Disconcerting Realization of the Day

Cidu Bill on Mar 19th 2010

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Paul McCartney is probably older than Crankshaft.

Filed in Bill Bickel, Crankshaft, Paul McCartnet, Tom Batiuk, comic strips, comics, humor | 32 responses so far

32 Responses to “Disconcerting Realization of the Day”

  1. Scott Mar 19th 2010 at 12:07 pm 1

    True, but he wasn’t when he wrote Yesterday.

  2. Scott Mar 19th 2010 at 12:09 pm 2

    Not that this means anything. Sometimes on my MP3 player I get Dylan in 1963 and Dylan in 2001 back to back - there is a commentary on aging if I ever heard one.

  3. Usual John Mar 19th 2010 at 12:12 pm 3

    Paul McCartney is 67. I’m pretty sure Crankshaft is older than that, especially if, as Wikipedia says, he’s a World War II veteran.

  4. Cidu Bill Mar 19th 2010 at 12:31 pm 4

    Scott, that was my point: it’s very disconcerting to my generation that we remember him as a pretty-boy when in fact he now looks like Miss Marple.

    And Usual John, I’ve noticed lately that comic strip and television writers have lost all concept of how old somebody would have to be to be a WW2 veteran. The war ended 65 years ago, guys!

  5. Elyrest Mar 19th 2010 at 12:48 pm 5

    My Dad is a WWII vet and he’ll be 86 this year. The youngest WWII vet would be 83. I can’t see an 83 year old driving a school bus. The last time I visited Dad we went out to dinner and as he was driving he asked me to reach into the glove compartment and get his glasses. Seems his television vision had improved so he didn’t wear his glasses all the time, but his forgetfulness caused him to leave the house without his glasses though. He usually didn’t remember until he was driving so he kept an extra pair of glasses in the car. A silent shriek went through my head as we were roaring down the road at 55 at night.

    Cidu Bill - Paul McCartney does not look like Miss Marple. He should quite dying his hair though. His face and hair would match and he’d look younger (Robert Redford are you listening!)

  6. Usual John Mar 19th 2010 at 12:59 pm 6

    Cidu Bill - Yes, if Crankshaft is really a WWII veteran he would need to be at least 82, and that would be if he joined up at 17 just before the end of the war. He looks and acts younger than that. When the strip began in 1997, being a veteran would have implied that he was probably in his early to mid-seventies, which is more consistent with the character we see.

    Many comic strip characters live in the present, yet seem not to age, or to do so only slowly. Readers usually don’t seem to care.

  7. ty Mar 19th 2010 at 01:48 pm 7

    As any fan of Craig Ferguson knows, Paul McCartney looks like Jessica Fletcher, not Miss Marple.

  8. Elyrest Mar 19th 2010 at 01:57 pm 8

    Usual John (6) - Crankshaft started in 1987 when he could have been 60 even though he looked much older.

    ty (7) - I’ll give you Jessica Fletcher, but is that before or after Angela Lansbury’s facelift?

  9. George P Mar 19th 2010 at 02:20 pm 9

    Thanks to TCM I have watched a lot of old movies over the past few years, and I now think of Angela Lansbury as an evil young hottie. It helps that I never watched “Murder, She Wrote”.

  10. George P Mar 19th 2010 at 02:22 pm 10

    Oh, and the scary age realization I had this week was that the Sex Pistols are to an eighteen-year-old today as the Andrews Sisters were to me at that age.

  11. Keera Mar 19th 2010 at 02:23 pm 11

    Shouldn’t we start updating the war the aging vet fought in to Korean or Vietnam, or will WWII forever be the only war worth being a vet from? (And the fact that the very youngest a WWII vet now can be is 83 makes me feel, well, old.)

  12. Cidu Bill Mar 19th 2010 at 03:21 pm 12

    Close enough: I always considered Miss Marple to be Jessica’s maiden aunt.

    Elyrest, if Batiuk keeps jumping ahead with Funky Winkerbean, the “kids” will soon be the same age as Crankshaft (who appears not to have aged since he first appeared).

    Regarding the WW2 business… some fictional character — I just can’t remember who right now because I’m also getting old — was recently retconned from being a WW2 veteran to someone who complains about having been too young for WW2.

  13. Elyrest Mar 19th 2010 at 05:52 pm 13

    Cidu Bill - Funky Winkerbeaners seem to be doomed to be old fogies. Funky himself seems as if he is in his late 60’s when I’m sure he’s supposed to twenty years younger.

    I’m not sure what fictional WWII vet you’re thinking of, but one that has bothered me is James Bond. He was in his mid-thirties when he debuted and since he has been a spy for the last 57 years he can’t have been in any wars since then. I read a number of books that use the same characters and because the authors don’t want the characters to age too much they keep them in some weird twilight world that isn’t the present, but almost is.

  14. Chakolate Mar 19th 2010 at 05:53 pm 14

    Bill said, “And Usual John, I’ve noticed lately that comic strip and television writers have lost all concept of how old somebody would have to be to be a WW2 veteran. The war ended 65 years ago, guys!”

    About ten years ago I was talking to a couple of 20-somethings about the Vietnam War and they started asking questions, some of which referred to WWII. When I pointed that out, they said, ‘But don’t you remember that one? It was bigger than Vietnam, wasn’t it?’

    I curled up in a fetal position before telling them that WWII ended seven years before I was born. Sigh.

  15. Cidu Bill Mar 19th 2010 at 05:59 pm 15

    Elyrest, I’m sure the name of the fictional character will come to me.

    Regarding James Bond, there are fans who theorize that James Bond isn’t an actual name as much as it is a title within the agency — so at least half a dozen men have been “James Bond” in turn.

  16. arvy Mar 19th 2010 at 06:32 pm 16

    If I remember correctly, the current James Bond inherited the title from the previous James Bond. The man he inherited it from was not the real James Bond, either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Bond has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia.

  17. turquoise cow Mar 19th 2010 at 07:28 pm 17

    My mother works for as an aid for a bus company and many of their drivers are actually old men (and a few women) who retired from their first job (or even their second) and are driving mostly to keep busy. Her current driver is in his seventies and is finally planning to retire at the end of the year, and her previous driver was not much younger than that when he retired. I don’t know if there are any eighty year old people working there, but it wouldn’t surprise me. So far as their driving skills, her only complaint with her current driver is that he drives too slowly (precisely the speed limit).

  18. Marshal Mar 19th 2010 at 11:34 pm 18

    Cidu Bill,
    Was it Dusty from The Elderberries?
    He has just revealed he was to young when he tried out for
    first bugle in the U.S. Calvery.

    http://www.gocomics.com/theelderberries/2010/03/19/

  19. Mark in Boston Mar 19th 2010 at 11:50 pm 19

    Elyrest, you think James Bond is bad: I’m reading the Arabian Nights (Richard Burton translation (not the Welsh actor, the other Richard Burton)) and Harun El-Rashid is in most of the stories. He must have reigned for several hundred years for all that stuff to happen.

  20. Jay Mar 20th 2010 at 12:21 am 20

    Scott (1): Are you sure? How old was Crankshaft when McCartney wrote _Yesterday_? When did McCartney become older (a neat trick)?

    Arvy: I think the previous Bond was named Ryan. Also, was Blofeld from Sicily?

  21. Elyrest Mar 20th 2010 at 12:25 am 21

    Mark in Boston - Sherlock Holmes is another fictional character who lived a convoluted existence. He first appeared in print in 1887, but he and Dr. Watson were fighting the evil Nazis in WWII. I wouldn’t be surprised if Harun El-Rashid pops up in some current story either.

  22. chuckers Mar 20th 2010 at 04:50 am 22

    Elyrest, you are confusing a literature with movies. Two different subject areas.
    The written form ought to be considered canon. If I remember correctly, Sherlock
    Holmes in the books was last active until around 1910 or so at the outside.

    “Never judge a book my a movie of the same name.”

  23. George P Mar 20th 2010 at 06:25 am 23

    The Simpsons has handled the passage of time while the characters remain the same age by dragging the flashbacks along with them.

    Yes, the Sherlock Holmes thing in the movies was just setting the films in the present. In the thirties Moriarty was a gangster. In the forties he was working with the Nazis.

  24. Charlene Mar 20th 2010 at 09:24 am 24

    The movies are also why we think of the two of them as old. Sherlock Holmes was about 27 in the first story, Watson about 31.

  25. Elyrest Mar 20th 2010 at 12:06 pm 25

    chuckers (22) - Ah, but we weren’t just talking about literature here. That should have been obvious by the James Bond reference.

    Charlene (24) - “Experts” usually put Holmes’s birth in 1854 which would make him 33 in his first work (1887) and 73 in his last (1927). That would mean that he could easily be middle-aged in films. Basil Rathbone was 47 when he began playing Holmes, Jeremy Brett was 51 and even Robert Downey, Jr., who people think of being a young Holmes, is 45.

  26. Mark in Boston Mar 20th 2010 at 04:29 pm 26

    Conan Doyle hated the character of Sherlock Holmes and licensed him to anyone who wanted him. William Gillette wrote the first Sherlock Holmes stage play (complete with deerstalker cap, calabash pipe, magnifying glass and “elementary, my dear fellow”) in 1899. Gillette said to Doyle, “I hope you don’t mind if I marry him off at the end.” Doyle said “I don’t mind if you kill him.”

    So Sherlock Holmes fell in love and got married in 1899 — but of course not in the Conan Doyle canon. Gillette’s play was also notable for special effects: it was lit by electricity and had the first-ever “blackout” scene, going from fully-lit to pitch dark in an instant.

  27. arvy Mar 20th 2010 at 11:45 pm 27

    Jay, you are correct - I forgot about Ryan.

    You think Blofeld was from Sicily? Inconceivable!

    Then again, there is this famous line: “You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The first is never enter a land war in Asia. The second, only slightly less well known is this: No astronaut would enter the capsule carrying his air conditioner!”

  28. DanV Mar 21st 2010 at 12:37 am 28

    Oddly, Crankshaft’s daughter Pam and her husband and children have aged quite a bit in the past few years, while Crankshaft has remained about the same.

  29. Matthew Mar 24th 2010 at 02:39 am 29

    I enjoy all these remakrs about the aging of fictional charavers. We’ve lost focus on the strip, however. (1) it’s not funny, but, then again, when was any FUNKY or CRANKSHAFT funny. (B) Paul McCartney gave “Yesterday” the working title of “Scrambled eggs”, because he wanted to rmember the tune & the rhythm & because the tune came to him as he woke. (III) “Yesterday” is a SONG. Crankshaft is renaming PEOPLE. It ain’t quite the same.

  30. Matthew Mar 24th 2010 at 02:40 am 30

    Oh, P.S.: I agree that McCartney should stop dyeing his hair. It’s time for hair & face to live in peace.

  31. Todd Mar 24th 2010 at 02:48 am 31

    I got over this “so-and-so’s older than fictional character” thing when I realized I was older than Superman.

  32. Matthew Mar 24th 2010 at 03:03 am 32

    Todd, didn’t Superman do all this spinning the planet backwards stuff just so he could stay young? I could never maintain any interest in the unbelievable doings of that comic. It seemed to ask for much too strong a suspension of disbelief.

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