Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis for October 25, 2024

To borrow from (unfortunately) Woody Allen, will somebody please walk into the restaurant and smack them all with a large sock filled with horse manure?

Mopey Pete should be in a pine box.

Mind-duh disapproves? At long last she shows some brains, and that means. . . oh, my. Don’t let the others tell you to investigate the strange sounds in the basement, Expendable Blonde character!

zzzzzzwhere’s Crankyzzzzzzzzzzz

Meanwhile back in Centerville, ghost dead Eugene-O-The-Wisp’s undead rotting corpse is slowly rowing the hovering the rickety old boat through the air, heading for The Village BooksWitch. As the ominous music is gets louder and louder! Wakes up old Lizard. For the ghost of dead Eugene is here for revenge! Lizard Lil screams but ain’t nobody is come for rescue. The ghost of dead Eugene is ties a rusty old anchor around the old Lizard and slowly rows back through the air towards the eerie lake and drags the screaming lizard to the bottom of the lake! How’s that for a scary story? It’s called storytelling.

You know, I would be VERY uncomfortable having some guy hanging around like that and I didn’t know who they were. I’d be telling him to take off the boxes or leave. At this point it’s just unsettling.

What happens when the pizza box guy has to go to the bathroom?

Mopey Pete is looking especially punchable today.

Do we even know who is in the boxes?

The real horror lay not in the storm raging outside Montoni’s Pizza, nor in the flickering candlelight that cast distorted shadows across the walls. No, the true horror began long ago, in the twisted life of a boy who had once been innocent.

The politician wasn’t born a monster. He had come into the world like any other child—small, fragile, full of wonder. But that wonder was crushed beneath the weight of his father’s cruelty. His father was a man of deep, festering anger, a tyrant who wielded words like knives. He called the boy stupid, worthless, day after day, until those words seeped into his bones and twisted his soul.

At first, the boy tried to fight back. He wanted to believe he was more than the names his father spat at him. But over time, the constant barrage of hate wore him down. His heart, once soft and full of dreams, hardened. His mind, once open to the world, became a prison of rage and resentment.

As the boy grew, so did the monster inside him. He started small—torturing animals, lashing out at anyone weaker than himself. It gave him a sick sense of power, a brief escape from the helplessness he felt under his father’s thumb. In his twisted mind, he began to believe that power was everything. If he could make people bend to his will, then maybe—just maybe—he wasn’t as small and worthless as his father said.

By the time he was a man, that wounded child had disappeared, replaced by the politician—an ego so inflated that it blocked out the sky. He convinced himself that he was the smartest, the most important, and that anyone who disagreed with him was the enemy. He became a force of destruction, determined to crush anyone who stood in his way.

And now, on this stormy night, the man who had been born an innocent child, now a monster, stood outside Montoni’s Pizza, watching, waiting, and plotting his revenge. He would make them all pay.

Where’s C̶r̶a̶n̶k̶y̶ Wally?

Where we go from here: the Montoni’s gang decides they need professional help writing their pizza-based horror story (apparently they never read a review of their restaurant—talk about a horror story), so they summon Lizard Lil (no phone required, just speak her name into the mirror three times). Together they collaborate on a book titled Murder At The Bookstore Pizza Party. After it shows up in stores and readers buy hundreds of copies, they return as angry mobs setting their torches to Montoni’s and the Village Booksmythe. And so The Burnings™ finally begin in earnest.

Well said

to quote the wickard witch of thewest how bout a little fire pizza box monster

“Say, who is the pizza box man anyway? We have a contract with him, but he signed his name with an X. Let’s find out.” They have to chase the pizza box man and hold him down. They start removing the boxes one by one. “OMG!” they all gasp. “It’s Elon Musk.”

Danny De Vito. That other chain pays him only in sandwiches

Cue the Rim Shot Monkey.

You know, over on Comics Kingdom, you can insert animated .gifs in the comments.

Tom, if you didn’t want to stop doing Funky Winkerbean after it was cancelled you could have always shopped it around to other outlets or even done an online-only version. There was no reason to ruin Crankshaft even further.

lame arc

Ed brings his flamethrower and uses it on PBM to see if they really can burn.

That one was actually good. Hehe.

He’s a dateless LOSER.