Author: ComicBookHarriet

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!

First of all, I want Banana Jr. 6000 to take a big bow. He very politely asked if he could interrupt the ceremony to celebrate Crankshaft’s fictional birthday, and I was pleased as punch to put things on pause for a couple days.

I have a very weird and very personal perspective on Crankshaft being a permanently 65-75 year old-ish WWII veteran born in the 20’s. I selfishly want to keep it. Because that puts Cranky and his cohort in the same generation as my grandparents and I want to live in a fantasy world where they lived forever as the greying but still active pillars of my childhood.

My affection for Crankshaft, as a character, in spite of his creator, is born from how I can see myself in Pam and Mindy (horror, I know) and see in Ed echoes of my own emotionally constipated, obstinate, and odd, dad and grandpa.

It’s a very personal bias that I’m not going to hide or apologize for and I don’t at all expect everyone to share.

But it does mean it’s easy enough to find a handful of genuinely funny Crankshaft strips every year. Even this year. Which kinda sucked.

Your nominees for…

The Best Crankshaft Strip of 2025

Suave for Men

May the Fourth Mayflower Be With You

Chiropractic Cosmic Irony

Going Nutmeg

Famous Last Words

Don’t We All

Acer Insomniatias

Who Counsels the Counselor?

And the winner of the Best Crankshaft Strip of 2025…

Acer Insomniatias

Wait. No. That’s the best Crankshaft Strip of 2017!

No! That’s the best Crankshaft strip of 2004!

Darn, so the best joke was recycled. Eh, I’ll still give it a pass. For me the statute of limitations on recycled jokes for a long running comic strip is once every decade or so.

Still, I can’t believe Famous Last Words did so poorly! That one was far and away my favorite. But once again, my bias is showing.

Panel of the Year

Blind Charge

Memory Lane

Batman Burns Batton

Lifelong Work Ethic

Driving Gear

I’m Your Huckleberry

Pillow Talk

Soap On A Dope

And you winner!

Soap on a Dope!

Welcome to the gallery, Lil.

They didn’t have a joke.

They didn’t have a goal.

They didn’t elicit an emotion (other than confusion.)

They didn’t convey any useful or interesting information.

They were….

The Nominees for

Most Pointless Strip of 2025

That Isn’t Even a Real Place

And Who is She?

And This. Definitely Needed. Three Panels.

Mindless Binging

Hopping Times at the HoJo.

Invasive Weeds

This Strip is Sponsored by Shillcon

Grounds for Termination

The strip that got the most points (ironic).

And This. Definitely Needed. Three Panels.

Happy Ash Wednesday and beginning of Lent to all the observant nitters and nittettes out there. In this somber season, those who practice the faith spend time reflecting on human mortality and frailty. We ponder our many, many, many faults, our unworthiness, and humble ourselves before a greater mystery. We then rejoice, as in our humility we find that while we are absolutely definitely assholes, at the same time we are infinitely precious.

I find this kind of ego annihilation that you only get when absolute guilt is mixed with absolute grace liberating. It lets me get on a stupid website and say, “I am a lazy moron. I don’t have to prove myself to anyone.” and smile.

Which leads us to this year’s recipient of The Slappy. Batton Thomas. A character that in the face of his own mortality holds a reporter hostage for years so he can recount his lifelong relationship with himself. And that is what is so insufferable about him. Batton talks of no one but himself. That is his greatest relationship, the one he has with his own ego. Narcissus staring at his reflection wasn’t this self absorbed.

And that is why only Batton is up for a Slappy this year. True, Jeff had a couple man-child moments, and Dinkle had a week long prophetic dream where God told him he was the greatest. But everyone paled in comparison to Batton this year. Batton and his stupid, thumb up, palm out, smirking, gesture of smug superiority.

You nominees for the Honorary Les Moore Backpfeifengesicht Award for Most Slappable Batton Thomas

Homeless Batton

Unironic Batton

‘Hardworking’ Batton

Rose-Tinted Nostalgia Batton

Unbearably White Batton

Neurodivergent Batton

Part-Time Imposter Batton

Unapologetic Batton

And the winner is…

Unapologetic Batton

Come on Batton, take a bow. In fact, go full Japanese dogeza, hit your knees, put your forehead in the dirt, prostrate yourself. Before who? Anyone. Anyone but yourself. Learn some humility, for heaven’s sake!