Tag: Comic Book tribute

Hardboiled Volk

Today’s strip tells us literally the same thing that Friday’s strip did. Marianne’s fate will remain a mystery for another day… that day quite possibly being Christmas Day. We are in color again, but I’m not quite getting that infomercial tonal shift feeling I described a few days back.

I feel it my duty to point out that a story about an actress who is driven to suicide (possibly) by cyberbullies is not “hardboiled” It’s pretty much the exact opposite of hardboiled, actually. It can be many other things: sad, appalling, educational (or in TB’s hands: implausible, maudlin, and preachy), but a word meaning “tough, cynical, unsentimental” as hardboiled does? No.

Us beady-eyed nitpickers may notice that Tom Lyle’s signature offers additional proof that TB works a year ahead, not that we really needed it.

lylesignature

You can see the conception of this comic book cover on the official Funky Winkerbean blog

To The Moon, Alice

Despite hatching the title “In The Clutches Of Queen Morphine!”, TB breaks from his typical tone in today’s strip. Yes, what sounds like the title of an Act II addiction-awareness pamphlet written by Mopey Pete, or something else right up TB’s alley, is actually a setup for some cheesecake space action. Weird.

Anyways, Cindy is still jealous, Mason still oblivious, and this whole Starbuck Jones movie deal is still ridiculous. There was no resolution this week… I’m afraid to see what might come next. Walt Kelly help us all.

I would like to thank everyone but Tom Batiuk for these last couple of weeks. Taking over tomorrow will be, your friend and mine, the nonpareil DavidO.

Night of the Meek

Link to today’s cover.

So, as predicted, it’s a comic book cover using someone else’s artwork, and the Batiuk characters are pasted awkwardly in the corners to ruin the effort.  The characters have nothing interesting or funny to say, but they have to be there because we can’t have nice things.  At least you folks get to read it right-side up!

People here have long speculated–if Funky Winkerbean is such an onerous chore to create, and Starbuck Jones is obviously where his true passion lies, then why doesn’t Tom Batiuk drop Funky and take up Starbuck.  After all, he’s gone to great lengths to detail a lot of Starbuck’s world, and it clearly holds a great deal of importance–heck, unless you follow Batiuk’s blog, there are all kinds of things in the strip that simply come out of nowhere.  By contrast, over in Funkytown, he can’t even be bothered to remember names or hair color and the characters are stagnant and miserable.

My guess (and it is only that) is that Tom Batiuk has enough self-awareness to know that if he were to tackle Starbuck Jones, he’d ruin it.  So far, the only appearances of Starbuck Jones have been comic book covers.  Never an actual adventure.  Well, a cover can promise a great deal, and it never has to deliver.  It isn’t expected to deliver.  It’s just supposed to make you buy the magazine.  It’s supposed to set up a story, not tell it.

But, if you’re going to make a space adventure comic, you cannot just promise adventure and then have people smirking over old comic books.  It’s going to require actual storytelling.  Moon Mile Meek has to leave the space house and find a giant monster somehow.  (Although I’d be willing to bet that Kloog showed up on the doorstep, thus obviating the need for Meek to do anything.  I’m also getting the distinct vibe that Meek touched one of Kloog’s comic books, and that’s what set everything off.  Sigh.)

To do actual storytelling, you have to have excitement, drama, action, violence, fresh fruit.  Passion.  Thrills.  Spills.  Romance.  Adventure–all the things you would expect to find in a space adventure book.  And when presented with the chance to do any of these things in Funky Winkerbean, Tom Batiuk turns away and does essentially nothing.  A chance for some police action with Dick Tracy?  No way, let’s have Tracy haul boxes of comic books.  How about romance, with Wally and Rachel?  Not really–that whole thing was presented as “Well, everything is only going to get worse, might as well get married now.”  Danger and intrigue in the Middle East with Cory Winkerbean?  Sorry, the cat’s eaten it.  Adventure?  Ah, usually fresh on Monday, today the van broke down.  And so on.

Even if he only did the writing, there isn’t a way that I can see that Tom Batiuk could produce a Starbuck Jones story that would satisfy anyone, including himself, and its lack of substance would probably depress him even further.  It would emphasize the various things lost to this strip over the years.  Storytelling, for one.  I don’t see any storytelling going on in this strip.  Ergo, Starbuck Jones will continue to be mentioned and continue to appear on covers, but that will be the extent of it.

Ultimately, my point is this–that those expecting anything of interest to pop up in this strip had best appreciate things like today’s artwork, junked up as it is with crap.  Let’s face it, there are some stains that no detergent can remove, and that shirt is always going to look like that.

Well, my guest stint now comes to an end.  Tune in tomorrow when the unparalleled Epicus Doomus takes over center stage.  I thank you for your indulgence, and I am outta here!

 

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire

Link to today’s piffle.

The content of today’s strip implies that Droppo and Pungent spent the entire weekend doing a cover mock-up.  (Complete with title, logo, price, etc.  Is Darin also a compositor in the print shop?)  Because a cover is the only thing that Cigar McBalding is holding…  I thought they were supposed to be doing an entire comic book, and that’s why it was so arduous?  Hell, I could do a cover mock-up over a weekend without a problem.

–Unless I missed something–this strip is so careful and attentive to detail, after all.

If all they were doing was a cover, why was Pete even there?  Oh well, looking for consistency or common sense in this thing is a fool’s errand.  It’s like asking, “Why is Darin’s hair in color when everything else is sepiatone?”  There’s no answer to that, man.

I think Moon Mile Meek is the big-eared thing barely visible at the bottom of panel one.

I seem to recall some Bat-Mite like thing on other Starbuck Jones covers.   Doesn’t seem like a great idea to give it its own book, but what do I know?  Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen was a successful enough comic for years.  Of course, Olsen was an occasionally entertaining moron who drank whatever potions he found lying around, turned ray projectors on himself and ate millions of pancakes.  Then Superman would have to save him.  And then, the exact same thing would happen all over again the next month.   There were always more potions, radioactive rocks, alien artifacts, magical crowns, and so on.  Superman never lost patience with Jimmy or tried to knock some sense into him (and his teeth out of him), and despite what I imagine were hundreds of fan letters, Superman never punched Jimmy so hard he flew into a completely different comic book.

So I suspect that the same formula would follow in Moon Mile Meek, minus the “entertaining” bits of course.  After all, the exact same thing happens with Funky Winkerbean.  Someone will be asked to do something, he’ll complain the entire way, then it’ll end with a pun and a smirk.  Interesting how the Starbuck Jones universe keeps expanding, while the strip that hosts it continues to shrink.

So, are we all ready for the comic book tribute tomorrow?  It looks like it might be well drawn at least.

The Ghost Who Balks

Link to today’s strip.

Don’t know what I can say about this.  Frank Brunner is a really great artist, and that’s a heck of a cover–it makes me want to read the comic inside.  Too bad Tom Batiuk had to junk it up with his own stuff, the sad, miserable “creators” that live in his sad, miserable comic strip.  I think he should abandon the idea of a Sunday strip that references his characters, and just do comic book tributes every week.  Just the covers, no stupidity in the margins.  I’d like that; at least the artwork would be good, and we’d get less of these smelly, trollish creatures that proudly wallow in their own mire.

Once again, there’s not a joke to be had here, but I am amused that The Idiotwins think that “spongetonite” stinks as a concept, to the extent that it cannot be associated with…The Amazing Mr. Sponge.  Really, the dumbest non-parody superhero of all time, and apparently he’s just too good for “spongetonite.”  That is rich.

At present I have no idea what Monday will bring.  Possibly more of The Idiotwins tolling in comic-book Hell, with an unhinged Brady fuming that his ideas were squelched, although I would note this:  that would be something interesting, that would develop a story beyond just stating a concept and smirking…so that probably means we’ll get Les watching the “For Les” tape.  Or Funky at the gym, haven’t had one of those in a while.

We can be certain of only this:  it won’t be funny, it will be dull, and it will be excruciatingly padded.