ComicBookHarriet

The Crankshaft Awards 2023, Part 7!

Okay. Holy Crap. What the heck is going on in this panel? Can someone explain it to me?

This is a non-Euclidian nightmare. Allow me to draw with my mouse, in paint, how it appears this is working…

*Okay, maybe this art thing is harder than I thought.*

But Crankshaft simply cannot be standing that way, half in the back with his foot sunken through the floorboards, his ass embedded in the side panel, wedged behind the front seat. It looks like the passenger door is open just a crack. Is he flat? Is he compressed like a squid squirming through a tiny gap in a bulkhead? I haven’t seen clipping this bad outside of free to play mobile games.

And if he’s putting the pizza in the back seat, why is he facing the front? It looks like he’s about to slide the box into the driver’s side seatback pocket.

My detailed research on the subject has proven to me that Davis was always a copy pasta king, but he’s gotten abominably LAZY in recent years. Completely unable or unwilling to put together a new scene or layout and have it make sense. Compared to his early days of 2017/2018, it’s night and day.

Is this flawless, or even above average? No. I mean, look at that pony tail, hairline, and hat combo in panel 4! It’s obviously still made of a bunch of clipped out paper dolls with new clothes pasted on. But the art fills the panels without weird crosshatched voids taking up the space where larger speech bubbles used to be. At least the car doesn’t randomly turn into a pickup truck in one panel.

The Crankshaft Awards 2023, Part 6!

Y’all ready for some art!

After an entire week of Crankshaft sawing an ice sculpture in half with a chainsaw, where the punchline for five days straight was just, ‘Crankshafts sawed an ice sculpture in half with a chainsaw.’ All done with the pantomime flat framing of an elementary school play, I think we’re all ready for some art.

‘Panel of the Year’ is all about art. About something profound, interesting, traumatizing or ridiculous happening in a single frame. It can be an inflection point for an entire story, the climax that would be clipped for the movie trailer. Though in previous years nudity and death have won out. We had nudity running AGAINST death this year, for the matchup of the ages.

The Crankshaft Awards 2023, Part 5!

First of all, a very happy Valentines Day to all of you out in Funkyville. I hope all of you out there spent some time with a loved one. Maybe some of you don’t have a romantic partner, but that’s fine. Love just as deep and just as powerful exists between parents and children, brothers and sisters, friends, companions, crazy cat ladies and their felines, old men and their lap dogs. And never underestimate the insane affection that can exist between a part time blogger and the assortment of anonymous cartoon icons and wacky user names that fill the comments section.

“Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”
… It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision – it is then that Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

However you spent the day, it had to be better than poor Becky and Wally’s Valentines back in 2006.

*Sure, swear in front of your toddler…it’s not like you bothered to teach her English yet anyway.*

Crankshaft Awards 2023, Part 4

WARNING WARNING WARNING!

Today’s post has been rated M for MATURE.

Those with delicate sensibilities, prudish tendencies, or weak gag reflexes are advised to use their own discretion or indiscretion today. Whichever they have in greater abundance.

Some of you may have been shocked or confused by this awards category more than any other. We don’t often expect unveiled lust illustrated in our undying legacy zombie strips, sandwiched as they are between local sports and local obituaries. At least, normal people don’t. If you’ve been in the strip snark blogosphere for very long you’ve come to expect a certain level of geriatric raciness popping up in Mary Worth and Gasoline Alley.

And Crankshaft isn’t an exception. Crankshaft has NEVER been an exception. Cranky has been a lady killer from the very beginning.

The Crankshaft Awards 2023, Part 3

Today’s award is near and dear to my heart. Because it’s all about the long suffering ladies of Crankshaft.