Tag: that unnamed cranky guy

Crank Calls

I was not so intrigued by Susan Smith’s reappearance yesterday, neither by today’s cameo by a…younger? Ed Crankshaft. Nope, what set these beady eyes to nitpicking was Ed’s peculiar POV in panel one. That angle and that distance just seem impossible on that narrow bridge. My curiosity compelled me to construct the scene from the opposite perspective:

Weird camera angles aside: so it looks like Batiuk’s gonna play the suicide card again, and for the second time on the same female character, and over the same leading man. Unbelievable. At least he knows better than to have Les come hastening after her to talk her down. Unless he’s about to leap out of Crankshaft’s bus. Speaking of old Ed, if indeed this strip is happening eleven years ago, he really went downhill between June 2011 and this cameo in June 2012!

 

Haikranky

Obligatory
Haiku post for today's strip
Where nothing happens

"Who spent most of his
Time at war with the world and
Ev'rything in it"?

We talking about
Phil Holt or that Ed Crankshaft?
Both? Makes me shudder

C'mon now, Durwood
Phil did not know a dang thing
About your mother

C'mon too, Mindy
Who here cares one iota
About your granddad?

Pete here wins the strip
Only offense is a smirk
Default win's a win

Choir Loft Capers

Link to Today’s Strip.

Is it possible to sue a comic strip for pain and suffering? Because today is unbearable. An agonizing compound fracture of compounding classic Batuikitis: the swollen grouping of tropes that chokes out all humor.

We have a restatement of yesterday’s problem.

We have a restatement of yesterday’s ‘joke’. (thinking outside something.)

We have references to Crankshaft.

We have Batiuk’s weird habit of refusing to reference Crankshaft by name.

Dinkle is present.

Dinkle speaks.

Taken as a whole, today’s strip is insufferable for people following Funky Winkerbean closely and incomprehensible for people reading one-off random strips casually.

I guess if I want quality dramatic storytelling about a wacky church choir and their pet cat sidekick, I’ll have to look to Guideposts to provide.

Spoiler Warning: The cat read ‘The Complete Funky Winkerbean’ in one sitting.
Waiting for natural disasters is an easier way to make money than door to door candy sales.
Music by Claude Barlow
Dinkle’s life story, like you’ve never seen it before.

The Price Is Wrong

Link To Today’s Strip

Unfunny premise + unfunny characters = unfunny gags. Connie wryly equates Morty’s sudden burst of altruism with a prescription drug mix-up, which strongly indicates she’s a born ‘n bred Westviewian too. The wryness of her delivery is a dead giveaway, like how New Jerseyans use “f*ck” as a noun, verb and adjective, often in the same sentence, typically while driving.

Now I don’t know whether Morty’s insurance covers it or if Funky’s footing the bill for it or what, but this Bedside Manor seems like a DELIGHTFUL place, all brimming with vitality, life, wisecracks and zany wholesome schemes courtesy of some of the most adorable old coots you’ve ever seen. It makes even regular Westview look like even more of a dump in comparison and it’s gotta be costing someone somewhere a pretty penny to keep housing the totally recovered Mort and his sidekick Connie there when there’s quite clearly nothing wrong with them at all. These are the things you find yourself wondering about when that day’s FW characters are talking about ordering an old catalog from the internet. Sigh.