ComicBookHarriet

The Crankshaft Awards 2023, Part 2!

Seems like Tom decided to have his own little comics awards season in February of this year too. But I’m shocked on how he judged and awarded ‘Death of the Justice League’. You’d think he’d be happy to that the series brought back to the fore one of the mopiest, wingiest, most melodramatic DC characters of the Bronze Age. The Pariah! The guy who dramatically whined his way through the destruction of an entire multiverse with a mouth so wide you’d could fit Solomon Grundy’s fist inside.

You think Tom would have just eaten up Dark Crisis, especially when it starts with Pariah killing his dead wife for not being real enough. Even in a endless universe, it’s all about HIM, and his torment.

Speaking of Torment!

Cranky Awards season marches on!

The Crankshaft Awards 2023: Part 1!

Welcome nitpickers, and snarkers, and funkers of all ages to the First Annual Crankshaft Awards! In honor of our surviving strip, its surviving protagonist, and the dedicated team of dedicated cartoonists that put Crankshaft together, I have created the following award to hand out.

In this piece, I tried to capture the essence of Crankshaft in 2023. Thus, I spent about ten minutes using art I stole off of Google scribbling this together in MS Paint and called it good enough.

A Year of Crank!

At long last, and without further ado, your nominees for

The Crankshaft Awards 2023!

Voting commences immediately, and will be open for about a week!

Vote Here!

The Horrifying Return of Dinkshaft.

Now that we’re back at St. Spires, TFH has whipped up another vastly superior interpretation of Sunday’s strip.

I wonder if Batiuk realizes how tone deaf Sunday’s strip was to the religious set? It’s one thing to shout about football fields being for marching bands. But screaming from the choir loft that a place dedicated to the worship and reverence of a higher power is just another venue for your own self-aggrandizing artistic pursuits comes across as blasphemy to the believer and insensitive to the agnostic.

Massaging the Truth

Correct me if I am wrong, but Ed going to get a massage is it a new arc for Crankshaft? I find this story-line original and funny. How about you?
Sorial Promise, January 19, 2024

Funny? Tolerably so, for me at least. The last three have at least been within the same universe as recognizable comedy. This should be the baseline of Crankshaft, not a week of no jokes, no conflict, no real plot, as one hunk of stale toast hands the keys to a failure of a restaurant to another hunk of stale toast and his pretzel stick appendage of a partner.

Original? Well, Cranky is no stranger to a massage. Back in 2014, when he threw out his back, his resistance to a massage served as the concluding conflict of the plot. And by the end…things started to look pretty…familiar.