Tag: Darin

The Turning of the Tables

Link to today’s strip.

Now, this is curious.   Presumably, Cigar McBalding is the guy who founded Batom Comics.

Let me just repeat that:  Cigar McBalding is the guy who founded Batom Comics.

Here, his staff is all but openly insulting him, already positive that whatever idea he’s about to present is absolute garbage.

In real life, Tom Batiuk is the guy who founded Batom Comics.

And I’m going to guess that he has a staff.

I don’t want to draw too many conclusions…

Is this a cry for help?

How can a person, who only listens to himself, cry for help?  That seems like an interesting philosophical conundrum, which I leave to the philosophers among you to ponder.

(Who says I have to post things that are 8000 words long?  Enjoy my brevity, fellow snarkers!)

Deja Doom

Link to today’s strip.

Oh good heavens…are we all trapped in Hell, where we have to relive things over and over again, until we’re forgiven and allowed to pass into purgatory?  Didn’t we just go through all this “back in the day” stuff?  In fact–isn’t Pete’s dialogue in panel two an exact repetition of what he said before?  (I’d look it up, myself, but I’m starting to feel a distinct aversion to going through old Funky Winkerbean strips.  Life being short and all.)

How much padding does Tom Batiuk need to get to that 50th anniversary?  Wait–don’t answer that!

Well, since we must, I’m guessing the answer is…a lot.

As for today’s day-old bread, again, I posit thus:  that Pete here is merely a clerk-typist, tasked with putting the real screenwriter’s handwritten notes into proper script format.   After all, he’s never been to a script meeting, and none of the producers have ever come by to chat about the project, even though he’s in the same building and everything.

I think he was hired because Mason wanted to do Cindy a favor, and CME thought Mason was valuable enough that he could be indulged a bit.  But when they got his first draft, things went sour (“What the hell is this about sponges?  And clones of sponges?  And why does Starbuck Jones have so many soliloquies railing against short-sighted editors?”) and he was quietly moved out of the writer’s chair into something more attuned to his abilities.

As for Darin, I have no idea why he’s even here.  Storyboards are typically done when there’s a reasonably final version of the script in place; there’s no point in paying someone to draw out sequences that may never be passed out of committee, let alone see the light of film.  (Particularly for a firm that produces cable-TV movies, most of which are cancelled.)

That sort of thing is nowadays called “pre-visualization” and I think it’s beyond Darin’s abilities–after all, you have to imagine something that works, rather than assuming failure right out of the gate, and no one from Westview has that talent.

Meanwhile, In Another Circle of Hell…

Link to today’s strip

Greetings, folks, BChasm back for another round in the chair.  Let’s see if we can get it to spin!

So, The New Darin and Cindy (looking very close to her “appearance-complaints” in panel one) are leaving Westview, returning to the glamour of Hollywood.  Ah Hollywood, where Cindy works at a company that seems like someone’s thinly-veiled YouTube channel, and The New Darin stars in made-for-TV fare that is invariably cancelled.   Can’t you just smell the stardom?

As a coda, we get Pete and The Old Darin facing the reality of every town in the Funkyverse–the fact that there is no escape from the horror that pervades every moment of life.  There are always those Philistines who refuse to see genuine art for its value, and instead look to crassly commercialize it by sinking black, oozing claws into it until it starts laying deadly golden eggs.   Golden eggs full of poison gas.

Kinda looks like The Old Darin has cut off his arm, there, though I’m sure that’s just an unfortunate colorist’s choice.   On the other hand, the carefully crafted punchline is really stupid–“changes to the changes” are still changes to the script, “changes to the script” being something that absolutely every movie, TV-movie, and TV series goes through every single time one is made.

In fact, there are so many revisions to a given script that those new pages are printed on different colored paper so that everyone can know exactly where they should be “on the page.”  It’s been this way for decades…though usually this happens either during rehearsals (to iron out difficult lines, or block stage business) or on the set (a location isn’t available, an actor quits, a character is dropped, etc).  Neither of which can be the case because 1) the damned star of the movie is swooning around in Ohio, and 2) so far as we know, there is no script yet.  And they’re not going to send our a crew to do second unit stuff until they’ve got something like a completed script.

Which brings me to a greater question–apparently at Cable Movie Entertainment, they hold script meetings where revisions are discussed.  Why in the Hell don’t they invite the screenwriter to these meetings?  Why are changes to the script a complete surprise to him?  He was hired, after all, because as a comic book writer he has some expertise in the field–why wouldn’t he be at these meetings?   He’s not unavailable or living in some distant city–he’s just down the hall.  It makes no sense to exclude him, in fact it seems to piss him off quite a bit.

Pete should be at all these meetings.  He should know about all the revisions, be able to contribute, and–more importantly–he should be able to shape those revisions, if he’s smart.  Not just negatively–“Well, Starbuck Jones wouldn’t do that, he’s got a code of honor”–but also positively–“Well, if you show the approaching Zergian ship, that’s another toy you could have in shops when the movie opens–vehicles are always big sellers…my pal Darin can sketch a rough of the ship for you.”  (Good one, Pete, you’ve come up with some dollar value, they’ll listen to your opinions now.)

There’s only one real answer.  Pete isn’t the screenwriter on the Starbuck Jones movie.  He’s just one of the typists.

Youth will be served… Pepperoni

Oh good grief… Funky had to go and open up the can of worms that is Durwood’s age in today’s strip.

Holly does her level best to draw my fire away with a “joke” related to the major Christian holiday that is NOT the one less than a week away, but it is to no avail. I’m sure Jessica’s laughing was annoying and Holly’s joke succeeded in quieting her down, but the statement that set up the joke remains. When commenting about how young Darin and Jess look, one ought have a rough idea of how young they are. Instead, we have this:

If you can do better, you are quite welcome to try.

Dashing in Darin, Outrageously Blaring

SURPRISE!
Today’s strip features Mason’s evil twin, back from his supposed death at the La Brea Tar Pits.

Wait, sorry, that’s not right. HERE AS EXPECTED! It’s Durwood, who we should have expected because TB has taken a major interest in him this year. He’s been a major player in 6 story arcs in 2015 (based on mentions in SOSF’s excellent arc-by-arc summaries), more than Crazy, Lefty, Dinkle, Owen and Cody… as many as Summer and Cayla got combined, and they essentially shared two of theirs. Every single one of these appearances deals with essentially one thing, by the way, his ability to illustrate comics and storyboards. Yet, we have not once actually seen this ability in the entirety of Act III.

SURPRISE! Pop quiz!
When returning to your hometown for Christmas or some other holiday occasion, whom do you visit first?

A. The wife and child you left behind to move west for work, the former whom you haven’t seen in nearly a month and the latter whom you haven’t seen since August.

B. The parents who adopted you and raised you from infancy, one of whom is crippled and surely difficult for the other to take care of.

C. Your former high school teacher who was married to your biological mother and who allowed you to live in his house for quite a while when you and your wife returned to town. Your half-sister may or may not be there too.

D. Your former boss and landlord and his wife at their dingy pizza joint.