Tag: Cindy

The Good, the Tiny, and the Sleazy

A new scene abruptly flash-cuts into view, as last week’s Starbuck Jones arc is abandoned once again. A bar, much too nice to be in Westview, and much too soulless to be anything but a hotel bar. I have to hand it to Batominc: he has mastered soullessness. And vast expanses of squiggly lines.

But of course, proportions always go haywire. Witness panel 3, where pint glasses look more like salt & pepper shakers, Cindy nurses a stemware shot glass of wine, and Smirky McSleazy’s old-fashioned glass also seems to have been provisioned by the CMDF.

And the dialogue—oh my!—the dialogue makes me want to invent a time machine so I can go back and dissuade the inventor of narrative fiction. Let’s see if we can make improvements.

First draft

Smirky McSleazy: Nice shoes. Wanna boink?

Second draft

Smirky McSleazy: Are you an interior decorator? Because when you entered the room, it became more beautiful.

Third draft

Smirky McSleazy: Did you bathe in sugar? Because you sure look sweet.

Nope. Going nowhere. I’ll be in the lab, working on that time machine. We’ll be better off without literature.

Fade to Wack

Charles
April 20, 2013 at 4:53 am
…So where did we go this week? Well, Les dithered around uselessly and then started writing his script in the most mundane fashion imaginable. I can’t believe Batiuk is actually going to do this. Never mind that he’s going to show Les writing this script, but what he’s going to have Les writing is godawful.

Not to mention improperly formatted.

Everybody can relate to the illness and loss of a close friend or loved one. And Batiuk did a creditable job of telling “Lisa’s story” the first time around. Readers were moved; at least the ones who didn’t object to such depressing content in the comics section. But TB, through his avatar Les, has spent the last five and a half years rehashing this story over and over again, as a book and then a movie, and Lisa’s story has become All About Les. The book was a success, and adoring fans lined up for their signed copies. Then Hollywood sends him a fat check and lets him write the screenplay, despite his complete lack of screenwriting experience. All the while, Les carries on like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. After a week of dragging his heels, today the Delicate Genius can bask in the afterglow of having written a trite and stilted line of dialogue.

Does the “home run” fantasy indicate that what he’s just written is the last scene? Doesn’t the story end with Lisa dying?

Frankie, My Beer, I Don't Give a Can

From the FW Blog, Nov. 6, 2012:
At the moment, I’m hard at work on what is turning out to be a bit of a coda to Lisa’s Story. Events in the present will spark a sort of flashback/prequel which will crossover into real life with a visit to my old apartment in Elyria…as well as a crossover with Crankshaft thrown in for good measure. Oh, and lest I forget, a long lost character as well…Stay tuned.

Clearly Les does not share Cayla’s excitement over his basic-cable movie getting a free plug on a basic-cable news network. Meanwhile, somewhere in Elyria, Ohio, “a long lost character” with Paulie Walnuts hair and wearing a wifebeater clutches a can of beer and talks to his TV. It can be none other than the despicable Frankie, Darin’s biological father and St. Lisa’s…ex-boyfriend? Date-rapist?

Tom Batiuk Talks ‘Funky Winkerbean’, comicbookresources.com, March 19, 2013:
I ended up writing a story where Frankie — he’s been mentioned a couple times and has actually appeared in the strip very briefly, the guy who got Lisa pregnant — returns. In the return of that story we deepen the teen pregnancy story and say that it was a little more than just youthful indiscretion on Lisa’s part. There was some coercion involved and it’s like a coda to “Lisa’s Story.”

Guess we’ll have to wait for TB to “roll out” the story to see how he retcons this.

I wasn’t able to dig up a whole lot on the web about Frankie (he’s not even mentioned on the Unofficial FW Fan Page, though Lisa’s teen pregnancy is). I found the above strip from Act II, but can’t provide any context on what their relationship was by the time she was pregnant with Summer.

Les' Story

I don’t know how Hollywood works, nor do I pretend to know. Some of you readers, though, seem to have some insight into the movie-making process, and it’s fun to compare and contrast that with Les’ Hollywood “experience”. I know even less about the network news business, so I’ll just share my musings about today’s strip.

For starters, how long has Cindy, I mean, Cynthia Summers been an anchorperson? Guess she’s no longer “embedded“. And is it just a little premature to be reporting this “news from Hollywood,” considering that not even one page of the screenplay has been written? Do plans to make a made-for-cable-TV movie even qualify as “news from Hollywood”? And are news anchors allowed to report hometown gossip as “news”?

The Way We Were

Sigh. I don’t want to pick on TB’s 9/11 effort…but I must.

Remember in Act II when the Westview High School Band performed at Carnegie Hall? Me neither. But let’s just say it happened. So excited  are Wally and Becky that their faces have become frozen masks of maniacal glee! Of course, that was before shit got real. Flash-forward to — today? Or sometime in the past ten years. Sgt. Wally (we assume) in his dress uniform, is going to or returning from Iraquistan, by way of New York City…looking glumly at the “new normal” skyline, his smirk turned upside-down.

Meanwhile, over at Crankshaft:

More careless time-jerking from Batiuk. Late last month TB posted on his “blogs“:

“I jumped everyone in the Funkyverse ahead in time in 2007 and I didn’t do the same with the cast of Crankshaft [emphasis mine].”

But in today’s CS, Cranky sits in  front of the TV, watching a news program entitled “9•11: TEN YEARS LATER”. The reporter is none other than Cindy Summers, reporting from Ground Zero; apparently following the attack, since she’s surrounded by the ruins and ashes of the Twin Towers. Cindy must work for the only U.S. news outlet using pink and yellow in their 9/11 onscreen graphics instead of red, white and blue.