Albeit only briefly, Cindy brightens as she remembers that she too has a career, and can maybe wring some publicity out of old Cliff Anger. Until she does the mental arithmetic that the rest of us have already done. But Mason is having none of it. He’s either trying to sound pithy with his “technicolor to monochrome” rejoinder, or perhaps he’s watched so many “Oscars In Memoriam” segments that the idiot really does think that’s what becomes of old actors.
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Son of Stuck Funky · The web's premiere source for Funky Winkerbean snark
Son of Stuck Funky 
Yeah, because “some random guy acted in a movie you’ve never heard of, before your parents were born” is definitely a segment those kids today would like to see.
“Sorry, Cindy, we have to cancel your interview with Biff Angry; the 7:00 Let’s Play ran long.”
We’ve all joked about the cornfield, but this is literally a canned world. Nothing has progressed beyond the 1960’s. The old cars are still driven, the old comic books are still read, the bandbox is the best entertainment.
Everyone shares the same interests Everyone thinks the same thoughts. Everyone is everyone else. This is like Ray Bradbury’s “Mars is Heaven” as written by a smug, punchable Les Moore. And in the end, when all the old faces melt and reform into an indistinguishable mass of putty, to reform into friends and neighbors…well, the astronauts were so bored they went back to their ship and took off.
“I say let’s nuke the place from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
The internet: great for mindless video chats, celebrity gossip and entertainment blogs…and apparently that’s it. Too bad there isn’t a way to use the internet to find information about someone, as if there was they’d be all set. Oh well, I guess they’ll have to brainstorm some more until one of them finally suggests visiting the one place that surely holds all the answers…Komix Korner.
I think that establishing whether or not he’s still alive would be a terrific place to start, as it could potentially save them a lot of time. Not that they’re in any particular rush to get back to work or anything.
“Hello, Mason? This is your boss over at CME, how’s tricks? Great, great. Listen, is it true that you chartered a private plane and took the head writer and his private lackey to Ohio to go see an old movie and that you’re offering cameo roles in the yet-to-be-completed film we’re trying to make? Oh, OK, no problem, just checking in! Carry on!”.
I think Cindy has confused Buddyblog with CBS Sunday Morning… and 2016 with 1982.
So does Cindy just tape and run whatever she wants on her Buddyblog news broadcast, or does she think Cliff Anger will have some magic ability to make her a producer too? Same question for Mason and his plan to offer Anger a cameo.
Oh! Oh! I finally get it. It’s funny because Cliff Anger rhymes with “danger.”
Great. More of Batiuk not knowing what the web is for, more of no one really understanding that it’s highly likely that Cliff (H)anger resides either in a pine box or a brass urn and more sentimentality from a nitwit. Time for Rat and Goat from Pearls Before Swine to track him down and tell him to retire.
“Old actors never die.” Try telling that to Sean Astin.
I really don’t appreciate that dumb aphorism considering that we lost a ton of great media figures between 2015 (when this strip was written) and now.
Writing a year in advance is not always the wisest thing in the world.
Mason seems to believe that literally; in the last panel you can see him rejecting the idea that he will ever die, now that he has a movie in the works. Immortality!
This is all assuming that SJ serial is from the 50’s. Most of those were popular in the 30/40’s. That’d make SJ actor dude like 96… the same as Crankshaft.
Yeah, let’s use my BuddyBlog job to help promote my boyfriend’s movie, obviously Cindy has no journalistic ethics whatsoever.
1. Cindy wouldn’t have editorial control to just do stories on whatever she wants… That has already been long established…
2. In addition to the distinct possibility that he might not be alive, I like how nobody is even considering the chances of Mr. Anger even *wanting* to go on camera or talking to some news bimbette old enough to be one of his ex-wives…
F’chrissake, T-Bats made it plain on Sunday where this was going and he’s spent the entire week bludgeoning the idea into the ground. THAT’S WRITING. Let’s face it: it doesn’t matter how old Cliff Anger would actually be in meatworld. This is the Funkyverse, and we all know damn well that Batshit is determined to play out this fantasy of his. It’s going to take at least a month of glacial plot “development,” but they’ll find ol’ Cliff, and he’ll agree to the cameo…and then – as usual – the thread will get dropped and Tom will move on to some other ridiculous tangent the way he always does. Fanfics written by kids in junior high have better developed plotlines.
Well this wouldn’t be very interesting if Cliff was dead. Of course it’s not very interesting now.
As others have noted the Time line here is troublesome – there were serials done into the 50’s (Commando Cody Radar Men of the Moon was from ’52) but that was really the last gasp. And if I remember correctly the SJ comic series started in the 50’s after the great comic book scare which happened in 1954 -55 and the establishment of the Comics Code Authority so the time lines a mess – not only was the SJ run started too late to really be the subject of a serial – it would really be far to new a series to be used even if folks were still making serials at the time.
of course in the hands of a better writer this doesn’t really matter that much – here it seems emblematic of the overall carelessness in plotting we see in this strip
Batiuk’s been updating the official FW blog like a fiend of late! Aside from the ones he authors himself (about his beloved Flash comics) and the whole Batom Comics "history", the posts regurgitate "classic" content from FW (old strips plus excerpts from the forwards to the Complete FW series), John Darling, and Crankshaft.
The latest post is a strip that predates any of those:
Moondog appears to be as much a thing of its 70s time as were the first FW strips. But it’s interesting to check out Batiuk’s drawing style of that period. Another Moondog-tagged post has an even more intriguing sketch, with editorial markup, of a crowd scene at an outdoor music festival. Batiuk’s style is distinctive, and mostly unrecognizable compared to his later style. I still do not see anything that suggests he could draw a Marvel or DC comic book.
@THHackett – as a side note Moondog was the state name of one Louis Thomas Hardin an eccentric Blind jazz composer and musician who from the 1940’s until the 70’s would usually be found standing around 53rd and 54th street and 6th Avenue in New York – he was a big tall man with a long beard and he wore a cloak and sometimes a Viking helmet. He was as they say ‘weird with a beard’ but was actually a respected composer a bunch of albums to his name who later relocated to Germany were he died in 1999.
but I assume the Author got Moondog from the Allen Freed’s Moondog show.
@HeyItsDave:
Batiuk’s writing style reminds me of nothing so much as a five-year-old telling you about a dream they had.
I know this has been said before, but a quick google search could probably confirm whether Cliff Anger is dead or not. If the internet can’t find Cliff Anger, then he probably isn’t someone you want to be looking for for much less casting in a movie.
Of course this leads to the more bizzare aspect of this. Why is Batiuk hiding whether this guy is dead or not? Are we just supposed to be visiting a grave somewhere in a few weeks? That’s not going to be suspenseful since it’s going to be really obvious. I’m pretty sure this is supposed to lead into a “Sunset Boulevard” type of plot, but why can’t we know he’s alive already.
This isn’t the worst think Batiuk’s written, but it does have several plot problems that are indicative of his work. He really doesn’t think these plots through.
@HeyItsDave: followup conversation (assuming I can get embedded images to work)
OK, standard HTML syntax doesn’t work… anybody want to explain how you embed images in these comments?
@Hannibal’s Lectern –
What I do is upload the image to a server like imgur, open the imgur image in a new tab to get the direct link URL, and then just paste the URL in as it’s own line in the comment.
@HeyItsDave: that sounds too simple, but this is WordPress… OK, here goes. I parked the image on a google account, got a direct URL, and it’s pasted in right below. Follow-up comments forthcoming…
The speculation about what’s ahead is more amusing than the strip. I’m betting that after two more days of wondering about Cliff’s fate (and never leading the pizza bog), Monday will start with Chullo and Glasses talking about yearbook photos or something.
Remember when Marianne Winters was introduced, and everyone started talking about how Cindy would be jealous and so on? A couple of “Cindy mopes” strips and Marianne has vanished completely.
Compared to this Starbuck Jones crap, Holly’s quest for comics was a tightly-scripted, straightforward story.
I’ll be moderately surprised if this Anger asshole isn’t in Ohio. There has to be SOME reason these dolts are there and there must be SOME reason why they’re filming in Cleveland…or so you’d think. Then again, with Batiuk who the hell knows? Next week could be all about Les’ shrubbery or Funky installing a space escalator at Montoni’s for all I know.