Codex Idiotica

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Well, MY hunch was right on the money…this arc is like a vacuum cleaner. It both sucks AND blows. This annoying old Crankshaft nimrod has (sigh) found his (sigh) Starbuck Jones (sigh) decoder ring, which as fate would have it just happened to be in his attic with the rest of his (sigh) SJ junk. Who’d a thunk it, eh? I thought that perhaps it was safely tucked away in a vault somewhere, or maybe a landfill, resting comfortably among some half-eaten fifty year old hot dogs or something.

IMO it’s time for Batiuk to start killing off a lot of these useless, unpopular and un-cared-about characters of his. Not like with Lisa either, I mean REALLY kill them off. And the beauty of it is they could be SJ-related deaths too. Like Pam and Jeff. Jeff can’t find the ring and suddenly has a childhood flashback where he remembers his demonic hellbeast of a mother forcing him to swallow the stupid ring whole. Then he develops excruciating stomach pains, is rushed to the hospital and dies during an emergency ring-ectomy. After the obligatory funeral strip we cut to Pam, who falls down the attic stairs while disposing of Jeff’s old SJ garbage and also dies. Then we cut to Crankshaft, who becomes so despondent when Pam doesn’t visit that he dies too. The big punchline would be that the secret message was from Chester The Chiseler, who was offering one million dollars for the exact issues Jeff had. The last panel would have Pam lying dead at the bottom of the stairs with SJ #165 draped over her face. See, it sticks with the SJ theme AND kills off three hated characters in one fell swoop. You’d have SJ covers, funerals, childhood traumas, medical emergencies, old people and death, all in one tidy package. And if he’s (ha) reading this, he can use that idea, no charge.

Floor Bored

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As BeckoningChasm so succinctly put it yesterday….” Mr. Batiuk, no one likes Crankshaft. No one. You cannot make people like Crankshaft by putting its terrible characters into Funky Winkerbean. No one will ever like Crankshaft. Just like people no longer like Funky Winkerbean.”

So apparently Batty will be spending A WEEK on a CRANKSHAFT character looking for a decoder ring in his attic. Twelve thousand dangling plot threads and THIS is what he’s wasting his time with. There comes a point when old 1950s comic book nostalgia stops being “cutesy” and becomes genuinely disconcerting. BanTom reached that point YEARS ago. And now, in his inimitable style, he’s absolutely piledriving it into the solid bedrock beneath the ground. Sigh.

Swolb Tfahsknarc

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Some of you loyal SoSF readers might think it’s all fun and games here at SoSF World HQ in lovely downtown Camden (located in the heart of Camden’s Snark District, right next to the Mark Trail Building), but in reality there’s WAY MORE TO IT than that. Like today, for example, when we were forced to summon our Special Code Breaking Team away from their families, friends and parole officers on a national holiday just to decode BanTom’s mystery puzzle JUST FOR YOU! After many frantic seconds of toil, they succeeded in breaking TomBat’s secret code and, at the risk of receiving annoying letters from a hack law firm, we’re going to reveal those results RIGHT F*CKING NOW, whether Comics Kingdom likes it or not. Ready? It says…..

“IF I CAN MERGE MY TWO STRIPS INTO ONE I’LL ONLY HAVE TO DO HALF THE WORK”

Wow, a stunning revelation about the future of FW and that other comic strip he writes! You know the one I mean, the really shitty one about the obnoxious bus driver. No, really, it’s real, I’ve actually seen it a few times. Obviously that idiotic SJ decoder ring gobbledygook will come into play here, even though a) no one under seventy even knows what a “decoder ring” is and b) even fewer care. Then again, I might be biased as I lost all interest upon seeing these characters from that other comic strip, as I’m sure most of America did as well.

No, Not! Really? Huh.

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“The Paper”…that’s real cute, BanTom. I had to double check and make sure this is actually a FW strip and, sadly, it is indeed. Although I am aware of Pam and Jeff, I know almost nothing about the Crankyverse and honestly I’d prefer to keep it that way. I checked it out a few weeks ago and saw a funeral and a woman stabbing a comic book and that was enough for me. Where is this going? What is the point? Beats the hell out of me. I’ll be moderately surprised if it doesn’t have something to do with a certain fictional comic book title. Then again I’ll be moderately surprised if it has anything to do with anything.

And Then Along Came Jones

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Yesterday, I posited that we wouldn’t see any of the strip’s promised action.  Well, I guess Tom Batiuk sure showed me!  Though I, in turn, would like him to explain Chullo’s remark.  How many graduations has he been to, exactly?

I sure hope Mr. Director Man–whose name I do not believe we’ve been given–is prepared to shoot this scene over and over again.  If you want a crowd of people running in terror, you don’t want your extras looking like they’re having a fun time.  Kinda undercuts what you’re trying to achieve.  So for take two, Mr. Director Man, you should tell the crowd to look frightened.

Technically, though, you’re not allowed to talk to the extras, Mr. Director Man.  That’s the job of the assistant director; in fact, if a director “directs” an extra–even something like “Hey, you!  Get off the set!”–that extra now moves up to become a paid player.  Yet another thing to add to the “Tom Batiuk knows nothing about how movies are made” column.

This 24/7/365 Starbuck Jones obsession clearly shows that Tom Batiuk has lost all interest in both of his comic strips.   I don’t know why he continues with Funky Winkerbean or Crankshaft–the paycheck, I guess, and the chance to win an award for longevity.  There certainly have not been any stories that engaged him that don’t involve Starbuck Jones.  The “senior trip” thing recently was an embarrassment, something he felt he had to get out of the way so he could get back to Starbuck Jones.   Before that, it was a week of Wedgeman’s class ring.  Obviously stuff that a “high school strip” needs, but interesting to no one.

The problem is, as I’ve mentioned before, Tom Batiuk is self-aware enough to know that he doesn’t have the talent to do Starbuck Jones.  This is why we’ve never seen Starbuck Jones doing anything in the strip, other than “appearing.”  When he had the vintage serial arc, we saw practically nothing of the film but we sure had a lot of people jabbering over it.  When a comic book cover is required, someone else draws it.  Tom Batiuk has written or drawn nothing of significance regarding Starbuck Jones.

So, aware that if he tried it, he would ruin it, I imagine Tom Batiuk would hire people to write and draw Starbuck Jones.  Oh, he would be the editorial supervisor, and make suggestions and create new characters and so forth.  In other words–

He would be Brady Wentworth.

Given Mr. Batiuk’s record on wrapping things up quickly, well…I haven’t seen tomorrow’s entry, but it would not surprise me one bit if it’s something like this–

Bear in mind, this is one day after filming in a high school auditorium.  Yes, it’s unlikely, but…can you prove that it won’t happen?

That’s it from me, folks!  Tune in tomorrow when the fantastic Epicus Doomus takes the center seat.  Back to the funway, which is already in progress!