So, Sunday’s strip is about collecting permission slips for a field trip.
Then Monday, the field trip’s over and Wedgeman is missing.
Now it’s Tuesday, and the bus is stuck in traffic caused by (what else) the Starbuck Jones filming.
What the hell way is this to tell a story? What happened to Wedgie? Why have we been subjected to months of Starbuck Jones Birth Of A Movie agony and not be shown anything about the filming? This is like trying to read Crisis On Infinite Earths after Mom found our comics under our bed and threw most of them away OH SNAP DID I JUST MAKE A COMIC BOOK REFERENCE
So now the bus is heading down a “short cut” which we all know is just going to turn out to be a bad decision because of course it is and Batiuk hasn’t had an original idea since he wasted, like, a decade slowly killing off a main character in a failed bid for a Pulitzer.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Sadly, “getting back to school before the other buses leave” is literally the greatest drama and suspense this strip has had in years.
Let me guess: Mason Jarr will decide that a school bus full of morons is exactly what they need for the big moron scene they’re shooting, moronically enough. Or the bus slams into a wall, killing everyone aboard except Owen, who survives despite losing his chullo in the accident.
I did enjoy the bus driver’s wanton recklessness, though. Boy, BanTom and school bus drivers, huh? IMO it’d have been much funnier if they’d actually have hit that pedestrian, though. A real dark good old fashioned Act II-style arc featuring hidden bodies, a bus full of terrified children and a sweaty trembling Klabinchnik, half-shrouded in shadow, explaining to Owen that Wedgeman and the bus driver HAD to die to preserve the secret they’re all sworn to take to their graves…or else.
This makes me shake my head, and it convinces me that Tom Batiuk is determined never to show anything happening in this strip ever again.
So it’s time for the big Starbuck Jones movie to begin filming in Cleveland! Let’s show how that holds up traffic. Brilliant. Amazing.
Odds are, this shortcut lands them right in the middle of filming. If we’re lucky, it will be an effects shoot and they’ll all be blown up.
I may be mistaken but I think the bus driver is Andy from Crankshaft’s garage, aged for time jump purposes. (Someone must have reminded The Author that there’s supposed to be a ten-year jump. While they were at it they should also have told him that if a movie is being shot downtown the company usually does it at a time that won’t disrupt traffic unduly.)
This???!! This is what the school trip arc was leading to???!! Another fucking Starsucks Jones episode??!!! FFS!!!!
You know, crack dealers are more subtle in pushing their wares than Batiuk is at pushing Starbucks Jones!! And they actually push a product that makes their customers feel good for a time.
It’s not going to happen, Tommy. Starbucks Jones sucks. There is no denying this. It’s as bad as an idea as your two shit comic strips. You need to just kill this Starbucks Jones movie plot and get back to Les Moore and his undead wife…wait what the hell am I saying….that sucks, too!!!
The bus driver appears to be an Act III version of Crankshaft co-worker Andy Clark*. Andy is well-known to Crankshaft fans for both of his traits, being black and wearing a green baseball cap (like some kind of terribly uninteresting Curtis).
So Andy knew in advance that the traffic was going to bad on Cleveland’s main thoroughfares, he knew exactly why it was going to bad, and he knew that by taking the main thoroughfare the students on his bus would arrive back at school too late to catch their buses home… and yet he still drove straight into a traffic jam. I think Crankshaft’s personality might have rubbed off on him just a bit.
*I see that Gerard Plourde beat me to it. Good eye!
Yes, it’s Andy from Crankshaft. Yes, the arc is a disjointed mess. Yes, St Battick is the Guardian Spirit of “Tell, Don’t Show.” Yes, he thinks the hokiest junk culture of any era is the Iliad. What we don’t know is that on the other side, we’re supposed to find a toxic hot mess of a mother-son relationship that leads them to bitch at each other on her deathbed is super fucking HILARIOUS. I’d like to introduce both casts to Heavy Weapons Guy as he delivers the line we need to hear: “Did you wish for Heavy to KILL you? WISH GRANTED!!!!!”
“”Sadly, “getting back to school before the other buses leave” is literally the greatest drama and suspense this strip has had in years.””
Batty was the one “who got back to school after the buses had left.”
Well, I think I have an idea why Durwood and Pete Rozingas have been complaining all this time. They were asked to re-write the script of a futuristic Sci-Fi adventure so that most of the action takes place in downtown Cleveland with a school bus and a suburban high school graduation ceremony.
Gosh… I wonder what it was like back in the day for the artists and writers at Batom Comics when THEY got stuck in traffic?!
You can take the bus driver out of Westview, but you can’t take that Westview depression out of the bus driver…
By the way, I did once chaperone a high school field trip (to a science museum, no less!) on which the bus driver tried to short-cut around traffic and wound up stuck and unable to turn around in a dead-end cul-de-sac. Adding to the hilarity, two other buses followed him in (it was a big field trip) and they all had to back out. This strip is already a lot less funny than I remember that day being…
1. So they just started filming a movie during rush hour without telling the city government so they could god forbid prepare in advance and route traffic elsewhere? Seems legit – Are the guerrilla filmmakers all of a sudden or something??
2. Are we ever going to learn what part of a futuristic sci-fi popcorn flick is so critical it *MUST* be filmed in modern-day Cleveland? Even if they wanted a fucked-up part of the city to make it into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, there are much better options available…
3. Believe it or not I had a bus driver in Rio de Janeiro pull some shit like this… Public buses in Rio might as well be roller coasters, and the drivers are evidently all retired Hollywood stunt drivers…
4. So despite not seeing *anybody* connected with this film other than Mason (i.e., no co-star, supporting actors, SFX guys, director, wardrobe, makeup, grips, gaffers, etc.) they’ve just up and started filming? Whatever… I mean FFS we haven’t even seen Cliff Anger after Batiuk spent a month introducing him to us!
5. Once again I’d like to remind folks that when the Hollywood gang came back to Cancer County, Ohio, it was only supposed to be a couple days’ vacation and that Pete Rattabastardo’s script was FAR from finished… So I have no idea what these people are actually shooting…
6. So what happened to Wedgieman? Did he get left behind or what?
@bayoustu:
For the love of CHRIST don’t give Batiuk any ideas!
Of course, if it is Andy from CRANKSHAFT, WTF is he doing driving a bus in Westview? Of course, Batiuk won’t explain it, since he doesn’t explain anything.
@bayoustu:
Be careful what you wish for…
living in a city like I do – I know that they typically film outdoor city location shots at night – when there is less traffic and city noise about to mess up the takes and if they want a daytime shot they will do it on the WEEKEND again to avoid traffic problems.
One can only quote the last line of the Bridge over the River Kwai “Madness. Madness. “
@ Hannibal… that Ohio Crazy House, aka, “The Lighthouse”