EvesdroPete

Crazy Harry shows us all that he never took a sales class in today’s strip, shilling for Atomik Komix by dumping on the comic book industry’s far more popular, far more established, and far more successful giants while Creepy Pete creeps about like a creeper (but not the comic book character, who has appeared in *gasp* multiple universes!). Maybe it worked, though we don’t actually see Komix Korner’s first sale since the Obama administration. This, uh… child (I think) actually seems interested in wasting $2.99 on a copy of Atomic Ape and its single universe of simian shlock. Sorry, the gray shading on that kid’s hair is throwing me off, he looks like a tiny Tom Batiuk.

This gripe about multiple universes that is shared by maybe 0.001% of all comic book fans that I have ever met is especially rich coming from TB, a guy who writes two comic strips that share a universe together and with a 3rd defunct strip, one of which is set 10 years ahead of the other even though both are depicted as taking place in the present day. So much less confusing than multiple universes…

Have a safe, healthy, and happy Easter Sunday SOSFers!

Rhino in Name Only

Banana Jr. 6000
February 14, 2020 at 6:09 am
Oh, God, there’s going to be a third week of this, isn’t there?

No one, @Banana Jr. 6000, is more appalled than is yours truly. All but the first two days of this month have been taken up with this lame-ass Atomik Komix fantasy.

So everyone here read Chester’s question as “Have you ever tried RHINO?”, right? And then tried to parse this as an acronym for Riding Home With The Owner? RHWO (or RHWTO to be precise). Does he spell out the acronym, or is he asking “Have you ever tried ‘Arrhuwoh‘?” This is another Batty staple: having a character utter a pun or wisecrack that only makes sense in writing.

Forward Into The Past

Well, this is one crowded cover: the Atomik Komix Krossover that nobody asked for. We see our heroines and a dog fleeing on a motorized trike from a giant mechanized Nazi. The art’s not bad, but the muddy, muted colors and the Photoshop lighting effects don’t exactly make it pop.Like the first Miss American cover we saw back in September, this is not the work of a female artist; it’s by Thom Zahler, another Ohioan (maybe Ohio is a “thriving hotbed of Golden Age comic book activity” after all).

Bald Legal

Who is this guy and why is he wearing Pete’s green shirt?

I don’t know why Chester is in such a hurry to get “the lawyers downstairs ” involved. Ruby’s going to draw Miss American and get paid by Chester for doing so; why must she own the rights as well? Will Chester then have to pay Ruby for the rights to publish her work? Readers of the FW blog know very well how Batiuk relies on his legal team, so maybe in that context, this makes sense.

Chester’s Treasure

Hat tip to iansdrunkenbeard in yesterday’s comments.

I’m just so sick of that surprised expression that’s been on Chester’s face this whole week. Who the hell goes to the time and expense of buying up copyrights and setting up a “shell corporation” and then forgets all about it? And what was the point of this shell corporation, anyway? Merely to pad out this insipid arc for a couple few more days, I guess.