Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis for February 28, 2024

Well, thank goodness Jfff named the strip Batton used to “craft,” otherwise how would he know what Jfff was referring to?

It was nowhere near enough like being hit by a truck.

“How did it feel to get fired for doing such a lousy job you lost most of your readers?”

“Readers? Pfui! Who needs them?”

I have a feeling Tom does “jokes” like these all the time IRL. “Listen to him!” they say, then whip out a tire iron and start brutally beating him with it. “NOW—you’re PERMANENTLY TIRED! HAHAHHA!” Two guys in the background laugh “Guess you’ll never get that Pulitzer now, Whiny Man!”

Hit by a truck eh. Which is why you is re-tyred eh.

Eh but if it gots hit by truck then why it was look like train wreck?

I know Cranky is a mess, but he’s a much better read than this stuff. Where’s Cranky?

John: “Buy something or get out.”

“That’s why I decided to just keep doing 3 o’clock high. I just do it in the space labeled ‘the wrinkles.’” Art imitates life with this goober.

For years, Tom’s avatar was Les Moore. Now it’s Keesterman’s mailbox?

P 3… I’d rather not

“Semi-retired” translation—-“Somebody offer me a job!! ANY job!!”

That second panel seems to imply that the end of “Three O’Clock High” (and its quarter-inch-away, in reality, counterpart “Funky Winkerbean”) was not Batton/Batty’s idea.

I thought Tom “voluntarily” retired his strip. This seems a tacit admission it was going to be cancelled, as many of us have suspected.

Where is Crankshaft?

Since the author-avatar is present in this week’s saga…

Batty has a habit of constructing homophone-based “jokes” (using two words that sound the same), which don’t really work when you realize these characters are talking to each other and therefore wouldn’t hear the “gag.” The “Wallace the Brave” strip from yesterday (2/27) constructs an actual joke about such gags: the first two panels set up a homophone gag, and the third punctures it by having the character not hear any difference.

Look at the facial expressions in panel three. Get a room, you two!

And I thought nothing could be worse than Batty’s trademark smirks…

Given this strip’s lead time, he probably wrote this right after he stopped doing the other strip.

So I guess this puts to rest the narrative that he voluntarily retired Funky Winkerbean. Which makes it more likely that he’s cramming all those characters into Crankshaft because he’s mad about it.

Hey, trying drawing a toon called Crankshaft and make it funny……..

what senior citizen home does he test these jokes at ?

I’m sure Batton Thomas Creator Of The Comic Strip Three O’Clock High will “borrow” that terrible pun to use in one of his “The Wrinkles” strips.

Haha so it’s SEMI RE-TIRED

Nice pun!

Honestly, Funky Winkerbean was one of the worst strips ever created. Boring, dull, and … irrelevant. Crankshaft was good when it concentrated on his personality and the ways people interacted with it. Now that he’s basically missing in action, and everything else has sunk back into the uselessness of Winkerbean’s lifestyle, this strip isn’t worth the effort of bookmarking anymore. Please put it out of its misery. Preferably with a chimney fire that takes down the whole neighborhood.

Old truckdrivers never die…..they just get their “Peterbilt”!!!!!!

Tom was involved in a car crash in 2009, which led him to make that incredibly weird 2010 storyline in FW where Funky went into a coma and dreamed that he ended up in the 80’s