Category: Son of Stuck Funky

In Soviet Russia, the Buck Saves You!

Pity the readers of Funky Winkerbean whose newspapers do not also run Crankshaft (okay, go ahead and pity all FW readers, regardless). Of course beady-eyed, nitpicking hate-readers understand that the rapt little kid is the same one whose ghost we saw peering creepily back at Jeff from the attic window of his childhood home a couple weeks ago. And we know that the old geezer awkwardly shaking Cliff Anger’s hand is not Funky with glasses but is that same kid, now grown old. So Jeff finally achieves closure for his mommy issues, albeit in a different comic strip and ten or twenty (and one or two weeks) later. And if his gushing pronouncement sounds familiar, peep this 2011 Batiuk interview:

Interviewer: Some of the memorable storylines of that [first time jump] era, at least for me, were Lisa’s cancer and the comic book store obscenity trial that was mirroring the Jesus Castillo case. I still have Crazy’s witness stand testimony of how, when he was in high school, “…superheroes did what they did best… they saved me.” tacked up on my wall.

While he understands fuck-all about how modern motion pictures are made, and has long since abandoned any notion of continuity and character development, Batiuk maintains his laser focus on spreading the gospel of old comic books and movie serials.

Baby I’m a Star(buck)

billytheskink
June 8, 2016 at 1:05 am
Mason shooting for Les Moore levels of schmuck-ery here…He provides Cliff with no schedule or itinerary and then makes him get into full costume on set, Cliff surely assuming he would be shooting his scenes for the film. Nope, Mason springs the news of an immediate photo shoot at some restaurant with zero relevance to anything on a wholly unsuspecting Cliff and then shoves him through a dingy Cleveland alleyway into a decades-old limousine.

…which would have been undignified enough if all this was just to surprise ol’ Cliff with an Ovaltine toast. But today Cliff is pressed into service autographing pictures or posters or some crap, and he approaches this task with the same disdain for his admirers that book-signing Les Moore has for his. No doubt book-signing Tom Batiuk at some point encountered one of his own fans who, overcome with excitement in the presence of greatness, forgot his own name.

Cliff: “Some things haven’t changed in fifty years, have they?” So now this 1950’s style Starbuck Jones serial film dates back to 1966. Help me out here, boomers: maybe Saturday matinees were still a thing in the midwest, but here in Jersey, we were getting our superhero kicks watching Batman. On TV.

OverTwee

Link to today’s strip

Playing with decoder rings

And Starbuck Jones related things,

Ovaltine and front porch swings…

Those were the days.

And you knew where you were then

The matinee began at ten

Mister we could use a man like Clifford Anger again.

Didn’t need no cell phone flicks

With comic books we got our kicks,

Although it sure repelled the chicks…

Those were the days!!!!!!

I really like how everyone in FW has the exact same childhood memories, regardless of when they were actually born. What, was Ovaltine running that SJ promotion for three or four decades? Honestly though, wading through week after week of BanTom’s plodding nonsensical SJ mythology and annoyingly uninteresting childhood nostalgia has me feeling like I’ve been beaten with a pillowcase full of padlocks. Batiuk has spent WAY more time on his old comic book memories than he spent reading the damn things in the first place, unless he hung out in that attic until he was thirty-five or so, that is.

And on that note I happily turn over the wheel to our fearless leader TFH, who’s courageously tacking the rest of this decoder ring arc and whatever else BanTom manages to dredge up from the musty old depths of his comic book-addled mind. Shudder.

 

Slow Motion Story Arc Too

Link to today’s strip

Wow, Mopey Pete sure can become a whirlwind of activity when something really stupid inspires him, you know? Just think, if Cliff had never sold that old decoder ring Pete never would have come up with the idea to stage an event where old SJ fans gather to talk about old decoder rings. It’s so funny how life works out that way, innit? Good thing he didn’t auction off his old SJ underpants too, or this arc could have taken an ugly, ugly turn very quickly.

I like how all this nostalgia-wallowing only serves to emphasize how Anger essentially wasted sixty years of his life living as a bitter old recluse for no reason whatsoever. But it’s all OK now as at long last he has a reason to celebrate the only noteworthy thing he ever did…sixty years ago. When you think about it like that it’s all incredibly depressing. And it’s also kind of depressing how a guy who’s been doing a daily comic strip for forty-four years could possibly create a new character this one-dimensional and shallow, although it’s certainly not surprising.

Pulling One Off

Link to today’s strip

The fine art of Batiuksturbation in all its glory. See, Pete bought that ring not knowing Cliff sold it and (zzzzzzzzz), other stuff, (zzzzzzz) and here we are with “everything” coming full circle again. In a way, I mean.

It’s a celebrity Q&A session where no one’s asking or answering any questions, how very novel. Everyone’s apparently just standing around gawking at a guy who, until a few weeks ago, was utterly and completely forgotten by everyone. “So Mr. Anger, what in God’s name have you been DOING for sixty years?”…”So, Mr. Anger, why did you leave showbiz?”…”Cliff, how did you afford to live in NYC for six decades with no visible means of support?”…”Pete, isn’t it true that you whined about having to visit Cleveland and that you had no interest in even seeing that old SJ movie?”…”Mason, does the studio still pay you while you’re off doing these bizarre things?”…nothing.

But there’s plenty of time to discuss (sigh) decoder rings, as obviously they played a huge, huge role in TheAuthor’s upbringing. Perhaps someday he’ll release a FW decoder ring which FW readers could use to make sense out of his rambling incoherent “stories”. It’d have to be quite a large ring, though.