Epicus Doomus
February 11, 2020 at 11:58 pm
I liked Chester better when he was a weird eccentric greedy dick.
Is Chester losing it? Hagglemore was introduced as an insanely wealthy and savvy comix fanboy. He’s clearly still got money to burn–keeping these useless dopes on his payroll–but he forgets that he has a holding company? Yesterday in the comments, it was proposed that “CH Holdings” might turn out to be Crazy Harry. Now that might set up generate some intrigue, laughs, whatever. We need to give a name to this rule which states that any plot event you can conceive for Funky Winkerbean that is remotely novel or entertaining will be the complete opposite of what actually happens.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Wow, this just became even dumber. Chester’s actually one of the few likeable characters in this crapstrip, so it’s no wonder Batiuk has to bring him down a few pegs, but this is really, really stupid.
Imagine a guy who loves driving fast, so he buys a formula one racecar. He stores it in his garage, carefully preserving it and keeping it fit and polished.
Some time later, he decides to build a race track, because he loves driving fast. Then his dilemma becomes apparent–“I need some people to race their cars on my track. How can I get some racecar drivers to drive on my race track? I’d better look for some lucky nobodies to help me out!”
The lucky nobodies race their Batiukmobiles around a while, to bored and extraordinarily small crowds, then say to the owner, “You know what would be great on this track? A formula one racing car.”
And the owner’s like, “Hang on, I just remembered something!”
Seriously, when launching his comic book house, the second sentence out of Chester’s head should have been “I already own several characters from the golden age of comics, and I want you to write and draw new stories for them” rather than “Hit me with your crappiest ideas, and I’ll foot the bill.”
In real life, Pete and Dullard would be “I’ve got this idea for a pile of sentient comic books, and also a scuba cop.”
Real life Chester: “Yeah, that’s great. When you have your own publishing firm, I’m sure they’ll be…fondly regarded in certain quarters. In the meantime, you’re working for me.”
It’s amazing. Batiuk spent a decade or so building up his reputation, then spent the next few decades tearing it down and stamping on it until it stopped breathing.
I hope he’s happy.
Wait until he’s revealed to be running a kiddie pron distribution in that big mansion of his………
I can’t say I ever actually “liked” Chester, but at least the evil greedy Chester was a little different than everyone else in the strip. As BC spelled out above, the idea that Chester would “suddenly remember” a property he owned (and drawn by someone he currently employs, no less) is beyond moronic. And remember, he’s supposed to be the biggest comic book nerd of them all, with an encyclopedic knowledge of (sigh) comic book history. Fat lot of good that did him.
And, as usual, BatBrain can’t go anywhere with this sub-cretinous revelation, as he (sigh) needs to stretch it out for days with his bogus two-word panels. I mean just get to the part where (sigh) Ruby gets to draw her stupid old comic book already and stop pretending there’s suspense here.
Chester was an antagonist. Funky Winkerbean has no antagonists anymore, just like it has no conflict. Everyone’s in constant agreement about everything, especially having to do with comic books. (Except Les, who is eternally disagreeable and doesn’t say why.) No doubt tomorrow’s strip will be everyone smiling about how great it will be to bring back Miss American, without the tiniest disagreement or difference in ideas about any aspect of it.
Funky Winkerbean also has no obstacles for characters to overcome. Anything a character needs, they are given immediately. Darin doesn’t get a big check? That’s OK, he still gets a check big enough for Jessica to pop her eyes at! We don’t have the rights to Miss American? Oh, wait, we had them all along! Yaaaaaay!
Just be glad that Chester the Molester just conveniently happened to be in the office at the exact moment his employees are wondering what “CH Holdings” is…
Because Batiuk could have *EASILY* had Darrin/Pete/Jess/Mindy all hop in the ‘Mystery Machine’ and spent the next six weeks on a multi-city road trip as they collect clues trying to discover the mystery behind “CH Holdings”
At the risk of Batiuk publishing something tomorrow that makes a fool of me, I can accept this so far. Supposing that Chester will, as many legitimate-enough businessmen do, organize a new holding company for each separate project. Then if he’s done a lot of things it can take a moment to remember them all. Especially if he didn’t put together a naming scheme but just used whatever made sense at the time.
Also, grant that he did set up CH Holdings for his buying-character-rights hobby. If he left its work mostly in the hands of an attorney who was really good at trademark law, characters might be bought without him noticing. Oh, it’d be in the quarterly report he gets, but I’d accept if after reading two pages of Marmaduke Mouse, Egbert & the Count, Nightlight Raccoon, Mister Risk, Poke Bancroft, and lesser names, that his eyes glazed over and he remembered none of it.
As I say, I know the strip will publish something that makes this untenable by about 4:30 this afternoon, but I am willing to grant that Chester might have bought the rights to a character without knowing he had.
And of course Ruby Lich never kept track of her beloved character, in the hope that she could obtain the rights to her or, somehow, see her back in print.
Nope, this is the Funkyverse thus she simply surrendered and resigned herself to her fate and became a hermit for sixty years until Pete and Darin dug her up and put her to work.
“she simply surrendered and resigned herself to her fate” this is S.O.P. for everybody in the Funkyverse and does tend to undercut the drama – it’s like Hamlet deciding well killing his uncle in revenge for his father’s murder is just too hard. Besides his uncle is eventually going to die so what’s the fuss?
Chester forgot he OWNED the rights to a piece of the comics history he reveres?
TB does not understand how nerds work. Add that to an already long list…
Chester reveres “Miss American” by protecting her maidenly existence from hordes of leering fanboys. No pimply degenerate shall ever defile her, not while Chester can keep her all to himself!
Yeah, that’s just what Funky Winkerbean needs: another Les.
And he currently employs the artist! Chester would IMMEDIATELY know who Ruby was and would be well aware that he owns the rights to her old work. But, because Batiuk, he’s suddenly a sputtering idiot who forgets everything and misplaces polonium for years on end.
Okay, Rubella, grow a pair and accuse Pester of having deliberately hidden his ownership of the rights from you. Accuse him of being a male chauvinist pig who’s terrified of female characters! Threaten to expose the world to his perfidious urge to turn the comics world into a sterile bastion of where men need not fear being cruelly used and surpassed by women in scanty costumes! Ravish him! Exploit him! Get at least half the profits from him!
That would be timely and appropriate which is why he won’t do that.
We also would have accepted:
“Chester the Molester sheepishly admits he NEVER wanted his employees to know about CH Holdings LLC because it’s a shell company with the real purpose of: 1. Dodging taxes, 2. Being a political slush fund for his “friends” in Moscow, 3. Laundering money so he can buy bitcoins , 4. Embezzling the hell out of Atomikkk Comixxx
The current arc has led me to two obvious conclusions.
First, it’s clear that TomBa has never (or only extremely limited) experience working in an office environment. He’s clearly drawing on his beloved fantasy of the Merry Marvel Bullpen, a nonexistent place where writers and artists sit around waiting for inspiration to strike like a bolt from above.
Second, I suspect that he thinks his strip is Seinfeldesque, that it mirrors the “show about nothing” completely missing that its purpose was to drop this crew of three dimensional albeit selfish and narcissistic characters into a routine situation and lay off their reactions for comic effect. Instead, TomBa presents cardboard characters and unreal, barely developed scenarios.
Here’s an idea–okay, a half-baked, half-assed notion: what if Pester is now a full-blown professional publisher? The same kind who keeps rejecting Batiuk’s proposals? Now, is Batiuk saying that such people are toxic monsters who prefer mediocrity to genius, or that they’re clueless fuckwits who don’t see a golden opportunity it’s in front of them?
Or is he just killing time again?
Consistency of character has long been a thorn in Batiuk’s side. It limits him having to remember that Chester would of course know what he owns when that gets in the way of a facile joke. It’s called TERRIBLE writing for a reason.
“I own it? I guess I do buy a lot of crazy shit when I’m drunk!”
This just reinforces my impression that when Batiuk has to come up with a plot development, he takes the first thing that pops in his head and never reconsiders or refines it, no matter how obviously stupid it is.
This is a man who established a new comic book company with the stated purpose of bringing back the old comic book stylings from 50 years ago, but he forgot that he owned the copyrights of supposedly popular comic book characters from that very same age. How on earth did Batiuk think this would be believable or acceptable? How could he think that something THIS stupid is the best way to proceed here?
“It’s owned by some outfit named Placeholder LLC. They haven’t done anything with the property in the twenty five years they’ve owned it.”
“I’ll have my lawyers talk to them about it!”
Day passes.
“They are willing to sell us the copyright to Miss American and five other old properties!”
There, that’s how he could have done it. It’s a lame development. It’s easy and simplistic, but it’s NOT ridiculously unrealistically fucking stupid.
Tom Batiuk would never spend two days fixing a continuity problem, when he can spend five days not fixing it.
BWAWHAWHAWHAWHAW-HAW! “It’s ME?” Does Todd think Chet is Captain Picard from “The Inner Light?”
Guessing that the headline is a Firesign theater reference: “Shoes for Industry Comrade.”
Dear lord so the plot line is really ‘I forgot i bought the rights to what’s her face signature character.’? So will she have to sue Chester to get the rights back or will by some awful mischance will the money she got from the Gallery cover what Chester paid for the rights? Or will they all smirk and decide to re-issue Miss American with new art by the creator? All timelines are possible and all are stupid.
“Gosh, no, the means of production are held by all the people!” is the proper response to today’s headline.
You’re right, sorry it’s been awhile – need to listen to that again soon. it makes so much more sense than the world does these days including this strip.
I think it’s a play in “holding” in the sense of “currently possessing drugs.”