Apologies first off–I don’t know how Fearless Leader embeds these sideways things into normalcy, so you’ll have to suffer with strained necks for the nonce. Unless I reach beyond myself, and give it a try–
–hey, that worked! I think!
And check out that cast. Isaac The Robot (defaming Dr. Asimov’s memory), Moon Mile Meek (or whatever that bowel movement was named), the Space Cadets, the Black Ghost, the Amazing Mister Sp0nge and the (*Cough* undead) Absorbing Junior, and the latest ass-pull, the Blue Astra. I’d love to see a follow-up strip showing what gifts they brought (“a gift certificate for $10 at Best Buy? Who the hell–“) but follow-ups are definitely not this strip’s strong suit.
–Case in point. So, the Starbuck Jones movie world premier has come and gone, and we are no wiser as to how it fell on the world. Was it a hit? Did people enjoy it? Were the fanboys irate over how it changed canon? Did it rescue the Valentine Theater from foreclosure, and did it spring the careers of Mason, Marianne, Cindy, Cliff, Vera, Pete and Dullard into the stratosphere? Did it circle the drain on the way through the toilet? Is Cable Movie Entertainment now on the level of Marvel Studios, or are they instead competing with The Asylum for most horrible crap ever?
As the Residents once sang on their album Not Available, these are “Never Known Questions.” Because the only answer here is another question, “Who cares?” And the answer to that is, “Not Tom Batiuk.”
My theory on this is actually quite simple, and obvious once you hear it. The success or failure of the Starbuck Jones movie was something that–had nothing to do with Les Moore.
Think on that for a moment. Has this strip ever featured a creative, successful idea that didn’t involve Les Moore? I certainly can’t think of any. For the most part, it’s been “I need help, oh thank you for helping, [blink] oh it’s the next day and everything worked.” (I’m thinking of Pete Movement and his battles with the…sigh…Lord of the Late.)
The message of the strip has been pretty constant in Act III–Les Moore is the only person who can be allowed a creative success in the world. Everyone else succeeds only because they betrayed their ideals and settled for hackery. No one else has lost a wife…no one else wrote a best-selling book detailing how he suffered when losing his wife…no one else wrote about how he just damn kept on, after losing his wife…and found a woman willing to be doormat. That last bit is a little troubling, but, you know…Les Moore was once married to a woman, who…died.
It makes me fear what comes next week.
