Crankshaft – Page 25 – Son of Stuck Funky

Crankshaft Crossover Sunday

At home with the Winkerbeans — Click to enlarge

TB goes all meta on us today: yes, that is indeed the first panel of today’s Crankshaft comic. Now, it would have been really clever to have Ed Crankshaft reading today’s funnies and complaining bitterly about how unfunny FW has become. Instead, today’s Crankstrip is not only unrelated and unfunny, but it barely makes sense. And speaking of elderly Ed, put a red ballcap on Funky in panel 3 and I defy you to tell him and Crankshaft apart.

“Diversions” is what “they’re calling graphic arts now”? Who are “they“? I’m pretty sure graphic arts is still called “graphic arts”, and outside of the Help Wanteds, the newspapers I read don’t have a “graphic arts section” (or Diversions…my paper calls it the “Better Living” section). My paper does sometimes have articles that stop mid-sentence. That’s what they call a production error. If they want you to go to the web they usually put a link in the article.

I guess newspapers have now joined Wall Street bankers on TB’s List of Greedy Amoral Morons.

"Oh, is this yours?"

fw_100418_lg — Click to view larger version

billytheskink
April 15, 2010 at 9:01 am
I really hope this week doesn’t end with Apple Annie giving Les that lost manuscript and him being happy about it.

Merry Pookster
April 16, 2010 at 9:00 am
[A]ny bets on Apple Annie giving Les his lost manuscript in the next couple of days.

O.B. Dan
April 17, 2010 at 1:14 am
Annie hands it over to Les, who is so amazed and delighted he forgets to punch the bitch’s lights out for holding back on it so long.

April 18, 2010: the day that Funky Winkerbean completely lost any sembelance of linear, logical storytelling, and in the process sent a big “kiss my ink-stained ass” valentine to us, the readers.

Oh no she didn’t: By the way, here’s the manuscript you lost. I have been holding onto it lo, these many years. Sorry, but the last four chapters are missing; I used ‘em for asswipe. Bam, closure. The rest of the panel is taken up with little vignettes supposed to fill us readers in on the whole entire chain of events from the last ten years. Except, I thought that’s what the last three days’ strips were doing. Now the reader is expected to sort thru these postage-stamp size scenes and put them in order.

So Crankshaft did spend some time living on the streets? He sure looks it, as Summer Less pointed out. Where are his huge glasses? What clue is he getting from seeing Annie’s bio in a Playbill that must be 25 to 40 years old? Did Fallen Star get published (we see a hardcover copy), attributed to Les, making Annie a successful agent without her client ever knowing about it? Is this not the laziest, most inept, slapdash attempt at storytelling the comics have ever seen? Batiuk (and you too, Armstrong) present to the readers this steaming, senseless mess of a story, and the readers are expected to grin thankfully, just as Les does when he finally gets his stolen masterpiece handed back to him.

Well, Crank My Shaft!

Whaaaaaa? and double Whaaaaaa? This week we’ve gone from time-wasting non-punchlines to jam-packed exposition and mind-melting comics crossovers! Where to begin? Here’s an old man named Ed, looking for his daughter, the “well-known Chris Crankshaft”? If she’s well known and has an outlandish last name like that, why does Ed have to wander Central Park asking the homeless to help “locate” her? I’m not a long-time reader of Crankshaft, and I understand that Ed is stubbornly old-school, but has he not heard of the Google?