Tag: Mason Jarr

Slow Motion Story Arc Too

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Wow, Mopey Pete sure can become a whirlwind of activity when something really stupid inspires him, you know? Just think, if Cliff had never sold that old decoder ring Pete never would have come up with the idea to stage an event where old SJ fans gather to talk about old decoder rings. It’s so funny how life works out that way, innit? Good thing he didn’t auction off his old SJ underpants too, or this arc could have taken an ugly, ugly turn very quickly.

I like how all this nostalgia-wallowing only serves to emphasize how Anger essentially wasted sixty years of his life living as a bitter old recluse for no reason whatsoever. But it’s all OK now as at long last he has a reason to celebrate the only noteworthy thing he ever did…sixty years ago. When you think about it like that it’s all incredibly depressing. And it’s also kind of depressing how a guy who’s been doing a daily comic strip for forty-four years could possibly create a new character this one-dimensional and shallow, although it’s certainly not surprising.

Pulling One Off

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The fine art of Batiuksturbation in all its glory. See, Pete bought that ring not knowing Cliff sold it and (zzzzzzzzz), other stuff, (zzzzzzz) and here we are with “everything” coming full circle again. In a way, I mean.

It’s a celebrity Q&A session where no one’s asking or answering any questions, how very novel. Everyone’s apparently just standing around gawking at a guy who, until a few weeks ago, was utterly and completely forgotten by everyone. “So Mr. Anger, what in God’s name have you been DOING for sixty years?”…”So, Mr. Anger, why did you leave showbiz?”…”Cliff, how did you afford to live in NYC for six decades with no visible means of support?”…”Pete, isn’t it true that you whined about having to visit Cleveland and that you had no interest in even seeing that old SJ movie?”…”Mason, does the studio still pay you while you’re off doing these bizarre things?”…nothing.

But there’s plenty of time to discuss (sigh) decoder rings, as obviously they played a huge, huge role in TheAuthor’s upbringing. Perhaps someday he’ll release a FW decoder ring which FW readers could use to make sense out of his rambling incoherent “stories”. It’d have to be quite a large ring, though.

Reporting For Doody, Sir!

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How very touching. See Cliff, they never forgot about you…except for that brief sixty year period between your final Starbuck Jones film and right now, that is. Just a few months ago these crappy old Starbuck Jones films were so obscure that even Pete, the nerdiest nerd who ever nerded, didn’t know about them (and he whined about having to see it in the first place). Yet now throngs of weirdos (all male, coincidentally enough) are pouring out of their hovels (and the WHS faculty lounge) to chant banal old catchphrases at a ninety year old guy in a spaceman suit. Did the films suddenly become popular again or did dozens of people suddenly remember they were the cornerstones of their childhoods or what? It’s all so typically Batiukian, something is, then suddenly it isn’t, then it’s both and sometimes neither.

What a weirdly specific-looking big-headed crowd, I (sort of) wonder who they’re all based upon? Those creepy big heads are just way too detailed to be accidental. Friends and associates is my best guess. Lucky them.

Boy, the Batiukverse is really in chaos now, particularly the timelines. FW is featuring an arc about an old 1950s B-movie star, which means these dorks are all agog over a guy whose “heyday” was over sixty or (if we’re still pretending it’s ten years from now) seventy years ago, long before the majority of them were even born. And nothing that’s happened in the strip would indicate why this is so.

Meanwhile “Fallen Star”-era Les Moore is talking about old books in Crankshaft, which I assumed was happening in the present day. So if it’s 2016 in the Crankverse and it’s 2026 in FW, the CS Les should be Les from ten years ago, when the strip was rolling along with its very special all-cancer format as we slowly waited and waited for Lisa to finally die. Even if it’s “now” in FW and ten years ago in CS it doesn’t add up correctly.

Let’s Give Him A Big Hand

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Once again we see the Great Author resorting to his usual time-killing tricks. They just can’t skip to the part where they do whatever they’re going to do at the Silver Grill, oh my heavens no. Instead he’ll eat up most if not all of the week by having the characters TALK ABOUT going to the Silver Grill. Which was firmly established days ago. Forget glacial, this thing is moving at the speed of human evolution now. Every time you think he’s found the slowest gear he drops it down another few notches, it’s unbelievable. If there’s a story to be told, BanTom will sidestep around that story until it ain’t no story no more.

Señor Offal

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“Senior officer”….oh, I get it. Because he’s OLD, right? Har-dee-f*cking-har har. With gags like that no wonder dozens of people all over the world love FW. You can see how Mason would have been a great Les Moore in “Lust For Lisa” given the way those horrible wordplay-based jokes just flow right out of his obnoxiously smirking mouth. The guy is grating on my nerves more and more with each appearance.

I like how the guy who remained an angry recluse for sixty years is suddenly strutting around in his SJ costume like he’s Adam West or something. SJ totally ruined his entire life but now he’s happily embracing it, all because a fifty year old blonde woman in tight pants lured her way into his apartment via the fire escape. Oh well, it’s not like it’s any more inconsistent than anything else going on in this thing. The SJ timeline is even more convoluted than the FW timeline is.

And consider this: we know nothing about Cliff Anger at all other than: he’s old, he lives in NYC and he played Starbuck Jones back in the 1950s. We don’t know a thing about his personality, his career, his life, nothing whatsoever. He exists solely so BanTom can wallow in more self-indulgent nostalgic comic book memories, the character might as well be a cardboard cut-out. He COULD have fleshed him out more, but in he opted to spend weeks on his favorite Crankshaft character, decoder rings and secret spaceman messages instead.

The point being that once again that big phony BanTom allows a perfectly fine premise to sift through his fingers like a handful of beach sand, preferring to take the nice, easy, lazy, hacky way out instead of spending twenty minutes cooking up a reasonable back story and some plausible dialog. IMO it just comes across as incredibly self-indulgent, he’s not even pretending to be writing this drivel for anyone but himself.