I’ve always been a fan of Joe Staton. He currently draws the “Dick Tracy” newspaper strip, and drew a comic book I used to read back in the day, E-Man. I actually first encountered his work in–believe it or not–the old Amazing Stories science fiction magazine. His style tends to be loose and casual, but he always knew exactly where the focus should be in the image, and he has a great sense of dynamics.
I mention all this only because his work is the only interesting thing in today’s offering. The corner bit from Tom Batiuk is basically the pimple on a model’s face. Although Mr. Staton doesn’t seem to’ve put a great deal of effort into this…I’m not sure if the robot he’s cradling was a friend or foe. His arm wrapped around Starbuck says “poor fallen friend” but his feet seem to be pointed toward “fiendish foe, who nearly had me.”
Although, I do think I’ve figured out why Tom Batiuk’s dialogue is so horrible. I think he believes that his readership consists solely of people who have never read Funky Winkerbean before, and who have no intention of reading it the next day.
Tom Batiuk also thinks that this thing called “continuity” or “consistency” is a sucker’s game. Remember last week, how issue seven was the only thing lacking in Cory’s care package? Well, now Holly is “collecting” more. (I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to collect a single issue of something and figure your task is “completed” unless you’ve set your goals pretty low.) You knew the pain wasn’t going to be just one week long, didn’t you? If I recall correctly, there were to be seven Starbuck Jones comic covers presented to us over the course of this arc.
And if each of those covers gets its own Sunday page, well, you can do the math I’m sure. At least we’ll see some artists whose work should be far, far better than the usual Sunday strips.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this is the start of a globe-hopping adventure, a la Indiana Jones, as Holly travels the far corners of the earth to track down the complete set of Starbuck Jones comics.
…ah, ha ha ha ha ha. I crack myself up sometimes.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Does this mean Holly has to meet 6 more lonely Ohio moms? They should start a book club or something.
OBTW: No man in his late 40’s early 50’s as Funky and Les are depicted, has ever worn a cardigan sweater while hanging around the house. In the last 30 years, anyway.
Well we know that issue # 1 is worth enough $$ to bail out a sinking comic book store and failing pizza shop.
Oh…and I’m sure that a hottie like Roxanne is turned on by a solider getting his rocks off over a 1979 comic book.
It was nice meeting her mother…we’ll never see miss pencil neck as we lost Darins 1/2 sister….and jarod….and a whole host of others we already hashed over.
Oh really, I barely read comics and even I know they sell compilations of older titles. Maybe if these characters didn’t have a pathological fear of Amazon, they wouldn’t have to go to all this effort.
Holly is stunned upon learning that they’re doing serialized drama in COMICS nowadays (or thirty-five years ago, when the fictional comic was apparently published). It’s like a space soap opera that reminds her of a television drama set in early 20th century England IF the drama was on muscle-enhancing drugs. Ummm, OK, I’ll buy that, if TomBat will buy my assertion that Act III FW is like FBOFW on a huge dose of Ambien and generic boxed wine after a hearty turkey dinner.
And what the hell is this “collection” nonsense? The entire arc so far has been about Holly obtaining ONE comic book…hasn’t it? This whole arc so far has been strangely disorienting, like how Funky’s trip to the attic to get a box resulted in days of incredibly bad puns, or how Carla noticeably aged from panel to panel. Maybe he’s trying to tell us something. Or maybe he got bored after the excitement of the SJ covers idea wore off and he realized he had to come up with some sort of nonsensical back story to give himself a reason to go all SJ-happy. I don’t know. Sure is stupid, though.
Does it seem like in the Sunday strips, Bull, Funky and Harry look like geezer? Even more so than usual.
Somebody should slap Holly upside the head…serialized stories and continuing storylines were happening long ago, and were in fact what often kept a strip or mag alive when I was ghosting years ago. And anybody who ghosted or even took over a strip or mag knew not to touch the continuing drama unless he was brought in for that specific purpose (case in point – when DC’s Jimmy Olsen dropped the lame supporting role of “Superman’s Pal” and the mag was “Marvelized,” including bringing Joe Kirby back to DC…the comic mag lived on long after its total sales should have killed it).
Ooops…should be *Jack” Kirby…had an old Schuster-era Superman up on my monitor for wallpaper…
“Downton Abbey on steroids”: well, at least Batiuk doesn’t lack for ego.
“This is for the generation of kids raised on the Sopranos, The Wire, and Breaking Bad, once they’ve all grown up and are ready for something really sophisticated and well-done this time.”
That’s actually a pretty large demographic.
well to be pedantic and why not – most stories from this era were one shots – with little if any continuity between stories. The Fantastic Four and then Spiderman were break-throughs in that they did have soap opera elements and glimpses of private lives and what not that evolved over time. Starbuck Jones from what little we see is more of a call back to the comics that dominated before that – well done art work with simple stories that were aimed at small boys who were assumed not to care that the hero had the personality of a plank of wood with no real human aspects or weaknesses.
Which I think Joe Staton is playing up with the impossibly square jaw Mr. Jones exhibits.
and yes how the hell did it go from #7 to a complete collection? And you’d think the plot revel that Rocky is a she might be mentioned.
but no.
I have to wonder do the comic book artists that he keeps citing actually like him? Of is just the annoying guy that hangs around and pays them from time to time.
Tide goes out, tide comes in, no miscommunication. This shit is wholly predictable.
Joe Staton actually drawing this for him gets the same acknowledgement as the last traced-completely strip of Oct. 27 (“Tip of the funky felt tip!”), as well as the strip having the same rights notice for Starbuck Jones (Batom Inc All Rights Reserved) as it did for DC Entertainment’s Superboy. Amazing.
Anyway, the character looks like a 1960’s-70’s DC science fiction hero, which i am not that familiar with–they often had a fuzzy alien or small robot sidekick like the muppet hiding behind Starbuck. Manhunter 2070? Space Cabby? Tommy Tomorrow?
The mere “tip of the funky felt tip” is indeed a rather poor credit. If I were Staton, I’d feel a bit insulted, and I’d be sure to check with my bank to make sure Batominc’s check hadn’t bounced.
But if the Jones cover was a work done for hire, then the copyright properly does belong to Batominc, unless the contract specifically says otherwise.
— Although, I do think I’ve figured out why Tom Batiuk’s dialogue is so horrible. I think he believes that his readership consists solely of people who have never read Funky Winkerbean before, and who have no intention of reading it the next day.
That’s actually a pretty large demographic.—
and growing…
Yep, these comics are just like serialized soap operas,……meaning they”ll all be cancelled within two years.
These comic books that I am identifying by name along with who I am collecting them for are very much like this pop culture reference even though there isn’t much to suggest that they have anything in common.
Seriously, Downtown Abbey? Batiuk, how big IS your ego?
These comic books that I am identifying by name along with who I am collecting them for are very much like this pop culture reference even though there isn’t much to suggest that they have anything in common.
Seriously. I’m not even sure what Batiuk means by that line. This Flash Gordon rip-off is the equivalent of a PBS British drama concerning a WWI-era estate and the goings-on of its residents and servants… on steroids. I’m not even sure how to reconcile that, really. Is it an extensive character study with emotional and/or class-based conflicts? I, uh, don’t think a comic book would be the best medium for such an undertaking. I guess if he used Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek or Farscape, he’d just be underscoring how derivative the whole enterprise is.
Mentioning Downton Abbey made me think about something else though. Since Cory himself indicates that getting pretty much anything is difficult in his situation, he could have been looking for just about anything. It didn’t have to be rare for Ohio. If we want to stay with written works, he could have been looking for collections of writings of the Beat Generation, or the Lost Generation, or books from the Romantic period, or even some more obscure but sophisticated present-day mysteries or science thrillers.
But instead, he wants picture books that are geared for someone with approximately a 5th grade reading level. And his mother apparently finds them so sophisticated that she equates them with a hit PBS period drama, only on steroids.
I blame Les Moore for their lack of appreciation of more sophisticated reading material. Cory could have been shown moving up from comic books as part of his development from a child to a man, but nope, he’s gonna stay a child.
Although I have to admit that if his desire for comic books stemmed from a desire to return to his wasted and carefree childhood, now that he really does appreciate how horrible things can be in the world being in Afghanistan and all, that would be an interesting development. But of course that’s why this isn’t what’s happening. Nope, it’s just Batiuk jacking off to one of the three things he cares about.
oddnoc–you’re right, the rights notice is appropriate here, and even goes with the mocked-up “Batom Comics” insignia on the ‘cover’. Having the same “it’s all mine” indicia on a completely traced DC cover featuring flagship character Superboy–that’s where he’s walking a dangerous line.
Tom: “Downton Abbey…I keep hearing people mention that.”
Reader: “Um, yes, it’s a good show.”
Tom: “That means that it’s…it’s something that EXISTS, right?”
Reader: “….uh….of course it d-”
Tom: “Things existing are FUNNY. The fact that it EXISTS is FUNNY. Ergo, PUNCHLINE!!! It’s brilliant brilliant brilliant! How -do- I keep coming up with these?”
Reader: “….-why- do you keep coming up with these?”
But, seriously, it seems that from 2007 onward, at some point Tom got it into his head that merely pointing out that something exists=humor.
He’s not alone in this fallacy, alas. -_-
Since I don’t know how to quote here, comic books can be considered mature material in the better sense of the word Charles. See Persepolis, Watchmen, Maus, Fables, the Walking Dead etc. The problem is that Batiuk seems to think that comics are the ONLY things people should ever be shown reading and that he seems to think that the only ones people should read are either science fiction adventure stories or comic book hero stories. So with the repetition of the “comic books are great” plot it was already an uphill struggle, but he created a second major problem that just make it clear he doesn’t have any understanding of what he’s referencing.
Stories of the type that this Starbuck thing seem to be aren’t remotely similar to a show like Downton Abbey, which focuses not on fantastic adventures but humans dealing with problems humans faced in the early 20th century. Yes there were some earlier comics that did look at the issues the characters faced, but those weren’t that common until later and it doesn’t really look like this is one of them. And where’s the nostalgia for the 1800s and 1900s U.K. that’s so popular for some reason in America? Where’s the upper class for people to wish they were part of? Dramatic dialogue so common to older comics, simplistic fights between good and evil and very soft science isn’t stuff you usually see in Downton Abbey.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. It can be great escapism, a throwback to boyhood imagination. Truth be told, I think that’s the real reason why Batiuk puts so many in his stories, he wants that escapism himself even as he ironically has directed his own work onto a dark path. It’s just not remotely Downton Abbey and nothing we’ve seen that would appeal to a middle age woman who prefers stories like Downton Abbey.
And I know there are going to be people who say we’re obsessing too much over this fact. But it’s a symptom of a bigger problem. Specifically that the story has long since stopped being about the story and now really just exists for Batiuk to put his own idealized self and opinions in. When was the last time that someone expressed an opinion that we can safely assume Batiuk wouldn’t like and they were treated as a reasonable person? When was the last time that we saw the town meet to discuss their economic situation or notTeen Les consider possible jobs or Summer try to balance studies and sports?
Funky Winkerbean is dead and in it’s place all that is left are comic books, Batiuk’s avatar and Batiuk’s socio-political opinions.
Since I don’t know how to quote here, comic books can be considered mature material in the better sense of the word Charles.
I recognize that, but look at this comic again. Does that remind you more of Gaiman’s Sandman or of the Silver Age Justice League? This isn’t sophisticated entertainment, nor is it a penetrating analysis of the human psyche or society’s twisted mores. Hell, nothing Batiuk’s done has ever been that. It’s just a 19 year-old reading a story written for children. As I noted, there could be some nuance regarding why he’s doing this, but that’s not it. It’s just a kid who’s in the army requesting some reading material that’s suited for fifth graders.
I mean, hell, look at that thing cowering behind Starbuck Jones. If that doesn’t scream Battlestar Galactica’s Muffit or Buck Rogers’ Twiki at you, nothing will, and those were written for children.
And that’s as sophisticated as reading gets in Westview. Again, I blame the Literature teacher.