Slow down, Holly! I’m not sure what multi-verse you’re in in today’s strip but cheesy superhero movies don’t usually get Oscars, storyboard artists for said movies even less.
Why would Funky and Holly be “the first” you’d invite, anyway? Wow, that’s bleak.
Today’s “contemporary issue affecting young adults”? The high rate of turnover among comic book artists. I wonder if the artist is “leaving the book” because he’s sick of having to work with the deadline-averse Pete Robertini? In any event, it seems that Batiuk just realized that Crazy Harry, though he may look like it now, was not born in the 1940’s, and has updated young Harold’s appearance (compare with this strip from 2010).
Big guest star get in today’s strip. Playing the role of Cory is Deimos, the potato-shaped second moon of Mars. TB clearly has friends high up in the IAU if he’s getting celestial bodies onto the set.
So… what else is happening?
– In a ringing endorsement of the quality of Starbuck Jones, Cory has never been more sure of anything he has ever done ever, than he is about his desire to sell these comic books.
– We also learn that this is NOT a complete collection, as I and others might have inferred, but that the first few issues are reprints from an archive book.
– Cory also drops the fact that Funky once owned Starbuck Jones #1 on the guy who knows that better than anyone. In fact, we were first introduced to Batom Comics and Starbuck Jones because DSH got behind on his rent during a bad month for Montoni’s back in 2010. Funky had to crack open the Montoni’s safe and sell his non-bagged, non-slabbed copy of issue #1 to save his shop AND DSH’s deadbeat hind parts in the process. It was OK, though, because Funky was never in to Starbuck Jones, only buing the comic because an old guy, who was actually his present self but badly injured in a car accident and hallucinating that he was his present self but in the Act I past, told him to do so.
Anyways, did DSH ever pay Funky back for covering for him? Or does he think helping Holly assemble the very collection Cory is now selling squares them?
In any event, today we have what I believe is the first conversation between two characters who Funky has been far too generous with (remember who covered for Cory’s theft at the Lisa walk). May as well have Les walk in for good measure…
Sorry, I didn’t really mean that.
He’s been spending a lot of time in the past, Batiuk has, dating to this past spring when Les got yoked into being reunion chairman. The reunion committee meetings reacquainted us with Junebug and Barry Balederman, and set the stage for a Lisa tribute. The reunion itself of course was the setting for the time pool silliness, in which the Act I cast were trotted out to meet their present-day counterparts (uh, sorry Lisa!). We’ve had a couple Sophmoric Sightings sightings. And speaking of sightings, we saw Les sharing the park bench again with Lisa’s ghost. And speaking of Lisa, we’ve once again dragged out those damned VHS tapes , this time to bake ’em and digitize ’em and preserve ’em for. Ever.
Along the way, Batiuk has of late altered his visual shorthand: the flashback scenes retain their photo album corners but are in full color instead of washed out sepia. Like the central triptych of today’s strip, which offers a perfectly passable gag and which for all we know is a redraw of a published strip from that era. Compare and contrast Coach Jockstrap’s humorous, deadpan style with that of his protege Coach Bushka, who harangues his players with Crankshaftian malaprops.
Today we’re finally treated to the Sunday strip whose pencilled preview Batiuk teased us with a year in advance. Make that a 53 weeks in advance: this strip would have served as the coda to the “Owen Learns He’s Not Good at Bullying” arc from the week before last, but Batiuk decided we needed to have a week of Les moping about life. I hope that in addition to Senior Lit with Mr. Moore, Owen is taking remedial math: he’s waited three years, not four, to become a senior (he’s entering his fourth year).
Son of Stuck Funky 
