In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire

Link to today’s piffle.

The content of today’s strip implies that Droppo and Pungent spent the entire weekend doing a cover mock-up.  (Complete with title, logo, price, etc.  Is Darin also a compositor in the print shop?)  Because a cover is the only thing that Cigar McBalding is holding…  I thought they were supposed to be doing an entire comic book, and that’s why it was so arduous?  Hell, I could do a cover mock-up over a weekend without a problem.

–Unless I missed something–this strip is so careful and attentive to detail, after all.

If all they were doing was a cover, why was Pete even there?  Oh well, looking for consistency or common sense in this thing is a fool’s errand.  It’s like asking, “Why is Darin’s hair in color when everything else is sepiatone?”  There’s no answer to that, man.

I think Moon Mile Meek is the big-eared thing barely visible at the bottom of panel one.

I seem to recall some Bat-Mite like thing on other Starbuck Jones covers.   Doesn’t seem like a great idea to give it its own book, but what do I know?  Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen was a successful enough comic for years.  Of course, Olsen was an occasionally entertaining moron who drank whatever potions he found lying around, turned ray projectors on himself and ate millions of pancakes.  Then Superman would have to save him.  And then, the exact same thing would happen all over again the next month.   There were always more potions, radioactive rocks, alien artifacts, magical crowns, and so on.  Superman never lost patience with Jimmy or tried to knock some sense into him (and his teeth out of him), and despite what I imagine were hundreds of fan letters, Superman never punched Jimmy so hard he flew into a completely different comic book.

So I suspect that the same formula would follow in Moon Mile Meek, minus the “entertaining” bits of course.  After all, the exact same thing happens with Funky Winkerbean.  Someone will be asked to do something, he’ll complain the entire way, then it’ll end with a pun and a smirk.  Interesting how the Starbuck Jones universe keeps expanding, while the strip that hosts it continues to shrink.

So, are we all ready for the comic book tribute tomorrow?  It looks like it might be well drawn at least.

While I Ponder, Weak and Weary

Link to today’s swill.

It gets increasingly difficult to bother with the content of this strip.  I think I spent more time writing that sentence than Tom Batiuk spent on the last month’s worth of strips.  The strip above…I can’t in all honesty say that it was written at all.  He overheard some five-year-old’s joke in the comic book store, and thought I can put that in the strip.  Doesn’t matter where.  It’s a space filler, a time waster, one more step toward that magical 50th anniversary when we can all go home.  At least he knew enough not to make it a Sunday strip.

The other content is what makes today’s entry utterly pathetic.  You just know that never in the last five years has Tom Batiuk worked himself into weariness like these two.  That he would extol such dedication while avoiding it himself is one of the things that makes this strip so terrible.

That and the artwork.  Seriously, this crap is just dismal.  Pete in particular looks like he was drawn by a drunk with two broken hands, riding on a freight train in 1934 in the middle of major earth tremors.  Panel three is an excellent illustration of “quality control” since you can see what you get when it is entirely absent.

“I’ve Suffered for My Art–Now It’s YOUR Turn”

Link to today’s dreck.

I think we’ve reached some kind of Batiukian plateau here.  Nostalgia-Darin is distressed at the amount of work ahead, but Nostalgia-Pete seems…worried?  That Darin doesn’t have the drive for art that requires sacrifice?  Is that what I’m seeing here?  Because I think that’s what I’m seeing here.   I mean, look at his face in panel three.  That’s someone thinking, “Wh-what?  You think pulling all-nighters is bad?  You…you are not of The Body!”

Which contradicts everything we’ve seen about Darin and Pete, not only in the “real world” but their counterparts in Nostalgia-Vision.  They hate working.  They would rather complain than work.  They would rather complain than eat.  They would rather complain than breathe.

But now, because it involves weak wordplay, all that goes out the Batom Comics window.  Pete now needs to be the Pure Comics writer, who would go without food, air, water, everything if it meant producing a comic book.

Speaking of going out the window, where is this supposed to be taking place?  In the alley or something?  Because who puts the company name on the inside face of a door?  Well…maybe the two clods kept asking the boss whether they worked at Batom Comics or Bantom Comics, and the boss finally had enough and hired a sign painter, or perhaps…I’ve put more thought into this than someone I could name.

The Lost Weekend

Link to today’s offal.

So, apparently Starbuck Jones has another sidekick in addition to Jupiter Moon and Isaac the robot, apparently named Moon Mile Meek, and about whom we have heard nothing before this day.  Way to keep the quality control on high, there.  This seems to flatly contradict the advice Tom Batiuk was given (reprinted on his blog), about referring to characters by name, etc, so new readers are quickly brought up to speed.

I happen to agree with that, by the way.  While there are certainly ways to make it really awkward (“Miss Jameson, you may be the best-selling mystery author of all time, but even I, your agent, don’t know why you need to spend a night in a haunted house!”), I’ve seen movies where the lead character wasn’t given a name until halfway though the movie.  It’s nice to know who the characters are, so when they’re not around and someone refers to them, you can say “Oh, that guy.  That cartoonist guy who draws that dull strip.”

So, this Moon Mile Meek might be anyone.  Perhaps on your way home someone will pass you in the dark, and you will never know it, for they will be from outer space, and their name will be Moon Mile Meek!  Can you prove that it didn’t happen?

At any rate, or rather because of, we have today’s thing.   Those characters in panel one are really poorly drawn–I mean, that is some seriously bad artwork, but…no matter, for we’re off to Nostalgia Park.  See, it’s funny because the boss is a fat stupid guy, and the artists are all like “Whoa” because they have to make a space comic in just a couple of days.  You can start slapping your knees…now.

Actually, I don’t see how the Deflated Due have a problem here.  They can just concoct a story where Starbuck, Moon Mile, Jupiter and Isaac are all sitting around the space office, space bitching because the space boss expects them to go out on space patrol, and they’d rather not.  They’d rather wax space nostalgic about the olden days when–and here’s the space twist–old TV movies were made and the staff totally hated working on them.

They hated working so much, they actually broke the space barrier and space hated it.

The Jerks Who Irk

Link to today’s bilge.

It’s been said far too many times before.  Here are two clods given a once in a lifetime opportunity for a dream job, and all they can do is moan and bitch, bitch and moan.  The appropriate reaction from Mr. Toothpaste-Tube would be to say, “Okay, guys, we’ve had enough–if you can’t cooperate with us and produce something, if all you can do is smirk and make moronic remarks, we really don’t need you.  So get your stuff and get out.  And remember, you signed NDAs so don’t even think about posting anything online.  Prison hasn’t gotten any nicer, and don’t believe anyone who says a spell inside will build character.”  I’m sure that if Mason Jarr the Actor objected, he’d be told, “Okay, so you don’t want to be part of this franchise and want to go back to made-for-TV weepers.  That can be arranged.”  I’m sure Mason Jarr the Actor would suddenly remember what “professionalism” means.

You’d expect Pete and Darin to be interested in a title like that.  It’s no worse than a Marvel or Lucasfilm title.  It’s actually imaginative.  And, when your main claims to fame are The Amazing Mister Sponge and illustrating a Les Moore comic book, respectively, I don’t think you have the right to criticize the works of others.  Not by a long shot.

Seriously, these characters are infuriating.  Fortunately, Mr. Toothpaste-Tube is doing his voodoo mouth-twich in the last panel, and we can see both Darin and Pete withering to dust right before our eyes.

When a cartoonist is clearly tired of producing work, and would far rather day-dream about an imaginary comic-book company, it’s time for that cartoonist to seriously consider retiring.  Instead, what he does is create two characters–an “artist” and a “writer” so both jobs are represented–and give them the same disdain for work and longing for nostalgia.  I guess in the case of the characters, Bantom Comics is (or was) a real-life publisher, so at least they’re waxing nostalgic about things that actually happened.  Not that I think that’s any better; wasted effort is still wasted effort, no matter the inspiration.

The only thing of interest here is Mr. Toothpaste-Tube.  Really, that guy is just weirding me out.  He looks like Butt-head’s dad.

“Huh-huh, huh huh huh.  Producers are dumb.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Heh heh heh heh heh heh.  It’s like, they demand things of true artists.”

“Uh…what? Huh-huh, huh huh huh.”

“Ahhh…I dunno, Butt-head, you tell me.  Heh heh heh heh heh heh.”