The Comics Curmudgeon

Main Menu

Social Media

Archive: Crankshaft

118

Sadly Lois does not have anything better to do than whatever this is

Post Content

Hi and Lois, 10/10/26

What really makes this strip, obviously, is Lois in the second panel watching over this scene from inside anxiously, with her arms folded. She wants to make sure Chip is capable of forming appropriate emotional bonds so he doesn’t turn out a broken loser like Thirsty, and also wants to make sure the boys rake the yard properly so their house isn’t a neighborhood eyesore like Thirsty’s.

Crankshaft, 10/10/26

Do they really make pilltainers that are as long as a man’s torso? That’s not a thing, right? Maybe that’s why Crankshaft looks so put off in the last couple panels. The joke in this strip was supposed to be about this comically large pilltainer! I carried it all the way over here! Now you’re telling me the joke is about an app that electrocutes you? This is amateur hour, we gotta get our shit together!

Mother Goose and Grimm, 10/10/26

“The devil wears crocs, and also walks on tippy-toes, which looks really unnatural but it’s the only way to really convey to the reader that he’s wearing crocs, and we already got most of the way into putting together a strip based on this joke and don’t have time to come up with another one, so I guess we’re just going to draw him like this??!”

Mary Worth, 10/10/26

“No, it’s … not true! I mean, yes, it would be gross if it were true, but it’s not true, therefore it’s … not gross? I gotta wake up and start making a diagram here.”

174

As a movie nostalgist myself, I’m feeling anxious about this one

Post Content

Dennis the Menace, 10/5/26

Part of being a sophisticated textual critic such as myself is that you have to be able to distinguish between “something I dislike” and “something that is executed poorly.” So, for instance, you know that on principle I dislike the “Dennis insults his mother’s cooking” Dennis the Menace panels. But if you’re going to do it, having Dennis stare ahead, dead-eyed and drooling, and saying “This tastes like shit, mom, it tastes like food that’s just been lying around until it goes bad” is a pretty good execution.

Dick Tracy, 10/5/26

Big news, everyone! A new Dick Tracy storyline is starting today, and the very first strip is a guy falling down the stairs and dying! Or at least I assume? He actually looks pretty much the same in the air as he does on the ground, so maybe he’s fine and just shaped like that.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 10/5/26

For too long, the Baby Boomers and retro-hipster Gen Xers of Glenwood have only been able to express their toxic nostalgia through dedication to roots country music. But soon they’ll also be able to enjoy older films that have been largely forgotten by the mainstream cineaste community for presumably good reason, thanks to Mae Mae’s carefully invested movie earnings and/or Glenwood’s rock-bottom real estate prices!

Crankshaft, 10/5/26

“As a matter of fact, some prescription medications, especially generics, are manufactured in China. It’s somewhat more common, however, for the chemical raw materials to be produced in China while the drug formulation happens in India. Just another facet of our globalized era, where different countries with different prevailing labor costs and specific know-how end up specializing in different segments of the supply chain. I know that’s not a ‘punchline’ per se but I thought you might find it interesting!”

151

Disturbing Sunday

Post Content

Hi and Lois, 9/27/26

My first impression reading this was that Hi seems so youthful in the first panel in the second row that he must be imagining himself as a Little Leaguer; but the mustache on the outfielder means that’s not right, and I realized that, of course, he’s imagining himself as a Major League Baseball player, and MLB players are on average men in their mid to late 20s, younger than Hi and certainly much younger than me, but not children by any means. It’s a lot to think about! And I honestly would prefer to think about this, to muse melancholy on middle age, and not think at all about the throwaway panel that includes what I guess is supposed to be Hi dozing off thinking happy thoughts but it looks like a portrait of JFK zooted out of his mind on all the off-label drugs they were giving him for his back pain plus whatever sex pills he was taking. I have to admit, not thinking about that is getting more and more difficult.

Family Circus, 9/27/26

We criticize Marvin a lot for all the piss and shit jokes it does, but honestly its worst sin is just to be so in your face about it. Like, here’s a Family Circus about a carpet remembering all the good times it’s had with the Keane Kids over the years as it’s being driven to the landfill, and only one of the seven little vignettes it’s visualizing involves being peed on. That’s how you elicit a healthy chuckle from the piss joke appreciating community while still getting grandparents to faithfully cut your comic and hang it on the fridge.

Panel from The Lockhorns, 9/27/26

You ever notice that we never see Leroy’s mother? I feel like Loretta gets mad at moments like this not just for the obvious reasons, but because Leroy’s mother’s presumably early death — or perhaps her decision to go no-contact with her son for reasons we could easily guess at — have denied Loretta ammunition in the constant marital battle that is the focus of her every waking thought.

Crankshaft, 9/27/26

Hey, I don’t want to overstep here, but … do you ever get the feeling that, just maybe, everyone involved in the creation of the Funkyverse strips has a terrible inability to feel pleasure, like in a pathological way? Just putting that out there.