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

ok boomer

He’s a real Nowhere Man.

Love it Ed.

No more cartoons on Saturday morning, either! No more diaper services! Whatever happened to the draft? I want my duck-and-cover! Why do all the cars have seat belts now? Why are iron lungs so scarce? Why do things have to change?

I like the corresponding musical notation. And the adapted lyrics. Cute idea, and a bit poignant for those of us who lost their lifelong hometown newspapers to USA Today.

Last frame could read ’cause all the news is on TV.

We’re Sorry for any Delay’s caused b a certain Bus Driver who backs over the mailbox.

So any news about sad loser on rickety old boat on the lake? Did they finds his body?

Oh, I believe in yesterday.

All too true.

I don’t often save comics, but I’m saving this one! Classic!

Tom: One of the things that kept people subscribing to newspapers used to be beloved comic strips. Maybe if you stepped up your game…

Apologies to all of us Batty

Sadly, mine now gets mailed, and I have late mail delivery.

I love it!

I read the news today, oh boy. About a Cranky man who always compained. And though his jokes were rather sad. Well, I just had to laugh. He took a funny photograph.

Mail is a day after……if it makes it??

Subscribe to your local newspaper

I actually think this is kind of clever.

What’s a newspaper?

Hey, lookitthat… the comment that had the most replies just disappeared—when I tried to post a reply to it, I got a “404 not found” message, and when I refreshed the page, the first comment and all the replies were gone. Deleted by original commenter? Deleted by moderator (though I can’t imagine why)? Software glitch? Electronic school bus backed over the electronic mailbox?

i do get a newspaper delivered but the quality is way down

I was able to sing the song (which I haven’t heard in so many years I didn’t remember it), using the provided notation. This strip always notates its music mostly correctly when it has music in it, although the bar lines and rhythms are slightly off, and the clef and key signature are missing. But kudos on all the notes being right – rare to see in a comic. (This version of the song is clearly in the key of F Major, with one Bb in the key signature, if anybody wants to play or sing it for themselves.)

Nothing gets past ole Cranky…..attaboy!

I miss being able to afford a newspaper.

But anyway… I find it interesting that people get nostalgic over a medium rather than over what the medium delivered. I used to get the daily paper every morning, and in its day it was the best technology for delivering real news—pretty timely and deep enough to make sense of complicated stories (TV and radio were more up-to-the-minute, but of necessity the coverage was pretty shallow).

But that was then, this is now. Online newspapers are better in just about every way (now that some of the early glitches are taken care of). Even more up-to-the-minute than the daily morning paper, capable of telling long stories (the page is of infinite length) if the publisher is willing to pay the journalists (a big problem of both online and print media these days). I can pick and choose the comics I want to read and not be limited by what an editor decided to cram into the two pages allotted for the funnies (and I get dailies in color!), and I can exchange comments with other readers (not just on the funnies—the moderated comment boards on the New York Times’s op-eds were often more interesting than the columns themselves). I don’t get ink on my fingertips, I’m not killing any trees, and I’m not creating garbage to be buried or (in the best case) recycled into TP.

About the only advantage I can see to a physical newspaper is that a thousand years from now, archeologists will be able to read the papers they dig up from our landfills and maybe understand what caused our culture to collapse. I don’t expect digital media to survive the inevitable collapse of western civilization, but papers in landfills almost certainly will. This is also the biggest value of putting music on vinyl… a thousand years from now, somebody will be able to reverse engineer a vinyl record and find the music in the groove. Not likely with CDs or streaming services…

Wow. A slight against newspapers?! Is Tom biting the hand that feeds him? And mail? Now what will he do with all the pennies in his sock?

Apologies to Sir Paul? What about the rest of us?

Not just newspapers but magazines too. Sports Illustrated used to be 1x a week, then 2x month, then 1x month, then gone for good. Online info hard to compete with.

Oh I believe in yesterday……

Batty: (singing) “Can I get a Pulitzer?”

newspapers are mailed now adays ? never heard of that

There is a lot of truth to that.

Paul McCartney, ladies and gentlemen!

Nice and quite timely. enews has been foisted upon the poulous!

Love it. Sir Paul would approve