Batiukverse space time
Still warping in today’s strip
A 40s newsboy?
Street-hawking newsboys
Were in decline in the 10s
And gone by 40s
Hammett’s Pinkertons
Found nothing on Brinkel’s case
They were years early
Or have we gone back?
Brinkel’s a silent star?
40s a typo?
Who knows? I sure don’t
Author sure doesn’t either
Just end this thing, please
Bad newspapermen
Are ones who print comics like
Funky Winkerbean
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Tagged as black and white, Butter Brinkel, Cindy, Cliff, Cliff Anger, Dashiell Hammett, death, fake news, film sprocket borders, filmstrip border, Hollywood, Jessica, movie frame border, movies, newspapers, Now Cindy, old crap, Old dying people, some kid-no one knows whose, Valerie Pond
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Son of Stuck Funky
“EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! CARTOONIST DRAGS OUT STORY UNNECESSARILY BY REPEATING POINT HE MADE LAST SUNDAY!”. So Hammett discovered what Cindy and Jessica knew last week, eh? Well, color me compelled!
So the Pinkertons think he was framed…but found no evidence he did it.
Wouldn’t ‘framing’ involve creating some fake evidence?
The film sprocket borders were ok at first; they made sense because they represented Brinkel’s old movies. But Batiayers is using them for *all* these scenes set in the past: the murder scene, the courtroom, the Pinkertons…is this newsreel footage? Or is Jessica shooting the doc on black and white film?
The whole thing is yet another huge Batiukian logic puzzle. The characters are visualizing Cliff’s recollections in movie footage form, the timeline is all over the place and Cliff Anger of all people apparently has some sort of heretofore unknown information on the extensively-covered case, in spite of it being extensively covered.
I would also think that BatYak would ALWAYS defend newspapers, as they are after all somewhat crucial to his strip’s continued existence and all. But they appear to possibly the villains here, as opposed to those debauched Hollywood heathens with their parties and murders, which frankly surprises me, as Batom usually hates Hollywood too. So I’m confused.
“I would also think that BatYak would ALWAYS defend newspapers”, as they are after all somewhat crucial to his strip’s continued existence and all.”
And in real life, it was William Randolph Hearst who used his newspapers to try Fatty Arbuckle (the model for Butter Bri-whatever). The same William Randolph Hearst who founded Hearst Communications, which now owns King Features, which syndicates L’Auteur Glorieux’s comic strips. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!
“The film sprocket borders were ok”
The sprocket holes are the closest thing to bricks…….
TB is really in a quandary here – it’s the evil gutter press vs evil Hollywood. He seems to be siding with Hollywood, though.
A side-note: I’m sure it was anomalous, but there were newsboys in Victoria (Canada) into the 1970s. I can still imitate their drawn-out bird call of ‘paaaaaaaaay-PER!’
How dare the evil newspapermen simply stare that a significant public figure was charged with murder! They’re not supposed to talk about those things. Clearly they’re trying to destroy his life by reporting a legal fact.
I mean if Batiuk wanted to highlight the media trying to smear Butter he could’ve used a much better headline. My choice would be “Boozy Butter Brinkel Butchers Bosomy Bimbo!!!”
In other words: “Fake news!” In the right hands, this could be a subtle dig at the present day news media… in subtle hands, that is. But we’re talking about BatHack here, so never mind.
Right? The ‘Evil Media’ headline in his strip was a literal factual headline: Brinkel arrested for murder. Which he was.
Building up Brinkel’s image sure doesn’t make good comic strip copy, so it is easy to see why newspaper editors would do the opposite.
“The Pinkertons couldn’t find any evidence that Butter Brinkel was guilty.”
Too bad the prosecutors could, huh Cliff? I mean seriously, is Batiuk trying to claim that a guy got convicted of murder with no evidence whatsoever?
Besides, Valerie Pond being killed at Butter’s house, by Butter’s gun is evidence that Butter did it. It may not be dispositive evidence, or evidence that could secure a conviction, but it IS evidence. From those two things alone Butter would be a suspect.
I’m amazed Batiuk passed up the opportunity to draw Billy “Captain Marvel” Batson, or one of Simon and Kirby’s Newsboy Legion characters, as the newsie. Heck, he could drawn the kid to look like Scrapper (whose personality was supposedly based on Kirby’s) and later establish that he was a young Phil Holt.
And again, if Butters was “Hollywood’s biggest star,” why in blue blazes would the studio frame him for the murder? Forget Valerie Pond, the real victim here is coherent storytelling, bludgeoned with the lead pipe in the library.
Phooey. I should have said Batiuk passed up the opportunity to have Ayers draw the character that way.
Well, we know it’s editor-proof. Someone paying attention would have noticed that Batiuk is published by a subsidiary of the Hearst group and perhaps told him that defaming the founder is not perhaps on.
“Ya see, me and Brinkel were shipmates on a tramp steamer, the ‘Mary Celeste’. He swore that when we got to Zanzibar, he was going to buy the biggest chimp he could find, and teach him to smoke and shoot. And by Gar, he did just that!
“When we got to Hollywood the parties got pretty wild. Inspector Zanzibar, as made us call him later, would drink bootleg gin like a maniac. Then he would shoot beer cans off the heads of Brinkel’s drunken chums, and they would tip him with booze and cigarettes.
“Anyways, the chimp got bored so he started solving mysteries in his spare time. Brinkle even got him a fedora and trench coat.
“Then Inspector Zanzibar solves the Black Dahlia murder! He finds the real killers of the Lindbergh baby! He proves that OJ is innocent!
“After that he thought his shit didn’t stink! He would only smoke Gauloises, and drink Courvosier. He started having shooting ‘accidents’. Hell’s bells, he shot both Tom Mix and Mary Pickford in the ass! Claimed he ‘missed’.
“Anyways, he told me that Brinkel never shot that girl. I’ll never forgot what Brinkel said. He said, “I never should have taught that chimp how to load a gun.'”
How quaint that Todd has a paper boy hawking, but no “EXTRY! EXTRY!”
I’m looking forward to the psyeudonym Todd come up for the most incompetent defense lawyer, F. Lee Bailey.
I wonder if the film reel border is supposed to indicate objective truth. Either way – 1, rumors should have been circulating at the time and probably covered by some film buff’s blog in much better detail if there were even a whisper of innocence, multiple clown suits, killer chimps, etc.; and 2, this is, what, fourth-hand hearsay by now? Hardly the stuff of a documentary to rock the industry.
Lord a Goshen this is all over the map yes? the time line is completely wrecked – although the idea of a time travelling Dashiell Hammett has a perverse appeal.
Still it’s a mess you wonder why the hell are talking this fool. An old coot talking about a dead writer. Gripping television.
And the Author’s clumsy writing here makes things even more confusing. “couldn’t find any evidence that Brinkle was guilty” what the hell ? wouldn’t that mean that they also didn’t find any evidence that he as innocent? wouldn’t that have been easier to say? And as elsewhere noted the police seems to have found enough to bring him to trial at the very least.
Looking at this mess of a story arc (and really not since the ‘everybody goes back in time and Les like a shit doesn’t let Lisa know she’s going to die’ arc have we seen more incoherent one) you are overwhelmed almost by the number of things wrong here
Part of the problem is of course the form – a newspaper comic stirp has a limited amount of space to tell the story in (wall-o-text notwithstanding) if memory serves the old formula was 1st panel recap- second panel introduce a new story point and have a sort of mini cliffhanger in the last panel. The Author it would seem doesn’t have the discipline to do that – this kind of story requires you the think carefully about what you are going to tell and show the reader. (need I say again that an editor would help here?) We’re missing so many details here – like why is the evil publisher doing evil? Again what is the Bloody case against BB? there has to be one – he was convicted yes? And aside from being fat we don’t know much about Butter either.
This type of story really requires one to pay attention to details – which doesn’t suit the Author’s slapdash approach to things.
“The Pinkertons couldn’t find any evidence that Butter Brinkel was guilty.”
Too bad they couldn’t trick the D.A. into hiring them.