A recent Crankshaft strip (by Tom Batiuk and Chuck Ayers) garnered a bit of ire from Feministing and, to a lesser degree, Tom Spurgeon, for suggesting that, in a nutshell, old people are too ugly to worry about attacks from rapist and muggers. And no, you didn’t read that last sentence wrong. Editor and Publisher has a nice round-up of the story.
In other Batiuk-related news, Shaenon Garrity explains the existence of Funky Winkerbean for you.
October 26th, 2007 at 8:22 am
Boy, Batiuk’s King of the World one week (for his cancer story), and Public Enemy #1 the next. Pretty much the whole comics/pop cultural whirlwind in a nutshell.
October 26th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
He should’ve just changed the words “pepper spray” to “box of condoms”.
October 26th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
The look on her face suggests to me that she doesn’t agree with him.
Are we supposed to disregard that and assume that the intent of the strip is that old people shouldn’t worry about rape?
Because various episodes of Law and Order SVU would tell us that’s wrong.
To me I thought the strip was just demonstrating how old fashioned and maybe somewhat naive the male is.
October 26th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Actually, Mark, people were ready to lynch Batiuk for the cancer thing too.
October 26th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Isn’t Crankshaft notoriously an insulting Bunker-esque curmudgeon? It’s kind of a mistake to equate his words with Batiuk’s views, although yes, it’s a very dangerous joke for Batiuk to have made, obviously.
October 26th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Screw the lynching of Batiuk. He’s had friend of the strip John Byrne do the cast renderings. I’d recognize those Byrne-heads anywhere. Tunnel-vision blogsphere turn your hate toward Byrne. I will post directions to how this connects to Mark Millar later.
http://www.funkywinkerbean.com/cast.html
Funky at 46 is downright Puppet Master scary:
http://www.funkywinkerbean.com/images/ng-funky.jpg
October 27th, 2007 at 6:54 am
So Crankshaft or whatever is a curmudgeon, the strip still ends with his statement as the “gag.” There’s no punchline about his being a clueless Archie Bunkerish jackass, other than the woman vaguely frowning. So the interpretation of the meta-joke being “Oh yeah, it’s funny because he’s just saying what we all think… that old women aren’t sexually attractive and therefore don’t have to fend off unwanted sexual advances up to and including assault” still stands.
October 27th, 2007 at 6:56 am
The one open-mouth expression of Funky at 46 is him looking in the mirror and thinking, “Jeez, John Byrne’s artistic skills have degnerated THIS MUCH since his salad days?!”
October 28th, 2007 at 9:50 am
To suspend this comic from the newspaper because of this one strip is ridiculous. I don’t see anything wrong with it, it’s merely a satire of the paranoid American middle-class nonidentities of this era. When Outland ran in our newspaper, we were accustomed to seeing such jokes. I guess the general media has become way too touchy on taboo subjects and would rather save their jobs than giving insight on a rather silly custom.
October 28th, 2007 at 11:15 am
I think people get their undies in a bundle far to easily. First of all, there is nothing in the strip about rape. Second, anyone that follows Cranckshaft has to know that is is what he is.
October 28th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
What is sad here is that a newspaper editor has decided what is suitable for his readers.
We all watched Archie Bunker and never felt obliged to agree with his views. Crankshaft is of the same mold and all readers should understand that.
October 29th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
It’s an editor’s job to make those kinds of decisions. You might not agree with his call, but it’s his call to make.