Who is this guy and why is he wearing Pete’s green shirt?
I don’t know why Chester is in such a hurry to get “the lawyers downstairs ” involved. Ruby’s going to draw Miss American and get paid by Chester for doing so; why must she own the rights as well? Will Chester then have to pay Ruby for the rights to publish her work? Readers of the FW blog know very well how Batiuk relies on his legal team, so maybe in that context, this makes sense.
Son of Stuck Funky 
“The lawyer downstairs”…LOL! Contrived much? And what’s the deal with “Miss American” anyway? Not only is it dangerously close to copyright infringement, it’s really lame and stupid even by AK standards. But BatYam is a comic book expert and he knows what the kids today are into, so who am I to criticize?
I vaguely recall a 1960s standup comedian who looked like the Pete imposter. Have to sleep on it.
Shecky Greene?
Kelly Monteith?
Good choices but…this is gonna drive me crazy. It’s right on the tip of my brainstem.
There’s sort of a Carson-era Buddy Hackett thing going on there too.
Although some people would be surprised that I think I have a brain to even attach to a stem.
Joey Bishop?
What to say? How about “Yay! The news is predictably stupid! Let’s roll out that long-forgotten character and get her to help Our Boys win at Kasserine Pass!”
Wait until the lawyers of Noah, Terry & Pubic get on the case. “There’s a legal hitch! Back in the day an original picture of Miss American was lost! The police suspected theft! An inside job! The case remained open and that invalidated everyone’s claim to the copyrights on Miss American! You could all go to prison if you dare publish a new Miss American story!”
Why would Ruby draw something she now owns for free. Ruby, make Chester the Jester pay through the nose for the rights that you just got!
That’s a great idea. Ruby holds Chester’s feet to the fire, hires counsel, demands a raise. It’ll never happen, of course, but it would be pretty funny. Everyone’s too damn nice in the Funkyverse, he needs to bring Frankie back.
Before the month is out, Ruby receives an offer from Warner Bros. and sells the Miss American IP rights over to DC Comics, who make the character a gritty, machine gun-toting lesbian and the newest member of the Suicide Squad, with a three-film solo package starring Mila Kunis to follow.
And, somehow, Miss American is still boring.
(Music plays…”There she is, Miss America!” Cut to Miss America winner, blowing kisses to the crowd and waving.)
Cut to backstage:
Evil Corporate Goon: “Now that we’ve allowed you to win the pageant there are a few things you’re going to do for me…sick, perverse things”
(Spin kick sends goon flying through wall)
“Not tonight…I’m kicking ass and adding an “N”.
Coming this fall…”Miss American” an Atomik Komix production, starring Marianne Winters and Cindy Summers as Haggard McOldie”.
Wait, what?! Ruby was never said to be the creator of Miss American, she was the artist who most famously drew the character. Chester can transfer ownership of the character to whoever he wants, of course, but the implication that Ruby is now receiving something that truly belongs to her does not really track.
Unless… TB is sending those Dinkles Band Shoes royalty checks to Chuck Ayers nowadays.
“Miss American”…it’s almost impossibly unimaginative. I mean why even write the story at all if that’s all you’re gonna put into it? Like all of his idiotic comic book stories it all centers around some weird arcane tangent, in this case his bizarre copyright fantasies.
It really is. Watchmen, The Tick, Mystery Men, The Incredibles, Drawn Together, and other productions all have interesting superhero sub-universes, even if the characters themselves are largely knockoffs. This strip is obsessed with comic books, can’t come up with an interesting characters, or even focus on an interesting part of the story. Next week: Chester fills out legal forms!
Oooh, I see a new character on the horizon -The AttorneyNator! Or is it LawyerupMan?
There is so much anti-narrative going on here, I’m afraid it’s going to destroy actual stories. Like, Monday’s newspaper will have both Funky Winkerbean and a story that all the works of Jane Austen have suddenly disappeared.
“The lawyers downstairs”?
Doesn’t millionaire Chester Hagglemore have attorneys on retainer?
And as stated above, wait until those attorneys begin to ask Chester about the details of the contract. For example, what happens when Ruby dies? If Chester relinquishes ownership, the rights to the character would be part of Ruby’s estate and Chester would have to request permission and pay royalties to the estate (and eventually to Ruby’s heirs) in order to continue publishing the Miss American title (assuming the character is popular and has good readership numbers, earning a profit for the company).
What if that’s Chester’s legal staff downstairs, and their only job is to help him extend his comic-book empire? When Rubella showed up he may have realized he owned “Miss American’s” copyright, and got busy having his lawyers draw up a contract that would benefit him. She owns the rights, but she agrees to let Hagglemore and nobody else profit from those works. And he decides how and when she gets paid. Odds are that Hagglemore will rush her into signing the contract before she can read it, much less consult a lawyer
(My lack of respect for Rubella would fade a bit if she grabs the contract and takes it to her agent, telling Hagglemore “Trust but verify, comrade publisher!”)
Wow! If only we could expect a plot twist like that it would go a long way to improve the quality of the storytelling.
What we’re looking at is how Comrade Batiuk thinks business people should behave: stupidly and self-destructively.
Wait, he didn’t finish the story from yesterday. Hagglemore ended with but…
So….
Batty’s not even tying things up from the day before now. This is a new level of laziness.
TomBa’s sloppiness and the lack of any kind of proofreading (let alone editing) is on display here. Rereading the strip I see that the document (contract) that Chester wants to have drafted “transfers the OWNER (CH LLC, not just Miss American)” to Ruby. That’s a pretty big difference.
Also, the Flash Friday entry on the FW blog this week has very different tone. He devotes the entire post to a scathing takedown of the writer of the issue under discussion’s cover story. His chief compliant: the villains’ lack of character development!
Yeah that blog post could easily be reworked into an introduction for one of his books. (He mentions he is working on a new one.). Just substitute Tom Batiuck’s for Flash’s
That blog post is an amazing example of…something. He can certainly see the mote in Cary Bates’ eye, all right.
While ignoring the wooden beam in his own.
Saturday’s comic is an insult.
We, the audience, have been sitting around for a week waiting for Chester to remember that he owned something. But no, that massive contrivance isn’t enough to move the story forward! Now he has to go talk to lawyers. Now he has to transfer ownership to Ruby Lith. Both of which are completely unnecessary to the story, make no sense, and will drag on even longer.
I’ve taken improv classes. They teach you not to spend time on things like this. Wrap up the negotiations with a line or two if you must, and get to the fun part of the story. In long form, actors not currently in the scene are allowed to yell instructions like “Cut to Ruby drawing the comic!” to help move things along.
And look where the story ends up: the ludicrous fantasy of a publisher just handing over a potentially valuable property to an artist. OKAY, WE GET IT, TOM, YOU WANT TO OWN THE RIGHTS TO YOUR CHARACTERS. Hell, the syndicate should just give them to you at this point, since your pathetic, self-serving writing has long since made them all worthless.
So, how soon before Miss American is pretty much the only reason the company exists, so she decides to start her own company – and take “her” crew with her?
I’m pretty sure women aren’t capable of agency or autonomy in the the TBverse, so the guys are safe there.
Safe in the clutches of Chester the Chiseler? Tell us more, you brilliant angel of vengeance!