I think today’s strip is something new, I don’t recall seeing a movie poster homage before. It looks like TB doesn’t know any movie poster artists, as he conscripted old pal (and Cliff Anger expy) Chuck Ayers to draw this one up. I guess that Crankshaft story arc where Crankshaft sold a bunch of vintage movie posters so he could pay for the “Roughriders” on his bus route to go to college was a good enough qualification.
I am not sure why present-day Vera is morphing into Holly, but Cliff appears to have found out about the rerelease of the old Starbuck Jones serial in Reader’s Digest. He is certainly the right age for a Reader’s Digest reader. I’ll bet the announcement was written in Junior Spaceman decoder ring code…
Son of Stuck Funky 
Ha ha, very funny Vera. A gag about how shitty the old SJ serials were on the heels of an entire week-long arc about the nostalgic joy of those old SJ serials…OK then. That BanTom, he just can’t fully embrace anything, there always has to be a self-deprecating disclaimer somewhere in there. And that’s some cover too, it’s incredible how little there is to know about SJ after six or seven years worth of incessant bantering about it.
Looks more like Starbuck Jones: in the Runaway Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloon to me.
It couldn’t possibly be more generic, it’s literally a spaceman flying through space. The SJ mythology is the least-complex and most poorly thought out fictional mythology ever. There’s SJ himself, Jupiter Moon, Xaxians, some sort of monkey and/or robot sidekick, the old WHS computer and SJ’s dad. Despite being a short-lived and obscure comic title introduced in the mid-1970s, it gained a huge cult following in parts of Ohio during the 1950s, enjoy a lengthy 300-plus issue run and inspired a series of movies.
And after all these years that’s it, pretty much everything we know about Starbuck Jones. Is he a superhero character battling the forces of evil in space? is he some sort of swashbuckling space cowboy, looking for trouble and finding it in a wild sci-fi universe? What makes him special? What’s his patented catch-phrase? No one knows, which tells you how much thought he puts into this crap. It’s all always just a tent pole for his weirdly specific nostalgic yearnings and/or bogus relationship-based humor anyway. But still, it’s pretty remarkable how little the character has been fleshed out, we know just as much about Darin’s weird half-sister as we do about SJ.
The damned thing should be titled “Starbuck Jones: Vagueness Ensues.”
Hell, the whole strip should be named that. It’s like that sketch from MAD TV about a fake gameshow called “Vague.” At one point, That Guy from That Show (i.e. Jamie Farr) asked people to remember that he was the guy who wore the things on that big show. We’re given the vaguest hint as to what the screaming is about so that Batiuk can not really embrace something he loves.
It’s an old forgotten comic book, and a new movie finally gives it the acclaim it always deserved!
He’s a stupid overpaid b-movie actor, and a new movie finally gives him the acclaim he always deserved!
She’s a stupid, naive yet hugely popular actress, and a new movie finally gives her the acclaim she always deserved! (Wait a moment…)
He’s an old forgotten actor, and a new movie finally gives him the acclaim he always deserved! (–That’s better!)
It’s an old forgotten movie theatre, and a new movie finally gives it the acclaim it always deserved!
It’s an old forgotten newspaper comic strip, and a new movie…uh, acclaim…acclaim? Unhappy macnam, unhappy macnam[SOUND OF GRINDING METAL, THEN LONG SILENCE]
I’m sorry, this ride is closed. Exit center to Funway.
Ha!
Grrrrr…another sideways crap panel.
Looks like he has run out of artists to tip his felt tip to…
I assume Batiuk and Ayers dress like their characters, so black long sleeve turtleneck under a denim button down shirt? Sounds about right.
Meanwhile, Crankshaft is oddly contemporary. I guess BaTom doesn’t try scripting it a year in advance. There might be a lesson in that.
About the only excitement this strip has produced is wondering who’ll be pictured next on the masthead.
Thanks for putting this in the upright position.
Young Cliff Anger looks like he’s trying to pass separate, hard lumps, like nuts stools, which type one on the Bristol scale. It is indeed a real thing,
https://www.gutsense.org/constipation/normal_stools.html
I learned something today! 💩
Now, if only Tom Batiuk would learn something today…like how to write!
If Cliff looks constipated, Vera looks like someone who was told Funky Winkerbean is Pulitzer-nominated, and then started reading the strip.
I read today’s post, and all the comments, and CK is still refusing to display today’s strip. Evidently there are still some things even the internet will not show.
Billytheskink, thanks (I think?) for putting the panel in your post…
Thank TFH and Epicus, who do a lot of little things like that, things that we guest authors often forget to do.