Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis for September 03, 2024

Not sure about Fahrenheit 451, but school boards and parents have a responsibility to protect the children.

Les, if you have to ask, you’ll never understand. Are you sure you read it?

Yes… but not from books.

Maybe it will teach them how hot to make their next book oven.

Last panel is spot on.

But at least in class, a book is not read in a vacuum. It’s read where the Adult themes can be discussed, and the broader meaning can be explored as to what’s good, what’s bad, and to better understand life and it’s choices.

Hey Les, Martin Shkreli wants his facial expression back.

The book details how Ed gets his grills hotter than that temperature.

When you have a book that basically says that book burning is bad you have to ban it so children don’t question why you’re burning books.

If only smug smirking was banned.

Of course, Batty must make sure that EVERYONE knows that Cayla is MRS. MOORE (got it??)

Meanwhile back in Centerville, Kesterman is putting up another mailbox. Ed looks on thinking I’ll get this one tomorrow.

So, high school libraries should stock The Story of O if that’s what the kids want?

There shouldn’t even be a need for a active shooter drill in the first place!!

Except that the issue isn’t that THE KIDS want to read Fahrenheit 451… it’s that LES wants them to read it. (And, let’s face it, if there’s anything that will make them NOT want to read it, it’s to make it assigned reading.)

But, as with everything else in the Batiukverse, it’s all about what Best Actress Academy Award Winner Les Moore wants, everyone else gets to fall in line or suffer the consequences. (Where the consequences are having to look at that smug jerk’s face.)

Fahrenheit 451 is mild when compared to some of the transgender material getting placed in some elementary schools. Parents need to be aware of what their kids are seeing.

This is just a sad sack of virtue signaling. There’s a reason Winkerbean got cancelled and it’ll be the same reason Crankshaft is getting cancelled. No one wants to read this boring crap.

Amen

Just for everybody’s information, the response to a google query about whether F451 is banned in Ohio schools:

As of January 2024, no books have been outright banned in Ohio, though book challenges have been increasing.

So… did Les, CauCayla and the gang join retired Flunky down in Florida? Or what?

Notice what we are seeing: characters talking about stuff that might or might not happen, repeating things they ought to know by now.

Notice what we are not seeing: how Les teaches F451, what the students learn from his teaching, how they react to Bradbury’s complex critique of media succession, what (if anything) they learn and apply to their lives.

Yep, peak Batiuk all right.

Ms. Moore’s thought does seem to be logical. But try selling it to the DeSantis crowd.

This seems to me more a “political” comic than a “comic” comic. Where oh where is Crank the Man?

If you’re not sure about a book, read it first. Then try to figure out what you’re protecting the children from – is it knowledge? Or will it harm them. Is it another point of view? Or will it stifle them. Will they learn from it? Or will they run from it. Children need to expand their minds and read more. not less.

Perhaps the Trial should be mandatory reading- that would be Kafkaesque

the comic free range did a banned book joke today and im sure hes not gonna do them for a month straight like batiuk intends to do

I wonder where Crankshaft is………….

I read “Tropic of Cancer” because it was banned when I was in middle school (Age in excess of 75). My home library had multiple “banned” books when my Son was in middle and high school, most of them were so badly written that he refused to read them once he started. I, as you can see, do not support banning books, If more people read “Mein Kamph” by A. Hitler and “The Prince” by N. Machiavelli there would be more understanding of some of the BS being spouted on both sides.

Will this strip ever ban Les??

Banned and Burning books is the act of fascism. It’s still another way of someone trying to tell others how they should live, what they should read, how they treat their own body, when they can’t manage their own lives. Censorship should not be a government function. That is a parent’s responsibility. If you don’t want to parent your kids you shouldn’t have had any, rather than getting someone else to do it for you. Mind your own business.

Aaannndd…. Crankshaft has now become Funky Winkerbean full time.

You know a character made a potential Pulitzer Prize winning observation that nobody else has ever made, when the other person gives the famous smirk.

“What do you mean by reading a book? Suppose you learn something?”

“Hailstone The Dictator”—YOU NATZY SPY—1940

In 1959, a kiddie book was banned in Alabama becasue it showed a White Rabbit and a Black rabbit being friends….

I didn’t read Fahrenheit 451 when I was in high school. It may have been one of the books I ordered from Scholastic Book Club but that they were sold out of. A coworker loaned me the book recently, so now I’m finally reading it.

Ironic that a book on burning books should be on the list of banned books.

I wish I had Les’s job. He shows up at the school whenever he has free time away from his passion projects.

Student #1: “Say, is that Mr. Moore?”

Student #2: “Why yes it is. That’s rare. He must not be working on a book or movie about his dead wife.”

Excellent point.

Give it up, Tom. Mary Worth will win a Pulitzer for “Dogs are great” before you will.

(Best Actress Award Winner) Les Moore rudely turns his back on his wife while she is speaking, to present a horrifyingly prodigious and annoying smirk.

Classic (Best Actress Award Winner) Les Moore!

When Ed Crankshaft finally returns to the strip, I wonder he’ll get a nameplate to help the readers identify him. Will Dan Davis remember how to draw him?

We don’t have active shooter drills in our schools; we don’t need them. The School Board declared schools to be gun-free zones.

I read that back in high school. It’s a VERY good book to read. And no, it wasn’t on the banned book list in the 80’s.

Out of the mouth’s of wise young people …

amen

Good point Mrs. Moore ♥

If it weren’t for the Columbine shooting, schools probably wouldn’t have active shooter drills.