Today’s strip is precisely why the “Mason’s Nose” tag was created.
We’ve covered, ad nauseum, Marianne’s transition from a rising star, whose popularity was such that a Starbuck Jones sequel was greenlit within weeks of her joining the project, to someone who claims her career has not yet even begun. We’ve done the same for her recently revealed ability to evade the security and natural dangers on Mount Lee to scale the Hollywood sign.
For me, there is only one thing left to cover here. Just one question left to ask. I can think of nothing else to say but this…
Is TB really closing out this suicide-teasing story arc by having Marianne quote the actress who is, perhaps, Hollywood’s most famous suicide?
Son of Stuck Funky 
Well, Marianne, sorry to say it, but your career is over. Oh, it’s probably too expensive to replace you for the Starbuck Jones movie, but no other studio will hire you now. You’re too much of a risk for the insurers and completion backers. You might get some work for cheap direct-to-video dreck, like garbage for the SyFy channel–hey, that smells like Starbuck Jones!–but as far as being a major star, Hollywood can’t touch you. Too risky that you, for example, might want to do a another take of a scene, and the director says, “No, that one was great. Next!” and you burst into tears, and jump from the roof. Hollywood is littered with performers who flipped out and then never (or rarely) worked again.
Seems to happen a lot with actresses–Lindsay Lohan, Sean Young, Margot Kidder, etc to depressing etc.
Now, give a decade or so, someone might decide you’re now stable enough and you might get hired, even working yourself up to major productions, probably playing the heroine’s mother. It’s not unknown. Ask Winona Ryder. Or you might get a part in the Crankshaft movie. I hear they’re looking to cast Lena.
My point is that this is a very serious matter in Hollywood, and just shrugging it off with a quote and a smirk is not going to work in the real world. It shouldn’t work in a world one-quarter-inch away, either, but Funky Winkerbean is nothing more, now, than wish-fulfillment, insulting anyone who dares criticize…and running out the clock. Gotta get that 50th, right?
All this drama is going to make her a great fit to play Lisa in the Lisa’s Story revival that Mason’s no doubt going to do next.
The total lack of continuity shown here is unbelievable and would be untenable in most writing. How can Batiuk forget that Cindy’s research (as created by him) in February established that Marianne had had co-starring roles? (Whether she actually got involved with her leading men as reported by the gossip press is not relevant.) To have her say now that her career was just beginning is either massive sloppiness or conscious trolling.
Considering TB’s inability to remember his own story lines, I’m beginning to wonder if he suffers from Wernicke-Korsakoff’s syndrome.
Wow, talk about a pile. She thought a picture of her kissing Mason Jarre on the cheek would destroy her career? She immediately assumed suicide was the only practical way out until she remembered a truly moronic old cliché she heard once? She’s a basket case, a person probably best suited to work the counter at some quiet, empty Midwestern pizzeria, cheerfully serving up slices and coffee to the same eccentric but harmless locals every day, not trying to make it in the high-intensity world of Hollywood. Introduce her around…SAVE HER, Mason!
It is hard to believe that anyone using a Marilyn Monroe quote in a (not quite) suicide story would be unaware of the significance of the reference, but this bout of self awareness would be a first for TB in decades.
An unstoppable force meets immovable object kind of thing…
It is a tone deaf reference either way, so there’s that.
Marianne’s career is over, she cant handle the press– so she quits the business and moves to Westview to become the new drama teacher
Given how motherfucking dumb everyone in this arc has been, it would have been better for her to quote Kelly Bundy:
Smile as though your brain had wisdom/
smile and go on Nutra-System/
Smile, smile, something, something, SMILE!
than to invoke the original suicide girl.
Over before it began? Not so, according to your own strip Batty, you made a big deal about her being signed, remember?
And wow, what a payoff, the wisdom of Monroe!
But why is this all still in black and white? At least the wavy lines are gone.
I guess he had to practice drawing Summer since she will be the new Westview PE teacher.
As someone who was bullied (albeit before the Internet era), and who deals with mild anxiety/depression, I can tell you exactly how useless this sort of platitude is–indeed, it obviously wasn’t enough to save Ms. Monroe from her own demons. It doesn’t solve the problem or offer comfort to anyone except the person who says it, since they can now pat themselves on the back for being “encouraging” and “supportive” without even bothering to understand the issue, much less do anything about it. In other words, it’s exactly as self-serving as every other “Very Serious Issue” arc Batiuk has done in the past several years.
@ The Diva, I second. Empty platitudes from the historically mentally unstable are NOT the best way to talk some one or yourself down.
I rescind my “Batuik wants to show off his Wikipedia knowledge” from yesterday. Apparently he couldn’t be bothered to even look up Marilyn Monroe. Hollywood and fame killed that woman. And her “Smile” quote reeks of tragedy coming from a very unstable woman who so often tried to hide that anything was wrong behind a beautiful and laughing veneer.
The image in the header tells me it’s good that Tom Batiuk did not take over “Peanuts” when Charles Schulz died. And the blink made me jump!
The header image tells me that next week we’re getting a Ziggy crossover.
I’m lost… Who’s that 15-year-old boy Masone is talking to? A runaway?
“Hollywood’s most famous suicide”? Wait until Les writes his new book that leads to the arrest of someone for murdering Marilyn Monroe.
Meanwhile…is this the year Kent State makes it to the NCAA women’s basketball tournament? This is Summer’s fourth year, so presumably she could have redshirted at some point and nobody has to worry about her until mid-2018 at the earliest.
Unless her next stop is a hospital, this is just crass, ham-fisted and idiotic beyond belief. Another stupid issue “addressed” in the most laughably trite, unimaginative and insultingly dumb manner possible. And his weird fetish for young women with boyish haircuts and hoodies is equally disturbing, at least with Summer it was semi-believable but his new Marianne 2.0 is utterly ridiculous.
In the weeks to come, Batiuk will quote Ronald Reagan on how to stay mentally sharp, WC Fields on the dangers of alcohol, and Fatty Arbuckle on the importance of consent in sexual relations. “The less you know: Funky Winkerbean” ******
As the Diva and Epicus Doomus already said, I find this ending is incredibly condescending and insulting as someone who has fought regularly with suicidal tendencies and deep depression