Page Kept A Scrollin’ All Night Long

160213

Link To Today’s Strip

Wow, it’s one of the rarest FW daily strips of them all, a sideways vertical memory within a fantasy within a fantasy! You don’t see these very often. After reading about the Superman trademark saga, I wouldn’t say that “tragic” is the first word that springs to mind. But then again, my entire being doesn’t revolve exclusively around nostalgic comic book memories, so what the hell do I know? I bet you that whenever he starts with this story while he’s hanging out at that pizza place, everyone politely excuses themselves to hit the bathroom.

Again, one has to wonder why despite being armed with this information, retro Pete opted to sign over the SJ title anyway, but thinking about it ruins the premise, which is apparently that the Superman creators got hosed. What that has to do with FW, Starbuck Jones or anything else is a mystery to me, but apparently it still has Batiuk all worked up, so here we are. It goes to figure that he keeps coming back to that story, as we all know that “writing” for a living is a horrible thankless task that never pays off no matter how great you are at it.

It might have made a little more sense if he held off on this (chortle) idea until they finished the movie, then had them lamenting the money the producers were making off their work. I said “might”. But BanTom simply doesn’t do things that way, or in any kind of a coherent way, really. He just does them, that’s all. Like with all of his cockamamie little stories, not one single aspect of this arc made any sense at all, on any level. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he wrote this one in his sleep, jotting down various fevered comic book dreams on a little notepad next to the bed then waking up and immediately committing them to paper as is.

 

A Hole (Where My Comic Book Shop Used To Be)

Link To Today’s Strip

That’s right FW readers, on “his way” to work at the Korner, Harry routinely passes by yet another comic book shop, “The Black Hole” owned and operated by “Nick The Geek”. I am assuming that Crazy must be taking the long way to work or something. Anyhow, the two morons lament the state of the comic book business, make a stupid comic book reference and (zzzzzzzzz). You’ve seen it all before, over and over again. And something tells me it won’t be the last time either.

Survival Of The Fleshiest

Today’s strip

Sigh. So THIS is what the last week’s worth of incoherent babbling and story-avoidance was all about…it was all about getting to Sunday so he could show off the latest fantasy comic book title that slowly oozed from his tortured comic book-fractured mind. It all almost kind of makes a certain degree of “sense” now. Relatively speaking, of course.

The cover itself isn’t so bad or anything, but that insert bubble is downright baffling. What’s so “exotic” about it? So it was all Brady’s idea? How does this have anything to do with the Starbuck Jones film? If you want the readers to see a particular character as a “wacko”, shouldn’t you actually show said character doing wacky things? You would assume that eventually these two stories would come together in some sort of way but nope, one went in this direction while the other one just kind of sat there doing nothing which IMO sort of defeats the entire purpose of the whole thing. If there even was a purpose, that is.

Novel Idea

I had no idea Les was teaching a class in comic books but it makes sense, considering Westview’s entire economy runs on the currency of comics, pizza and heartache.

It’s almost weird seeing Les without his yellow shirt in today’s strip— it’s like Charlie Brown without his striped shirt!

And the guy behind the counter sez “why the long box?”

Is today’s strip a clip show? Further examination reveals that none of the artwork in these panels is reused, but I had to double check, because this is the third day of the exact same conversation.

Cory continues to sell a mystery that we all stopped caring about after Tuesday’s haiku-legram read:

Cory sell comics
Looks bad but probably is
for decent purpose

I’m not sure why we need to receive this message every day. I guess it keeps Western Union in business.

All this time is not wasted, though. We do gain some insight into Cory’s life here, specifically about how little privacy he believes his mother will give him.