Link to today’s strip.
As usual, Sunday’s strip was not available for preview. Who knows what it might be? Comic book cover, obliquely referencing Pete and Mindy. who will be stuffed into a corner speaking utterly irrelevant idiocies? Funky and Les jogging? Someone vomiting at Montoni’s? Les hawking the new Lisa book? (Never has the term “hawking,” in it’s alternate spelling of “hocking,” and meaning “spitting up phlegm,” been more appropriately deployed.) I can’t think of any other irons that Tom Batiuk has in the fire, though his capacity to surprise–in the most disappointing way–is beyond my ability to predict.
In the real world, the new movie based on Stephen King’s It is projected to take off at the box office–it has already sold something like 20-odd million pre-order tickets, which is pretty rare for something whose title doesn’t begin with “Star” followed by “Wars.” The film is projected to break box office records for a horror movie.
The film will certainly dethrone Starbuck Jones The Movie at the box office, but this is hardly surprising given Jones‘ performance. With a first weekend gross of $42 million, Jones debuted respectably for the most anemic Labor Day weekend in over a decade, but subsequent box office returns have seen the film plummeting disastrously–forecasts have it earning just a little over $1000 total for this weekend, at over 2500 theaters (this figure includes children’s matinee showings, oddly enough almost entirely attended by the elderly). Cable Movie Entertainment spokesman Mason Jarre says the studio is proceeding with the sequel nonetheless, and adds that he feels the upcoming China opening will boost the film’s profile and profits. His optimism flies in the face of Chinese film commissioner Wong Wei Feldman’s repeated assertions that there are no plans to open the film in China, and that in fact, the Chinese want no part of Starbuck Jones The Movie. “I have seen stills assembled by someone named John Howard,” Mr. Feldman has stated, “and it looks like garbage…garbage set on fire, and dumped into a vat of sewage. And we have plenty of that here.” He then waved off reporters and jumped into his auto-gyro (“The Spirit of St. Louis” emblazoned on the side) and shouted that he was late for his engagement in Wu Hu.
And that, my friends, is my last posting on this go-round of Son of Stuck Funky. Oh, as Ahnuld said, “I’ll be back,” but in the meantime please give a warm SoSF welcome to the fantastic DavidO, who becomes the new Number Two starting Monday, as I slither back under the storm drains.
