Tag: comic books

Shanks on a plane

In today’s strip, Pete puts his Starbuck Jones comic down long enough to wistfully look out the window as his plane prepares to land at Van Nuys Airport. He looks remarkably content and fairly happy, how many weeks do you give that?

For SOSF’s resident beady-eyed nitpickers, Pete appears to be reading a copy of Starbuck Jones #115. This is a key issue, as Starbuck’s little blue rabbit-like pal dies in the vacuum of space because Starbuck took him out onto a disintegrating asteroid without a space suit.

Glean On Me

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Mason’s been in town for a day or two and he’s already making with the wry remarks and the eyebrows like he’s Les Moore’s long-lost half-brother or something. Also note how he’s in the proper comic book reading position, on the floor like a child. And how the hell is he speaking without opening his mouth in that last panel? He’s seriously going to read four hundred SJ comics (including all bronze, silver, gold, platinum and diamond keys with corresponding ashcans) on Holly’s sofa? Good lord, this arc could take years to finish…IF he decides to finish it at all, that is. Because he might not, you know.

Today’s punchline references events presumably taking place in the pages of a fictional comic book that only fictional comic strip characters have read. Think about that for a moment. These disturbing comic book fantasies of his have progressed to the point where he’s basing jokes upon scenes that only exist in his mind. Obviously his “vision” of SJ includes lots of property damage, which makes it all very amusing to him, but what good does that do anybody else? We’re reaching a point where you have to understand the inner workings of BanTom’s comic book-addled brain in order to decipher the dialog and make sense of the jokes. We’re through the looking glass here, people.

Coming later this year: Having gained eighty pounds during his stay, Mason decides to quit showbiz in favor of staying in Westview. He moves into Les’ house and takes the longbox delivery job at Komix Korner. Then, after wrecking the Kornermobile in an accident, an MRI reveals a brain tumor. Then the story abruptly cuts to Owen complaining about the cafeteria food and Mason isn’t mentioned again until a scene where we see his tombstone in the background of an unrelated panel on Mother’s Day.

And this concludes my latest SoSF stint. Thanks to TFH, the SoSF staff and most of all, you, the snarkers who make it all possible. Stay tuned for our next guest host and a virtual font of obscure FW knowledge…billytheskink! Good luck and godspeed, billy!

A Game-Laming Arc

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I told ya, a big box of f*cking comic books. Any military folks out there care to tell us what would happen if you were deployed in Afghanistan and requested emergency “celebrity coming to my mom’s house to read comic books” leave? I’m guessing the answer would somehow involve push-ups, lots of potatoes and/or mops, if not an involuntary psych hold.

Then there’s the art, where Cory is twelve, Holly has Crankshaft’s schnozz and the backgrounds are blank and sort of surreal looking. What, is drawing the Winkerbean’s living room just too challenging or something? The guy draws thousands of bricks but can’t manage a lamp and a table? And Holly’s deranged comic book collecting fantasy dialog is overshadowed by the Corporal’s cruel jibe about her obesity. I thought he’d outgrown that sort of thing, although she did have it coming after all that “platinum key” bullshit she started spewing. Call it a draw there.

But the really noteworthy thing here is that Holly has apparently already given Cory the SJ collection “off-screen”, so to speak. That’s right, after a year of premise-flogging and idiotic comic book collecting fantasies, the Great Author totally blew off the big emotional climax and premise-resolving scene of his own story. It’s laughably inept “storytelling” at its worst, the intelligence-murdering work of the laziest madman ever set loose on the funny pages. There’s no need to ever “expose” him as a hack with a total disregard for his (assumed) readers, it’s all right there on the freaking page.

I was going to say that someone should tell Mason that it’s a SJ movie, not a SJ collecting movie. But (shudder) what if it IS a SJ collecting movie? You know, where Mason plays a demented SJ collector forced to navigate the seedy comic book collecting underground and so on. While I seriously doubt BanTom would go that far, I definitely wouldn’t bet against it because you just never know with FW.

Take The Long Box Home

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Oh brother. DT and Sam are actually using a WPD vehicle to deliver comic books? Another example of Westviewian tax dollars at work. Nice jawline on DT in the last panel, you could chip ice with that profile. I don’t have a protractor handy but that looks like a 90 degree angle to me. And Holly looks like the world’s worst female impersonator today, especially in that last panel. Yikes.

But as shoddy as the artwork may be, it’s nothing compared to the incomprehensible dialog, which makes no sense whatsoever. First of all, Holly isn’t selling the comic books, Komix Korner is. Second, I don’t recall Holly “learning” anything at all during the Comic-Con arc, as all she did was stand around confusedly while looking stupid. And I’m 100% certain she knew how to do that long before she went to San Diego.

The best line of all, though, is DT’s bit about the “shadiness” of comic book geeks. For a guy who loves comic books as much as BanTom does, he sure has a negative opinion of, well, pretty much everyone else into or involved with the hobby. I guess what he’s trying to say here is that even though they may look and behave like a bunch of filthy disgusting morons, it’s the comic book memories in their hearts that truly matter…or something. I’m not really sure and at this point I’m WAY too sick of comic f*cking books to ponder it for even a millisecond longer. And anyhow, if the guy writing the story has no idea what it means what chance do I have of figuring it out?

No Good Deed Goes Un-Comic Booked

Link To Today’s Strip

So Holly somehow topped Chester The Chiseler’s $50,000 bid in order to repay John for helping her to acquire a bunch of Starbuck Jones comic books for nothing? And now John owes Holly at least $50,001 for the favor? Welcome to BanTom’s whacked-out comic book-centric fantasy world, where happiness is bagged, slabbed, tagged and longboxed. There’s no need to point out the gigantic logic holes here, as the entire thing is a huge logic hole. I don’t mean this story specifically, I mean the entire strip.

Get a load of Skunky’s unbridled joy upon learning that he now owes Holly a cool fifty grand. Why, he’s just like a kid whose parents put themselves into crippling debt to buy him a candy store! I certainly hope Holly hides the vodka and firearms BEFORE she informs Funky about this rather implausible development, or we’ll be re-visiting Act II before you know it.

And, uh, what happened to Dick Tracy? It’s like the big crossover never even happened, which in a way it kind of didn’t, now that I think about it. Oh well, at least it didn’t involve Les in any way, thank God.