Batom Comics – Page 14 – Son of Stuck Funky

While I Ponder, Weak and Weary

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.

A Homage To That Which Never Was

Link To Today’s Strip

Anyone who didn’t see one of these comic books covers coming, please pay more attention going forward. I only know what this is because I (hangs head in shame) regularly check out the official Batom Comics…er, I mean FW blog. Without going into way too much detail, blah blah blah comic books comic books comic books. That’s really all you need to know to be “up to speed”, as it were.

Are we looking at modern-day Pete and Boy Lisa here or their retro counterparts again? I guess the bow ties indicate “retro” but who really knows? “Charlie and Chuck” is another one of his fanciful fictional funny books and yes, it has a whole convoluted back story behind it too. Apparently “theft” is the theme here, as retro Pete and Boy Lisa are still bemoaning how they lost the rights to Starbuck Jones right before the (sigh) point in its retconned history when it really took off. Even his fantasies are miserable.

A propeller beanie AND a slingshot in the back pocket…where’s his Lone Ranger mask and Dick Tracy wristwatch? Too bad this creativity never finds its way into his daily strips, one gets the impression that THOSE obligations are really cutting into his vivid world of make-believe. Nothing’s happened in FW in almost a decade, yet the world of Batom Comics is exploding with all sorts of history and new characters. Go figure.

Stupor, Man

Link To Today’s Strip

Incredible. Somehow, just out of nowhere, this nonsensical arc has become a comic book history lesson. Never saw it coming.

So, was Starbuck Jones an obscure cult classic or was it a huge sensation? Don’t ask Batom, despite it being his own personal fantasy he has absolutely no idea anymore. Maybe he should have created his little SJ universe BEFORE he started doing FW arcs about it, but the cat got out of that bag a long time ago. And now it’s all a big ugly mish-mosh.

And how does any of this relate to modern-day Pete and Darin’s situation? They didn’t create SJ, they were merely hired to work on an already-developed project. If Pete wanted a situation where he was in full control of his own creation, why did he leave his Mister Sponge gig in the first place? And as far as Boy Lisa is concerned, he’s fortunate to be involved with this idiotic movie at all. I’m not sure what the point here is supposed to be or even if there is one anymore.