Batiuk would have us remember a character he killed off 23 years ago, yet he doesn’t trust us to recall Jessica’s name from one day to the next. “How goes the documentary, JESS?” “Who’s next on stage for the documentary, JESS?” And to the list of things about which Batiuk has no idea how they work, add documentaries. It’s one thing to have her use cheap home video equipment, but any halfway serious filmmaker would undertake a project, especially one as deeply personal as this, with some kind of outline. We’ve had a week of Jessica running around gathering unflattering anecdotes about her late father. Now she finds herself forced (“I didn’t want to have to do this…”) to finally get serious.
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Son of Stuck Funky 
This bitch is about to get serious!
“I didn’t want to have to do this” –equals– “I really didn’t think this whole ‘Documentary about my father’ thing through. Going into every detail? Who does that, making a documentary? Really, usually, all you have to do in the Funkyverse is announce you want to do something, and that’s all you have to do. Of course, I never expected to, you know, work at anything. I just figured I’d die of cancer before I got this far. Damn it all.”
She wouldn’t have to do it at all if she’d just give Boy Lisa’s bio-stepdad Les a call, but I suppose that going to visit a convicted murderer who killed one of your parents would be the preferable option there. Not only is it hard to believe she didn’t read “Fallen Star” or speak to Les for her “film”, but also that Les didn’t babble continuously about it during the time she was living in his house. I mean come on, Les + a captive audience? There’s no way they don’t know his stories by heart. But I guess TomBat was more concerned with speeding along to the big climax here and didn’t have time to worry about stuff like continuity, logic, plausibility or entertainment value. Uh huh, that must be it.
This arc reads like a rough draft of an idea he jotted on a napkin or something. “JD jerk…cameos?”, “Jess visits Plantman?”, “different nose and hair for Darin each panel?”…you get the idea. I do love that black void of an apartment though, now that’s the dark and brutal FW I remember.
Not only does Boy Lisa feel compelled to refer to Jessica by name every thirty seconds, he also needs to mention her current project specifically. “How goes the documentary? What’s next for the documentary? Tell me more about your documentary! Did I mention you’re making a documentary?” It’s like everyone has a peculiar form of short-term memory loss and needs to re-establish the context of the conversation every three panels.
In other news, Jess’ approach to investigating the murder of her father John Darling is on the level of writing about Lincoln’s assassination without mentioning John Wilkes Booth.
I can believe that she never heard of the book. She IS named Darling and that implies suffering from fecal encephalopathy. Heh. Watch Moss ask her “Why didn’t you just read that book Les Moore wrote?” only to have her practically shriek “THERE WAS A BOOK?!”
Anyhow, the only thing she’s going to learn is that Moss had a stress-induced psychotic break that made him think that John Darling Who Was Murdered was the Creature From The Black Lagoon.
“I do love that black void of an apartment though, now that’s the dark and brutal FW I remember.”
It’s so bad that even the lighted sign hanging off the front of the building took off………………………..
“She wouldn’t have to do it at all if she’d just give Boy Lisa’s bio-stepdad Les a call”
or if she spent the money on a psychiatrist instead of VCR tapes.
Oh, she read the book, it’s just that about halfway through writing it Les got bored and filled the rest in with a synopsis of each issue of Starbuck Jones that he copied off the internet.
Then he imagined himself running bases on an unusually small baseball diamond and went to whine at Funky about Bookywood ruining his ideas.
AKA the Plantman? Another obscure Marvel villian?
As pointed out in today’s Comic Curmudgeon, TB committed a pretty egregious continuity error today, suddenly morphing the killer Pete Mossman’s name into Pete Moss. Either that, or as Josh pointed out, Jess didn’t pay particularly close attention when she read Les’ book.
Having her skim through it and come up with factual errors proves one thing: she IS her father’s daughter. I remember him asking the Purple Pain what country he was the Prince of.
TB is setting up the murder of Jess. It will happen when Les realizes the only place Jess could be still getting VHS tapes is by recording over St. Lisa’s guide to the future.
Given the puny names of every other John Darling supporting character, I can almost forgive Jessica’s miscue. I say almost because I’m pretty sure she has no earthly idea what peat moss is.
Perhaps she’ll also interview the guy who arrested Plantman, Paul Eisophiser…
Dead-End Degree #4: Film, Video, and Photography Arts (Yahoo news 4-17-14)
Think a bachelor’s degree in film, video, or photography will mean a life of creative fulfillment and satisfaction? It’s a beautiful dream, but the reality might make you reconsider. According to the Georgetown study, the unemployment rate for recent film, video, and photography arts graduates was 11.4 percent.
So John Darling was murdered by a man with a stupid name who had a break with reality and imagined he was a super villain, who then he kidnapped Les and monologued vast portions of the plot. This is painfully stupid. And again with the comic books! Geezus, TB, give it a rest!
” It’s a beautiful dream, but the reality might make you reconsider”
Not in Westview reality…..
” Outside of the major entertainment centers in this country, there’s little demand for this major.” Worse, even if you do live in a major entertainment center, your chances of finding a job aren’t great, since there’s a great deal of competition in this industry,”
But isn’t Westview a MAJOR entertainment center?
After all, it does have a comic strip.
“Murdered my father,”
Cut to : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhBM_Yay6w
Guys, the really important question is…does Mossman have any rare issues of Starbuck Jones?
Somebody needs to post the storyline wherein we discover Plantman kills John Darling. I remembered Plantman killing Darling. But I’ve forgotten why.
Jess’ “dream” of being a documentary filmmaker reminds me of an article i read a couple of years ago about an engagement broken up when the groom found out the bride-to-be had $170,000 in student loan debt she racked up while getting a degree in photography.
“….her total debt was actually about $170,000. “He accused me of lying,” said Ms. Eastman, 31, a San Francisco X-ray technician and part-time photographer who had run up much of the balance studying for a bachelor’s degree in photography. ” (NYT, blogger)
Wouldn’t it be really funny if it turns out that Plantman was the only person who actually liked John Darling?
Darin: “Um, instead of talking with the man who murdered your father, why don’t you research his official statements instea-”
Jess: “I also have to go talk to the President.”
Darin: “The President?!?”
Jess: “Yes, but not of Earth. Of Mars. The angel who lives in the linen closet told me to.”
Darin: “….*….is he buddies with the ‘tiny orange kangaroo’ you claim visits you at 4 in the morning?”
Jess: “No, they only go to the same juggling class.”
Darin: “Skyler, you and I need to take you mother on a little vacation.”