Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis for September 13, 2024

You go Girl ! Don’t let the Bas%#ds win !

She knows that those two cats are planning to kill her..

whos more annoying lilian or estelle from mary worth

Zzzzzzzzz…..

How can ANYONE feel safe living next to the master of disaster, Crank!

Hey Crank…..October is just next month!!!!!

I want to give credit to poster Sad Kitty who wrote this in yesterday’s comments:

“the chances of Lillian’s bookstore being burned to the ground is rather small due to the 24/7 fire watch that is maintained due to her neighbor’s barbecuing habits.”

There’s also the last week of Funky Winkerbean which shows that Lillian’s shop remains intact into the future.

The point is that if prior strips are true, then Crankshaft’s house literally is under city fire prevention surveillance 24 hours a day. Therefore, Lillian should actually feel quite safe, as it means that her location is under the same surveilance.

If prior strips are not true, then there’s no reason to believe that what is being said here and now has any relevance into the future as well, and there’s no reason to care about what these characters are saying and doing now, because their history is irrelevant.

This is a problem when you try to take a Looney Tunes slapstick world and try to make it mirror and discuss real life situations, particularly when that world has run so long that its own prior history contradicts the present.

Too true, Lilian. Deja Vu, circa 1933.

You go girl……

What awful wording in panel two: “I wouldn’t want you to do anything that might make you feel unsafe.” The phrase “might make you feel unsafe” is so fluffy and broad that he might as well have stopped at “I wouldn’t want you to do anything.” How about inserting a little real drama here, as in “I wouldn’t want to put you in any danger”?

And Les, Batty insists, is an English teacher. Yeah, right.

Ah yes, the good ship SS Feeling Safe, the little known sister ship of the Titanic.

It left, all right, and Eugene is hard at work rowing it.

If this made any sense, and Les was truly concerned about other people, he would just have the kids pick up the books at his house. Or have them meet him in a parking lot. But I guess we have to progress to the destruction of modern society somehow. And Les figuratively lighting the match seems appropriate.

“Fahrenheit 451? I assumed you were trying to get them to read All Boys Aren’t Blue or The Bluest Eye! What kind of wimpy controversy is this?”

Lillian lives next to Cranky, so she knows firsthand about unsafe.

My first look at the two cats, which somehow steal the scene. JD Vance,meet Lillian

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

YOU NATZY SPY—1940

Considering we already had the flash forward during what was supposed to be the end of Funky, saying that Lillian’s store was the only one to survive “the burnings” there isn’t exactly a lot of dramatic tension here.

While I have come to despise nearly every single frame that Batty creates, it’s sad to recognize that life is yet again imitating art (if you can call this art) with some MAGA whacko (in Ohio, no less) calling in bomb threats to Springfield City Hall and a local school inspired by the debunked lies about Haitian refugees promoted by the Former Guy and his mini-me, Hillbilly Himmler.

Here’s hoping that Batty next pens a national return to rational thinking.

Tom thinks he can get a Pulitzer Prize for people talking on the phone about things other people told them on the phone about things they haven’t seen themselves.

Really, I’ve never seen the problem with “Fahrenheit 451” that gets it banned. Not my favorite Bradbury but nothing wrong with it. Makes a point about totalitarianism and, yes, book-banning. It’s not, oh, the illustrated “Kama Sutra,” which I wouldn’t allow any kids of mine under ten to read. (Over ten, anything goes. I sort of punched above my weight when I was under ten, and a lot of what I read I didn’t understand—-at least not till later.)

Not feeling safe living next to Ed Crankshaft, What could go wrong

At this point, I’m totally confused about whether there is any actual danger or not. Will the book-banning/burning crowd get more riled up about Lillian’s bookstore than the Booksmeller?

If there is any danger to Lillian herself, getting involved isn’t bravery, it’s stupidity. Is she going to risk life and limb to make sure some kids get a book?

Lillian’s Tombstone engraving: “Bravely gave her life to ensure Les Moore’s students received their class reading material. Les was too much of a no-account sissypants.”

How true and in more ways than people can imagine.