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

Yeah, Skippy, comic strips were a big deal back then. Young people (and old people) didn’t have smartphones, tablets, and other devices that allowed them to view comics at the drop of a hat. There were no TVs or streaming services to watch animated shows, movies, or imported anime on. The folks commenting here aren’t reading your “Old Man Yells at Cloud” rant in newsprint form. Your own Sentinel has a website, remember? Things change.

Also….“running full truck”? What in the name of Hal Foster is Skipster talking about? Does he mean it took up a full page of the paper’s comics section, like many strips (particularly adventure titles) did 70-plus years ago? Or is this a variation on the cargo trucking term, because in that context it makes no sense.

By the by, you’re late to the party, Batiuk. Shrinking comics pages and less size for strips has been a bugaboo cartoonists complained about for decades (“Calvin and Hobbes” did a much funnier take on this subject back in 1987). In fact, creators like Bill Watterson, Garry Trudeau, and select others were able to get their syndicates to insist that papers carrying their strips run them at their intended size. I guess Batton Thomas—and his real-life counterpart—don’t have that kind of audience or clout.

Dude. You did not see the Prince Valiant comic strip when you were little. You saw the actual Prince Valiant. The strip came centuries later.

Full truck?

Norma Desmond looks appalled by the size of the snot rocket she’s about to fire at William Holden.

Excellent, EXCELLENT movie! A TRUE classic!

It’s too bad that Funky Winkerbean’s archive isn’t here now. If it was, we would be able to link today’s entry to a prior FW strip where Tom Batiuk portrayed Prince Valiant’s creator Hal Foster as being a plagiarist. 07/23/2022 is the specific date itself.

Ah, yes, Prince Valiant. Hey, remember that time some half-rate cartoonist had a character recount a story about the time he tried to get the job doing art for Hal Foster, only for Foster to use the work of that (fictional) character without credit or permission? And did so by showing a page of actual Prince Valiant art, thus stealing from Hal Foster while accusing Foster of being a thief? Good times, good times.

Geez, can’t Cranky make a guest appearance in his own ’toon at least once a week? Sundays would be nice…

Rat: I wanna kick Batton’s @$$!

Cs: How about you beat Rawlings to death?

Sunset Boulevard started out with a funeral for Norma Desmond’s pet chimp. I wonder why it never occurred to Billy Wilder to have the chimp shoot William Holden and then talk about it.

“Doom, despair, agony on me (waaah!), deep, dark depression, excessive misery (waaah!). If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all. Doom, despair, agony on meee (waaaaah!)”

I haven’t heard that term, in that context, for half a century. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get truckin’.

Not only did many Sunday strips get a full page, some of the more popular strips had an additional strip by the same artist at the bottom. For example Harold Gray’s “Little Orphan Annie” was always followed on Sunday by a strip called “Maw Green” (typically the joke was a rather lame pun).

If this “story” is supposed to be about Skippy interviewing Batton for an article in his “newspaper,” why is Skippy doing so much of the talking? And why is he not asking any questions, just yelling at clouds and inviting Batton to join him?

Newspapers…….have gotten “small”!!!!

Full truck? What the truck he talking about? Me never knews there be trucks in Prince Valiant comics.

They’ve become too costly for papers to buy and print.

From Wikipedia:

“Desmond was once a giant of the silver screen’s silent era, but the proliferation of talking pictures marked the end of her career as a big time Hollywood star. She lives a reclusive existence in her lavish Beverly Hills mansion on Sunset Boulevard with her servant, and former film director, Max von Mayerling and pet monkey.”

Gosh, it’s almost like it’s not 1940 any more or something.

If only there was a medium where you could have all the room you wanted and could reach the entire world. Something like a “world wide web” perhaps.

“To paraphrase Norma Desmond…”

I think he needs to find a better phrase to pair with.

Some too small to even read without a magnifying glass. I learned to read the newspaper by first reading the comics. The newsprint was huge compared to today

wow he continued this story on a sunday !!!!he must have a fly up his ash to be this angry about something

He is misremembering. Trucks had not yet been invented when he was little.

Norma Desmond was a mentally ill narcissist. Tom using that quote is tells more about himself than he realizes.

From the Tiny Toons Sunset Blvd parody: ELMYRA: “I’m still big. It’s the movies that got small.” MONTANA MAX, thinking: “It’s her brain that got small!”

I’m glad I’m not in Skip’s place. I’d be biting my other arm off.

Batton Thomas, what a self-indulgent bore. A character reviled by many readers, merely tolerated by the rest.

Truckin’, got my chips cashed in

Keep truckin’, like the doo-dah man

Together, more or less in line

Just keep truckin’ on

Sunset Boulevard’s a film I MUST watch again.

Yeah! My father would make up expressions that he thought made him look either cool or modern relevant. Other times, he used catchphrases from Matlock or from movies of the 1950’s. Then, he thought I was not keeping up with modern times because I gave him a blank expression on my face.

NEW Y ORK DAILY NEWS still gives full page to VALIANT