Crankshaft – Page 16 – Son of Stuck Funky

I Get Carried Away

As I mentioned yesterday, we really have no timeframe for the events in Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean. I, therefore, find it funny to think that Lillian’s been on the job for only a day or two and has immediately been proven unsuitable.

I think that’s the first time I’ve found the strip “funny.” So, good job.

I don’t know why Batiuk insists on doing these terrible crossovers. Scratch that–I do know why. It’s to get people interested in reading the other strip. The thing is, if you’re telling people you’ve got something else that they may like, that something else better not be Crankshaft.

The Old Rugged Crossover

Link to today’s strip.

So, if you’re lucky enough that you don’t follow Crankshaft, you’ll have no idea who these people are or what’s going on.

I rarely look at it; Batiuk is insufferable enough when he’s trying to be serious, but he’s unbearable when he tries to be funny. The short version is that a church organist died right in the middle of a service, and the much-loathed Lillian was drafted as a replacement. Although based on today’s thing, it looks like she’s not so much a replacement as a downgrade.

My question is this: when we see Crankshaft in Funky Winkerbean, he’s a barely sentient pile fastened to a wheelchair in the assisted living home. In Crankshaft, he and Lillian appear to be roughly the same age (if anything I’d say she’s older). So why isn’t she in Bedside Manor in a similar condition? “Well, we’d have no story.” That’s no excuse, we haven’t had a story in years.

Let me say, too, that the timeline is very confusing here. The “organist dies” bit just happened in Crankshaft. I suppose it’s possible that today’s strip is happening years later, but the scheduling of the two strips makes it seem like it’s all happening at the same time. Not even a fig leaf of dialogue, “Well, I’ve been the organist now for ten years” or something (I don’t claim to be a writer). If you’re going to be confusing, it’s a good idea to have something of substance to make it worthwhile to unravel.

“Lillian” sure does have a lot of squiggly L’s. Good thing her last name isn’t Llewellyn.

They’re All Writing in “Lisa”

Strips like today’s really just make Batiuk’s habit of writing his strips so far in advance extra hilarious. Not only is nobody wearing a mask and everyone is basically touching, you have a roughly hundred year old man on oxygen right in the middle of them. And it’s not like the global pandemic just sprung up in the last week when it was too late to tweak the strip. Batiuk’s had nine months where he could’ve had the artist at least draw masks on the characters to make it look like it reflected reality.
Les blatantly ogling Funky’s ass with both of his hands in his pockets while his Lesser Wife is standing right next to him is extra awkward.
When did Crazy Harry’s wife die from cancer/get murdered by him/starve because his part time job at a comic shop couldn’t feed them both? It’s especially sad when you’re a Funky Winkerbean character whose tragic untimely death doesn’t even merit an arc, or Les silently staring at your obituary in the paper.

Nocturnal Dietitians

Link to today’s strip

So they left an hour after the fair closed…and then drove a funnel cake to the Bedside Manor? How late is it? Our county fair closes at 10:00, and I’m guessing that is about standard. It’s got to be approaching midnight. What kind of nursing home lets people just wander in at midnight?

And poor old Gramps has been abandoned alone in his wheelchair, completely clothed, in the middle of the night. Where’s the nurse on call? The only reason he’s calm and smiling is from huffing the cheap nitrous oxide they slip into his ‘oxygen’ tanks to keep him passive and pliable. What kind of cut-rate elder warehouse is this? The kind where the miserable staff hide from the patients in their break room snitching jello snacks and swapping pills.

I mean, look at the heavy lidded eyes of the lady in panel one and tell me she isn’t baked out of her mind on a delicious cocktail of the nursing home specials, oxycontin, seroquel, vicodin, and Miralax. Dinkle could come marching in with an entire rock band, and she would barely be able to blink.

Scare Thee Well.

Link to today’s strip

Well Mindy has not only annoyed all the exhausted carnies cleaning up the grounds by sticking around an hour after close, she’s now terrified them by randomly shouting into the darkness.

And we’re supposed to be touched as Mindy waxes all nostalgic about a fair trip where they stood in one place for upwards of five hours and blew several hundred dollars on a Tawny the Not-Talking Tiger rip off?

I just realized that the Tiger is Mindy. They were both handed out as a prize to someone who hadn’t really done anything to earn them except hang around too long being pathetic. Pete was just as enthusiastic to get Mindy as she was to get the tiger. Both are pretending they’ve won something great when in reality they’ve been given a cheaply made air-filled squeeze toy by a bored uncaring carnie clown who is tired of waiting for his shift to end.