Tag: Marianne Winters

Dullholland Drive

Charles
December 10, 2016 at 6:04 am
Well, I thought it before, but this makes it abundantly clear. Marianne, the beautiful, successful and deeply desired actress was intentionally drawn to look like Summer Moore. Put a hoodie on her and no one would be able to tell the difference.

Your wish has been granted! Anyone lucky enough to have not read FW since late January, when we last saw Summer, would look at yesterday’s and today’s strip and suppose that dark haired gal to be Summer Moore (and “Mom” to be Cayla, having at last turned completely Caucasian).

Batiuk attempts another punny headline, either unaware of or ignoring the more common usage of the slang term “mooning.” Unless we’re to believe that it’s Summer, I mean, Ms. Winters, who misunderstands the context and thinks she’s been accused of flashing her ass at Mason.

Well gang, I’ve survived my fortnight at the SoSF desk, and I’m more than delighted to turn things over to billytheskink! If you’re in New York City this afternoon (Sunday) around three, I’ll be among the 500 tuba, euphonium, sousaphone, and baritone players taking part in the 43rd Annual Tubachristmas at Rockefeller Center (pregame at the Pig ‘n’ Whistle on W. 48th).

Happy Holidays and a Funky New Year, everyone!
From Son of Stuck Funky and TFH.

Well, That De-escalated Quickly!

Sorry, snarkers: the catfight between Cindy and Marianne will not be televised, or uh, comic-strip-tized, uh…we don’t get to see it. It doesn’t happen, apparently, because Mason’s explained to Cindy that it’s not as it seems, and very quickly and convincingly, too. This plotline has become a complete shit show, even by Batiuk’s nonexistent standards. He spends months setting up this conflict between Cindy and Marianne, brings it to a climax in the most contrived way, and then Mason explains it all away and Cindy buys it…offscreen. The paternalistic Director Guy chimes in: “Hey! Hold it down, kids. Don’t get excited! (Who’s excited?) We’ve already put out a corrected story.” Who’s “we“? Don’t “corrected stories” come from the source of the incorrect story? Is he talking about their publicist? “We” have no idea. Nor have we any idea why that massive-headed freak in panel 3—we’ll have to assume it’s Marianne in a “wife beater” undershirt—is just now seeing and is completely aghast at the “DMZ” story.

Disengaged

All of you who laughted at Frankie’s paparazzi skills will admit that the shot he took of Mason and Marianne on her mom’s porch came out pret-ty clear from about a hundred feet away! What’s not so clear is why Mason’s referred to as “newly engaged,” as it’s been almost a year since he and Cindy announced their betrothal. The “news crawl” across the bottom of the panels is a nice touch, though “MASON JARRE FLINGS FIANCÉE FOR FLING” reads less like TMZ and more like a Variety front page hed from the first Starbuck Jones era.

The Winters Of Our Non-Content

Link to today’s strip

That hair strand invading the word balloon in panel three is one of the single most enraging things I’ve ever seen. And Marianne’s peculiarly proportioned body probably says a lot about the artist responsible for drawing it, the less said there the better. The biggest question at this point is how long can Frankie continue to make that ominously sneering face? Is that his default expression now? Did he remember to lock up the Food Film truck before he left? And why did Mason and Marianne leave the front door open like that?  Mysteries abound.

The dialog today is really bottom of the barrel though. Hey, remember back before Marianne was a real character, back when she was still a mysterious home-wrecking vixen? Me either. Turns out she’s just an ordinary girl with a solid set of good old fashioned mid-central-Ohioian values who just happens to live in Hollywood with her adorable stereotypical mom, that’s all. As always, BatNom grinds everything down until there’s not a single edge of entertainment left, just a smooth flat bland surface full of contrived dialog and stupid smirks.

Jarre Adore

Link to today’s strip

Finally. And what a payoff! It turns out that Mrs. Winters is a frumpy, Westviewian-bodied, patented Tomban “cute mom”-type who probably has the milk, cookies and comic books on the coffee table already. That BanTom, never afraid to firmly stick with what works.

Meanwhile we can probably assume that the perennially disappointing Frankie will use the dismal lighting at Marianne’s mom’s house to his advantage via the magic of those darn computer machines they make these days and create a scandalous video he’ll sell to DMZ for cash-money-profit. I guess he’ll use some sort of filter to rein in Mrs. Winters…uh…”ample” behind to match Marianne’s painfully bony and weirdly angular body type. Absolutely brilliant.  God I just want to punch this comic strip so hard sometimes, you know?

Seriously though, how much would some gossip outlet really be willing to pay for something like this? Maybe ten thousand dollars or thereabouts? I just can’t see how Frankie breaks even here, much less makes a profit at this. And I still don’t understand his motive here, did he choose the SJ production because it’s the next big thing and just happened to run into Darin by chance or did he choose to target SJ because Boy Lisa works there? Because right now Frankie is a guy who laid out what had to have been many tens of thousands of dollars at the least to obtain a piece of gossip worth a fraction of that, for no established reason other than he just does stuff like that sometimes. As usual, none of the pieces fit together at all and everything contradicts everything else.