Tag: Crankshaft

Floor Bored

Link to today’s strip

As BeckoningChasm so succinctly put it yesterday….” Mr. Batiuk, no one likes Crankshaft. No one. You cannot make people like Crankshaft by putting its terrible characters into Funky Winkerbean. No one will ever like Crankshaft. Just like people no longer like Funky Winkerbean.”

So apparently Batty will be spending A WEEK on a CRANKSHAFT character looking for a decoder ring in his attic. Twelve thousand dangling plot threads and THIS is what he’s wasting his time with. There comes a point when old 1950s comic book nostalgia stops being “cutesy” and becomes genuinely disconcerting. BanTom reached that point YEARS ago. And now, in his inimitable style, he’s absolutely piledriving it into the solid bedrock beneath the ground. Sigh.

Swolb Tfahsknarc

Link to today’s strip

Some of you loyal SoSF readers might think it’s all fun and games here at SoSF World HQ in lovely downtown Camden (located in the heart of Camden’s Snark District, right next to the Mark Trail Building), but in reality there’s WAY MORE TO IT than that. Like today, for example, when we were forced to summon our Special Code Breaking Team away from their families, friends and parole officers on a national holiday just to decode BanTom’s mystery puzzle JUST FOR YOU! After many frantic seconds of toil, they succeeded in breaking TomBat’s secret code and, at the risk of receiving annoying letters from a hack law firm, we’re going to reveal those results RIGHT F*CKING NOW, whether Comics Kingdom likes it or not. Ready? It says…..

“IF I CAN MERGE MY TWO STRIPS INTO ONE I’LL ONLY HAVE TO DO HALF THE WORK”

Wow, a stunning revelation about the future of FW and that other comic strip he writes! You know the one I mean, the really shitty one about the obnoxious bus driver. No, really, it’s real, I’ve actually seen it a few times. Obviously that idiotic SJ decoder ring gobbledygook will come into play here, even though a) no one under seventy even knows what a “decoder ring” is and b) even fewer care. Then again, I might be biased as I lost all interest upon seeing these characters from that other comic strip, as I’m sure most of America did as well.

No, Not! Really? Huh.

Link to today’s strip

“The Paper”…that’s real cute, BanTom. I had to double check and make sure this is actually a FW strip and, sadly, it is indeed. Although I am aware of Pam and Jeff, I know almost nothing about the Crankyverse and honestly I’d prefer to keep it that way. I checked it out a few weeks ago and saw a funeral and a woman stabbing a comic book and that was enough for me. Where is this going? What is the point? Beats the hell out of me. I’ll be moderately surprised if it doesn’t have something to do with a certain fictional comic book title. Then again I’ll be moderately surprised if it has anything to do with anything.

We turned left at Montoni’s

The joke in today’s strip appeared in Sumerian cuneiform. It likely dates back even further in oral tradition, as seen in the following paleontologist reconstruction:

Tilmily and Amtrilia

Of course back then, the trilobite’s twin didn’t step all over the punchline like Emily is doing today. And this “teachers are great” business? Hoy, Centerville schools must be in shambles.

Is Nate worried as all get out about what these two think of the school or what? Students moving TO Westview really is the rarest of rare cases, I guess, and he really is terrified of losing them. I don’t think Emily and Amelia’s mother cares half as much about their first day of school as Nate seems to.

Sortwhere is this going?

The red blue carpet tour continues in today’s strip. The Westview hive mind has fully taken control of Emily and Amelia now, as they both smirk at Nate’s anti-joke and don’t seem to even consider fleeing at the very sight of Les.

Given that Nate has shown the sisters “The Bleat” (which is really more min comm than mass comm) in addition to the band, can we assume that, like the band, Les’ video journalism fiefdom is failed levy-proof?
Of course we can! The last time Les didn’t get what he wanted, I could still watch UPN on my analog television.

By the way, I’m still wondering where the news desk that Cindy and Channel 1 donated went. “The Bleat” clearly isn’t using it. It’s rare that TB makes a plot point and then ignores it or forgets about it later…