A “cranky show” is an old-timey form of entertainment in which hand-drawn images on a scroll are hand-cranked across a screen or small stage. These are typically accompanied by a musician, who tells the story on the scrolls in song form. Tom Banjo — aka Tom Azarian — is the local master of the cranky show and can often be found at Burlington’s Radio Bean cranking out humorous yarns, often based on popular folk tales, of runaway meatballs, stubborn mules and wayward cats. So for our Cartoon Issue, we asked Tom to tell us a story from his own life … and then illustrate it. We then adapted his story in lyric form, in an attempt to re-create a cranky show in print. Feel free to hum along.
This article appears in The Cartoon Issue 2014.
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