Fired? Pete’s been fired?
Welcome to CloudFunkyCuckooLand, folks. Batiuk has at long last thrown off the bowlines and sailed away at last from the harbor of continuity and logic.
Sure, the editors tasked him with taking Mister Sponge in a “darker and grittier” direction, but the clone idea was Pete’s own, and he enthusiastically sold it to his bosses. When, as they anticipated, controversy ensues, his editors reassure Pete that his story has “lit up the internet” and put sales of their comic book “over the moon.” They outline a plan (presumably involving Pete) to further boost revenue by spinning the one title into three. When Pete predictably complains about the increased workload (his current output is already enough to trigger Pete’s psychoses), his nerdbosses calmly throw him overboard in favor of the Netbusters guy.
Suddenly jobless and 400 miles from home, Pete is concerned not for himself but for the “poor readers,” represented by Owen in a panel 3 which presumably takes place months hence: the same Owen who was devastated to learn that his absorbent and yellow and porous hero had been “retcloned” has dutifully shelled out for all three of the resulting comics and pronounces them “cool.”
Son of Stuck Funky 
Exactly, TFH. Exactly. My reaction–
Whoa, whoa, whoa! So, when Pete Reid wrote the story that galvanized sales for the Amazing Mister Sponge, to the point where SpongeCake’s popularity demanded he be expanded into three books…and the publishers are firing him??
Well, I guess this has some historical precident, in comic-book terms–after all, I’m pretty sure Joss Wheden was fired after the success of “The Avengers” movie, and the success of “The Dark Knight” I’m betting ruined Christopher Nolan’s career. So it would make sense that they’d fire Pete Rostenkowski. After all, Stan Lee is a penniless bum these days! Right?
–I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that. What?! Are…are you sure? Ooops.
Wow! What a totally unsurprising, uninteresting and totally inconsequential ending!
Well, good riddance to a pathetic storyline that would and should have been spiked until the guiding hand of… I don’t know… AN EDITOR??!??
I don’t care if Mopey Pete Reischauer mopes back to Westview or is written out of the strip a la Susan Smith… his character only seems to exist now to fulfil Batom®’s chew toy wishes when bloviating about his outdated and outmoded views on the comic book industry, and nothing else. What else can Mopey Pete do but mope?
Even by Batom® standards, this is too boring to even be ridiculously pessimistic.
TB is there anyone, ANYONE besides the guy you see in the mirror each morning that isn’t a philistine when it comes to “art”?
Yesterday when I read FW I thought about talking about how stupid it was to fire Pete, but I decided that there was no way that was what was meant. It had to just be a bit vague and they were keeping Pete while bringing new talent in.
This is the fourth or fifth time I’ve given FW the benefit of the doubt for a moment and it’s chosen the stupider of the two options.
Well, of COURSE Pete comes out of this as the big loser…he is, after all, a “writer”. And of COURSE his editors are greedy and exploitative…they are, after all, in the “publishing business”. This is how the world works, at least Bom Tan’s world, that is. No contrivance is too stupid to drive THAT point home, not now and not ever. “Writing is hard”, it’s Batiuk’s motto. And if keeps on repeating it over and over maybe someone will buy it one day…but that someone won’t be me.
Welcome to the Funkyverse, where there’s no contrivance too implausible so long as it ends with somebody miserable.
And why is Owen representing the army of morons who make it impossible for artists like Pete to painstakingly craft super-awesome comic books? Is this also a little dig at “these kids today” and their lack of good taste re: comic books? If so, add it to the pile of stupid things BanTom is beefing about.
These “writing” arcs of his are always so annoying, I mean change up the template every once in a while, you know? Every single “writer” doesn’t always have to be a miserable mopey anxiety-ridden Delicate Genius raging at his corporate overlords. He might have even been able to somehow work this mess into a coherent story if he wasn’t so freaking hell-bent on squeezing these stupid editor characters into the strip.
@Nathan Obral:
About his outdated and outmoded views: The thing is, I don’t think comic books were ever like that. If anything Silver Age comics were even more cynical and exploitative than they are now, full of gimmicks, with minimal characterization and plot development. Even in Batiuk’s fantasy land, the comics industry in the olden days was shown to be a toil, with poor imaginary Pete being bossed around by his fat, bald Publisher. Batiuk isn’t pining for yesterday. He’s hoping people will start treating him the way he thinks comic writers should be treated: just staying out of his way and letting him write and draw whatever he wants, no matter if it sells or not, and only commenting on his works to shower it with praise.
C’mon, now. Did anyone really expect a happy ending to this arc? It’s the Funkyverse, people.
Let us hope that this stupid blathering about how being a creative artist would be a dream were it not for editors and their useless suggestions or audiences with their stupid demands that they be entertained has finally come to an end. This way, there’s one neurotic annoyance whining about the problems he brought on himself the less. They were in their rights to get rid of some pain in the ass pissing and moaning about having a license to print money and the syndicate was in its rights to do what they wanted with characters they owned.
“I don’t care if Mopey Pete Reischauer mopes back to Westview or is written out of the strip a la Susan Smith”
“C’mon, now. Did anyone really expect a happy ending to this arc? It’s the Funkyverse, people.”
WAIT! Now Pete and Cindy have something in common! Fired from their jobs in the big evil city.
If Dopey Pete goes out to work on the Starbuck Jones movie, then he will meet Cindy, now working at her loser job at Buddyblog and wondering where her next meal is coming from. (Unless she is peddling her a55 somewhere).
Cindy, who will now be crushed after she realizes that Mason Jarr only wanted to create the great Coney Island Whitefish (after he dumped her), will fall for Pete and another stupid and unterminated arc will ensue.
@Saturnino, How I wish I could call your comment satire instead of foreshadowing.
Now Pete can return to Westview and:
1) Work for Darrin at Montoni’s
2) Teach writing at High School
3) Finally snagging Summer Moore
4) Work at Comix Book store.
5) Get a mail route.
6) Write a daily in the Westview Gazette.
TFHackett wrote: Welcome to CloudFunkyCuckooLand, folks. Batiuk has at long last thrown off the bowlines and sailed away at last from the harbor of continuity and logic.
If this storyline were to be submitted as a creative writing assignment, it would be lucky to get a “D.”:
@Epicus Doomus
The story was about the editors.
re: 3) Snagging Summer Moore: questions of orientation aside (although they’re so loud as to be impossible to do so), if Summer and Special K started college in 2011, shouldn’t they be graduating this spring?
I love this hot Skype-on-Skype action, where BanTom shows us Pete Robicheaux tell Durrhey about the main action of the plot.
But at last Pete Rödersheimer has defeated the Lord of the Late. The unemployed never miss a deadline.
@Oddnoc: Ah, yes. The Lord of the Late….or, as we call it the real world, Pete Rachmaninoff’s impostor syndrome made flesh.
Anyhow, I think that the real nightmare is that everyone likes the new writer much better because he isn’t a paranoid basket-case about to drown in his own flop sweat. That’s the nightmare that made Batiuk kill Darling, you see: the fear that his critics are right about his being a very lucky hack.
gleeb: My point being that you can tell this story without using the editors at all. “They” ask Pete to write a controversial story, he does, the internet erupts, “they” call, tell him it’s the best-selling issue ever and they want more, bam. Same message, same “irony” too. The editors are there to represent Pete’s Evil Corporate Overlords and nothing more, plus they were made so AFTER Pete gave them the very same clone story he KNEW would send his fans into an uproar. All they actually did was enthusiastically run with Pete’s story, THEN they were transformed into sneering evil artist-crushing monsters. And he does this because he apparently really believes that this is just how the whole thing always works. He’s as predictable as the tides that way.
Because Batom® repeats the same tired message on a level embarrassing to fourth graders, I wound up rooting for the editors and the nameless, faceless corporate overlords. Batom® is incapable of portraying any of his characters not named Buddy as likable, relatable or human, and Mopey Pete is too much of a caricature to even qualify as someone who I would feel empathy for (especially with the unoriginal “Lord of the Late” BS).
Good for Mega Comics. Pete deserved to be fired, for acting miserable and unwilling to do his job in front of his bosses. Heck, Mega Comics’ slogan should be, “No Mopes Allowed.”
As this subplot is over, I’ll take this last opportunity to point out the stupidity of the guy at MegaComics wearing a bare multi-colored undershirts with a MegaComics iron-on in a laughably unprofessional font, sitting in a boardroom beside an easel with the word “Megacomics” written on it and nothing else.