Wait until the cackling corporal learns that Starbuck Jones numero uno was once under his very own roof…until his idiot of a step-father sold it to save his crumbling pizza empire. Look at him there in panel three…he’s nearly as punchable as Les with those eyebrows, that sneer and the wild gesticulating. If he continues his incredible rise through the army’s ranks I think there’s little doubt he’ll eventually be “fragged”, which is military slang for “being killed by your own men on purpose because everyone hates you”.
Man, the big Starbuck Jones collection mega-arc was just astoundingly anti-climactic. No one can “frag” his own premise better than Batominc can. I mean yeah, it isn’t actually over yet but then again it pretty much is, you know?
Son of Stuck Funky 
“Even assuming I end my tour of duty without being killed or horribly maimed, your pathetic effort to ‘do something’ in my absence will be entirely futile! Isn’t life grand?”
$$$WESTVIEW ONCOLOGIST$$$: Holy shit, you actually got me to spit-take with that Groucho line. Classic.
That last panel is so fantastically bizarre. It’s like Cory is actually taunting his mother, right after he appeared to have bonded with her, no less, sneering derisively at her while mocking her lack of Starbuck Jones collecting knowledge. I guess some people never really change.
Soldier Cory looks younger than at any time the character was ever depicted in high school. It’s really strange. I can’t be bothered to look for the old character studies, but I think he’s sporting a new nose.
Here’s a problem I’ve heard of in stories. Writers will realize that the audience hates a character they’re supposed to like, and so they try to salvage the story by making the disliked character do worse and worse things. The writer’s way of trying to say that they get how unlikable the character is.
The problem is, because of poor writing and no one calling the character out on their behavior the audience never realizes this and thinks that the writer is actually 100% serious and expects the audience to like the jerk.
I don’t think that’s happening here by the way, I’m just telling you what writers with actual knowledge of their stories do. No, here we’ve got so much mood whiplash I think Cory’s facial muscles were permanently damaged by it.
Hey, uhhh, Epicus…”fragged” is what you said, but more specifically it was done with a fragmentation grenade, a killing device and an end result that both became popular in Vietnam. It was usually reserved for extremely annoying and/or dangerous officers and serious lifers.
If Corporal Cory continues his meteoric climb through the ranks, he could become either of those, or both.
Can I get some confirmation here people? Is Starbuck Jones an actual comic Batiuk or someone Batiuk knows is creating, or is it just an annoying thing they keep mentioning in the story?
Gyre, TB’s Starbuck Jones is totally fictitious… much like the 2013 Lisa’s Legacy 5K.
The creators of the real life webcomic The Adventures of Starbuck Jones may want to look into drafting a C&D letter.
Holly: “I was going to surprise you with a complete Starbuck Jones collection when you eventually got home!”
Cory: “Everything’s eventual Mom. And I told you, I already bought digital versions of the issues missing from my collection.”
Holly: “B-but…but…I spent our entire savings on getting the rare, impossible to find issues!”
Cory: “Well, that was stupid. Mom, old comics are just rotting wood pulp and faded ink. Who cares? And anyway, we both know that if you actually DID complete the collection, I would just perish ironically at the very moment you slide the last issue into place.”
Holly: “AAAAAAAARGH!”
Cory: “Decaf, Mom. Decaf.”
OB Dan: Grenade, howitzer, micro-nuke, napalm, some type of futuristic laser-based weaponry…whatever works best and fastest.
I’m still waiting to see if TB acknowledges the “Funky sells SJ#1 to keep his business afloat” arc from a few years ago or if he’s just going to pretend it never happened. Because if Holly manages to secure a copy of SJ#1 it’s going to be somewhat (OK, admittedly not very) interesting to see how she’ll pull that off. I mean the fact that SJ#1 is very valuable is part of FW canon, it was the central plot point of a very long super-mega arc, in fact.
Freeze a grenade in a can of water….place under a cot, pull the pin, walk away and wait for the ice to melt.
That fraggin’ the good ole’ way.