Tag: Darin

Butterfl-hio Effect

Today’s strip is a sobering reminder of just how tantalizingly close we came to completely avoiding the foul, intrusive neighbor that is the Starbuck Jones movie. If only Mason had never come to Ohio, none of this would have happened.

– Mason only came to Ohio, of course, because he met Les on the set of Lust For Lisa.
– Tempting as it is to pin this all on Les, he was only able to lure Mason to Ohio with Holly’s collection of “Starbuck Jones” comics.
– Holly’s “Starbuck Jones” collection only existed because Cory started it.
– Cory only started the collection because… well, Tom only knows that. Maybe something to do with his stepfather reading it when he was a kid…
– And Ohio is only a state because the British ceded it to the United States in the Treaty of Paris, which was only possible because the French ceded the Ohio Valley to the British after losing the French and Indian War.

“Fan” theory time:
Funky is still in a coma from that 2010 car wreck and everything that has happened since then has been a dream. It was immediately before the wreck when Starbuck Jones was first mentioned (Funky had to sell SJ issue #1 to cover Komix Korner’s overdue rent), everything else involving Starbuck Jones has occurred after the wreck. Also, think of all of the other outlandish things in this strip that have happened since that wreck, things that would have been unlikely before: the successful publication of Lisa’s Story and its national book tour and “Hollywood” chapters, Cayla’s appearance changes, Les’ love life, Cory becoming a soldier and a well-adjusted individual, Cindy comes crawling back to Ohio, Wally snags Rache and Buddy, Dick Tracy…

This theory is, of course, disgustingly unoriginal and incredibly stupid. But is it really worse than the alternative?

O-H! I-ugh…

Today’s strip simply confirms what we’ve all known since Monday, that this movie premiere is going to take place at “that damn Crankshaft theater”.

And we can all blame Jeff Murdoch, a passive-aggressive sad-sack who has never managed to elicit sympathy from readers despite constantly suffering under his mother and father-in-law, two of the nastiest and most despicable characters to have ever graced the comics page. We can also blame Batiukverse Twitter, which waived its character limit to allow Jeff to convey the following information in a single tweet (maybe he typed this all up in Notes and tweeted a photo, which is still contemptible):

– His first and last name
– His location
– The fact that he was a member of the Starbuck Jones Junior Spaceman Fan Club when he was a kid
– That he saw the original Starbuck Jones serial at the then-new Valentine Theater
– That his son now owns the Valentine Theater
– And that he thinks it would be a good place to hold the premiere of the new Starbuck Jones movies.

Given all of that, I’m surprised he didn’t mention how movie tickets only cost $0.10 when he first saw the Starbuck Jones serial, or how much he misses voting for Robert Taft Sr., or how great his old LaSalle ran.

Martin Mulls It Over

Greetings, SOSFers! It’s billytheskink here – your favorite lizard-named, Martin Mull-referencing, pointless trivia-posting, guest author.

I was wishing (and hoping, and thinking, and praying) that yesterday’s strip was the coda to this Comic-Con arc. It certainly looked like it could be. Unfortunately, it was a tease, and today’s strip takes us right back to yesterday’s ocean-side confab to discuss… the Starbuck Jones movie premiere. Goody, another week of this. That’s four straight weeks now.

A relative of mine had a baby back in June. That baby will be 8 weeks old at the end of this week. FW strips involving Starbuck Jones will have appeared during 65% of her life. This makes me incredibly sad.

Retcon Artist

SosfDavidO here, and it looks like the boys are back at Comic-Con in today’s strip. The human lamprey John is nowhere to be seen this time, however! He probably still owes them for the hotel from last year. That and the “Oh, my, I seem to have forgotten my wallet.” routine near the end of a pricey Comic-con hotel dinner was probably enough to give him the boot.

But enough about Dead Skunk Head. Let’s talk about Darin, who, up until he got reconned into being a Hollywood storyboard artist a few years ago had been reconned into a mobile applications developer. That’s right, lifelong passion for art and expensive animation school be damned, Pete asked him to come out to Hollywood and suddenly he’s shitting out major studio quality storyboards like he’d been doing it as long as people with decades of experience in the industry.

Time will tell if Tombat can handle Darin being an anonymous storyboard artist for long or if some director will look at him and say: “I don’t care if he’s had a lick of acting school, let’s make him the lead in the Starbucks Jones Junior Space Cadet series!”

Meanwhile, Wally, who has been struggling in school and trying to get his life together didn’t even get as much as a panel in yesterday’s 4th of July strip. Nope, instead we got a lame pun about sand. SAND.

I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

La Vida Patetico (Extended Disco Remix)

Link to today’s strip.

Oh. My. God.  Pete and Dullard are pathetic beyond my ability to measure.

Well, I guess working as a storyboard artist must pay pretty damned well.  The shipping and insurance alone on that garbage is probably going to be over two hundred dollars…especially if the treadmill is a fully-functional model that is being shipped fully assembled.  Although I doubt the treadmill “works.”  Museums don’t really tend to sell that kind of thing.

And when we last glimpsed Dullard’s house or apartment or whatever, it sure looked small–where is he going to keep that monstrosity?

Maybe they can turn Skyler’s room into a Flash Treadmill Room.  A phone call to the local orphanage would be the first step.  The orphanage in Westview is just bursting with inconvenient children; in California, I’m sure they’ll have no problems finding something similar.

As for the “dolly,” again I can’t comprehend the idea of wanting something like that.  It just seems (to me) like a huge waste of space, unless you’re running a comic book store.  Or unless you’re Chester the Chiseler and live alone in a giant mansion.  In that case, superhero statues are your best friends, and lord knows you can’t have too many of either, especially if one column has a big fat zero in it!

I originally was going to say that this whole arc reads like something from a huge Flash fan who happens to be five years old, but that just seems too mean, even for me.

I understand being a huge fan of something which has made you profoundly happy, and the urge to share that happiness by trying to share the fandom.  But there are ways to do that which work, and there are ways to do that which actually turn people off from the “something” you’re always on about.  This story does a good job of showing that Tom Batiuk is the world’s biggest fan of the Flash, and that he has no way of transmitting this enthusiasm (bordering on unhealthy obsession) to anyone else.

Note:  personally, I always thought that the Flash was a pretty cool superhero.  I only rarely read his comics but it seemed to me that they went out of their way to be scientifically plausible, and as a callow youth I appreciated that.  He’s even better in the animated Timmverse; the previously mentioned episode “Flash and Substance” is very entertaining.  Even better is “The Great Brain Robbery” where Flash and Lex Luthor switch minds.   Should I mention the best line in that episode?  No…cause I’m evil.

So, don’t let Tom Batiuk give you the idea that the flash is only for cretins, dimbulbs and creeps.  The Flash is one of the good ones.