My aunt was older than that when she was raped. She died as a result.

That cartoon is an insult. If you find the cartoonist's contact info, please post it.

God. That's a really enraging example of a common myth. I doubt the cartoonist even understood what he (or she?) is saying. It's one of those really pervasive things- rape is just forced sex and who wants to have sex with an uggo. It's a false assumption on so many levels.

Rape isn't about sex, it's about power.

Rape victims shouldn't be appreciative of being pretty enough to be assaulted, even if it were about the sex WHICH IT'S NOT.

And after all that is the western convention that only cookie cutter, young, skinny, beautiful women are desirable in any fashion.

to get in touch with a cartoonist, write them at their syndicate.

The comic is syndicated by King Features Syndicate. They don't seem to have direct contact information for either of the cartoonists. They do have a general email address though: kfs-editorial-cartoonists@hearst.com

Doh! Make that kfs-cartoonists@hearst.com

Sailorman, I'm so sorry about your aunt. That's terrible.

I don't mean to detract from the rape inference because clearly that's what mentioning the age is doing, but on another level - uhm, 68 year olds also get mugged and beaten. Why would anyone advocate that after a certain age you should stop worrying about defending yourself?

This sort of pisses me off that Batiuk and Ayers have drawn this in Crankshaft, because Tom Batiuk's other comic strip, Funky Winkerbean, is probably the best one being written now. But this isn't the first ignorant thing I've seen in Crankshaft--back in April, they had a cartoon with an allusion to the Leakeys, Lucy, and Olduvai Gorge--and drew two male archeologists in the place of Louis and Mary Leakey.

Not only are elderly women raped, they are also mugged. Another good reason to carry pepper spray.

The same person who writes Crankshaft also writes Funky Winkerbean which does have an email comment form on its website:

http://www.funkywinkerbean.com/email.html

It's pretty awful to suggest that people shouldn't take steps to defend themselves at exactly the time in life when they're more likely to be targeted because of perceived helplessness. Thank you for the contact information on this. I'll definitely write.

Jem took the words out of my mouth.

RonZ, thanks for the e-mail address - I just wrote to them and expressed my anger and disappointment. Who knows if I'll actually get an answer.

Anyone remember the video of some douche mugging a 101-year-old woman? Advanced age is all the more reason to protect oneself.

Jem & Blitzgal got it right. You posted within a minute of each other, so I thought I'd give you both credit.

About rape not at all being about physical attractiveness, there's an argument to be made about that. Rapists cite physical attractiveness as one of the reasons they raped someone. I do, however, have a hard time swallowing that. Physical attractiveness is difficult to define, and a rapist may very well consider any target to be sexy. If you want to define physical attractiveness as tall and thin with long hair (as our society judges it), the women who look like this might also be seen as more vulnerable, more willing to please a man sexually, and easier targets. That is, if they look like the ideal woman, perhaps they act like the ideal woman and have the psyche of the ideal woman as well.

My grandmother was raped and beaten in her home. Thankfully, she survived.

Rape *is* about power, not sexuality, and cartoons like this perpetrate the myth that older women are "safe" from rape and assault because they're perceived as unattractive. Heinous.

That cartoon really burns my biscuits! It is very unconsciousable that any comic would make fun of a violent and brutal crime such as rape. Females as old as 125 years old and as young as thirty-five days old have been raped. I hope that the people who made that cartoon are all fired.

wow. that is disgusting. i just wrote a very angry email...i wonder if they will respond...

Appalling. I sent an angry email too. How could anyone be so ignorant as to write a cartoon like that?

I'm not so sure about characterizing rape as solely about power and not at all about sex. Yes, in the instance of the stranger rape of an elderly woman that seems to be the case. However, when we get into date rape, or an alcohol induced lack of consent, it seems to be a clash of objectification, sexual desire AND power. The rapist finds the woman attractive and doesn't really care if she consents, he might even get off on the lack of it. As referenced a few weeks ago a woman can withdraw consent and if the man ignores her, it's rape. However, her withdrawal of consent doesn't automatically suck all sexual desire out of the situation.

It's a very human thing to try and define WHY something happens. If we can figure out why, we're half way to figuring out how to avoid it. I just don't think the cause of rape is so cut and dried that there is a sole, always applicable, motivation.

As for the comic, I don't read Crankshaft and I don't know much about his characterization. As I comic creator I feel I should mention that what a character says is not always the voice of the creator. We make it a point that our characters do or say boneheaded or ignorant things because they're three dimensional characters and they're not always right. We try not to use any one single character to be our faultless Mary Sue and be a virtual soapbox for our opinions, assuming my co-creator and I agreed on the issue in the first place.

I'm not defending Crankshaft, I have no idea how they handle things. Still, I have experienced people complaining about a strip we've posted before seeing that we address the problem, in character, in a later strip.

Okay I'm not defending the comic as written but one defense *maybe* is that in future comics, say the next's day, he addresses the very issue we're talking about it.

Crankshaft the character (as I read the comic a while ago) is not supposed to be the most "with it" person. He's not exactly Archie Bunker but that's part of his origin.

Doesn't Lois look annoyed in the last panel? Maybe the cartoonist is fully aware of the issue. The comic might not present best in one panel but if there are more that adds to this issue then I can see it as understanding.

I guess I might hold judgement until I see what the follow up strip was.

Over at The Comics Curmudgeon, the consensus seems to be that the follow-up panel should have Lois using her pepper spray on Crankshaft.

Has anyone received a response? If so, please share it with the rest of the class. :)

Even if the older woman lets the pepper spray fly on "Crankshaft" the next day that still doesn't negate how effed up this strip was. For all the average reader knows, she's simply pepperspraying him because he insulted her attractiveness, not because what he said was perpetuating rape myths.

i vaguely know the illustrator, chuck ayers, although i don't have much contact info for him unless you count his daughter's myspace or something, lol.
i would say going through the king's feature syndicate or the funky website are best, since it is the same guy who does funky. and funky is such a great comic usually, i have to say i'm not all that fond of crankshaft in general.

This is so ugly and stupid. I have seen morgue photos of elderly women who were raped and murdered; these crimes are often characterized by "overkill" and are uniformly hideous. I am writing to Batiuk and Ayers.

Don't be too quick to conflate Batiuk's opinions with that of the title character in that strip. He's named Crankshaft for a reason.

And I think we should be educating people more about rape; primarily because people are forgetting that it's all about violent power.(And sex, a beautiful thing, is used as an ironic tool by the monster)

Damn __________ that incorrectly portray rape as "Oh, I did it, cause she refused" or "She asked for it and we're just horny" Rape is a savage weapon, not a form of S&M.

Dybevick, the artist's personal opinions don't matter much to me when the title character of the artist's work makes a statement like this that goes unrefuted by other characters. This is different from an "Archie Bunker" sort of bigoted main character in that the Crankshaft character isn't forced to confront his wrongheaded views by the other characters in response to his statement. No, this is an old man telling his wife (presumably) that not only is she unattractive, but that no one would "compliment" her by raping her- and that's the punchline. Ugh.

"I don't know much about _____, BUT..."

Boy, that doesn't sound like ANYONE on the reactive right, now does it?

Look, I think everyone here is mature enough to separate 'author' from 'persona', so I'm a little miffed that some here aren't bothering to do so.

The cartoonist in question is Tom Batuik, the creator of Funky Winkerbean, a comedy-cum-drama daily comic that's won many awards over the years for its insightful treatment of real-life issues like breast cancer, teenage pregnancy, and suicide among others. That Batuik can even touch these issues and maintain the strip's popularity has long been a testament to his empathy.

Batuik is also the illustrator and co-writer (along with Chuck Ayers) of Crankshaft, which is a much lighter-hearted daily consisting of one-liners, usually from its eponymous curmudgeon star. The plot consists of the guy being an ass, which Batuik and Ayers have made plainly evident on a near-daily basis for several years.

Learn a little about the artist and their creations before going on the offensive. It'll help us all.

Look, I understand the difference between author's voice and character's voice, and I understand that there might be something coming after this strip that could counteract its harmful message, but to me the biggest issue is:

If you saw this strip and didn't know anything about the author or the history of the strip, you'd just be reading a heinous cartoon that promotes myths of rape. Responsibility in this culture requires addressing the subject in a timely (in this case - in the same published strip) manner if it's going to be rebuffed by another character.

I wondered if this would turn up here. I wrote an email this morning, to the King Features address given above.

Jonas Jeepers, I know and read Funky Winkerbean and Crankshaft daily. I'm familiar with Batiuk's usually quite excellent and sensitive writing style, which is EXACTLY WHY I wrote to him today, to let him know that I didn't like the way this comic perpetuated the myth that rape only happened to young, pretty women. I admire him as a cartoonist most of the time, but everyone makes missteps, and he shouldn't get a pass just because he's usually not sexist and awful. Especially because he's usually not.

Please don't assume that the only way someone could be bothered by this cartoon is if they were ignorant of its creator.

I rarely read the comics (except on Comics Curmudgeon, which is where I normally see SecretMargo), but I happened to today and at first I didn't understand what this comic was saying because it was so... ridiculous. I know Crankshaft is a cranky old blow-hard, but still. It's pretty obscene.

In defense of the comic Crankshaft, the character Crankshaft is usually portrayed as a misanthropic sharp-tongued old coot with a tendency towards malapropisms who embodies the worst aspects of every bad school bus driver you ever had, whose single redeeming feature seems to be loyalty to family and friends. While it crosses a line of what's tasteful it certainly is an in-character line for him to say.

But it's still well over the line.

Unbelievable. Who is this dude who's unaware how criminals especially go after old people, because they are more defenseless? Does he live on an island or something? You don't have to be some kind of high powered sociological statistician to be aware of this, all you have to do is watch crime drama on the teevee!

>This is different from an "Archie Bunker" sort of bigoted main character in that the Crankshaft character isn't forced to confront his wrongheaded views by the other characters in response to his statement.

How do you know that he isn't drkeyedcajn?

Do you call the networks during the commercials when Archie doesn't get his commeupance by the first break?

The medium has limitations. Should Batiuk limit his pallete to issues that can be dealt with in three panels, like Disney Channel dramas resolve in 17 minutes of programme time plus commercials?

If Bechdel published DTWOF three panels at a time do think there would be no ugly issues hanging for 24 hours?

dybevick, I feel like the problem here is that this is clearly meant to be a punchline. Unlike Funky Winkerbean, Crankshaft is much more often (although not entirely) a one-off, gag-a-day comic. Without any implication that this will be resolved the next day, the way it hangs isn't acceptable. This is the joke, and Lois looks offended at his implication of her undesirable nature. Batiuk is very good at making it clear when something will continue, and either this isn't one of those times, or he seriously misjudged the pacing of this comic. Either way, it doesn't look good. I'll be delighted if he addresses the inaccuracy of the assumption in tomorrow's comic, but for today, this reads, inescapably, as a punchline.

It's too bad Crankshaft isn't of such a popularity that compilition books will pass around for years. If the week ends right Batiuk could look like a hero in hindsight and perspective.

I agree that "it doesn't look good" - it is an ugly issue and he is pushing artistic limits.

I disagree about "punchline" though. That is what one might traditionally expect, but the expressions on the two faces in the last panel leave just enough doubt.

If you think that comic is bad I'd hate to see what you think of this cyanide and happiness sketch.

It really was just a gag. Here is the subsequent strip.

There's lots of awful comics out there.

Take Shredded Moose. I'm linking to the girl-wonder forums that discusses it instead of direct linking.

http://girl-wonder.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3000&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=moose

WARNING: VILE STUFF.

well guys and gals, i have to take the contrarian view here, and say that decrying crankshaft for making a politically incorrect remark to anybody is like decrying norman lear for archie bunker's points of view.

crankshaft doesn't like anybody. anybody!! and that's the joke.

he's a grumy, unloving, unloved, cranky (hence the name) unpopular, unsocial, mean-spirited piss-ant. and thus the humor of the strip.

the author of strip (i don't know him other than what i've gleaned from reading the strip) doesn't want you to laugh at the idea of an old lady incorrectly thinking she's sexualy desirable, even in a twisted way of man on woman violence.

he wants you to laugh at the fact that crankshaft is an asshole.

Skippy, unfortunately the punchline that most people will read is "Crankshaft is an asshole for calling Lois old and ugly," not "Crankshaft is an asshole for implying that old an/or unattractive women wouldn't be raped."

Our culture largely accepts the "rape as compliment" myth (that is, it's an expression of sexual desire aimed at attractive women), so much so that many people, while maybe recognizing that Crankshaft is being rude for implying Lois is undesirable to her face, would also accept the assumption that she, indeed, is too old and ugly to worry about someone wanting to rape her.

Basically, what many people will find to be the punchline of this strip is Crankshaft is an asshole for saying to Lois's face what most people would just say behind her back, considering that is the crux of most of Crankshaft's humor.