Archive: Crankshaft

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Crankshaft, 8/19/26

The last time Crankshaft and Harry Dinkle started an adventure together, Crankshaft looked real cherry but it ended up with Harry confronting the truly depressing circumstances of his father’s death. Now Ed has shown up at his place of work to drag him off on some other journey and he looks pissed, so maybe this time will turn out to be more fun for Harry, or maybe Crankshaft has just decided to murder him and put him out of his misery.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 8/19/26

At one point the scam twins were thinking about kidnapping a child, but then they realized that would not only get them in a lot of trouble, but also make this strip dangerously exciting, so now they’re trying to negotiate down to an acceptable level of plot development. I love the idea that squatting is too much of a commitment to bother doing. Like, most people squat just because that means they get to live someplace for free, but in the Twins’ conception, they’d be squatting for revenge, which means they’d have to stick around even if it turns out that the Morgan house has bad vibes or is unpleasant to be inside (it definitely does and is).

Beetle Bailey, 8/19/26

Hey, General, I just want to point out that the U.S. has fought in, like, several wars in the time that you’ve been an officer. Heck, there’s one going on right now! I know what you mean is that you want to have been in one of the cool ones, not the cringe wars we keep finding ourselves in lately, but still, I feel like you shouldn’t be quite so vocal on this point at the office if you don’t want to find yourself abruptly in the field.

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Dustin, 8/17/26

Hey kids! Do you remember the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that dumped 150 million gallons of oil into the ocean? Well, that happened in April of 2010, which I regret to inform you all was more than 16 years ago. I’m not saying that it’s impossible for someone in their early 20s, as Dustin is supposed to be, to have a memory of this event that includes the total amount of oil spilled over the course of the disaster; I am saying that it’s a testament to the unparalleled period of peace and prosperity we’ve experienced since, given that this is Dustin’s go-to reference for “something world-historically bad happening” within his lifetime.

Crankshaft, 8/17/26

Hey, kids! Do you remember Funky Winkerbean, the comic strip that was originally about wacky high school students in Northeast Ohio who hung out at Montoni’s Pizza, but eventually came to be about depressed adults in Northeast Ohio whose lives all revolved around Montoni’s Pizza in some way, before finally becoming about survivors living in a futuristic sci-fi Northeast Ohio hellscape where books were eradicated in “the burnings” and the last few precious copies are guarded by robots, with the status of Montoni’s Pizza being unclear? Anyway, long story short, Crankshaft hopes you do, because clearly the intention here is that Crankshaft sitting down and saying “a nice big slice of … Montoni’s Pizza” with an extremely knowing expression on his face will have all of us hootin’ and hollerin’ and yellin’ “got the reference” like we’re the live studio audience for Family Matters and Urkel just walked on set.

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Crankshaft, 8/10/26

You know how when you’ve been experiencing pain for a while so it’s become just kind of background radiation in your life, when it abates the absence of sensation feels actively pleasurable? That’s what I’m assuming is happening here: Pam had instinctively steeled herself to receive some gibberish pun-like utterance from her father, but then he just said some mostly coherent dribble of Chicken Soup for the Soul, and now she’s positively beaming about it. Obviously this is even less of a “punchline” than you usually get in this strip, but maybe reading one of the only Funkyverse strips ever where everybody involved is more or less happy is its own reward.

Alice, 8/10/26

I’m assuming we’re supposed to understand “The Marketplace” as Amazon or eBay or Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist or something, but maybe Alice’s boyfriend is talking about, like, the marketplace as an abstract concept? Maybe Alice has crafted the perfect computer virus that’s going to destroy capitalism, and she just has to do “one more thing” to end all forms of buying and selling, forever.

Mary Worth, 8/10/26

Here’s a thing about Wilbur: he could’ve been fucking your mom for years and that wouldn’t make you his friend. You’ve got to go out for ice cream with him and conspicuously not mention the fact that he got a triple scoop and it’s melting all over everything to earn that status!