Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis for February 11, 2024

“She should have left him in the freezer!”

“And you feel left out? Let me tell you how to get even with her!”

Not the place I expected a physics lesson! “INERTIA: a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.” Even THE CAT can’t be bothered.

All Sundays here are 3 panel jokes spread out to 7. This is a NO panel joke, unless like most of these the 8th punchline panel got cut off for 3 panels of “Hi, I’m me!”

So why does Lizard Lil look more unpleasant than usual? Is she afraid that Amelia is the reincarnation of her sister, come back for long-delayed vengeance? Is she shocked that an eight-year-old girl (that’s how old Emily is for today’s strip, right?) would talk that way? Or was she just cut-and-pasted from a strip where her expression made sense?

“Say, Ms. McKenzie, did you know that a couple of years ago Amelia and I were teenagers attending Westview High School? Whaddaya think happened?”

Better clean the snow off that staircase, Lillian, before a would-be customer slips and decides to sue…BWAHAHAHA!!! Who am I kidding? You NEVER have any customers!

Empty store again? Who wouldn’t want to buy encyclopedias and old appliance manuals?

Good girls is likes bad boys. So it mean you is bad girl eh.

It’s funny bc Lillian has no customers

It’s very telling this very dull strip is STILL better than a week of “Tom Bautik talks out of his butt about comics”. And at least while I still have no idea who the creepy twins are or who lillian is in relation to crankshaft, their STILL members of this strips side of the universe and not leftovers from Funky Winkerbean. I used not to complain about that.. but instead of say, having Crazy Harry and Crankshaft interact or something fun, most of it is “REMEMBER THAT OTHER STRIP I DID” or “REMEMBER THE SILVER AGE I SURE PREFER THAT TO COMICS WITH STORY”.

SO! What’s the point of all this? Aside from the one on Batty’s balding head?

“Bad boys”.

Bad boys?

Eh, whatcha gonna do?

If the twins are back to being kids shouldn’t Bull still be alive?

Where’s Kesterman?

Cats are the best pets for a book shop because they love the bookshelves and (depends on the cat) sometimes like the attention of the customers. One of the twins, Amelia, shows a definite tendency to “go for the wild side” and will be quite a character for this strip later on (if she’s left in it!)

Must be being factious!!!!!!

Does he keep his ear bud charger rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve?

Still no Crankshaft, but this is his neighbor, so I guess this is “Crankshaft Adjacent.”

What is this?? No comic books?? No Harry Dinkle?? No Band Box?? No Dead Lisa?? No Funky?? WHAT ARE HE EVER-LIVING F—K IS GOING ON HERE?

It’s been a long (ugly) time since Crankshaft was in this.

Tom and Dan also like bad jokes……..

maybe every sunday crankshaft could tell animal storys like mark trail . it would be better then this mush .

“Uh huh.” Long pause. “Um…do you have the punch line or was that it?”

There’s BAD BOYS and then there are bad boys. He’s in the latter category……

If Emily is seeking advice on how to sabotage her sister’s relationship and ruin her life, she has definitely come to the right person.

Why is Emily there anyway? Taking lessons on how to become a spinster?

A “bad boy” that talks all the time during class? What a rebel. /s

It’s probably Bernie Silver.

This strip has been up for 12 hours and nobody has said it yet? I’ll help.

Why do you read the strip if you hate it?

The main character doesn’t have to be in the strip every day.

There doesn’t have to be a joke every day, sometimes it’s just a slice of life. Or whatever.

/s

It’s interesting that a Lilliopsaurus/bookstore strip follows immediately after a week of Komix Koroner (so named because the owner and customer only seem interested in long-dead titles).

I have a hypothesis that TB was developing Lil and her store into the Crankyverse equivalent of Komix Koroner and he-who-shall-not-be-named—a place where he could have people spout nonsense about books, owned by a real live book author (a thing TB seems to view as the highest calling in life, though one he has never risen to himself—Dead St. Lisa’s Story is, in the real world, just a collection of Funky Winkerbean strips, not an actual novel).

Now that he is wholesale migrating FW characters into Crankshaft, I wonder if Lil is going to be de-emphasized and/or turned into a straight-line-feeder character (like most of the women in his strips).

So did Ms. McKenzie.