Recent Comments

1. 19 days ago on Crankshaft

   Ms Angelo – point well taken, and that’s a tribute to Peanuts greatness. I’m irked nonetheless that Batiuk isn’t serving the reader near as well as Sparky Schultz did.

2. 19 days ago on Crankshaft

   Have you run your older personal work through ChatGPT for summary or other output?

3. 21 days ago on Crankshaft

   Some object to the snark and critical banter that arises with each new frame of Crankshaft (insert Dan Davis joke here). Why do you read something if you hate it so? they ask.

   I am no wannabe. Quicker wits than mine have put out beautiful and kind – or at least patient –responses to the occasional objections to critical comments. I’ve chuckled at any and all takes on CS and FW, short of wishing evil on the artists involved, because it’s funny.

   The snark keeps things fresh with the many eyes for fine detail and irony; for a willingness not to suspend disbelief, but to have it over for tea and a good chin wag. We wouldn’t comment or come here long to read if Crankshaft didn’t matter in some way.

   I’ve commented before on Tom Batiuk’s use of slanted or off-kilter narrative, where he leaves so much for a reader to fill in. Hitchcock used this trick, but he was much better at the payoff. For Tom it has become a near-compulsive approach to telling a story, a shopworn go-to in his kit bag. I also guess that at the end of his career Batiuk is looking through older material and feeling nostalgia for past events.

   Where I find the snark particularly valuable is keeping score on how these things appear. Repeated jokes, reused panels, canonical inconsistencies; this is thought-provoking critical deconstruction at its funniest.

   I started reading Funky when I was a contemporary of the characters in Act I itself. Where Batiuk did have success was going from high school gag-a-day to a more constructed world, with locations and plots and closeups and yes bricks: characters moving forward with their lives. He liked this for Funky and has imposed it on Crankshaft, as is his right.

   Rather than hate I see the best snark underlaid with humorous appreciation for even a failed effort, and a willingness to speak when the jokes land or there is something in the work that a reader likes. (comment moved from 10/26 strip)

4. 21 days ago on Crankshaft

   Ease up, friend!

5. 28 days ago on Crankshaft

   So the snark makes sense, of course! Actually, with respect … can you explain the symbol/icon you sign off with? \\// I try to keep up with these things, but for yours all I can come up with is “Approach of Marauding Bunny Viewed through Crack in Castle Walls.”

6. about 1 month ago on Crankshaft

   Cultural literacy and regard for historical context will suffice to answer this question.

7. about 2 months ago on Crankshaft

   I’d settle for even slightly amusing.

8. about 2 months ago on Crankshaft

   +1 for evoking the first punch line of a much better strip!

9. 2 months ago on Crankshaft

   Pubes, perhaps?

10. 2 months ago on Crankshaft

    +1 for “faith-based majorette costumes.” That evokes any number of scenarios.