They’re a cultured people, eh wot
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Andy Capp, 6/2/26
Look, I don’t pretend to know everything about what life is like in working-class, industrial neighborhoods in Northern English cities. Do people go door-to-door selling prints of the 19th century Romantic artist who revolutionized landscape painting and inspired the Barbizon school? I mean, maybe they do. Who’s to say the yobs and louts who populate this strip don’t appreciate a lovely, bucolic landscape? I’m sitting my ass down and learning.
Crankshaft, 6/2/26
There was some kind of long-ago love triangle involving Lillian and this guy and her now-dead sister that was introduced at some point when I wasn’t reading the strip and frankly I’ve never really caught up on it, but I know a lot of my readers have very strong and negative feelings about the whole thing, so if you fall into that category, I just wanted to bring you the latest update on this gentleman: they’re putting him in a home, or possibly in prison.
Pickles, 6/2/26
“Also, they don’t really enjoy spending time with me!”
172 replies to “They’re a cultured people, eh wot”
Crankshaft: I’m also thankful to you updating us on this guy, because I’d never seen him before and thought Crankshaft had got really into porkpie hats.
Andy Capp seems to be doing better financially than I remember from reading this strip as a kid. His home is nothing fancy, but vintage Andy lived n a place where you wouldn’t be see surprised to find rat droppings.
Phantom: After years of trolling Grindr, the left guard’s next love just walks out of the woods in skin-tight Spandex that emphasizes every curve and bulge. Just look at those “come hither” eyes!
CS: OTOH, you’d be surprised what they can stuff into a coffin these days.
Andy Capp: If Andy were more tipsy belligerent, he would threaten to make a Picasso out of the rude intruding salesman.
CSh: “I hear that there’s no memorabilia allowed in hell… ”
Pickles I honestly had to look up if Jeopardy was still in the air. It is, apparently.
CS: So, is this Eugene and the titular star of the strip supposed to be related? Is that why Eugene is always wearing that bowler, to differentiate him from the always ballcap-wearing Ed?
Luann: Well screw you too, you humorless old fossil!
JP: Uh, Ann? You clearly aren’t and won’t, otherwise you would have done so of your own volition a long time ago!
DT: ‘Aim it at his head.’ ‘Right, Chief!’
GT: Once again, the syndicate went to Barajas and said ‘We *really, REALLY* don’t need this kind of trouble right now, capisce??’ and the rest of the strips following yesterday’s have been scrapped. Please enjoy this ‘funny’ about mothers-in-law! They’re such pains in the neck, amirite?
MW: At this rate, Dawn will have solved all of Tommy’s problems by they time they get back from their run, and Mary won’t have to get involved at all. I’m sure Mary will still take a victory lap — “I could see Tommy was troubled, so I put him to work in the vegetable garden” — but the truth will rankle.
Pickles: The parents are also too cheap and/or technologically clumsy to use a DVR or Peacock (send a check my way for the promotion, NBC!)
CS: This better not be going where I think it’s going: to yet another Lillian redemption story.
CS: Is this a Good Humor man?
Crankshaft:
That’s not a particularly large box, so the only logical place Bowler McBowtie could be moving to that wouldn’t have space for it is a coffin. He’s dying!
Not gonna lie, super curious to discover what kind of Lillian/Lucy memorabilia Hat Guy has been holding onto all these years, in the hope that it would appreciate in value. If these two are in their 80s, their young adulthood would have coincided with the 1960s, so maybe it’s racy photos of the sisters cavorting with Ringo Starr or another luminary of the “big bands” of the day. But since this is the Funkyverse, it’s much more likely to be something devastatingly sad, like one of Lucy’s discarded stockings. Either way, let the laughs ensue!
Who is still watching “Jeopardy”? Alex Trebek died years ago.
Wrecks Moregone:
This would actually have been a nice moment if Mae Mae, who doesn’t need a job, wasn’t keeping that job away from some poor desperate woman on the verge of resorting to selling her body on the streets.
Wary Morth:
Don’t these two need their breath to run, or does spewing platitudes substitute for oxygen?
@Gil Bates: or Hulu. Hoping Disney will now send ME a big referral fee.
SlyFox: The seventh difference is that in the first picture, the customer is high as a kite and in the second picture he’s stoned to the gills.
Andy Capp: Sadly, none of the salesman’s prints were the right size for that empty frame in the Capps’
sitting room. Maybe next week.
ANDY CAPP: “Do you have ‘Madam X’ by SARGENT? Not really, I’m just screwing with my layabout husband. “
Crankshaft: Worse than a home or prison, or even a home in prison: Big Band Guy must go to the cancer ward…
Mary Worth: The true value of people lies in the measure of their ability to express genuine gratitude toward Mary Worth.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
#10. CS: indeed, afte Eugene left house without turning off coffeemaker, his family won’t let him live alone. Lillian thinks of her never used guest room…. Run, Eugene, run!
Hi and Lois: What an incredibly original and remarkable observation. Not many people know that the United States of America is turning 250 this summer. There certainly isn’t any merchandise available for sale to commemorate the anniversary. Could you even imagine someone designing a baseball cap for something like that? It’s inconceivable!
Pickles: Is that the grandson’s father? And if so, is this the first time he’s made an appearance?
yLUANN: (Seattle Times still hasn’t advanced). Camo is in the mountains. That little satchel won’t contain a toothbrush, change of underwear, and a heavy sweater!
Surely there crossover between this site’s readers and fans of the 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back podcast, so thanks to the Miranda Hathaway cozy quilting mysteries, we all know what Jeopardy means to folks of a certain age.
(Sex. It’s a euphemism for sex)
AC: Ugh, another typo slips by the editor. It was supposed to read “It was someone trying to sell stolen art prints.”
Andy Capp:
“You realize, luv, we’re shamelessly ripping off the Monty Python ‘encyclopedia salesman’ routine….”
High and Lower – So what Thirsty is saying that he intends to hang onto his MAGA cap.
Is that Snoopy shirt enough to cover Luann’s cooter?
MW Who are you trying to convince here, Dawn? The guy with a job living on his own, or your own living-in-my-childhood-bedroom, can’t-get-that-degree-after-about-a-decade self?
Where the hell is Eugene moving that he doesn’t have room for a tiny box of photographs? A studio apartment in Hong Kong? A hamster cage? One of those Russian prison cells where all you can do is stand? It’s not Bedside Manor: thanks to Harry Dinkle, they have a Big Ten-level band program. Eugene’s box contains what appears to be sheet music written by a “Dinkle”, so there’s your angle for getting him to admit you.
MW:
“What do you do for fun, anyway, Tommy?”
“I enjoy lounging by the seashore alone, listening through headphones to the offerings of jazz great Mr. Goodman. It’s so splendid it makes me feel like Julius Caesar!”
“No. Don’t say it.”
“Yep. Benny…Beedie…beachy!”
C’shaft: Even before the end of WWII big band jazz was on the decline, thanks in no small part to many of the musicians being called to fight overseas. Eugene isn’t going to a home or prison, but a secret government research facility. He’s well into triple digits and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down! We must learn his secret!
I also notice that Eugene’s box contains sheet music called “Sunrise over Kilimanjaro”, by Larry Dinkle. Just when you thought this timeline couldn’t make any LESS sense!
GT: I guess Gil and Luke are supposed to be Linus and Charlie Brown now? Good grief.
Pickles: I read a book once wherein a man was accused of a crime, and what convinced his girlfriend of his innocence was that said crime occurred while Jeopardy was on, and he never, ever, ever missed Jeopardy. I doubt that’s where we’re headed here, but it would be funny if it were. “Yes, officer, those are my knitting needles in the deceased’s back, but I was watching my shows!”
The fact that the sisters were in a love triangle with a guy who looks nearly identical to Crankshaft is a surprising revelation that adds a strange undercurrent to all of their previous interactions. At least I assume so, I’m certainly not going to reread any of them to check.
GT: Charlie Brown and Linus did NOT age well.
Luann: Oh please, Frank, my mother wears Snoopy merch.
MW: Man, imagine how sad your life must be when Dawn Weston looks put together.
RMMD: Yes, being a glamorous movie actress is not all it’s cracked up to be! You’re better off being a waitress, a profession that has absolutely no downsides apart from sore feet!
Crankshat – Did Eugene read Marie Kondo’s book and decide to toss the photos because they didn’t bring him joy? Or is he trying to lay a guilt trip on the loathsome hag for ruining their lives? I hope it’s the latter.
@Lauralot: GMTA! Oversnarpologies.
@TheDiva: @TheDiva re GT: Now I really want to see Gil in a zig-zag shirt saying ‘Good grief!” after getting his socks knocked off by a line drive.
@TheDiva: It’s all good! We both saw what I’m sure we were intended to see.
A short-sleeved shirt with a bow tie and he’s wearing a hat indoors? If he’s not headed to a reeducation camp for fashion and etiquette, then what even is the point of them?
***
You can’t tell me Old Man Pickles doesn’t still have a VCR.
“Yep, not a lot of room in a coffin. Dying? Oh, probably. This is Crankshaft after all. I just assumed I’m dying and decided to get ahead on things.”
Crankshaft-“Remember when we went to the Whiskey and saw The Doors.”
Crankshaft-“They’re shipping me off to a single panel comic.”
MW-What is a person’s value then?
FC-“But it’s yachting season.”
RMMD-And a sudden chill runs down the back of an agent in Los Angeles. “I just got this feeling like a client is going to quit.”
Phantom: The secret of the Wambesi is how the men and women keep such luxuriant blown out hair in the humid jungles.
RMMD: Today, Mae Mae learned an important lesson. Real work is hard, and can take a toil on your body.
Crankshaft: Is it finally time for Eugene to sleep the Big Sleep. That is why he is giving up his shoebox of memories.
@Ukranazi Stepan: 16- Not sure about Dawn, but I think Tommy can breathe through his ears. And lick his eyebrows.
Pickles:
“I’ll take ‘People Who Don’t Have Recording Devices on Their TV, or at Least Don’t Know How to Operate Them’ for 200, Ken!”
Crankshaft:
“I still sing along to those old tunes, but I lip-sync — you know, like Frankie Valli!”
FC: Billy will try anything to get out of Thel hosing him down in the backyard.
Hi and Lois: Hi looks shocked because …he’s thinking “people use Arabic numerals you drunken sot.”
Chix (sic): Xunise’s not so subtle message with today’s Springsteen song:
@treetown: The last thing we saw Eugene do was a row a boat solo into the middle of a lake. That’s an impressive feat for someone who is at least 99 years old. He should easily outlive the decrepit Lillian and the self-destructive Ed. Unless the story is being written by someone completely incompetent.
Andy Capp:
Never let it be said that legacy comics can’t have subtle humor! I’m getting considerable amusement from what I assume is the implied preceding action of this strip, which is our door-to-door art print salesperson saying “and here we have a very nice John Constable”, followed by Flo getting a gleam in her eye as she realizes the tremendous opportunity she’s being presented with here before she bellows “A Constable, you say?” at the top of her lungs.
Andy Capp – In our next hilarious episode, Andy asks for some “Dutch Masters” and is perplexed to receive prints of Rembrandt and Vermeer instead of cigars.
@Liam:
And then a sudden chill runs up the back of that agent in L.A. “Wait, I just got an even stronger feeling that this could be reality TV gold! Lorna Starr’s Diners, Dives, and Drive-Ins? Nah, already taken. Mae Mae I Take Your Order? Ok, the title will need some workshopping…
Don Abundio, translated:
“Aren’t labor-saving devices wonderful, Abundio?”
“Yes… if you’re the sort who can’t afford to hire unnecessary labor”
I’d love to see Luann overhearing Tommy and Dawn’s run convesation, and thought-bubbling about it. “Hey, I’m able to hold down a job too! I’m trying to improve *my*self! I *am* a success! Dream Apartments, here I come!”
@Liam: RMMD: I wonder if her agent gets 10% of Mae Mae’s tips, or just 10% of her sub-minimum-wage salary for tipped employees.
@Charterstone: Dune: Brilliant! I for one love Mae Mae I Take Your Order.
Crankshaft – “Also I had to replace my favorite hat with this little cardboard cutout that’s just pasted to my forehead. There wasn’t room for my old hat where I’m going.”
MW: After spewing out a slew superfluous platitudes, Dawn reflexively punches herself in the mouth.
RMMD: Has Beatty gone rogue? Chubby girls with sore feet is one very specific kink
FC-“I’ll take a shower but only if it’s golden.”
Pickles – I’m impressed that she remembered to put the exclamation mark inside the quotes around “Jeopardy!” because it’s part of the title. But it’s really annoying and confusing to have sentence-ending punctuation in a title. Does the exclamation mark count as ending her sentence? What if she wanted to end the sentence with a period?
@Peanut Gallery: Portugal. The Man should write a song about this problem.
@Peanut Gallery: Or worse:
She asked, “Did you lose on Jeopardy!”?
“I did lose on Jeopardy!,” he replied.
@treetown: re: Phantom – given the usual hair texture of the locals, I expect this is a formal headdress showing these are high-status warriors doing their guard duties effectively in dress uniform, and also that the Wambesi culture has some style elements quite similar to the Oromo or Maasai
JP: “You could try doing the fucking dishes once in a while.”
MW: “Don’t get too excited. I was just fooling.”
Phantom: Hey, where’s the sexy, half-dressed dummer girl? Bring on the sexy, half-dressed drummer girl!
6Chx: Ah, Miss Xinuse, you are a blessing to us all. Every Tuesday you being us a smile…and perhaps, a tear.
9CL: Since she is so distraught can we assume this is once again the time before the fat-man wedding? Given that these people are so self-absorbed you would think that they knew how to please themselves, if you know what I mean.
Crankshaft For all the snark, I will say bringing over only a small bit is pretty realistic if Eugene is downsizing to assisted living. He’d be getting rid of *tons* of stuff but wouldn’t bother Lillian with the trailerful of things headed for Goodwill. As for keeping that box – it’s one of many boxfuls of Stuff, he just might have taken pictures to display on a digital slideshow frame knowing he’d never be getting that box (or any others!) from the back of that one closet – closet space he needs for the one coat and two pairs of shoes that will fit.
I follow the daily blog of Lileks, the guy who made the Gallery of Regrettable Food, and he’s navigating a late-in-life divorce having to leave his detached home for a much smaller apartment. This is a guy who has made it a mission in life to catalogue ephemera and has had to ruthlessly jettison the physical pieces he’s kept (even with a storage unit, he could only take a tiny fraction of that and keep a few family keepsakes).
I could totally see this and it’s quite sad, which of course means I expect to be infuriated by the strip’s treatment of it by the end of the week.
Mary’s Worst: I like the fact that Dawn is punching herself in the chin every time she tells Tommy one of Mary’s worn out cliches.
“No, I said ‘Dada,’ not ‘yer Da,’ so you can quite hidin’ ye daft bastard.”
RMMD: write a fucking book Mae Mae.
LUANN: Luann: “Dad! It’ll look more ‘mature’ once I stop wearing underwear. Trust me!”
LUANN (2): Luann: “Thank you dad. I’m not going to listen to anything you say or follow any advice you give me. But a week doing lame, contrived ‘banter’ with you is a week they don’t have to show fucking up at camp. So thanks again for helping me stall in this time-wasting filler!”
LUANN (3): I have the distinct feeling that the actress playing “Bernice” called out sick or is holding out on the syndicate for more money because it suspiciously looks like these lines were supposed to be written for her, and then hastily giving to (spins wheel) Frank once she couldn’t make it.
Andy Capp: This series seems to really want us to think Andy is some kind of petty criminal who’s constantly in trouble with the law, but I can’t for the life of me recall even a single time we’ve seen him actually break the law. It feels instead like he’s just got some weird phobia of the very IDEA of police interacting wifh him, no matter how innocuous the circumstances (e.g., violently shitting himself in fear because a cop pulled him over to tell him his tail-lights were out).
Crankshaft: I’d also like a bit of a recap on the Lillian saga and what exactly caused her to be so aggressively hated on this site. I’ve always been amazed at how she’s treated with more scorn than even the likes of Les Moore.
Gil Thorp – Shorty and Beanpole better watch their backs.
JP – Wouldn’t it be a condition of Ann’s parole that she get a job? Her last meeting with her parole officer must have been, “Oh, you’re hanging around your father’s house when you aren’t assaulting people and imprisoning them in the storage unit where you hid the stolen loot you were supposed to have returned to your victims? You’re making progress.”
And what ever happened to Alan’s writing career? Remember how he cranked out best sellers over a weekend?
Mary Worth – Says the woman who wouldn’t look twice at Jared when he was an orderly, but suddenly had stars in her eyes when he became a physician’s assistant.
Rex Morgan – Maybe Lorna should wear sneakers instead of six inch stiletto heels.
The next comic I read was an appropriate Rhymes With Orange.
6Chix – Wellness check time.
Crankshaft – I fear that this box of memories is building up to Loathsome Lillian writing her literary masterpiece about Eugene and Lucille’s doomed love. @Banana Jr. 6000: is right. It will be another attempt by Batiuk to turn the loathsome hag into a bearable human being.
Loathsome Lil apparently watched her sister have an unhappy life because of what she did, and she should have also known that Eugene wasn’t with anyone else, either. This went on for fifty or sixty years! The loathsome hag never said a word, when she could have tried to atone. And Batiuk wants readers to think she’s a sweet old lady? Fuck off, Batiuk.
And when did Eugene turn into Ed Crankshaft’s twin?
@ectojazzmage:
The Lillian (and Lucy!) McKenzie story, as I understand it :
Already, early on in the strip’s history, Crankshaft had two sets of neighbors : Morgan&Chase, the yuppie couple
*, and the McKenzie sisters, a set of identical twins who were elderly spinsters.Being twins, of course, meant that they were complete opposite : Lillian was the smart, ‘evil’ one, Lucy was the good, ‘ditzy’ one (this is illustrated on the cover of “Crankshaft – I’ve still got it!”, where Lillian is depicted as a screeching harpy charging for Crankshaft with her hands like claws, while Lucy is holding her back as an angel of “Let Crankshaft be, I’m sure he has a good reason to do what he is doing” (What Crankshaft is doing = dressed in his old baseball uniform, throwing fastballs at their home with the intent of breaking all their windows (and the fragile possessions inside their home)).
Eventually, Lucy’s ditziness (including always forgetting to bring the cranberries for Thanksgiving, to endless mirth at her expense) was retconned into being early sign for Alzheimer’s, which, as she deteriorated, turned into A Very Special Story.
Towards that story’s big climax, Lillian confesses something to Lucy : though she spent her entire life, as the evil twin, sabotaging her social life so it’d be just the two of them in general, she wanted to apologise for a specific event : in the early 1930s, Lucy fell in love with a guy named Eugene, and they would trade love letters. Lillian started intercepting the letters, culminating in both lovers sending a “If you don’t love me and don’t want to see me again, do not answer this letter. I’ll understand”. This lead to Eugene and Lucy going their own way, heartbroken in their belief that their lover didn’t reciprocate, and then Eugene died in the War.(except he didn’t? He’s right there alive and well!)
…The thing is, Lucy’s reaction to that confession was “…what?… Who are you, again?…” because she was too far gone from Alzheimer’s.
…tl;dr : Lillian was initially a “bad guy” in this strip, and she sabotaged Lucy and Eugene’s relationship out of envy/jealousy, and it seems more like the strip is hoping we forgot/don’t know that’s how it played out than Eugene having forgiven her for what happened (especially considering he seems to STILL be holding a torch for Lucy, even though their dating happened over 80 years ago, and she’s been dead for nearly 10).
*IMHO, there was a good running gag in “Which one’s Morgan and which one’s Chase?”, but apparently the strip established which was named what early on.Crankshaft: For those of us wondering why Eugene presents as “ridiculous:”
My father was born in 1922, so was a grown man by the time JFK destroyed the American hat industry, and he knew Hat Fashion firsthand. When I was about 30 years old I told him I was thinking about buying a porkpie hat. He grunted and said “You’re too OLD for one.” If I couldn’t wear the hat of a callow youth at thirty, imagine bumping into a 99-year-old still wearing his 1935 topper.
Also, no one has worn a bow tie seriously since 1965.
@Anonymous: Ho-lee shit. That’s actually so much worse than what I presumed.
@Scratchy Scrotum LXIX:
#29. LUANN: Nope, and since toilet is probably an outdoor privy or hole in the ground, her campers will be getting an Eiffel.
RMMD: Today she introduced herself to and served local folk, by tomorrow or Friday the City Tourists will come. Doug will definitely need to hire at least one more cook and server as well as expand hours. Meaning he’ll need to hire TWO new cooks and servers. Mae Mae is a job creator
@Liam: The Doors starred at the Whiskey about 60 years ago. A 21 year old Eugene would be in his 80s. Yeah, that tracks better than someone taking a date to a Bunny Berrigan dance.
I would think of the ‘Summer of Love’ when I encounter crabby old people. Were they always like that?
@ectojazzmage: Short version: see the key moment, and Uncle Lumpy’s response to it here.
Long, self-promoting version: I co-wrote an essay on Son Of Stuck Funky about the Lillian-Lucy story. Lillian hid Eugene’s marriage proposal letter to Lucy, leaving Eugene to believe he had been rejected. Somehow this never got discovered for the next 80 years, and Lillian never admitted her misdeed to the offended parties. Not even after Lucy had some kind of mental breakdown, and had to go to a sanitarium because of it. So yes, Lillian is a strong contender to Les Moore for Scummiest Person in the Funkyverse.
@treetown:
#45. PHANTOM : To a he-man with nice hair like the Cobra, it’d be no problem to scale a tree at night and escape over the fence
@Ken: “to a plumber with a PhD….D….D”
Pickles: I’m not saying they’ve been using the same fake excuse for 50 years, but they still think “Jeopardy!” is hosted by Art Fleming.
Crankshaft: “Leprechaun Ed Crankshaft” is reluctantly parting with the photos that show him dancing with the two ladies — but he’ll never give up the home movies of what they did afterward.
Andy Capp: In England, a police constable is the lowest-ranked law enforcement officer. So it makes sense that he’s the one who has to visit Andy Capp’s house several times a week. “What is it this time?” “Drunken violence and public nuisance.” “All right, send P.C. Freddie again. And have him bring a print of The Hay Wain — that always seems to keep Andy calm when he’s starting to sober up.”
What a great career being a historian is! If you work hard and collect plenty of awards, they might turn your book into a two-panel joke
“The police is after me! You can no longer say that you want your country back!”
“I think this is about how you tried to set fire to a hotel with refugees inside!”
“Yes and, as Elon would say, it’s a free speech issue! I hope he buys me a pint”
REX MORGAN M.D.: So…is someone going to to explain to dumb little Lorna/Mae Mae that she can’t have her cake and eat it too. Like, this broad really thinks she can be “just a waitress” and yet still have people praise her, even though the whole point of this was the the waitress stuff was just a cover for her to lie low to escape a fans hounding her. Also the only problem is that her feet hurt, even though that was supposedly the “issue” with her acting jobs as well: that they consisted of too much running around and hard work. “But I can staisfy the writer’s obvious fetish for thick-thighed waitresses in outdated uniforms this way, so clearly the service jobs wins out!”
@BigTed: I had no idea Constable had painted a hay wain, and was wondering why you were referencing the 1519 Bosch triptych of a hay wagon leading dozens of sinners to Hell.
I’m not big on Regency landscapes, but I always have time for lurid depictions of eternal damnation.
I know this is redundant, but there’s something wrong with Batiuk’s timeline here. My dad was born in 1927, died in 2018. He was 90 at death. If still alive, he’d be 96. As I recall, he loved Glenn Miller and other Big Band music, although he never danced, that would be worldly. Reading Wikipedia, the Big Band Era was mostly in the 1930s to early 1940s. For this decrepit leprechaun and Lillian and Lillian’s withered sister to have gone out dancing to Big Band music, at a minimum they’d have to be 5 years older than my father. So are Lillian and this member of her late 1930s throuple 101 years old now?
Luann: just a reminder that “camp counselor” is a job for a high school student.
RxMD: Not that I’m complaining—this is more of a curiosity—but it has been 106 days since Rex has appeared in his own comic strip, and that was only in the form of one of Sarah’s meta strips, so it has actually been 111 days since we’ve seen the real Rex Morgan, M.D. Should we put out a BOLO? Did he have complications from his cataract surgery and is currently blind/comatose/dead while June keens over his lifeless body? Has he given in to the eyepatch lifestyle and is currently sporting a parrot on his shoulder while cruising the Caribbean for Spanish frigates riding fat and low in the water? I’d say inquiring minds want to know but we all know the truth is going to be so painfully noneventfully boring it will beggar belief.
AC: Here’s the thing about comic strip writers: if they encounter a word with two very different meanings or a word that sounds like another word, they never let go of it. They can’t. Come hell or highwater, they’ll turn it into a daily. (“Hey, wait a second, what if I had two characters called Heller and Highwater?”)
‘shaft: “I won’t have room for an entire shoebox full of pictures. Gotta have space for my fedoras and bowties.”
Pickles: Lately, I’ve been seeing lots of variations on the same basic joke: “Haw haw! Jeopardy! is for old people! Old people sure do love Jeopardy!, I tell you what!” It’s become the new Matlock, and I don’t like that one bit. Jeopardy! is a beautiful thing, and it’s for everybody! Maybe if these cynical young people could tear themselves away from their fancy restaurants for one night, they’d know that. (Young people are super into sit-down restaurants, right?)
@Doc Wonmug: Eugene fought in World War II. If he was 18 in 1945, that sets his birth year no later than 1927, same as your dad’s. Which would mean Eugene turns 99 this year (not 96). Batiuk really needs to kill off both of these tiresome fossils. Plus Ed Crankshaft, who is at least 108. Then he can turn Crankshaft into The Batton Thomas Interview Show, which is what he wants to do anyway.
@Doc Wonmug: This GenXer maintains that it feels weird that “50 years ago” is the era not of Glenn Miller but Glenn Frey.
@Joe Blevins: First the past few years at least, young people haven’t been able to afford sit down restaurants. “Going out to dinner” for these two means wrapping up a couple of PB&Js and taking them to a park bench.
If I were the guest editor for Andy Capp for a week, I would mandate that every strip be full of British terminology and slang.
GIL THORP: Coach Martinez: “Sorry Thorp, I can’t relate. Probably because we exist in a different dimension from where the action in panel #1 is. A dimension where the lawyers for Charles Schultz’s estate are asleep at the switch, apparently.”
@Tonio: When it comes to Crankshaft, “peaceful easy feeling” means he remembered to take his Metamucil 4-in-1. HEY-OH!
@Charterstone: Dune: Mae Mae will see Rex because her feet hurt. He will be fully recovered from his surgery and it will never be mentioned again. Then the appointment will conclude and he’ll go back into The Void until he makes another appearance 175 days later.
@Doc Wonmug: @Banana Jr. 6000: Have you factored in all the Funkyverse time-skips? It’s possible Eugene is only 89 — or maybe a remarkable 109.
Crankshaft: They’re putting hat guy in a home, or possibly in prison. Meanwhile, Lilian remains at large.
yJP: Judge Parker’s sandwich-devouring reminds me of the classic Rex Morgan sandwich scene, “Excuse me, I’m going in!”
“Oh good, just a salesman. If it’s a real cop, warn me, because I just robbed several banks.”
@Rita Lake: How could any of us have forgotten the infamous FOOB Sunday when Ellie ate a cheeseburger?
REX MORGAN M.D.: Lorna/Mae Mae is so dumb and clueless. Like, honey in this day and age, if you the praise and fandom of celebrity but don’t want to do anything that would actually merit it, just shill yourself on reality TV. Duh!
@Joe Blevins:
Young people would be into fancy restaurants if they could afford to go to one. Sadly, most of the young people I know are working multiple jobs to afford rent and food. I’m convinced it’s why they don’t drink like previous generations: too damned expensive.
Pint of decent beer goes for upwards of $8.00 in some places.
@101 2+2=7: She could kick off her Reality TV career by releasing her “Mud Mountain” video. It did a lot for Paris Hilton.
AC: True story: While I don’t recall anyone ever coming to the house trying to sell art prints, I do remember one occasion when I was young where someone came to the door trying to sell Maw Broon some kind of fancy dust-mop. And even as a kid I was thinking “It’s a door-to-door brush salesman! I thought you only got those in cartoons!” A few years later we had an old lady, who may or may not have been Romani, selling handmade wooden clothespegs, which I thought was downright 19th century.
All of which is to say, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if this were a thing that actually happened. Whether anyone actually buys them is another question.
Phantom: So, a couple of weeks ago, it looked like Chatu was still in the cage we saw him in last time, which you wouldn’t get away with in a zoo these days. Now it looks like they’ve put him in a fairly decent enclosure, of the sort you would see in a zoo these days. I’d wonder if his lawyer had issued a protest, if he’d ever spoken to a lawyer or there was anyone for a hypothetical lawyer to protest to.
@Horace Broon: Poor Chatu was arrested in a place where The Ghost Who Prosecutes and Convicts is also in charge of the criminal defense lawyers, the appeals courts and the jailers.
It’s cheaper that way.
@Doc Wonmug: Batty also thinks that Jeff, who I’m pretty sure is supposed to be around my age, would have grown up reading the Silver Age adventures of Barry Allen as the Flash, rather than the 80s adventures of Wally West. Honestly, I’m genuinely impressed when a comics creator does remember that if a character’s been the same age for decades, that affects when their past happened.
But it’s not just comics creators who find shifting demographics confusing — the specific mention of big band music reminds me that a few years ago, I was listening to an interview with the head of BBC Radio 2 about the difficulties of getting the balance right on the station (for those who don’t know, Radio 1 is the current charts, Radio 3 is classical, and Radio 2 is literally everything else). And he repeatedly talked about “big band music for the over-60 demographic.” And I just thought “If Maw Broon was still with us she’d be in that demographic and I don’t remember her ever showing the slightest interest in big band music. When she was young she was into the Beatles and the sixties folk revival, and later she discovered Jim Steinman and Leonard Cohen. People don’t suddenly become interested in what you consider ‘old people music’ once they become old!”
@Ukulele Ike: If you wanted to wear a hat, why let your Dad tell you different? With the right style you might have looked rather nice.
I picked up a cheap fedora on a trip once more than a decade ago and now I rarely go out without one on. I eventually replaced that first one with a nicer one a few years back, and I still sometimes get genuine compliments about it.
I’ve also even worn a bow tie, with a nice three-piece suit on special occasions.
Eugene’s problem is he isn’t committing to the look. Either wear long sleeves and maybe a vest or don’t bother. Plus, you’d think an old-fashioned gent like him would know you take your hat off* in the presence of a lady**.
*Of course if he did we couldn’t tell him and Ed apart (are we SURE they aren’t related?).
**In Lillian’s case I use that term as loosely as humanly possible.
@Ken: I’m holding Tom Batiuk to his own standards: “The only comic strip where the characters age realistically” and “a quarter inch from reality.”
Ed Crankshaft is at least 108, probably older. Eugene is at least 99, probably older. Lillian, Lucy, and Eugene were all interested in each other as teenagers, so they must be with in a couple years of each other. Lucy died in 2009, living to be over 80. Most of it in a sanitarium because of what Lillian did.
Screw all four of these losers. Lillian for what she did (and then didn’t do); Eugene and Lucy for passively letting their love die; and Ed Crankshaft for pretty much everything he’s done his entire life. The world should have bid good riddance to them long ago.
“We could show them how to stream Jeopardy on demand — a feature provided by all modern TV service providers — but I don’t like spending time with them either!”
Pffft! Art prints? They were nudies!
Pickles: I’m near certain that my Amazon TV Firestick supports an all-day Jeopardy streaming channel.
Probably the really good ones from back in the day too.
Even if the answers are outdated.
@Banana Jr. 6000: There’s the trope “Hate Sink”
Crankshaft is a “Hate Toilet”
Also, I want to thank Baja for the cute otter yesterday :3
It was WAAAYYY too late when I came on and saw it this morning, so I’m going to say now :3 I appreciate it ^^
Crankshaft-“I knew it was you all along, Lillian. You broke my heart. YOU BROKE MY HEART!”
@Horace Broon: The Wambesi insist on being able to watch the Python while he poops. They don’t have televisions.
“He’s awfully constipated this morning.”
“He ate toasted cheese before turning in last night.”
@The Quiet Man: Hats are fine, but the Porkpie was considered a young man’s style. Eugene looked normal in one at age 18 or whatever, less so at 99.
@Anonymous: I mean, I am, as are several million other people per week, according to my brief research, some of whom are certainly in this comment section. I’m sure Ken Jennings would be the first to agree that he can’t truly replace Alex Trebek, but he’s been doing a great job.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
“Ed Crankshaft is at least 108, probably older.”
A few years back, Todd had Cranky say something about being in the Indians’ farm system with Rocky Colavito. This did not jive with the previous backstory for Ed that he had played in the ’30s and ’40s since Colavito had been an Indian farmhand back in the early ’50s. I had the temerity to ask Batty (via email) if he had just made a mistake. He replied that he had to adjust the timeline because if he didn’t, Ed would be impossibly old. But he couldn’t leave it at that; he had to add that it was his ballgame, he held the ball and he could do whatever he wanted to. Ar eal, classy guy.
The problem with cartoonists tying their characters to real-life events is that it does just that and people can figure out how old they are. The worst case example is Gasoline Alley where the characters are supposed to age in something approximating real time. Skeezix was born February 9, 1921 so he should be 105. But Scancareeli hasn’t mentioned his age or even his birthday since he hit 100. Even worse is good old “Uncle Walt Wallet. Frank King created a backstory for Walt with Walt having served in the Navy during WWI, that he was a college grad, and that he had been a sales manger BEFORE he moved into the “Alley”. So he must have been about thirty when Skeezix was dumped on his doorstep and he must, then, be about 135. The problem isn’t just that this makes Walt impossibly old but that the last vet from that war died in 2011. That puts Scancarelli somewhere between a rock and a hard place, especially if he is unable to handle the death of a major character. I guess he has scrapped the whole “characters age” thing but stories about really, really old people are really, really boring.
@brendancalling: Luann: just a reminder that “camp counselor” is a job for a high school student.
And just a reminder that Luann still believes in Santa Claus (no seriously, check out 12/24/2022) so why would you expect anything else from her?
@Charterstone: Dune: 88- Maybe he’s in a Dr. Hook cover band?
@Banana Jr. 6000: “The only comic strip where the characters age realistically”
Has Batty actually claimed that? Hahahahahahahaha…
Not only is this blatantly untrue — the Crankshaft characters look exactly the same as they did decades ago, and Funky Winkerbean characters only aged during timeskips — but it also removes the only defence I’ve ever seen of the time-discontinuity nonsense; that both strips are set in the Eternal Unaging Present so it’s not like there’s a proper timeline anyway.
Tom Batiuk: Always somehow able to have his strips make even less sense than you thought.
LUANN: I dunno, Frank. Given that the hemline of the Snoopy nightshirt stops right at Luann’s pubic bone, I think it looks pretty “mature” to me.
@Bob Tice:
Bob, I’m not gonna lie, I do the anticipated groan at a bunch of these. This was a gloriously mad art piece. I doff my hat, sirrah!
@Horace Broon:
On “The only comic strip where the characters age realistically” :
In Batiuk’s defense, I *THINK* that tagline was only used for Funky Winkerbean. On the other hand, I’ve always felt that was more of an excuse to explain why he aged all the high school-aged characters out of the strip to focus almost exclusively on Les Moore’s age group (and the Starbuck Jones/Atomix Komix stuff).
@TheDiva:
There’s probably one only universal good the heave into our modern world has produced, and it is the demise of big band music.
C-Shaft: Eugene won’t have room because he’s moving to a depressing retirement home or the grave. This is the old Batiuk we know and…know.
Pickles: Next time you can invite them to lunch. Or lunch for you, dinner for their superannuated asses. That is if you actually want to spend time with them, for some reason.
@Banana Jr. 6000:
Next Week: Batton Thomas drinks a glass of water! Amuses Sesame Street’s Burt!
@Ukulele Ike:
Also, a porkpie? Old man was right. Homberg, my man. That shit is HAT.
PICKLES: I can certainly relate to this joke. But still, it’s a rerun from years ago.
MENACING DENTIST: I initially thought those leaves in the background was crap or something spraying out of Dennis’ behind.
LUANN: I don’t have kids, but if I’m in Frank’s position, I’m saying, “What’re you askin’ ME for? Go ask your mother.”
ZITS: Ask my brother, Jeremy. Seriously, he’d go.
JP: Alan, you could have knocked it out of the park. You SHOULD have knocked it out of the park. If Ann knew how to get a job on her own, would she be running around attacking people with a spanking stick and tying them up in a storage unit? She’s clearly bored, and doesn’t have the sense to do something honest with her time, like working.
@Horace Broon: I should probably let this go, but I just reminded myself when the timeskip actually happened: 2007. That’s when Funky Winkerbean jumped forwards a decade so it could give us occasional glimpses into the Crankshaft characters’ horrible future. If they were actually aging in real time, we should have reached the Jeff-is-bald-and-Ed’s-catatonic period in 2017! Conversely, when Les cameos to give Lillian extremely bland writing advice in actual 2017, he shouldn’t have been clean-shaven and hawking Fallen Star – he should already be pretentiously goateed and working on the Dead Wife Diaries!
TLDR: Batty is, once again, full of crap.
@Anonymous: Okay, that makes a bit more sense, but I still think they only aged during the timeskips, and AFAIK there were only two timeskips.
@Tabby Lavalamp:
With luck he digs a ditch for Chairman Mao until he drops.
@brendancalling: Not necessarily, at least in the past. The summer camp where I worked had a few college-age counselors with specialties (I did nature programming). However, I was fully capable of choosing my own jammies. If I had asked my dad for his advice on which jammies to take to camp, he would have been, um, nonplussed.
CS: The only way I can believe in any sort of redemption for Lillian is if she falls on her knees, fesses up, and begs Eugene for forgiveness. If that ever were to happen Batiuk would probably have Eugene say something like, “Don’t worry about it. The only reason I proposed to Lucy was because I thought I didn’t stand a chance with you. If I couldn’t have the woman I loved I figured I’d make do with her clone.” Problem solved!
FC: A seven year old barely knee high to his mom? Is Thel one of those Mongovian Ice Giants?
Late Thread Cuisine: Did they go out of their way to make these recipes look so unappealing, or is it just veal’s fault?
Andy Capp: They’re a cultured people, what rot!
@Ukulele Ike: The Hay Wain was John Constable’s most famous painting, according to Professor Internet. It’s much more peaceful — although it seems likely that Bosch’s version is a better representation of what’s going on in Andy Capp’s head.
Pickles: Jeapordy airs at 4:30 PM here in the Twin Cities so Fibber McGee and Molly could go out to dinner but they’d have to skip the early bird special. They’re afraid they might make Jack Klompus mad (“It must be nice to have that kind and money!”).
Am I to understand that this guy in Crankshaft is someone other than the titular Crankshaft?
@Baja Gaijin: Er…I don’t know if a “Blowin’ Mud” video series would be as enticing as if might initially seem…(Maybe among Marvin-esque scat enthusiasts?)
@Baja Gaijin: Wow, it’s so bad the photographer used a soft-focus lens. I take it the veal is under the mushroom(?) cream(?) sauce.
DT: Mumbles’ full name is “Mumbles Except When He’s Really Upset.”
Dustin: Baldness is genetic, so Hayden has nothing to worry about unless something too depressing for words happened.
GT: The Thorp crew acquired that brick wall at a Peanuts estate sale. As to what Luke is doing behind it, I really wish we could see his hands.
HtH: Hagar’s mouth is just a trapdoor in his formless beard, while the attempt to put a mustache on the marriage counselor can only be termed “unfortunate.” Someone really needs to at least take some continuing ed classes in illustration before they attempt to draw facial hair again.
Luann: Take only one pair of pajamas and they’ll wind up smelling pretty ripe, so good thinking on everyone’s part.
MW: A person’s value lies in how ready they are for a quickie after a vigorous cross-country run, that’s what Dawn always says.
RMMD: I hope that Doug doesn’t think Mae Mae is asking him for a foot massage, because he could easily wind up sharing Tony Rocky Horror’s fate.
@Horace Broon: The gold standard for Eternal Unaging Present was set by Rex Stout in the Nero Wolfe stories.
@Ken: It’s a method that can work quite well with detective story characters, even if it can lead to some weird results. For example in the aforementioned Nero Wolfe series a character who was in his twenties in Too Many Cooks returned in A Right to Die with a son that age. Wolfe and Archie had apparently not aged at all.
@Tonio: Re British terminology: I read a lot of British authors and run across many words that prove that we are divided by a common language. The one that threw me off the most was “revising” for a school exam. I discovered it meant looking over the material again, not editing.
@unca scrooge: @Horace Broon: and others Re Crankshaft’s age – There used to be a time difference between Crankshaft and Funky Winkerbean, which further muddied the understanding of everyone’s age. I recall that when FW ended, the magical mysterious janitor put an end to all that, and the time frame was whatever Batiuk said it was. I see that he was his usual humble, gracious self when he replied to unca scrooge.
@Baja Gaijin: Cuisine – It’s a wonder that no one sliced those olives into eyes for that dish. I guess the olives are there to kill the taste of the glop over rice.
@Baja Gaijin:
The olive plate looks magic, the rest, totally decent! We hadn’t figured out aesthetics yet!
@I speak Jive:
Frankly, “Public school” meaning “a super super private school” has always super eluded me in British English
@A Grave Mind: True. I forgot about that one.
@brendancalling: #102: All back issues of The Lantern, the Ohio State newspaper from 1884 to the present are available online for free. Whenever I feel like waxing nostalgic I like to look at the issues from the mid to late 70s when I lived in Columbus. What’s surprised me is I forgot how reasonable prices were for everything back then. I wanted to say cheap but people my parents age even then complained how expensive everything was getting compared to what they paid back in the 30s and 40s. I’ll stay with reasonable. There wasn’t a single thing advertised in that paper, short of a brand new car, that a college age kid flipping burgers or punching a cash register couldn’t afford to buy. Wanted to take your girlfriend out? In March of 1974 you could’ve seen Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes, with opening act, Bob Seger, at the Agora on High street for five bucks a head.
@139 2+2=7: Uhmmm, that’s totally not where I was going.
@140 Ken: I think some of the photo’s sharpness disappeared over the years with the printed blacks fading with age. Or the photographer used some Vaseline on the lens to soften the image. Not enough Vaseline, I think.
@145 I speak Jive: You’re right: sliced green olive eyes could improve this dish by distracting the viewers’ eyes from the glop.
@146 A Grave Mind: The olive plate does look good. The broccoli plate next to it is a bit sus.
All this talk of the impossibly old age of Crankshaft characters reminds me of something I used to ruminate over since I was in my early teens. I’d noted how every June, Garfield’s age would go up by one year. By 1996, I found it incredible that a cat could live to be 18 (at least one in such lousy shape as Garfield). I don’t know whether Garfield still ages in real time, but assuming he does, he’s closing in on 48 this month. Someone call Guinness!!
@Horace Broon: On top of that, For Better Or For Worse and even Gasoline Alley have a much better claim to that boast. GA at least had the taste to let some of its characters die of natural causes off-panel, like Slim’s wife. Batiuk only kills characters if he thinks it serves one of his petty grudges (John Darling) or if it sets up Les Moore for another round of insufferable smugness (Bull Bushka; Mary Sue Sweetwater).
@Rover Berkeley: #151: Billy Keane celebrates a birthday every year but is perpetually seven years old.
@Baja Gaijin: @Baja Gaijin:
Oh, it’s broccoli in butter/cheese goo, that’s literally never been bad
@Ken: @Artist formerly known as Ben: The Nero Wolfe novels were published between 1934 and 1975.
In the early 2000s TV adaptation (starring Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton), it’s fun to watch Archie’s suits bounce between 1930s double-breasted wide lapel pinstripes and 1960s Carnaby Street mod.
@Guillermo el chiclero: I think Lillian is at least half a century beyond redemption. The whole “hiding the letter” story was believable teenage behavior in the early 1940s. But the time the war ended, it was time to grow the hell up.
Lillian’s whole reason for hiding the letter was that Lillian wanted Eugene for herself. (Even though he only went to Lucy after Lillian turned down his invitation to dance, making the whole story a “play hard to get” move that backfired on Lillian.) A fight between Lucy and Lillian over Eugene would have made sense as a story, but the Funkyverse is a 100% conflict-free zone. So we get the story we got.
Lillian’s greatest sin wasn’t hiding a letter. It’s that she accepted this misdeed as a fait accompli, never admitted it, never made any attempt to atone for it, and never even tried to benefit from it. She made herself, her sister, and another man live pointless, unfulfilled lives, just because she couldn’t own up to what she did. That’s why Lillian McKenzie is the biggest PoS on the comics page.
@Guillermo el chiclero: When brendancalling mentioned current-day $8 pints at post #102, I immediately recalled the 50-cent 10-oz drafts at George and Harry’s bar in New Haven in 1979. I can’t remember the last time I bought a drink at a bar — twenty dollar cocktails, feh.
@Rover Berkeley:
Garfield does go down better with a pint, it’s true.
Andy Capp – This would be much funnier if Andy’s wife was planning a bachelorette party and was being read a string of costume options for the male stripper.
Crankshaft – Another stand-in for Batiuk, who fears that nobody cares for his archive of comic strips and original art when he dies.
Pickles – Once Jeopardy! shifted from having contestants limited to 5 appearances in a row, it started to make minor celebrities of long-term contestants. Ken Jennings was the first breakout star, and now some contestants even become villains during their runs.
Which is to say, this is the elder Pickles’ form of gossip. They couldn’t name a single TikTok star, don’t know who Timothee Chalamet is, and stay out of the latest political drama, but miss one episode of Jeopardy and you lose your status in the Jeopardy fans Facebook group
6 CX: not a Springsteen disciple, only this evening did I discover Depressed Chick is singing his “Dancing in the Dark”. Yeah, while it’s tempting to affirm our mood, I hope she’ll next sing, “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head”. It turns a frown upside down, eh?
@Banana Jr. 6000: It’s really Toto’s “Africa” arranged for marching band.
Pluggers never use modern technology, because old technology is better. Pluggers use modern technology so much, they’ve forgotten how old technology works. Pluggers never use modern technology…
@Peanut Gallery:
#162. PLUGGERS : BETTY has a similar message yesterday and today. Books, a relic of the dark days of ignorance? Sure hope not!
H&L – I still think they should’ve gone with “Bicenquinquagenary.”
@Activist: I NEVER noticed it. To me, “Dancing in the Dark” is that 1931 song featured on Broadway in The Band Wagon. A lot of master jazz men put it on their playlists.
Bianca should karaoke along with the Kinks’ 1969 “Victoria.” The rock n’ roll song closest to injecting a large syringe of a strong cocaine solution directly into your heart.
@Banana Jr. 6000: Before anyone does this timeline shit, please understand that it is a fool’s errand that can only lead to madness and gibbering. Premise 1 is that the Funkyverse is a multiverse of which we were shown two instances that were both contemporaneous and 10 years apart. Premise 2 is that they collapsed into a singularity because of the motorcycle helmet worn by a time traveling janitor. Given this background, time in the Funkyverse is non-linear, non Euclidean, and can only be measured by a sundial under the pale light of a gibbous moon. It is a cycle in which, for all eternity, Lillian McKenzie purloins Eugene’s letter, Ed Crankshaft cannot read his name on a team roster, and Lisa Moore receives the PET scan results of a patient whose cancer is in remission instead of her own and ends Chemo because of it. Over and over again.
@JeffMcm: Am I to understand that this guy in Crankshaft is someone other than the titular Crankshaft?
Nobody wants to see Crankshaft with his shirt off.
@Anonymous: Who is still watching “Jeopardy”? Alex Trebek died years ago
_________________________________________
What is watching “Wheel Of Fortune”
I don’t give a f*** is watching “Newlywed Game”.
@Comically Challenged: Nah, the Pickles’ son-in-law appears every now and again, but you’re right, it’s infrequent.
@unca scrooge: Gasoline Alley ranges from dull to irritating for me, but I do like that Walt and Skeezix are impossibly old. I find it kind of charming that Walt is, as you say, over 130 years old (and he has a birth certificate to prove it, unlike all these fakers in remote villages claiming to be 120,) and he should be treated as some kind of medical miracle but there’s no explanation for it. You can’t kill off Walt or Skeezix! Fuggedaboutit!
@Bob Tice: Boooooooo (extremely complimentary)
@richardf8: Oh, I know it’s ridiculous. But the basic premises, like Crankshaft playing for the 1940 Toledo Mud Hens, fall apart so easily that I don’t even try to parse Batiuk’s inept attempts to handwave it.