Tag: Holtron

Holt Rides in a Volt

Whatever else new artist Rick Burchett brings to this strip, he knows how to draw a realistic, modern looking car. And he can draw the occupants seated comfortably inside, not pressed up against the windshield. Good job!

While the artwork’s (marginally) improved, the writing hasn’t changed. Phil Holt is such a comics legend that he’s instantly recognizable; quite a feat for anyone not named Stan Lee. Yet he bitterly dismisses his life’s work as “just junk.” “Now there was this young fella back in the day, walked in off the street…’Tom’ something, ‘Tom…Batty-yuck’. From Ohio. Showed me his portfolio. Great stuff, much better then my work. Told ‘im thanks but no thanks! Shit, he’d have had my job!”

Of course it’s up to Darin, the high school newspaper comics legend, to cheer up Mr. Holt, and it seems to work. Hopefully he’ll omit the part about the Comic-Con attendee who called Phil’s namesake “an old-fashioned piece of junk.”

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?

Take My Sanity! All Of It!

Link to today’s strip

Yay! Comic book geeks are SO STUPID…amirite? It’s all about the Benjamins…or in this case, the Washingtons and Lincolns. The Cartoon Conan-led Q&A session appears to be over, thank God, as we’re finally at long last almost at the point where the characters will begin to discuss the possibility of the SJ movie eventually someday being released, eventually. And I, like all FW readers, am SO STOKED to hear the various characters talking about how great the unseen movie was before they return to filming more and more and more of them, over and over and over again. Yay!

I’ve always marveled at the way BatNom always includes just a touch of cynical disdain toward everything he loves. Writing and marching bands are torture, comic book collectors are weirdos, Comic-Con is packed with oddballs, Montoni’s pizza isn’t very good, the band box never works and so on. Like today, he can’t just wrap up the SJ Q&A panel on a solid upbeat exciting note, he had to take the time to remind everyone that at the end of the day it’s merely all about money. It’s like he just can’t help himself, there always HAS to be another shoe involved, it always HAS to end on a downbeat note. Sure, it’s just a dumb failed gag in a dumb failed comic strip but still, it’s so predictable and weird.

Too Much Junk Business

Link to today’s strip

This is one of those strips it took me a while to figure out, as at first glance I was totally baffled. OK, apparently they’re doing an audience Q&A session and one of the audience members felt the need to lob rather unimaginative insults at the old WHS computer which, out of completely nowhere, has suddenly become a relevant character again. Continue reading “Too Much Junk Business”

Just Holtron To What You’ve Got

Link to today’s strip

Holtron? What? Are we pretending that the old Act I WHS school computer is sentient again? Why? This is just achingly bad, intelligence-insultingly bad, BAD bad and not in the “good” Michael Jackson way either. What the f*ck is Cliff smirking about and what’s up with Marianne? She looks like she’s about to gnaw on some logs or something there. This whole Comic-Con SJ Q&A panel premise hasn’t just gone off the rails, it’s gone off the rails, plummeted down a steep cliff and landed with a huge splash in a sewage treatment retention pond.