Auctioneer-ring

Rusty
April 15, 2016 at 8:05 am
So….what’s happening with the decoder ring? Why show that yesterday?

Well, I guess it was so he could show it again today, being sold (and bought) on “Fleabay”, which, as it turns out, exists in real life and appears to be a desperately poor man’s eBay–it’s a dot net, not even dot com for cryin’ out loud. A more puzzling question is, with his rent paid for a year and any financial problems likely resolved for the rest of his days,  why must Cliff continue selling off his last few Starbuck Jones mementoes?

20 thoughts on “Auctioneer-ring”

  1. This is just completely and utterly effed up! Couldn’t Cliff have asked for an advance or some money? Didn’t Mason or his buddies ask if he was in dire financial straits? And Batiuk used “Ebay” a few times before. Why did he change it to “Fleabay?” If he didn’t want to plug the site, why did he use a nearly-identical name? And, of course, Batiuk would have put up old JOHN DARLING strips and blog entry about 50-year-old sub-literate issues of THE FLASH than try to defend the laughable garbage he spews out.

  2. why must Cliff continue selling off his last few Starbuck Jones mementoes?

    He’s going to Hollywood, so he has to have something to moan constantly about until he gets there. “I should never have sold the Precious.”

    It’ll get him into the mood when clueless producers change his dialogue.

  3. Chekhov’s decoder ring I guess. Pete has never gotten laid is the message of today’s strip.

  4. Batiuk loves to focus on the minutia while totally overlooking huge swaths of his own stories. He obviously needed a good hard slap when he began drifting off into this insane boyhood decoder ring sub-fantasy, but unfortunately no one cared enough to do it. At least we know that Anger has internet access, which makes his sixty years as a total recluse even stranger, but no point in expecting it to suddenly start making sense now.

  5. Apparently meeting with the Westview Crew convinced Cliff Anger that he never wanted anything to do with Starbuck Jones ever again.

  6. Why is Darin suddenly standing right behind Pete? And why does he have that creepy grin on his face in the first panel? And how can he tell the ring’s sold when all the screen is showing is a full-screen image of it?
    @dougputhoff:
    I’ve said if before, but if you only read Batiuk’s blog you’d have no clue he actually writes two strips currently, but would instead think he retired sometime in the early 90s.

  7. This story is so deep and engaging. Good work Batty. Always pining for the good ol days.

  8. “Fleabay”!! Haw, haw, haw, that’s a real knee-slappa, Tom, and it has been ever since someone first called eBay that, about 20 years ago.

  9. For all of the minutae The Author relates in his blog posts about The Flash and the care with which he draws backgrounds, it’s amazing the gaping plot holes and inconsistencies he creates in this strip. For the Ovaltine ring to be associated with Starbuck Jones there would have to have been a radio program or possibly a tv series. The only non-comic iteration The Author has disclosed is the long-forgotten movie serial.

  10. HeyItsDave: It’s almost like he shoehorned Jessica in there just as a reminder that Pete and Boy Lisa are merely heterosexual male pals and nothing more. The old “Aunt Harriet” bit. Plus there’s Jessica suddenly making a four and a half week visit home to Ohio just a few months after U-hauling her way to California. Trouble in paradise? I’m just saying is all.

    It’s interesting how they’re way more enthusiastic about old Starbuck Jones nostalgia than they are about the actual, brand new SJ movie they’re writing…right now! It’s like you’re at a World Series game and you spend it standing in the concourse talking to some old guy who saw a WS game there in 1958. AND you’re actually IN the game, no less. I mean the chance to make indelible SJ history (and humongous piles of money) is right there in their hands and meanwhile they’re dicking around at Montoni’s, jabbering about decoder rings. No wonder Jessica might be considering leaving Boy Lisa, he’s hitched their wagon to the sails of a lazy mopey loser.

  11. Batiuk’s love for the stupidest comic book out there is sort of why we have to trudge through all of this. For good or (mostly) ill, we have to deal with a man who expects everyone else to love the cheesy, ridiculous crap he loves from all comers. It doesn’t matter if it’s a mother who wants him to grow up, get a real job and to stop playing with toys or a twitter-tot or internut who wants him to unwedge his head from his rectum and actually BE a quarter of an inch from reality, he’ll take us all on.

  12. Ha. Look at yesterday’s strip – the one HeyItsDave hacked, not the one at Comics Kingdom. I just noticed the logo on the laptop.

  14. Fleabay is a slang term for eBay. Given his fondness for bad puns, this is one pop culture fact I imagine Batiuk actually knows.

  15. Don’t these two ignorant comic geek assholes have more important things to be doin— Nevermind, I answered my own question.

  18. Just got back from shopping Record Store Day. Spotted the 12″ by Candlemass titled… Drumroll please… Epicus Doomicus Metallicus…

  19. Fred Blurt: A username that for some reason stuck in my head for years LOL! Find anything good?

  20. Oh hell yeah! Loads of colored wax releases (my weakness)… JSBX… Bardo Pond… Big Star… Flamin Groovies… Green River… A killer Nigerian compilation from the 70s… stop me before I pull out my credit card kids… RSD is always fun. Last 3 years I managed a store but then we moved back home and this year I’m just a civilian!

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