I want to take off my snarker hat for a moment, and talk seriously about the future of Crankshaft.
We thought the past week would be yet another week of Skip Rawlings’ endless, pointless, onanistic interview with Batton Thomas. It turned out to be something much worse.
After what we saw this week – Tom Batiuk using the title character of Crankshaft as a tool to bash readers who want to see more of Crankshaft in the strip, and additionally as a strawman for Tom Batiuk’s tired “comic strips have to be funny” canard – there is one inescapable conclusion:
It’s time for Ed Crankshaft to die.
And I don’t mean that maliciously. I mean it in the way that a long-suffering family pet, who can’t be cured or even helped, needs to die. It’s a gut-wrenching decision to have a pet put down, but sometimes it’s the merciful thing to do.
Because the way Ed Crankshaft was used this week is appalling. How much do you have to hate your own creation, and all of its followers, to use that creation to mock their desire for more of it? I haven’t seen a production insult its audience this much since 1968.
And this isn’t the first time Batiuk has acted like this. He killed off John Darling so the syndicate could no longer use the character (even though no one would ever want to). He’s bitter about the name Funky Winkerbean, because he thinks it held the strip back; the character Funky Winkerbean got pushed into the background. When Funky did appear, his arcs tended to center on his misfortunes: alcoholism, obesity, ego, incompetence, bad luck. And now Batiuk is bitter that readers want to see Crankshaft in Crankshaft, so he used the character to mock them. Notice a pattern?
The worst part of it is: these are his genuine fans. “Where’s Crankshaft?” isn’t something this blog thought up. It’s a common sentiment in online comment areas, from people who presumably enjoy the comic strip as Batiuk intended. They prefer Ed’s antics to the self-indulgent meandering slop Batiuk has been filling it with since Funky Winkerbean ended.
These are the people Batiuk should be trying to please. Or at least, listen to. “Where’s Crankshaft?” is essentially positive feedback. It affirms his decision all those years ago to give Crankshaft his own world. People seem to enjoy the cranky old bus driver and his antics.
Personally, I have no strong feelings about Ed Crankshaft. I don’t like or dislike him more than any other character. He’s a selfish, egotistical, malicious, unemployable jackass, but so are most male characters in the Funkyverse. But I do think Crankshaft deserves some dignity. He does not deserve to be used as a punching bag by an arrogant creator trying to make a point.
There are several reasons why the death of Ed Crankshaft would be beneficial to Crankshaft as a whole:
- It’s way, way overdue. Ed Crankshaft is at least 106 years old. I base that on the fact that he played for the 1940 Toledo Mud Hens, and the youngest member of that team was born in February 1919. It’s also consistent with other mileposts of his life. He fought in World War II. He was an advocate for black baseball players in the early days of integration, which would have been the late 1940s. He played professional baseball in Cuba, which ended halfway through the 1960 season. His daughter Pam was a student at Kent State in 1970, making her birth year about 1950, at which time Ed was in his early 30s.
I know there are some individual strips that contradict that chronology. Like when Crankshaft claimed to admire Vic Power and Rocky Colavito growing up. But I think those were all caused by Timemop. If Tom Batiuk can use a time-traveling janitor to fix all his continuity errors, I can use a time-traveling janitor to break them again. Nudge!
If Batiuk truly believes his comic strips are the only ones where characters age realistically, it’s time to let nature take its course.
- It would attract attention to the strip. Tom Batiuk loves media attention, and he loves killing off his own characters to get it. This would be another opportunity to do that. Alert the New York Times.
- It would require no new writing or artwork. We already know Ed’s future, because it’s been shown in the strip. During the “Funky Winkerbean is ten years in the future from Crankshaft” era (2007-2022), Ed was depicted in FW as a decrepit husk.
We also know where he’s going to die: at a baseball game. So no new story needs to be written. Existing art can be repurposed or recreated. Which is a common practice in Batiuk’s work nowadays.
- It would be a nice Continuity Nod. The Funkyverse loves revisiting its own stories, and this would do that.
- It would be a satisfying end. It would bid farewell to the character in a way that lets readers and other characters say their goodbyes to the cranky old bus driver. In other words, it would be the opposite of what happened in Star Trek: Generations.
- It would signal the strip’s change in direction. Have you ever seen (or been part of) a couple that really needs to break up, but they won’t pull the trigger on it? They just hang around together, hoping things will get better? Ed Crankshaft’s continued presence in Crankshaft feels like that.
Batiuk clearly wants to turn the strip into Funky Winkerbean Act IV, full of comic books and writing awards and Dinkle and Montoni’s and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and interviews of himself and cheap award-baiting. And Ed Crankshaft is in the way of all that.
If I’m right that Batiuk is bitter about being pressured to include Ed in the proceedings, the best thing he could do for his readers and himself is retire the character permanently. It would end the “Where’s Crankshaft” questions, because readers would know he isn’t coming back. (Though death can be a dubious thing in the Funkyverse.)
- It would let Tom Batiuk do what he claims he wants to do. Batiuk constantly complains about having to be a gag-a-day writer. If Ed Crankshaft isn’t around anymore, there’s a lot less need for gag strips in Crankshaft. It removes a writing crutch Batiuk has leaned on for far too long. And it calls his bluff. You want to write serious drama, not gags? Fine. Get rid of the main character you have to write gags for.
Of course, he’d also need to get rid of Dinkle. But that would only take one panel:
And if Tom Batiuk doesn’t want to kill off Crankshaft or Dinkle, I’ve got another character he can get rid of:
Son of Stuck Funky 
