I don’t know how to break this to you, but in today’s strip, nobody smirks. Les, however, spills the beans, lets the cat out of the bag, and otherwise squeals like a stoolpigeon, revealing his ethical depths in a single panel. BanTom’s star journalist loses her composure, because Mason Jarr ZOMG!!!!! Her only question is “WHAT!!?” I’ll try to help Cindy out with this:
Because you’d think a former national news anchor, who presumably has interviewed stars, presidents, prime ministers, and kings, wouldn’t be overawed by the mere mention of a B-grade movie actor. “Wimmen, amirite?” thinks BanTom, as he imagines himself rounding the bases of a tiny baseball diamond.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Mason Jarr, to Les, two weeks ago: “If anyone found out I was so dense I had to go to some nowhere Ohio town to research one of the most popular comic book characters of all time, my career would be in ruins. So don’t tell anyone, okay?”
Batiuk once had a guy stuck on top of a mine for like two weeks. Look at what he thinks passes for dramatic tension now. “People are going to find out that an actor is coming to town to read comics!”. Man, this strip has really fallen far.
“OMFNG! THE MASON JARR? THE ONE WHO ONLY A FEW MONTHS AGO WAS A STRUGGLING ACTOR FORCED TO TAKE A ROLE AS LES MOORE??? NO WAY!!!!!”. Tomban’s wild comic book fantasies are just so full of weird tangents and seemingly contradictory little details, aren’t they? My, what a vivid little world he’s created in that head of his. Too bad none of it translates to his boring as all f*ck comic strip where it takes MONTHS for the plot to inch its way forward…if it inches at all, that is.
Batom®’s definition of “reality-based” includes Cindy wearing a channel 1 lapel on her jacket.
Not “Channel One News,” the school-age newscast that begat Lisa Ling and Anderson Cooper, but a real-life TV station in Cleveland, Ohio operating on CHANNEL ONE.
Batom®, are you too lazy to draw a circle 7 logo? Other comic strips use it, but those strips are written and drawn by people who give the bare minimum of effort.
If Batom® the Misfit Cartoonist’s life goal was to write a putrid sitcom plot that wouldn’t have even seen the light of day on “Hello Larry,” this week of Funky strips would fit the bill.
So far, the only thing plausible I have seen in this entire arc is the way the characters react to it with complete incredulity.
Remember the story arc where Mopey Pete sees the Superman creator’s childhood home in order to be inspired and end writer’s block? Batiuk does.
I called it! Didn’t I say that Cindy would be dulled and/or shocked back into sobriety soon?
Be specific, Les–did you mean Mason Jarr The Actor or Mason Jarr The Movie Actor? There’s a difference, ya know.
^Whoops, sorry about that. I actually “called it” over on Disqus yesterday. Not here. My bad!
Yeah. Way to remind us that you think women are imbeciles because they don’t get the perfection of Silver Age DC comics. Cindy’s as stupid as any girl because she doesn’t know that there’s a funny book movie despite the fact that in the real world, everyone’s a geek now. I should probably program in a macro that says “Eat a buffet table of dicks, douchebag” and save time posting on this site because it’s applicable to pretty much every strip Batiuk pukes onto the page.
Yes, the blonde chick who appears to be about 30 years old was 70 year old Flunky’s classmate and ex-wife. It’s called “drawing.” Every now and them, BatArt will whip on lines under her eyes and proudly say to himself, “Voila! Middle aged!”
Other than that, do I really need to pile on about the idiocy of this entire arc? How ludicrous is it that a guy who was going to play LES MOORE in a no-budget cable TV show is someone anyone would have heard of, let alone care about?
Assuming that, how ludicrous is it that he’d come to Bumflip, Ohio to prepare for a role by reading comic books?
Assuming that, how ludicrous is it that Goatee Creep taking about this super-secret-squirrel visit in a public place?
Assuming that, how ludicrous is it that Cyndi Whatever is still hanging around Montoni’s?
Assuming that, why is Creepface spilling the beans to the biggest busybody in Ahia, even though I made it clear it was none of her business?
Wake me when ANY of this forced, contrived nonsense makes sense.
I guess there are no comic book stores or collectors in Los Angeles, nor does A-Hi-A have any UPS stores to ship the comics to LA. Just when you think BatHack con’t get any more stupid, he does.
Normal human reactions like Cindy’s are so rare in this strip that they are almost unsettling when they do happen.
Despite Cindy getting this scoop during her one contractually-obligated 2015 appearance, if Les doesn’t want anyone bothering Mason while he’s in Westview, Montoni’s would be a GREAT place to take him…
I have this horrible feeling that Les is going to be the beneficiary here…he’ll be hired as the Starbuck Jones screenwriter, or during Cindy’s interview Mason will say that his next role will be Les Moore in “Lisa’s Story”–the way Les intended it to be.
I hate Les. I just felt I should add that.
@Hadda Mae Kapupe: It’s like waiting for Waylon Jennings to say something that makes sense when he narrated Dukes of Hazard. If he’d limited himself to that, we wouldn’t know that it had a narrator.
@beckoningchasm: Oh, that’s a given. Les is for all intents and purposes a self-portrait of Batom®, so it would make total sense given this whole Brooke McEldowney-esque internal fantasy he has going on.
If it weren’t for Funky’s thriving hatedom, no one would be reading Batom’s garbage.
Didn’t Mason Jarr star in “Team America: World Police”?