Tag Archives: author avatar

by billytheskink | November 19, 2022 · 10:30 pm

Meta-mucil

TB goes full on meta in today’s strip… could this be a preview of what we’ll see over the next few weeks? Is everything else from here on going to be bizarrely (and blandly) self-referential? Are we in for even more unnecessary acknowledgements that these characters all of a sudden know they are in a comic strip? I suppose we will have to wait and see, though the wait won’t be too long now.

Meta references can certainly work, but are not inherently interesting or funny, nor are they funny in the context of this strip and story arc, or in the context of TB’s real life partial retirement for that matter. What is funny, however, is that Ruby joined Atomik Komix over 3 years ago to much fanfare, specifically to draw Wayback Wendy I might add, and she’s peacing out after drawing the cover of issue #4! And we all thought Phil Holt was a slow worker…

And that’s a wrap for my latest and possibly last time blogging here at Son Of Stuck Funky. No goodbyes here, but I do want to thank some folks. Thank you to TFH and Epicus for running this place for the past 12 and a half years and for trusting me as a guest writer here over the past 8 years. Thanks to my fellow guest writers for keeping this site reliably humming for years and much thanks to all of you SOSFers for coming back and reading day after day in spite of my silly wonderings and regular typos. I’ve written over 500 of these things, believe it or not! But for me these posts are mostly a glorified header, the best content generally comes from you all in the comments. I can only hope that you have enjoyed reading some of my words even 1/100th as much as I have enjoyed being a part of this community.

And so, I will close this post the same way I wrote my entire first week of posts…

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Tagged as Atomik Komix, author avatar, Batom's bizarre comic book fantasy world, Batton, Batton Thomas, bullpen, Chester, clouds, comic book art, comic book cover, Comic Book tribute, comic books, comics, Comics Code Authority, contempt for comic book nerds, Darin, Darin's blue shirt, Dawn Of Time, drafting table, Flash, Flash Fairfield, Flash Freeman, Funky Felt Tip, glasses, meta, Mindy, Minty Pete, Mopey Pete, multiple characters neccesitating many tags, Pete, Pete's Plaid Shirt, Phil, Phil Holt, Pun, punnery, puns, retirement, Retro, Ruby, Ruby Lith, sad-sackery, seldom-seen characters wearing hats, self-references, silly names, Sunday comic book covers, the end of Funky Winkerbean, The Grand Finale, the inevitable death of the universe, tiny hands, unnatural hand gestures, unwarranted wry sarcasm, Wayback Wendy, women in comics, wry banter, wry self-deprecation, wry weary snideness, wryness

by billytheskink | November 18, 2022 · 10:30 pm

Ruby the Grate

In case you missed it, we are in the final weeks of Funky Winkerbean. Tom Batiuk appears to be reluctantly retiring the strip much in the same way he’s written Ruby as reluctantly retiring from Atomik Komix this week and in today’s strip. The timing of this thin gruel of a story arc and TB’s fairly muted announcement is certainly no coincidence. Most all of us here at SOSF, despite speculating for over a decade on when and how this thing would end, are probably still processing the suddenness of the announcement, how soon it will become reality, and what that means for this wonderful community going forward.

But enough wallowing about, let’s leave that to the strip and try to get back to business as usual. I guess today’s strip is aiming for bittersweet, but it largely is coming across as just bitter. You can’t mask your true feelings in a wall of smirks, TB… And even if the strip wasn’t ending at the close of this year, I’m guessing we were never going to see Chester meet with the building manager by looking in a mirror anyways. I’d say “a pity”, but, you know, it’s not. It’s really not.

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Tagged as Amazon smirk, arcs that go on too long, Atomic Comics, Atomic Komix, Atomik, Atomik Komix, author avatar, awful wordplay, bad wordplay, Batom's bizarre comic book fantasy world, Batton, Batton Thomas, buildings, cavalcade of characters, Chester, Chester's intrigued face, Cleveland, comic books, comics, Darin, depression, eighteen different characters, extremely high character-to-panel density, Flash, Flash Fairfield, Flash Freeman, glasses, gradient voids, jaunty scarves, knowing smirks, lame wordplay, malapropism, many tags, Mindy, Minty Pete, misappropriated wordplay, Mopey Pete, multiple characters neccesitating many tags, one of those arcs that just never seems to end, Pete, Pete's Plaid Shirt, Phil, Phil Holt, poor female characters, retirement, Ruby, Ruby Lith, sad-sackery, scarf, seldom-seen characters wearing hats, smirk, smirking, smirks, smirks exchanged, sub-moronic wordplay, terrible wordplay, the untimely death of Phil Holt, word zeppelins, wordplay

by billytheskink | November 15, 2022 · 10:30 pm

Re-haiku-ment

Are we STILL on this?
More on Ruby's retirement
Here in today's strip

Batton butts right in
Again, he does NOT work here
Who asked him to speak?

Batton's questioning
A reflection of TB?
Is the strip's end near?

Or is this resolve?
Tom writing his thoughts in strip
Eff-ing ponderous

^{A warning haiku
The link above has cussing
That's NSFW!}

With Dinkle, Linda
And others who fake retire
Do we believe this?

We probably should
Not like TB gave Ruby
Anything worthwhile

Chester looks depressed
I mean, he's just despondent
In his sad jacket

57 Comments

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Tagged as arcs where nothing happens, Atomik Komix, author avatar, Batton, Batton Thomas, boredom personified, Chester, comic books, comics, Complete Worthless Ass, curmudgeonly oldsters, depression, drafting table, endless tedium, enraging hair strands, glasses, gradient voids, gray ashen landscape, hatchet face, impending doom, jaunty scarves, Mindy, not how the world works, not how things work, not the way the world works, oddly muted squiggly lines, Old dying people, one of those arcs that just never seems to end, really dumb questions, retirement, scarf, seldom-seen characters wearing hats, squiggly lines, squiggly lines used to denote texture, stupid, the inevitable ravages of age, the ravages of age, things that never end, why?, windows

by billytheskink | November 14, 2022 · 10:30 pm

Pencil droppers, eh?!

Wait, is today’s strip taking place on the exact same day that Ruby drew Sunday’s Scorch cover?! Ruby drew a whole cover in a matter of hours?! Maybe that’s not at all surprising for a real life comic cover artist at a real life comic book company, but at Atomik Komix it sure is. These folks make “Turtle Thompson” look like AJ Foyt.

I mean, Batton is still there treadmilling and everyone is wearing the exact same things they were wearing in last week’s strips, give or take some colorist’s liberty… ok, scratch that, Mindy is wearing a skirt in today’s strip and clearly has on pants in last Saturday’s strip. Different day, I guess. In either scenario, though, we’re left to note how ridiculous it is that Batton spends so much time in the Atomik Komix bullpen. He, ostensibly, has a job drawing a comic strip, but we’ve never seen him do it. Heck, we’ve never even seen the strip-within-a-strip… and it’s not like Funky Winkerbean is above that kind of thing. He likes comic books and frequents Komix Korner from time-to-time (SUCH a unique trait in the Batiukverse, I know), but he doesn’t appear to be a regular there like he is here at the Atomik Komix bullpen. He likes or feels obligated to jog. And that’s it. That is everything we know about the guy. I don’t necessarily care to know more, but if TB insists on having his author avatar hang around places where it makes no obvious sense for him to hang around then Batton needs some purpose and motivation.

Oh yeah, also… Ruby is old, water is wet, and Chester now wears the look of someone clinically depressed.

98 Comments

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Tagged as Atomik Komix, author avatar, Batton, Batton Thomas, boredom personified, bullpen, Chester, comic books, comics, curmudgeonly oldsters, Darin, depression, disembodied hand, drafting table, eyelids, Flash, Flash Fairfield, Flash Freeman, Flash treadmill, glasses, gray ashen landscape, hatchet face, jaunty scarves, labored setup, merry-go-round, mind-numbing tedium, Mindy, Minty Pete, Mopey Pete, muppet profile, oddly muted squiggly lines, Old dying people, pencil, pencil necked geeks, pencil-neck geek, Pete, Phil, Phil Holt, possibly Battom Thomas, retirement, Ruby, Ruby Lith, sad-sackery, scarf, seldom-seen characters wearing hats, slowly dying inside, squiggly "L"s, squiggly lines, squiggly lines used to denote texture, the inevitable ravages of age, the ravages of age, tile, unnatural hand gestures

by billytheskink | November 9, 2022 · 10:30 pm

Testosterony’s really neat! Hooray! For testosterony!

We’ve teased you with her face at the top of the page for a full week now… but she’s finally here folks! Please welcome Ruby Lith to the climage damate/pandemic/supply chain issues story arc (now with comic book misogyny or something) in today’s strip.

Is Ruby just annoyed that all of the damate climage comic books Atomik Komix is putting out don’t feature female characters or are too muscle-bound action man violence explosions so many explosions-oriented (did she forget about The Oceanaire?.. well, she doesn’t appear to be the only one) or does she believe that these issue du jour comic books would somehow be more effective in changing the hearts and minds of the world citizenry if they weren’t so… ugh, “testosterony”? And why is she addressing Batton like he works at Atomik Komix? Unless… oh no. Surely it won’t come to that, will it?

74 Comments

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Tagged as arcs where nothing happens, Atomik Komix, author avatar, awful wordplay, bad wordplay, Batton, Batton Thomas, climate change, climate damage, comic books, comics, Flash, Flash Fairfield, Flash Freeman, glasses, half-assed political commentary, insufferability, lame wordplay, melting faces, misappropriated wordplay, pens, Pinching hand gesture to indicate smallness, quarter inch pinch, Ruby, Ruby Lith, seldom-seen characters wearing hats, sub-moronic wordplay, sweat beads, terrible artwork, terrible ideas, terrible wordplay, the comic book industry, Tom doesn't get women, women in comics, Women's Lib, wordplay

Tag Archives: author avatar

Meta-mucil

Ruby the Grate

Re-haiku-ment

Pencil droppers, eh?!

Testosterony’s really neat! Hooray! For testosterony!

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