Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis for May 24, 2024

Where’s Crankshaft?

Barlow: “Fish scales!”Mason Jaw: “I knew there was something fishy here!”

Heavy metal bands? So Claude Barlow was alive and working in the latter part of the Twentieth Century? Then his music would be under copyright and Mason Jaw should contact his estate.

What, did Batiuk have a carton of unused Claude Barlow strips lying around his studio when FW shut down, and now he’s packing all the “jokes” into a Barlowpalooza to help him run out the clock on this strip? If such is the case, one cannot help but admire his frugality…if nothing else.

Extra heavy on the potty.

Toilet humour eh.

Scale? Does music come in scales? I know it comes in keys…

Obviously, Crankshaft is too smart to get sucked into this story line.

So just who is this Barlow fellow , I looked him up not much in the way of music ?

I think what is most annoying is not that Batty destroyed his Crankshaft comic (which I enjoyed), but that he destroyed it so he could do this crap instead.

I’m this close to pulling the plug on this strip! IT’S CALLED CRANKSHAFT!!!!!!

Gheorghe Zamfir the master of the Pan Flute

Ha ha, it’s funny because we all know how popular heavy metal music was in the 1600s.

What a bunch of gibberish. Dinkle is turning into Abe Simpson.

Dinkle: "We can’t bust heads like we used to. But we have our ways. One trick is to tell stories that don’t go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville? I needed a new heel for m’shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. “Gimme five bees for a quarter,” you’d say. Now where were we? Oh, yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have any white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones…"

This arc blows

P 3: So is this strip lately.

This last week actually makes me appreciate the comic book store and Montoni’s stuff.

Who else thinks Dinkle will be tapped to compose the music for the movie?

Bathroom scales smells!!!!!!

If you want incomprehensible soundtrack music, anything by Charles Ives will do

knock knock whos there not crankshaft whos drinking a triple thick shake with buck

I’m feeling disappointed with the new direction the cartoonist is taking with the Crankshaft comic strip. I want to share a new type of comment where I randomly select a strip from the Crankshaft’s archive using the GoComics “Random” button and then comment on it. I will then decide if the randomly selected strip is better, in my opinion, than the present-day offering. I might omit some details to encourage you to read those strips. I welcome constructive comments and critiques.

Today’s Random Strip in Crankshaft History: Crankshaft from May 19, 2003. This comic strip is taken from a four-week-long story arc showcasing Ed failing his bus driver’s exam and needing new eyeglasses. This comic strip was the Monday in the fourth week of that story arc. In the first panel, Shane, one of the Roughriders, boards Crankshaft’s bus. He smiles and says, “There’s something different about you, Crankshaft!” In the second panel, Shane puts his hand on his chin as if in deep thought. Still smiling, he continues to tease, “Let me see if I can figure out what it is…” Ed cuts Shane off and tells him, “Grab a seat and sit down before they’re all gone, smart guy!”

Verdict: The random comic strip is part of a four week-long story arc featuring many funny jokes, the appearance of many characters, including the Roughriders. There was a strip on May 22 that mentions Ed’s mentor, Pop Clutch!

Crankshaft 05/24/2024. In the latest edition of ‘Dinkle Days’, Harry is spouting off dreadful one-liners like a lousy comic bombing on open mike night. To be fair, there were Dinkle strips like this in the early days of Funky Winkerbean. I wasn’t a big fan of those trips either. Then, as now, this type of strip is an interruption between the better story arcs.

Winner: Random comic. The random comic features Ed. The current strip features Dinkle.

Boo. Harry Dinkle. Boo.

Could this comic get any more obscure and boring? Who is writing it, AI?

Nobody gave any honor for the engineering breakthroughs in creating the electric pan flute and stomp pedals.

Good one Harry

It’s full of “brown notes”…

Don’t let Stephan Pastis see today’s “Crankshaft”. He might have a stroke.

“He was the first to introduce the pan flute into a heavy metal band.”

Was that a cast iron pan flute?

This is even creepier than usual today.

Can’t you do anything better?

Too often in sport or entertainment, a person of great talent and accomplishment will want to keep going as their abilities diminish, thus tarnishing how they are remembered by their fans. Well, at least people are still able to scroll back to earlier years to read a few much better strips and try to forget today’s atrocity. I leave you with that thought.