I am not even going to dignify the last week of Crankshaft with any kind of detailed response. Y’all have lambasted it well and truly in the comments here and elsewhere, and there is nothing I want to add.
Except to point out that the exact same Batton face was used twice today, just flipped horizontally. I would call it lazy, if Davis hadn’t gone above and beyond with his stock image searches to bring Batton’s sepia toned flashbacks to stilted nonsensical life.
Let us go back to an earlier time. When the art was fresh, but the writing was just as insufferable.
To re-orient ourselves into Chien’s Story,
In 1998, Chien was introduced as a wannabe avant garde, misanthropic snarker with a goth sense of fashion.
I posited that we should be asking four questions when going over Chien’s history.
1.) Is Chien truly unique in personality?
2.) Where does Chien come from?
3.) Is Chien morally/intellectually/philosophically justified in the author’s eyes?
4.) What can Chien’s portrayal tell us about how Batiuk views and writes the internal lives of women?
From 1998 to 2000 we saw Chien and her best friend Ally working for the school yearbook and newspaper. We saw them butt heads with Bull Bushka over including pictures of the football team in the yearbook, and in the next year they published a hit-piece in the school paper about the hypocrisy of the new dress code.
In my analysis I pointed out the many many times Chien was demeaning and dismissive toward ‘The Cool Kids’. I posited that while this was believable for her character, Batiuk does a ham handed job of framing it, never realizing that by making Chien an intellectual elitist that gets off on being an outsider, he turns her into just another kind of bully.
And now we reach September 11, 2000. And a disaster of an arc begins.
First things first. This strip. I will give THIS ONE strip credit.
This nearly wordless strip establishes that Chien dresses the way she does because she personally thinks it’s cool and likes it. She is literally doing it for an audience of one, herself. This helps to make her sympathetic.
NOW THE HORROR.
Your friends call you ‘dog’? Kay. And what is up with this second person narration? Is this some kind of Chick Tract.
(Kind of)
No, of course you’re not like them Chien. You’ve never mocked or belittled, pointed at and humiliated others because you thought you were better than them.
Oh wait…
But no. You’re not like them. They’re preps and dress preppy.
Oooooookay. Don’t even really know where to begin to pick this one apart. Like, it’s 2000, right? Wouldn’t adults expect classrooms to be wired for telephones?
Batiuk is obviously trying to put his Boomer audience in the shoes of a Gen X student. But barring the technology upgrade how does Batiuk even show that school is different.
And then there’s the nonsensical Columbine namedrop over the top of blatant and egregious bullying? What does that even mean? What has changed?
The going popular narrative being bandied about at the time was that Columbine was the result of preps bullying outsiders, and there was much hand wringing and pushing of anti-bullying initiatives. Why are we seeing bullying?
Batiuk is, once again, incorporating a real life tragedy into in little universe in the most stupid way. Some of you may argue he does this to grandstand and get accolades. But I also think there’s a weird coping element to it. He takes a problem that troubles him, shoves it awkwardly into his playhouse, and solves it to his own satisfaction. Like a kid whose parents are fighting soothing themselves by making the dollies kiss.
But wait. It gets worse.
I have no words. I can only respond using a visual aid.
For fucks sake. It’s like Batiuk is writing a self-aggrandizing Tinder profile for Les.
So, all this boils down to, “You are Chien, you think about Les Moore.”
BARF.
Buckle in folks. This one’s a doozy.
Son of Stuck Funky 