Tag: Cindy

Fail Punner Tom

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Cliff Anger is a defiant and bitter commie. Jessica is back behind the camera after the unfortunate “Barbie” debacle. (I somehow totally missed that development this week, which says plenty about the Jessica character in general). TomBat was once the ringleader of some shoplifting-endorsing comic book liberation movement. It’s like the whole Funkyverse is all topsy-turvy, nothing makes SENSE anymore!!!

Fortunately though, at least one aspect of FW remains constant, the rock-solid pillar and foundation the entire Funkyverse is based upon. Of course I’m referring to abysmal, stupid, sub-moronic wordplay…what else? Apparently Cliff’s career wasn’t quite as important to him as the opportunity to make a really dumb and inane joke was and Cliff seized that opportunity, Tailgunner Joe and his own nascent movie career be damned. It’s a profile in courage all right. Life, liberty and the pursuit of idiotic gags that would make a third-grader roll his or her eyes… it’s in the Constitution. Give me punnery or give me death!

What a debacle. And on that note I’m passing the SoSF baton to the one, the only…TF Hackett, who’s all set to tackle the next two weeks of wry banter, painfully bad wordplay, adorable ninety-year old coots and sinister bio-dads, along with whatever other weird curveballs Batiuk yanks out of his musty little bag of contrivances. Why, it might be a retconned sixty year old congressional hearing or a broken pizzeria bandbox or a brain-damaged man comically spilling human remains all over himself…you just never really know until Monday rolls around and even then it’s sometimes unclear.

Sentences Batom Rarely Hears For $100, Alex

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haha

BOOM! Look at Cliff, trying not to crack up. Sometimes NomBat makes this way too easy.

“Yeah, the feds got wise to us while we were filming “Starbuck Jones Leads The Righteous Lunar Proletariat In A Galactic Revolt Against The Decadent Capitalist Space Bourgeois” and long story short, I spent the next thirty-two years working a floor buffer at Leavenworth. Even worse, my cell was in the Right Wing so all day long I had to watch my back in case someone wanted to trade currency for goods or services. It was hell on earth. Really good grilled cheese sandwiches though, it’s all in the quality of the paper you’re using when you heat them on the radiator.”

“Oh how I waited and waited for my dearest Clifford to call after his parole. So many years spent watching my neck waste away, hoping to hear from my beloved Starbuck. Then I learned he had a computer and could have looked up my number in like two seconds. I began to see things in a different light after that. But still, this is too good to pass up, the studio pays for everything no questions asked and the food is fantastic.”

“When Dashiell told me to meet him at on Marx St at the old Lenin building over on the communist side of town I was a little apprehensive and when he asked me to wear all red I thought “hmmm, this guy could be involved in some far-out stuff here”. But he was very engaging and persuasive so I eventually agreed to obtain the blasting caps for him in spite of my misgivings.  But I wasn’t anywhere near the bald eagle sanctuary on the evening in question and you can put that on the record.”

“I tried to tell him “Cliff, darling, this Hammett guy is a pinko, he associates with more Reds than Ted Kluszewski, he’s a goddamned f*cking commie to the core. But that’s my Clifford, a dear man but quite frankly dumber than a pillowcase full of broken toasters.”

 

 

To Greet The Man, You’ve Got To Meet The Man

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turkey1turkey2turkey3

Happy Thanksgiving From Your Pals at SoSF!!!

Dashiell Hammett makes his first actual appearance today and it’s everything you imagined it’d be, even minus the band turkeys. Yep, nothing leaps off the funny page like a drawing of a man while he writes…but as a regular FW reader YOU ALREADY KNEW THAT!!! This Hammett guy was a political activist during the “Red Scare” era which is without a doubt where BanTom is going with this, although I can tell you with 100% certainty he’ll dance around the particulars and the details and keep things as vague as he possibly can to ensure there’s absolutely no possibility of offending anyone whatsoever, like he always does. Yep, 1950s commie paranoia…issues, today’s youth and so forth. Sigh.

“Starbuck Jones”…an obscure, short-lived comic book title that eventually grew to span decades and captured the very imagination of a nation. The old SJ movie serials of the fifties…low-budget and mostly forgotten matinee fare that was actually the brilliant work of a group of idealistic young Hollywood subversives. Cliff Anger…not really a weird old recluse but an American hero forced into seclusion by Cold War paranoia. Montoni’s…lousy indifferently-made food that Westviewians would kill for. Nothing is ever what it appears to be in the Funkyverse, like how it’s always on the page titled “Comics” for some reason.

And Even Fewer Care, Cliff

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History lesson time…who knew? Anyhow, the entire SJ mythology veers wildly off-course today as the old serials we assumed were based upon the “Starbuck Jones” comic book series were actually written by Dashiell Hammett, a renowned  mystery writer and political activist from “back in the day” (guess which day, bet you’re not surprised). Few people knew this, as generations of obsessive SJ fanboys somehow completely overlooked the old SJ serial films because comic book fan communities rarely deal in the arcane or trivial and would have no interest at all in something like that.

Anyhow that’s a real swerve into left field completely out of nowhere, eh? Obviously none of this shameless, haphazard retconning makes even a little sense but hey, it’s his comic strip and if he wants to use it as some sort of half-assed platform to create magical boring fantasy worlds where his real-life interests and preferences get shoehorned into the narrative regardless of logic or continuity, that’s his business.

Briefly checking out the Dashiell Hammett page gives me an idea of where this is going…ugh. Cliff Anger…Political Prisoner? I guess it does beat band turkeys, though.

Those Four Dreaded Words

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No, not “I love you Spanky”….”it’s a long story”…(shudder). Long like two-week arc long or LONG, like this SJ movie mega arc that’s spawning all these spinoff arcs? I like how Cindy, the veteran journalist doing a documentary on an old movie star, is shocked to learn that her subject was in prison, as if it’s the first she’s hearing of it. I also love the little dig at her own work, like all true Westviewians she takes a perverse pleasure in knowing she’s churning out crap, like it’s OK because she’s in on the gag. And I think it’s safe to say that if you’re reading this you probably know the deal there.