Tag: Anon-O-Characters

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.

Reporting For Doody, Sir!

Link to today’s strip

How very touching. See Cliff, they never forgot about you…except for that brief sixty year period between your final Starbuck Jones film and right now, that is. Just a few months ago these crappy old Starbuck Jones films were so obscure that even Pete, the nerdiest nerd who ever nerded, didn’t know about them (and he whined about having to see it in the first place). Yet now throngs of weirdos (all male, coincidentally enough) are pouring out of their hovels (and the WHS faculty lounge) to chant banal old catchphrases at a ninety year old guy in a spaceman suit. Did the films suddenly become popular again or did dozens of people suddenly remember they were the cornerstones of their childhoods or what? It’s all so typically Batiukian, something is, then suddenly it isn’t, then it’s both and sometimes neither.

What a weirdly specific-looking big-headed crowd, I (sort of) wonder who they’re all based upon? Those creepy big heads are just way too detailed to be accidental. Friends and associates is my best guess. Lucky them.

Boy, the Batiukverse is really in chaos now, particularly the timelines. FW is featuring an arc about an old 1950s B-movie star, which means these dorks are all agog over a guy whose “heyday” was over sixty or (if we’re still pretending it’s ten years from now) seventy years ago, long before the majority of them were even born. And nothing that’s happened in the strip would indicate why this is so.

Meanwhile “Fallen Star”-era Les Moore is talking about old books in Crankshaft, which I assumed was happening in the present day. So if it’s 2016 in the Crankverse and it’s 2026 in FW, the CS Les should be Les from ten years ago, when the strip was rolling along with its very special all-cancer format as we slowly waited and waited for Lisa to finally die. Even if it’s “now” in FW and ten years ago in CS it doesn’t add up correctly.

Burn, baby, burn!

Link to what Bats hath wrought.

Wow. An entire week of Starbuck Jones and every bit of it has been peripheral to the actions of Funky Winkerbean regular cast members. I have to take back all the nasty things I’ve said about the writing in this strip – it’s obvious that Tom Batiuk is a genius – he’s managed to bring about a whole new comic (Starbuck Jones) while keeping the science fiction out and revolving the story entirely around the residents of his beloved Westview Ohio. Truly he is a master of his craft. Though I have to say that it would have been nice if there had been just a teeny bit of Mason Jarr hamming it up, or Marianne Winters’ cute little implied butt. No matter, there are still a few years to go until Bats gets that Lifetime Doodler Award or whatever, so I guess there’s plenty of time to inflict entertain us with the continuing interweaving of Funky Winkerbean and Starbuck Jones.

Oh, yeah, and before I forget – my wish was granted, too!

Mason, please, for the love of all that is holy, have Holly do her her Flaming Baton act.

— Me.

One last thing…we joke about this movie being “straight to cell phone” bad, but c’mon. We all know how bad it’s really going to be.

 

And…that’s it for my turn in the barrel. Beckoningchasm will be here tomorrow with some more high-quality snark, and I’ll be back in the comment section ruining T-Bat’s artwork.

Running Aground

Link To Today’s Strip

Only TomBan could do a football team arc that features a bunch of anon-o-characters talking in a boring conference room.  So what the “committee” is saying here is that bullying is OK if the bully has been heavily bullied in the past? Well OK then. Perhaps next week we’ll see Les Moore stealing candy from babies and punching puppies. It’s all about the context, you see? Another “very serious” issue tackled…time for pizza and comic books!!