Tag: Holtron

Wow, Stan Lee Dropped By

Today’s strip wasn’t available for preview, so I’m just guessing that involves a now very awkward appearance Stan Lee dropping by Atomik Komix and promising to do a signing at Komix Korner.

Does anyone doubt that the entire purpose of this week was this “gag” right here?  “Haha, I can have a crane company named after someone named Crane!  It’d be hilarious.  Hmm . . . what’s a plausible reason why someone in this strip would need a crane . . . I guess I could have Funky lifted out of his house because he’s so fat.  But no, I’ll save that for the finale . . . I’ve got it!  Comic books!  Someone could need to lift something heavy into the comic book store!”

If someone sent Batiuk a copy of “The Mammoth Book of Corny, Slightly Punny Names” I have a strong feeling he’d use it as material for the rest of his strip.  Stuff like this is what would be a background Easter egg in a Pixar movie that most people wouldn’t even notice.  But Batiuk tends to put it front and center and repeat it over and over.  “Get it?!  It’s funny!”  What are the odds we’re going to see “Buster’s Crabs” at least once the next time there’s a Hollywood arc?  And Crankshaft is doing a bowling story so I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing “Margo Lanes” over and over.  I also look forward to the next couple of weeks, when they hire the “Frasier Crane Co.” to remove Holtron from the Komix Korner and the “Niles Crane Co.” to put it back in Atomik Komix (how did they not have any issues getting it down the multiple flights of stairs in that building?).

Quasi Fake Humor

“. . . it’s worth more now as a quasi fake computer than it was a real computer”.

This has to take the prize as most awkward, crappy sentence in the history of Funky Winkerbean, if not comic strips as a whole. I mean, wow. There’s a word just obviously missing “as a real computer”, for starters, showcasing the lack of crap-giving on the author’s part and the fact that nobody else reads these strips before they’re printed. Then there’s just the fact that so many words mean literally nothing. It’s now a “quasi fake” computer? What does “quasi fake” even mean? It’s either fake or not. It’s like saying Lisa was “quasi dead”. If anything it’s more of a real computer now, since before it was blatantly cartoony, making wisecracks, and now it’s just an Alexa/Siri knockoff. Take a bow, Tom Batiuk, this has to be your peak.
Oh, and Chester apparently has something worth two-million dollars sitting around the abandoned old building where Pete and Darin work all day. And somehow a piece of junk from a movie a year ago is now worth millions of dollars.

No, It’s a Different Holtron

It’s also the Holtron that until recently was sitting around totally unused and forgotten in a random Westview High classroom, so I don’t see how it’s worth getting all worked up about. But of course like everything else to do with the Starbuck Jones movie, it’s the most awesome, mind-blowing thing ever, even though we have no idea why, since none of the actual movie was ever shown.

And what the hell?  Darin is apparently a computer programmer now?  And one so advanced he can reprogram a computer from the seventies to have internet connectivity and respond to voice command?  I’m amazed to be saying this, but apparently his talents are seriously wasted.  He got an MBA, works as an artist, and is an expert computer programmer?  I know he did the “pizza app” and all but just completely changing your characters on a whim for a “gag” like this is silly.

It’s super weird how Batiuk brought back Holtron and keeps using it regularly, when he has so many other unresolved plots and totally forgotten characters. I’d be shocked if there was anyone reading this strip who rejoiced when Holtron came back.
What’s totally typical for Batiuk is making what is apparently an Amazon Echo joke about five years after the Echo first came out, though.

Hai heel ku

Editor Mindy
Continues in today’s strip
Change her job title

“Here’s the first cover
That Darin drew featuring
Armorilla!” close…

Mindy is concerned
With realistic foot pain
In superheroes?

She’s only girl here
But what Women’s Lib does
Not know won’t hurt them

Oh hello Holtron!
Surely you have opinions
On comics for Pete

It amazes me
That TB writes his dream job
As an unfun slog

Dry Drowning

Today’s strip is finally up.

I was desperately hoping that my return to the writer’s helm after months of this meandering nonsense would be the magical talisman to break this unending inanity. I was there when this plot started in February, and maybe now it could end.

No such luck. Pete is plodding along on his Cosmic Treadmill…using awful word association to come up with cut-rate characters. I’m sure that the Floodlight, or the Floodmaster, or Floody McFlooderson the World’s Wettest Woman, will be nothing more than a name, a costume, a gimmick, and an even worse arch nemesis with drought powers. No Batman or Captain America levels of backstory, built in angst, creeds, and psychological insight. Just a stupid idea, personified.

Floods of biblical proportions can’t drown shallow characters. They’re hollow and insubstantial rising to the top and clinging together in a choking mat of garbage.

Yes I am comparing TomBat’s idea of ‘comicbook characters’ with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.