Tag: Darin

Quid Amateur Quo

Less than a week ago I marveled at how Batiuk had engineered a Hollywood screenwriting opportunity for recently fired comic book writer Pete. Today’s strip has me marveling at how wrong I was.

Charles
April 19, 2015 at 8:47 pm
…The suggested storyline is so absurd it’s insulting. The producers aren’t going to go to the lead actor to get recommendations for script doctors…and in the extreme situation where they do so, they’re not going to accept the suggestion when it turns out to be a rank amateur who just got his ass fired from a crappy comic book company.

Charles, I’ll go ya a couple better: how about an even more rank amateur, who, after dragging out the process of writing the screenplay (which he insisted on doing), decides it’s too much work and walks away, sinking the project while still getting paid? On the recommendation of the star’s new girlfriend?

Failing Up

No doubt TB means to suggest that a “Netbusters” movie is barely a notch above “straight to cell phone.”

Me, two days ago

OK, I stand corrected: they are equivalent. For once, Batiuk seems to have achieved synchronicity between seemingly divergent plotlines, and the results are just as implausible as you’d expect. Pete, who sat practically mute as his editors shitcanned him, vents at length to his Skype wife Darin (these guys are too cutting edge to just talk over the phone; anyway, Pete’s panel 3 air quotes would be lost in translation).

“The Hollywood writers don’t know how to handle superheroes…” This has to be the most howlingly funny and asinine thing that TB has written in years. Comic book adaptions continue to be among the biggest-grossing movies year after year, and probably not on the strength of the writing. Mason Jarr the movie star, because he has just so much clout in this town, decides that the answer is to “bring in some fresh talent” from the comical books. This of course spells opportunity for Pete Reynaldo, freshly chewed up and spit out by New York, whose epic struggles vs. deadlines should play just fine with the studio.

Incom-Pete-nce

Fired? Pete’s been fired?

Welcome to CloudFunkyCuckooLand, folks. Batiuk has at long last thrown off the bowlines and sailed away at last from the harbor of continuity and logic.

Sure, the editors tasked him with taking Mister Sponge in a “darker and grittier” direction, but the clone idea was Pete’s own, and he enthusiastically sold it to his bosses. When, as they anticipated, controversy ensues, his editors reassure Pete that his story has “lit up the internet” and put sales of their comic book “over the moon.” They outline a plan (presumably involving Pete) to further boost revenue by spinning the one title into three. When Pete predictably complains about the increased workload (his current output is already enough to trigger Pete’s psychoses), his nerdbosses calmly throw him overboard in favor of the Netbusters guy.

Suddenly jobless and 400 miles from home, Pete is concerned not for himself but for the “poor readers,” represented by Owen in a panel 3 which presumably takes place months hence: the same Owen who was devastated to learn that his absorbent and yellow and porous hero had been “retcloned” has dutifully shelled out for all three of the resulting comics and pronounces them “cool.”

Basket Case

Happy Easter, gang, and a tip of the ol’ SoSF Easter bonnet to Epicus and SoSFDavidO for their guest stints over the last several weeks! Your pal TFH is stepping in to ramp up the “festivities” marking the fifth anniversary of Son of Stuck Funky this week!

Before laying eyes on today’s tableau, I’d have wagered that today’s holiday would have passed unremarked (as it is in today’s Crankshaft, but then Easter 10 years ago might have fallen on a different Sunday). Despite the abundance of baskets, bunnies, and eggs, this scene suggests Christmas (specifically the Epiphany) more than Easter, as Westview’s Holy Family is surrounded by the Magi bearing gifts. I recognized dowdy, nondescript Kerry, Fred’s daughter from his first marriage, though she’s not been seen since Thanksgiving 2013. It took me a lot longer to surmise that the big smirking blonde to the right is Jessica’s mom Jan Murdoch Darling (you’re welcome).

Anyway, it’s a good thing for Skyler that this mob showed up bearing baskets, else he’d have had to content himself with that pitiful tiny basket before him, which I don’t think even contains any chocolate—that green rabbit’s probably made of carob or some crap. It’s certain that the basket’s chintzy size has less to do with “keeping Skyler away from candy”—on one of the two big candy holidays all year, for goodness’ sake—and everything to do with Boy Lisa’s meager Montoni’s salary.

Ex-Sponged

Link to today’s strip.

Well, Darin sure looks dumbfounded by today’s revelation, but I suspect that’s his default state anyway.   And across town, at Mega Comics headquarters, that one editor (who looks like Sesame Street’s Grover has shaved his face) looks equally astonished.   He may be thinking, “Haven’t we gone over this road several dozen times in comics?  Spider-Man was a clone for a while…comic books these days seem packed to the gills with clones…”

(That’s my hazy recollection.  Unlike some I could name, I haven’t followed comics for several decades so all my info is second-hand.)

GroverShave may also be thinking something along the lines of, “Say, isn’t this a really stupid idea?  Why would a hero’s arch-enemy clone that hero, rather than kill him?  Is the clone programmed to let Doctor Centipede free just as he’s about to capture him?  Isn’t that kind of annoying, having his schemes stopped all the time by his own creation?  Should Pete go back to his old job of bringing us coffee, while simultaneously shutting up?”

And here we have the number one problem with “tell, don’t show.”  Since we’ve never had a glimpse of The Amazing Mister Sponge (or TAMS for short), much less any hint of his adventures, none of this means anything to anyone.  So what if TAMS is a clone?  It changes nothing.  Our lives, hitherto untouched by TAMS, have not had their courses altered in the slightest by this latest development.   Even the characters here are just chatting–there’s certainly no hint at all of Pete bemoaning that he is being asked to change the nature of his signature character into something else.  There’s no sense of loss, or dreams slipping away, or anything…it’s just another day for Pete, and like most days, it ends with your creations ground down under commercial pressures.

Or so we assume, again.  Pete looks excited in the last panel, but is that because the idea appeals to him, or is he simply desperate to keep his job?  Without a hint, we’re just looking at bad drawings spouting bad dialogue, with nothing to tie either to any human experience.

I hate to say it, but the scenario below has more of a connection with an audience–any audience.

Yes…above, everything revolves around Les, as Tom Batiuk clearly wants.  But at least in this scenario, there’s someone we can hate.  The Amazing Mister Sponge?  I have no opinion about him one way or the other.  I’ve been given no opportunity to form an opinion of any kind…which, given the reception Mr. Batiuk’s work usually gathers, may be by design.