Banana Jr. 6000

Cup Holder Week Has Been Cancelled

I had so much to say about this week in Crankshaft.

Why did the week start with a holy war against cup holders and fancy armrests?
Why are fancy armrests an issue when you can simply ignore them if you don’t want to use them?
Who hates fancy armrests so much they’d choose a movie theater just because they don’t offer them?
Why are these the same seats the Valentine Theater had before it closed down, became a strip club, and re-opened? Was this some kind of 1940s strip club? (Knowing Tom Batiuk’s tastes, it probably was.)
Why did Crankshaft and Mary Marzipan enter the theater after Max and Hannah were cleaning it up, something you would do at the end of the night? What non-existent customers even made this mess?
Who did Ed and Mary pay for their ticket? Did they just walk into the theater?
Why are they on a date (confirmed by Mary) when she broke up with him in 2010? We haven’t seen Mary since her “bus driver PTSD“, at which time she and Ed were not depicted as a couple.
Who’s watching Max and Hannah’s small child?
Why is the theater down to two customers when it looked like this three weeks ago? How the hell is this theater viable?
Why have they already stopped showing Starbuck Jones III? Could they only afford one screening? Did it bomb harder than Rise of Skywalker?
How is this even a prank? Shouldn’t a prank confuse or mislead you? All he had to do was look at the sign.
Could Max and Hannah be any more boring, even compared to other couples in this boring universe?

Back To The Future

For the first time in awhile, this week in Crankshaft wasn’t straight-up Funky Winkerbean Act III. It starred Ed Crankshaft and his family, in a staple Crankshaft story: Ed’s barbecues causing a major disaster. But it was a great example of many things that are wrong with Tom Batiuk’s storytelling in general, and invites commentary for that reason. It’s going to be a cavalcade of TBTropes, some old and some new.

The week started with Mindy informing Pete that he’s “not really dressed for a grill-out” at her house. The suggested gear is, of course, protective gear against fire and explosions. Yuk yuk.

How does Pete not already know of Ed’s grilling misadventures? He’s been dating Mindy since 2017, and the “engagement tiger” incident was in 2019. They’ve been on multiple trips together.

On top of that, Ed’s grill-outs have resulted in criminal charges of destroying the earth! You’d think Pete would be aware of that incident. If the earth was destroyed, where would Pete get his comic books?

So What Does It All Mean?

This week, Tom Batiuk gave us a classic Funky Winkerbean story. Also, he posted some nonsense on his blog about Harry and Donna going back in time to play “Defenders” again.

This week’s Crankshaft is once again worthy of comment as an extension of Funky Winkerbean Act III. It gave us a Funkyverse staple: the “young people just starting out” story. Tom Batiuk loves this story, as he loves any story where he can just walk the characters through the procedure again. Even when it doesn’t make sense for the character, as it doesn’t with Pete.

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Within 11 Months

The DVD version of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith has a 75-minute feature called Within A Minute. Its purpose is to illustrate how much work went into producing one minute of the finished movie. It starts with the statistics: 910 people put 70,441 man-hours into this one minute. Then it shows a huge, three-dimensional chart of the hierarchy of these people. It reminded me of the “code” scene in Wreck-It Ralph.

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Everybody Needs A Screed

On April 18 – almost two months ago now – ComicBookHarriet promised you I would deliver a “screed of epic proportions” about the two and a half weeks of book signings that happened from April 17 to May 4. I referenced this promise on April 22 and May 25, but haven’t delivered yet. It’s about time I did. But I’m going to move the goalposts a little.

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