Archive: Crankshaft

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Baby Blues, 8/9/23

C’mon, Darryl, you don’t need Wren for a three-legged race; just tie a shoe on that nose.

Crankshaft, 8/9/23

They train surgeons not to say “Oops”, but Ed’s dermatologist missed the class on “Holy $#%!!”. I hope she took the Continuing Medical Education unit on “Get me the belt sander.”

Between Friends, 8/9/23

Don’t get too relaxed there, Susan—Lucky Eddie could be lurking just around the corner, looking to get lucky.

Luann, 8/9/23

It’s not unusual for authors to tire of their main character—I mean, Arthur Conan Doyle is a famous example, and look what happened to Barney Google. Judge Parker turned into Sam Driver, Action Lawyer and stayed that way for decades. Team Luann has done a lot to sideline their protagonist: shunted her off alone to Community College, gave her dweeby thrall Gunther an actual girlfriend, introduced secondary characters (Tara, Stef) with far more robust backstories, etc. So why keep Luann around? Waiting for readers to get as sick of her as her creators have? I have news: that ship is a mere dot on the far horizon.

Anyway, former hottie Tiffany is hosting a pool party at her Dad’s house (persistently and annoyingly called “the Manse”). Tiffany covets and covertly ogles Stef’s boyfriend Kip, who is staying at the pool house because of the reasons, and complains that she doesn’t have a boyfriend. But Tiffany has never had a boyfriend; her Whole Deal was that she was “popular” in the abstract, i.e., she had a world of choice but never made one. It seems pretty clear that she “wants” Kip only to shore up her sagging, um, confidence, because Kip is so dull and dimensionless he couldn’t get cast as a Ken in that Barbie movie.

Sherman’s Lagoon, 8/9/23

Your son, Herman, Megan, c’mon, get with the program.

In an echo of February’s “Chinese Spy Balloon” incident, Sherman ate a bunch of helium balloons found in a crate of derelict property that fell into Kapupu Lagoon en route to Whacko’s Party Store. The Kapupu Self-Defense Forces seem a lot more on the ball about territorial integrity than our own armed forces were, for which their reward will be a deluge of shark guts.


Josh has sworn a Blood Oath not to cover Luann. A Blood Oath. Worth more than a few bucks, wouldn’t you agree? Make a generous contribution to the Comics Curmudgeon today!

—Uncle Lumpy

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Blondie, 8/7/23

… and my OnlyFans clients are insatiable!

Crankshaft, 8/7/23

Medical Economics: Crankshaft pines for the days of general practitioners, but his proctologist has gotten rich off this colossal asshole.

Judge Parker, 8/7/23

Sam is blind to the profundity of Lev’s evil, so I’ll spell it out: Sam, is that a child sitting in the front seat? Do you see a carseat anywhere? Does she look like she weighs 65 pounds?

Heathcliff, 8/7/23

Body positivity is lost on skunks.


I feel that the Blondie creative team is trapped somewhere and sending us coded shirt-messages. Anybody know what “υ – ε” means? It’s Greek to me.

—Uncle Lumpy

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Crock, 2/4/23

My attitude towards most of the comics on this site range from “I make fun of this because I love it” to “I make fun of this but I grudgingly respect its history and craft” to “I make fun of this because I love it ironically, which over the years has become increasingly impossible to distinguish from just loving something the normal way,” but there are a few that I genuinely dislike and think are bad, and I don’t think it’ll come as a big surprise to anyone that Crock is one of them. That’s why, in the interests of intellectual honestly, I feel compelled to confess that I think this is a really good joke.

Hi and Lois, 2/4/23

I can’t tell if Lois’s facial expression in panel two is meant to indicate that she just didn’t want to look at a little white spot up by the ceiling for the next five years and didn’t think Hi would take it so personally, or if she’s thinking “Wait, Hi thinks Michelangelo had a wife? Oh, you sweet summer child.”

Crankshaft, 2/4/23

“Back when I was a high school band director … it seemed like we were always in a strip called Funky Winkerbean. And now that I’m a choir director for St. Spires … we’re always in a strip called Crankshaft, which presumably had its own characters and plotlines that its readers enjoyed at some point.” “The more things change…” “Amen!”