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!”
81 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.”