Hi folks! SoSfDavidO here with a tip o the Funky Fedora for Beckoning Chasm’s most excellent stint here snarking! I feel like I’m following a bear on a unicycle juggling flaming chainsaws but here goes my hand at snarking on today’s strip.
From the looks of things, the Mr. Sponge story is still going on. Forgive me for a stifled yawn, but I don’t find story arcs about comic book writers all that… ABSORBING. Let’s SEA what TomBat came come up with after WETTING our appetite last week for this comic drama.
From the looks of things, it’s some kind of Popeye cross over? Is that misshapen blob wearing circus pants supposed to be recognizable as a human being? A word balloon is coming out of it, so I guess so.
Buckle up, ’cause we’re about to be treated to a full week of Tombat imagining what it was like to work for a major comic publisher in the early 2000s!
Son of Stuck Funky 
Wait a second…Pete regrets changing Mister Sponge, huh? Pardon me, but wasn’t it HIS IDEA?!
So…..Batiuk is seriously having a multi-week arc about a comic writer bemoaning his comic turning needlessly dark and serious? Is he completely blind to the irony of that?
All aboard the self-indulgence express for another trip to comic book fantasy land. Today we see Pete wearily mis-remembering the events of last week before drifting off into some sort of weird fantasy sequence about what it’d have been like to work at TomBat’s insane fictional comic book company “back in the day”. Based on that stereotypical gruff cigar-chomping salty editor guy who calls everyone “kid”, I’m assuming that “the day” was sometime around 1956. It’s also pretty amusing how the day after he bashed obsessive detail-crazed fans he does a story about something only the most devout Batom-watchers would even know about. What a nut.
And major artwork fail today, as everyone knows you do NOT use those photo album corner holder things on fantasy sequences. Sepia-tone is fine if the fantasy takes place in the past, but it’s optional and quite frankly tacky as well. But sorry, the corner things are for retconned memories only, as you can’t put weird fantasies/dreams in photo albums. I sure hope BanTom fires someone for that blunder, I couldn’t wait to get online and register my disgust.
Has Batiuk written a storyline in the recent past that didn’t involve comics or marching band in some way? I wouldn’t consider “Funky gripes about his age and weight” a storyline, so the great DUI and EMU sagas might be the closest thing. That’s pretty bad.
“Oh, if only I had lived during the Golden Age of the Boomer Generation! Truly, it was an era of pure integrity, where comic books existed in their most perfect form! We shall never see the like again in this sinful generation!”
You know what? Why do we even waste our time and energy commenting daily and giving this strip any kind of attention at all? “Funky Winkerbean” doesn’t deserve to have the time of day. Yes, snarking is fun. Yes, these websites give us all an opportunity to band together and vent our frustrations. And I appreciate them a lot! But still–Tom Batiuk doesn’t care, so why should WE do all of the caring for him? Is that not HIS job? This strip is not going to get any better. Because it’s still in his hands. And we can’t do a thing about it. And the syndicate really can’t do a darn thing about it because everyone will get killed!
This is beginning to severely try my patience.
“… the Batom Comics heroes.”
I think I just did a full-body cringe, the ridiculous manboy wish-fulfilment was so naked. Great, so The Author’s given his pure and shining comic book fantasyland fictional comic book company, purveyor of such Silver Age greats as The Amazing Mister Sponge and Starbuck bleedin’ Jones, the same name as his actual comic book company, which is responsible for, uh, Funky Winkerbean. I can’t even snark about this, guys, it’s just too bloody sad. Seriously, isn’t it about time Batiuk got over the fact Marvel and DC told him he wasn’t wanted on voyage? Going by his current work, I can see why they may not have been beating the door down to offer him a job.
Great. Not only is he lashing out at the Industry for telling him to come back when he’s got some actual ideas, he’s about to subject us to a self-indulgent whine about how little freedom people like him have. If it isn’t the audience saying bad things like “This makes no sense” or “Why should I care about these mopey old people who do nothing but whine about life?”, it’s the fact that he ‘traded his freedom for money’ to be considered.
Coming from a man who doesn’t have an editor to tell him the Syndicate has a problem (because they’re afraid of another stupid incident like the salting John Darling’s earth) and who ignores his fans to do whatever he wants, this would be hypocrisy had he anything like self-awareness.
@beckoningchasm: Sure, it was his idea….but it’s not his fault because the evil publishers and evil audience forced him to dilute the purity of his vision for the sake of trivial concerns like profitability and plausibility.
By the way… in Sunday’s strip, BanTom referred to Mopey Pete as “Pete Reynolds”, when the character’s name is Pete ROBERTS. Confound it, man- this is your own strip!! This is your life’s work! Have you no pride?!
Good article today in the WSJ:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/calvin-and-hobbes-americas-most-profound-comic-strip-1425656199?mod=trending_now_2
@bayoustu: kudos! You beady-eyed nitpicker! If Bob Buttock wants to change the characters’ names in Fanny Wankerpulse, isn’t that his prerogative? I myself welcome these changes, as they’re about the only source of interest in this woebegone strip. So bring on Mort Less, Hailey Butt, Derwood Fairway, Cayla Lilywhite, Owen Doe, Cody Doe (no relation), Balls Perestroika, Candy Winters, and Moe Howard the comic bookstore guy! Bring them all on!
So the industry wants him to change his vision because of reasons? Why does this sound so familiar?
I guess it’s time for another kill fee.
If “trashing” a character causes a comic book sales spike, then it probably wasn’t much of a character to begin with. Just think of how many papers would TB pick up if he revealed what we’ve long suspected… Summer is not really Les’ daughter, she is a gender-swapped clone of Pete.
There’s really nothing that can be said. This strip has reached un-snarkable levels.
So let us just unpack the madness of this strip here for a second –
1) If the first panel Mopey Pete is complaining about having to muck about with the Amazing Mister Sponge because the editors want a sales spike. Dude it’s a mainstream comic book. It’s a popular art form produced by a commercial enterprise of course they would want a sales uptick. They are in the business of selling comic books – the more they sell the better it is for them. That the precious Mister Sponge Continuity (I can’t quite believe I just typed that) gets trashed (as always just how is not clear) is of little concern to them.
2) The Idea he is complaining about his is his own. This is not evil Hollywood making Lisa live at the end. The change of direction is his. Either come up with a better idea or accept this is the best you got at the moment and do your job.
3) Taking the high moral ground about trashing a character for the sake of a sales spike is rather rich coming from an author who – after having Lisa dying of cancer (this coming after she was an unwed mother, blown up in a terrorist attack and having had cancer once already) retcons her life story so that she was date raped – and spent an unseemly amount of time jabbering about this new story to the press (for publicity perhaps one wonders?)
4) The less said about the Batrom comic brand the better. This is going from invented comic book universe to something wish fulfilment creepy.
5) Again while he seems to be harking back to the good old days of Silver Age dc comics – note the shirts and ties all around along with the cigar smoking boss – he seems unable to portray working as a creative writer/artist as anything other than unvarnished misery. And this is the good time before the evil Mega comics swallowed them whole at fire sale prices. Why did that happen? Maybe the books weren’t selling – it’s why other comic companies have gone belly up over the years.
As this first strip is such a mass of repressed issues, I’m wondering what the rest of the week will bring. Not in a good why but I’m still curious. How deep will this rabbit hole go?
So big, evil Mega Comic publishers are evil, only interested in profit, and don’t care about the artistic or literary quality of their product. They’re so cheap, in fact, that their logo is nothing but “Mega Comics” scrawled with a sharpie on a piece of poster paper.
I might have a bit more empathy towards Pete if we were ever actually able to see this sponge character that Pete is sweating blood over. He’s really given us no reason to really give a shit about anything that happens in this comic. We have Pete toiling over an invisible comic character, Funky running forever on a gerbil wheel without any change in his physical fitness level, Bull continuing to display complete destructive indifference towards his job responsibilities, but continue to remain employed, Les continues to be Les, and somehow continues to avoid being brutally murdered.
I always thought Pete’s last name was Zuh. Get it? Get it??
“Gee whiz, the world of comic book publishing sure was better way back when they…uh…didn’t care about selling them, I guess.”
@beckoningchasm: It is with a sorrowful heart I reluctantly throw a thumb’s up your way for the Pete’sza pun/joke/wordplay. Let us never speak of this again.
Interestingly enough, the blog on the FW site happens to be down right now. So during this arc about the history of Batom Comics, the resource that explains it is unavailable. Is that just perfect or what?
@epicus–i was looking at it this afternoon and there is/was some relevant stuff in the “History of Batom Comics” things from last year. I think there’s 3 total, interspersed among Flash recaps.
The thing that jumped out at me was one talking about Batom Comics being bought by Mega Comics in 1972, after a legal dispute over their “The Arachnid” was settled by the courts in Mega Comics favor, being derivative of their Spidey-something. So, as i read that, it was both Fawcett Comics bought by DC after suing them over similarities between Captain Marvel and Superman; but with a touch of Marvel also in the names of the characters. Again, some ideas and similarities to real-life, but not exactly a roman-a-clef.