Son of Stuck Funky – Page 35 – Son of Stuck Funky

This Week In Crankshaft: The Gutter

After a brutal fight in the virtual blog writer’s room, I’ve emerged to provide analysis for Crankshaft this week. So congratulations to Banana Jr. 6000 for his victory.

A few hours ago I was standing in the kitchen, freshly washed from a day on the tractor, trying to explain to my housemate just how uniquely terrible this week was. As a woman with cardboard long boxes in her closet, a Star Wars tattoo on her ass, and more action figures than socks, I’m ready to say it: I’m frikken sick of comic books. Superhero fatigue has hit SOSF big time. It’s part of why I stealth-ended the year long Dead Skunk Head Analysis this fall. I was just kinda done with the Funkyverse’s weird fetish for superheroes. Maybe I’ll revisit some of it someday. But ugh, not for a while.

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.

Continue reading “Everybody Needs A Screed”

A Very Funky Week

Welcome to the second installment of This Week In Act IV. This Crankshaft arc had no characters or overt ideas from act IV. But it was still a cavalcade of everything that sucked about latter-day Funky Winkerbean, and how that suckitude has infected Crankshaft.

Let’s start with Monday’s strip. The previous week was about Ed Crankshaft soliciting Montoni’s to sponsor his softball team. Ed told lame jokes for a week, then it ended with Mindy and Pete at the softball game, meeting the detestable one-armed news reporter Skip. I ended last week’s post by calling this “undue attention from the local media.”

I undersold it. Because now there’s a frickin’ TV reporter at the game! Are they broadcasting live? Is it viewable on my ESPN app, between kabaddi and the New Zealand pro basketball league? Can I bet on Summer Silver Senior Slowpitch Softball Society games on DraftKings? Did they really need two media outlets to report on a 93-year-old softball player turning 94? It’s like something out of The Onion. “Local Old Man Is Now Slightly Older.” How much media coverage does this small town need? Especially when 60% of residents are content creators themselves?

A Ghostly Premonition

Oh my Lisa, it IS!?

Well, there’s one clip art mystery solved.

No Passtime For Old Men.

We here in the Funkyverse commentary community are currently gritting our teeth through the second week of ‘Senior Baseball’ hijinks in the copy-pasta nightmarescape that is Crankshaft. The art has been awful, and the gags as limp as a hand-me-down training bra. On the upside, at least this arc involves Crankshaft himself, and I would even venture that today’s strip comes closer to an acceptable joke then we’ve been used to so far this year. It’s inoffensive, and I have a sneaking suspicion it might make the shortlist for best of 2024. Though this says more about the dire state of comedy in 2024, than the quality of the strip itself.

For those of you new to the Crankensphere, Cranky’s been on a senior baseball/softball league for nearly 20 years, giving Davis plenty of clipart to select from this week. We’ve even already had a week of Davis, senior baseball material in 2017. Looking at those gives a good indication of how far his photoshop efforts have fallen off.

And hey, at least I’d say the vast bulk of these strips are tolerable to good, with a few real gems. So if you wanted to actually ENJOY Crankshaft this week, take this little trip down memory lane with me!

2005