What powers would ‘soggy superhero comics’ give? I don’t get it.
On Friday, commentator Erdmann made the guess: “Anyone else suspect there’s a comic book cover Sunday strip headed our way?”
To which Bobanero replied: “It would be the longest lead up to a Sunday Comic Book Cover strip in history.”
Kudos for both the prediction and the comment. Indeed this entire meandering, yet linear, arc over the past three months seems to have been building to this end.
And by ‘this end’ I mean Batiuk establishing some of his protagonists in a new comics related field so he can keep getting his precious commissioned covers whenever the mood strikes. He obviously had gotten all the Starbuck Jones covers he wanted, and is preparing to branch out.
Interesting that we don’t get a tip of the Funky Feltpen directly on the strip. The name on the bottom of the line art says Fairgood. Honestly interested in who drew this.
Son of Stuck Funky 
“So, Peet, what superpowers does The Inedible Pulp possess?”
“‘Superpowers, Mr. Hagglestrom?”
“Yeah, you know. Does he have any special abilities or powers that set him apart from mere mortals?”
“Uhhh…Can I get back to you on that? I guess I didn’t think that far ahead.”
He can turn a weak and stupid idea sideways but it’s still weak and stupid. He can make Chester easily impressed sideways but Chester is still in love with the dumbest, lamest idea ever.
This reminds me a little of “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” in which Simon Helberg plays a character named Moist.
He had lines like:
DR. HORRIBLE
Moist! My evil, moisture buddy. What’s going on?
MOIST
Life of crime. Got your mail.
…
MOIST
You need anything dampened or made soggy or…?
…
MOIST
Kill someone?
DR. HORRIBLE
Would you do it? To get into the Evil League of Evil?
MOIST
Look at me man. I’m Moist. I mean, at my most bad-ass I
make people feel like they want to take a shower. I’m
not E.L.E material.
……….
Of course Dr. Horrible was written by Joss Whedon who knows how to do something interesting with what is basically an uninteresting character. The only reason I can think of that Chester would get so excited by this character is that he spent too many years huffing mimeograph fumes while printing his newsletter.
Is Chester reading the actual printed comic? Have we time-jumped another six months of so? Did Chester have no idea about what his company’s first book would contain until now? Is there anyone else employed by Atomik? Am I deeply disturbed that I deduced what Batiuk had in mind for today’s strip?
The answer to the last question is obviously “Yes, very much so.”
I think the “Fairgood” signature is supposed to be Darrin. I guess Batiuk let Burchett draw the way he wanted to?
I didn’t think Burchett was capable of good artwork. Wonder who really did it.
Believe me, Burchett has done much, much better work than what we’ve seen on the strip in the past, and he’s not so old as to be ‘losing it’.
My theory is he’s been phoning it in to fit Batiuk’s “house style”
Am I the only one wondering how lifelong sketcher/doodler Darrin produced such an expertly crafted professional cover with excellent ink and color work??
I know I’m giving this far too much thought, but this concept of Pete’s gets me back to the question of how Batiuk conceives the Funkyverse, and it appears to be the realm of magical thinking.
The cover we’re presented with implies that the comics-reading audience in the Funkyverse would accept the idea that somehow the comic books can, with the addition of floodwaters, transform the.protagonist into another being entirely and endow that being with all of the various powers possessed by the heroes in the books. This is also a universe where Central City and the Flash Museum are real places.
We’ve moved quite a distance from the “one step from reality” period.
I was thinking along similar lines but merely about the incongruity between the absurdity that’s supposed to be the larger humor in this sequence and Batiuk’s insistence on treating Funkyworld seriously.
Part of the humor is just how ridiculous this idea is, that it’s so obviously NOT something that would form the basis of an actual comic series about a hero. It’s like The Amazing Mister Sponge, where part of the humor is trying to imagine what sort of absurd superhero you could get from sponges and their potential superpowers. It’s the sort of thing that draws its humor from the fact that it obviously wouldn’t work in the real world outside a very limited parody conception.
But oh, we’re supposed to take his CTE and his cancer and his land mine stories seriously. The business side of comics can be completely absurd but cancer we must take SERIOUSLY, because it’s supposed to be an authentic reflection of the savagery of the world or something.
I wouldn’t read this for $2.99… you would have to pay me A LOT more than that.
In my best South park voice: “The Simpsons did it! The Simpsons did it!” In episode 422 (Homer the Whopper), Comic Book Guy publishes a comic book he wrote titled Everyman, in which the title character, an overweight average man called Avery Mann, can absorb superpowers from the characters of comic books he touches. I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t think there is enough distinction here not to warrant a “cease and desist” for either Chester or TB.
Yeah, I mentioned that the other day…
I’m not a big comic book fan, but as I understand it, a superhero wouldn’t be depicted flinging citizens around and being plugged by a cop with lead.
Also, the devastation left by the wall of water resulting from a failed dam is much worse than what’s depicted. Just look at a few pictures of Johnstown, PA after the 1889 flood from that specific cause.
Well… when does filming start on the Inedible Pulp trilogy?
“A soggy superhero!” More like a sucky superhero, am I right? Impeach Tom Batiuk!
My guess is Batiuk also like to eat Rice Krispies that have been sitting in the bowl of milk for 15 minutes or so.
The superhero could just be called “Funky Winkerbean.” I mean, they’re both made of garbage.
Inedible? Who in the world would want to eat that? It looks like feces, or one of those “fatberg” things that are clogging up sewer systems in big cities like Westview.
What I said yesterday, squared. Everything that “happened” over the last three months led to this stupid gag. There’s just no one else on earth who’d have gone to such lengths for so little payoff. Every time I think I have that Batiukian mindset figured out he reaches into his boring bag of tricks and astounds me with another monumental feat of sub-mediocrity the likes of which I never even could hope to imagine.
Consider the narrative he created to work this “Inedible Pulp” pun into the strip. He had Chester seek out John who led Chester to Pete, who along with Boy Lisa drove to Ohio where they met with Chester regarding his dumb idea. Then, without ever really showing them actually taking the job, he had Pete and Boy Lisa quit their Hollywood jobs (jobs he spent many individual arcs establishing and which led to numerous tangential arcs featuring many other characters who wouldn’t have existed if Pete and Boy Lisa hadn’t worked in Hollywood, mind you) and move to Ohio, where Chester purchased an entire office building and immediately put the dorks to work. All of it leading to this witless Sunday comic book cover strip featuring the most balls-out idiotic reality bubble in the history of reality bubbles. “Soggy superhero”…f*ck you, Chester/Tom.
The idea is stolen from “The Heap” comic character from the 40s, which was a muck-monster and not a superhero.
What the fuck is Action Jackson in the background doing? He’s supposed to be the horrified fleeing public but he’s doing the run-dodge right at the “monster”.
I am mistaken. It’s not Action Jackson. It’s ubiquitous CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin!
Seriously, what’s the point?
It’s too fucking stupid to take seriously, yet it’s too fucking stupid to even be 1% funny…
late to the game but I have to add that the douchy fist bump between Mopey Pete and Boy Lisa add substantially to the loathsomeness.
And two one must guess his weaknesses are direct sunlight or a mass of people with Hair dryers.
Explain it to me again…. How exactly is this going to “Make Comics Great Again?” The only difference between this and everything else on the rack is The Pulp is dumber…