, what single bet, if someone had made it, would have resulted in the biggest payoff?
Yes, there will be a full breakdown and a standardization of rules going forward.
Crankshaft was supposed to be a bomber pilot. It seems impossible an illiterate person could have passed boot camp, much less being an officer, without knowing how to read. Also, how did a minor league pitcher qualify for a private pilot’s license?
Funkyverse lore makes zero sense if you think it through. If illiteracy prevented Ed from playing baseball (a sport that tolerated a wide range of ill behavior in those days), it would have prevented him from doing almost anything else. Maybe the most basic grunt troops can be illiterate, but not pilots or officers.
Illiteracy didn’t prevent Ed from playing baseball, per se. He did play in the high minor leagues. But illiteracy kept him out of the major leagues because he couldn’t read his own name on a lineup card, causing him to miss a crucial start when a major league scout was present.
“Illiteracy prevented Ed from playing Major League Baseball” is what Tom Batiuk wants us to believe happened. Not “Ed missed an opportunity to play Major League Baseball because of his own laziness, gullibility, and failure to manage his own condition.”
There is no way on earth that a starting pitcher of a top-level minor league wouldn’t know it was his day to start. And even if he did, starting pitchers don’t just take four out of five days off. They’d be expected to go to the ballpark, do other tasks, and generally be available if needed. Which does happen sometimes. Especially if the pitcher had some non-pitching skills.
This mean-spirited “prank” simply wouldn’t work. But Tom Batiuk is so addicted to silver age comic books, that he can’t write stories any more complicated than that. And he’s done this one many times. Lisa doesn’t get a message that her cancer has gotten much worse (and somehow doesn’t notice herself). Lucy hides one letter, and a marriage proposal somehow stays hidden for decades. Darin almost misses the letter that revealed that his mother was Lisa.
See my above comment about “ordinary obstacles, immediately giving up, and whine and/or smirk about how hard their life is.” To that, add “laziness, failure to manage their own affairs, and inability to push back when wronged.”
I’ve got two words for Ed Crankshaft’s sob story: Dock Ellis.
A few years ago, I actually went and looked up facts and figures. Barring severe, needs-institutionalization levels of intellectual disability, no one growing up in Ohio in the 20s-30s would have been this illiterate. He would have been educated at least through the 8th grade; if he couldn’t recognize his own name or a few simple words by that time, he probably would have been put into a “home” where he could be cared for.
Another in the long long line of Batiuk storylines that combine alleged social-justice realism with pivotal plot points that fall apart when you so much as glance at them.
It’s like his Just Say No thing that plagiarized the PSA Hanna Barbera made where a guy ages fifty years after taking a drag on a joint.
I can imagine someone with a very rural upbringing not learning how to read. But pro baseball was full of people like that. Shoeless Joe Jackson, the key figure in the 1919 White Sox scandal (the subject of Eight Men Out starring John Cusack), was considered illiterate. So this wasn’t a rare problem. The team probably would have known, and wouldn’t have put players in a situation where they had to read something.
Nowadays, literacy is common, but ballplayers may come from cultures that don’t use the Latin alphabet.
Oh, sure, but didn’t Crankshaft canonically grow up around Cleveland/Akron?
Bear in mind that even people considered “illiterate” can usually read a few words, including their name.
The most commonly used definition of “illiterate” is “unable to reliably determine sentence meaning, use short texts to locate a single piece of information, or complete simple forms.” It doesn’t exclude the ability to recognize one’s own name on a roster.
And your point’s well taken; if Ed couldn’t fill out a simple form of any kind, or read or write anything whatsoever, I think the team would have noticed by that point, and ensured that he was getting the information he needed.
Probably. Ed probably went to Centerview or Westview High School with Lillian in what must have been the mid-1930s, and they’ve both lived there ever since. Along with Eugene and Lucy. Such is the Funkyverse.
I’m reminded of Les Moore’s self-serving line “high school follows you” from his disgusting performance at Bull Bushka’s funeral. But… it doesn’t. High school is very easy to leave behind, unless you’re poor, or from a remote place. If you’re close enough to Cleveland to call yourself a suburb, there is absolutely zero possibility that high school follows you… unless you want it to. Or need it to.
I can’t tell if Batiuk thinks this is how the world works, thinks this is how it should work, or if he’s just too lazy to find out it isn’t true.
Shoeless Joe Jackson was born in 1887 in South Carolina. I have no idea how old Batiuk thinks Ed is now, but since Ed still seems to have been playing minor league baseball before the US entered World War II, Ed would have to have been born in 1920 or so, give or take a few years.
Given that Ed was (1) at least a generation younger than Shoeless Joe, and (b) from Ohio, a state which began compulsory education much earlier than South Carolina did, he should have had a lot more educational opportunity than Shoeless Joe did.
Most current-day baseball players who come from countries that don’t use the Latin alphabet are from Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan. And all of those countries have English as a compulsory subject in school. The ballplayers may not be fluent in English when they get here, but they presumably have seen the English alphabet enough to learn the English spelling of their own names.
I note that in the flashbacks to Ed’s time as a minor league ballplayer, he was seen wearing a jersey with “CRANKSHAFT” on the back. Somehow he must have managed to recognize his own uniform and not take someone else’s jersey by mistake, yet not have been able to match the name on his jersey to his name on the lineup card.
Today’s Crankfuckery (Happy Memorial Day)
(suddenly, a massive explosion is heard and Ed is sent flying into the sky at Mach 50)
5/26: Tired of waiting for Ed Crankshaft and Lillian McKenzie to die, Satan opens a direct portal to the Funkyverse.
As I said, someone thinks he’s messing with we beady eyed nitpickers. He’s just boring us
That goes for the caption contest… and every strip since too.
Once again a week of the Funkyverse where we take a turn towards Act 1 style insanity by casually having a black hole in the backyard. Mr. “There’s Crankshaft” has gone from dooming then saving the world with his pyrotechnic grilling skills to dooming it by breaking the laws of physics.
At least until it ends with Ed waking up from a nightmare, 50/50 bet on that.
“I pooped today!”
5/27: And the inanity continues at the expense of media personalities.
Sheesh, would somebody tell Batiuk what a black hole is? (HINT: It’s not a hole in the ground.) What’s happening this week seems like more like a sinkhole.
Of course he’s not going to give a sinkhole its right name. He’s pulling the same stunt Lynn Johnston does: making things too ridiculous.
I don’t remember Lynn Johnston doing anything as ridiculous as depicting a black hole in somebody’s yard. I had some issues with her depictions of family, friendships, and romantic relationships, but she didn’t try to delve into science-fictional scenarios that I can recall.
I’m thinking more along the lines of Mike bring home a bottle of Mazola from college.
pj201718nbca: I see what you are talking about — in the FBOFW strip reprinted 5/29/2026, there is a pile of items Mike brought home from college, and one of the items (at upper left) is a container of corn oil.
But that strikes me as Lynn Johnston’s attempt to do Mad magazine-style art work, where odd details are stuck into the background that don’t actually affect the story. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdcSJAUpUV8 where Lynn talks about being a fan of Mad and meeting many of its cartoonists.)
It’s a far cry from doing a week of strips based on the idea that there is a black hole in Crankshaft’s yard which threatens to swallow up the planet — wait, never mind, it was all just a dream.
Great photoshop from “Baja Gaijin” at CC: https://ibb.co/67c20Vkc
Match to Flame #241 is up, and he didn’t even repeat the previous blog entry this time!
Come on, Tom, you’re just inviting the snark with comments like that.
Thank’s Criswell! “We are all interested in the future, because that is where we’ll spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends, future events such as these will effect you in the future!”
But this Complete Funky volume contains the class reunion story where the past versions meet their “present” selves, so Tom included one of the strips as the image for the blog entry. And… well, there’s one really, really tacky bit…
I mean, is it just me, or is Generic Blonde Holly’s comment REALLY tasteless? “I’d rather have an eating disorder than turn into a Generic Potato Person”? That’s what she’s saying, right? I know Batiuk hates the idea of having an editor, but he could really use someone to look at these things and say “whoa, that CAN’T be what you want to put into print, is it?”.