Epicus Doomus

Missed It By That Much

I guess Mason chartered one of those super-low altitude private planes all the hot celebrities are into these days. I mean seriously, the thing is maybe forty feet over Les Moore’s house and judging by the change in the house’s perspective, doing a cool 50 miles an hour or so. Talk about a gratuitously unnecessary detail. Seeing a plane cruising over Moore Manor with no flames or bomb craters in sight is such a tease, man. And wasn’t that stupid tree cut down months ago?

So they’re going to film the SJ “earth scenes” in Cleveland of all places, instead of somewhere better or more practical. Sure they are Tom, sure they are. Mopey Pete is in rare form again today, as now he’s pissing and moaning about having to leave Hollywood, as he sits in a private jet no less. Unbe-f*cking-lievable. And what the hell is Boy Lisa going to say when he pops in on his wife…”hey hon, how was that long economy-class flight with our toddler aged son? Oh, me? Private plane”. A quarter-inch from reality my ass, any real wife would have bailed on the hapless Boy Lisa long ago. And who the hell is Andy and how much of the blame does he deserve?

Tonight There’s Gonna Be A Failbreak

Link to today’s strip

Yay! Another excuse to ditch the worst, most difficult and most demanding job of them all…writing for comic book characters! Somehow the star of the white-hot (and perpetually unfinished) “Starbuck Jones” feature film “heard” that Jessica and Skyler (who just moved to California a few short months ago) were inexplicably heading to Ohio to visit Skyler’s grandparents. And, incredibly enough, Mason just happens to have a private chartered flight to Ohio this very week! Unbelievable. And quite stupid, too.

So what the hell is this all about? Air travel gags? Fred Fairgood’s always-hysterical mutterings? John Darling? If Mason “heard” that Jessica was visiting Ohio, why didn’t he offer to fly her out there as well? How does he know Jessica and Skyler at all? How can Boy Lisa, who just a few months ago was using garbage as furniture, afford all this air travel back and forth to Westview?

Damned if I know. But apparently it made sense to Batiuk at the time, which of course means nothing, but still. At this rate Mason will be as old and washed up as Cindy is by the time this SJ movie hits the big screen.

Not Going Anywhere

Link To Today’s Strip

Flog, flog, flog. Mason is reading the SJ script today, which indicates that there is a script to be read…I guess. Otherwise it’s a pointless rehash of a premise that was (for lack of a better word) resolved yesterday. When you think about it just running this Sunday strip instead of devoting an entire week to the premise might have been a better idea. But then he would have only had fifty-one weeks worth of strips, which would have left him one short. Sure, he could have probably just thrown an old one from a few years ago in there and no one would have noticed, but it’s all about the integrity, man.

And with that I turn over the reins to billytheskink, who’s going to steer you through next’s weeks installment of annoying claptrap! And based on the header pic above, I have no idea what that claptrap might be. I don’t like the looks of it though.

Schlock Solid

Link To Today’s Strip

Wow, Cindy is actually given the chance to (gasp!) smile today AND she actually enjoys a brief flickering moment of (gasp!) security too as Mason reassures her that there’s no way he’s banging Marianne Winters because he’s already combined (chortle) their CD collections. It’s better than nothing, I suppose.

But the artwork today is really something else again. Mason strikes a Boy Lisa-esque pose in panel one, his unruly thinning hair bursting right into his dialog bubble. Then in panel two all rules of perspective go flying out the window as he futilely tries to keep his enormous freak head from falling off his body completely. Then in panel three we wrap things up with a wry smirk and a truly frightening hatchet-face straight from hell’s infernal depths. What a display.

But I can’t complain too much here. I mean sure, this idiotic story went absolutely nowhere, SJ is no closer to being finished (or started) than it was a year ago and it made no sense whatsoever, but he did manage to go one entire day without mentioning Cindy’s age, which is quite rare indeed.

All Bias Herself

Link To Today’s Strip

Things get darker in Hollywood today, as Mason becomes disturbed by Cindy’s increasingly deranged jealousy. Meanwhile, Cindy begins cyberstalking Marianne Winters as her plan to destroy the Starbuck Jones franchise and Marianne’s career begins to emerge. Will she push Mason too far and trigger his bi-polar disorder somehow? Will she suffer a breakdown and retreat to the safety and comfort of her old home town pizzeria? Will Marianne use her youth, looks and stable personality to wrest Mason from the grip of the tired old insane hag Cindy? Will anyone lose a limb? Will anyone DIE?

Nah, just kidding, nothing is actually happening, as usual. The same internet Cindy snidely dismissed on Monday has suddenly become a source of absolutely rock-solid and totally verifiable proof that the Winters woman is a shameless man-stealing hussy of the first magnitude. The internet is just so funny like that, you know? One day it’s killing your career, the next day you’re using it to undermine your boyfriend’s career. One day you’re making terrible jokes about how useless it is and the next day you’re furiously blogging about things that used to be or never were. There’s a word for it…yes, Batiukian, that’s it.

Note how she isn’t wearing her sunglasses in panel one, so he can really capture the desperate panic in her eyes. Well done. Ever since she skulked back to Westview in shame after meekly shuffling away after a national TV network discriminated against her because of her age she’s been nothing but an endless pit of ponderous “over the hill” tropes, one after the other. He hasn’t pounded on a character like this in a while, Funky excluded. “I was fired for being old”, “my ex-husband and I are old”, “I can’t get a job because I’m old”, “I got a lousy job because I am old”, “will this guy like me even though I’m old?”, “he likes me even though I’m old!”, “he’s bi-polar but so what, I’m old”,”note to younger self: you’re gonna get old”, “we’re getting married! I’m old!” and now “he will immediately succumb to the charms of his younger and hotter co-worker because I am old”. It’s like wave after wave of it, like an ocean of imminent defeat and self-loathing. Not only doesn’t he allow her any joy, he won’t even allow her to just be safe in the knowledge that everything is OK right now. I don’t know what he has against Cindy but it’s all pretty dark and brutal comic strip fodder if you ask me. Too bad it’s in the hands of AnAuthor with no imagination at all, you know?