Today’s strip was not available for preview. Odds on potential happenings in the strip are posted below:
3-1 Cindy’s exclusive interview with Mason begins
1-1 Les, hanging around despite having no role in said interview, smirks
7-1 Appearance by the green pitcher
27-1 Appearance by the Montoni’s pie case
6-1 Starbuck Jones is mentioned
12-1 “Lust for Lisa” is mentioned
250-1 A cameraman will be present to record the interview
0.5-1 Nothing
1,000,000,000,000,000-1 Humor
Hey SoSFers, billytheskink here for my second tour of duty. Please bear with my pointless observations and references that usually only I find amusing and continue your excellent snark and discussion in the comments.
So much, and yet, ultimately, so little is going on in today’s strip.
Let us start with the so little, for those whose memories were fried by the back-to-batiuk Dick Tracy and Crankshaft crossovers, this is the auspicious beginning of the interview with Mason that Les arranged for Cindy. Today they are introduced… and that’s it. Mason is remarkable cheerful bout meeting Cindy, considering that this interview basically is happening because of the silent threat that Cindy might reveal Mason’s presence in Westview on the Cleveland evening (Clevening?) news. Funky’s comment is perhaps supposed to give us the idea that Mason’s cheer has to do with Cindy’s looks, but considering that she does not move an inch between the panels I think it is just as likely that TB accidentally put a space between “in” and “action”.
On to the so much…
– This is probably the first time in 30 years that a man kissing a woman’s hand wearing a Members Only jacket has been called “charming”.
– I just now noticed that the Montoni’s man on Funky’s apron is really just a dismembered head and hands.
– Cindy is pulling off the difficult one-handed awkward turtle in panel 2.
– She is also remarkably calm having her hand so close to Mason’s face. Look at thing, you could cut a roast on it.
– The green pitcher is always a welcome sight amidst the general schmuckery that occurs at Montoni’s.
Mason’s been in town for a day or two and he’s already making with the wry remarks and the eyebrows like he’s Les Moore’s long-lost half-brother or something. Also note how he’s in the proper comic book reading position, on the floor like a child. And how the hell is he speaking without opening his mouth in that last panel? He’s seriously going to read four hundred SJ comics (including all bronze, silver, gold, platinum and diamond keys with corresponding ashcans) on Holly’s sofa? Good lord, this arc could take years to finish…IF he decides to finish it at all, that is. Because he might not, you know.
Today’s punchline references events presumably taking place in the pages of a fictional comic book that only fictional comic strip characters have read. Think about that for a moment. These disturbing comic book fantasies of his have progressed to the point where he’s basing jokes upon scenes that only exist in his mind. Obviously his “vision” of SJ includes lots of property damage, which makes it all very amusing to him, but what good does that do anybody else? We’re reaching a point where you have to understand the inner workings of BanTom’s comic book-addled brain in order to decipher the dialog and make sense of the jokes. We’re through the looking glass here, people.
Coming later this year: Having gained eighty pounds during his stay, Mason decides to quit showbiz in favor of staying in Westview. He moves into Les’ house and takes the longbox delivery job at Komix Korner. Then, after wrecking the Kornermobile in an accident, an MRI reveals a brain tumor. Then the story abruptly cuts to Owen complaining about the cafeteria food and Mason isn’t mentioned again until a scene where we see his tombstone in the background of an unrelated panel on Mother’s Day.
And this concludes my latest SoSF stint. Thanks to TFH, the SoSF staff and most of all, you, the snarkers who make it all possible. Stay tuned for our next guest host and a virtual font of obscure FW knowledge…billytheskink! Good luck and godspeed, billy!
I told ya, a big box of f*cking comic books. Any military folks out there care to tell us what would happen if you were deployed in Afghanistan and requested emergency “celebrity coming to my mom’s house to read comic books” leave? I’m guessing the answer would somehow involve push-ups, lots of potatoes and/or mops, if not an involuntary psych hold.
Then there’s the art, where Cory is twelve, Holly has Crankshaft’s schnozz and the backgrounds are blank and sort of surreal looking. What, is drawing the Winkerbean’s living room just too challenging or something? The guy draws thousands of bricks but can’t manage a lamp and a table? And Holly’s deranged comic book collecting fantasy dialog is overshadowed by the Corporal’s cruel jibe about her obesity. I thought he’d outgrown that sort of thing, although she did have it coming after all that “platinum key” bullshit she started spewing. Call it a draw there.
But the really noteworthy thing here is that Holly has apparently already given Cory the SJ collection “off-screen”, so to speak. That’s right, after a year of premise-flogging and idiotic comic book collecting fantasies, the Great Author totally blew off the big emotional climax and premise-resolving scene of his own story. It’s laughably inept “storytelling” at its worst, the intelligence-murdering work of the laziest madman ever set loose on the funny pages. There’s no need to ever “expose” him as a hack with a total disregard for his (assumed) readers, it’s all right there on the freaking page.
I was going to say that someone should tell Mason that it’s a SJ movie, not a SJ collecting movie. But (shudder) what if it IS a SJ collecting movie? You know, where Mason plays a demented SJ collector forced to navigate the seedy comic book collecting underground and so on. While I seriously doubt BanTom would go that far, I definitely wouldn’t bet against it because you just never know with FW.
This one’s a real puzzler. Why would BanTom resort to an Act I retcon job here? Les wasn’t a “published author” until a few years ago, so his retconned Mary Sue memory is less than totally irrelevant here, not to mention totally out of place. I think Mason was just trying to be polite, or perhaps it’s just nervousness over being forced to ride in that very unsafe-looking Batiukmobile while Les is all hunched over the steering wheel in a most peculiar way.
I can’t believe they’re already on their way to visit the Winkerbeans. I figured it’d take weeks if not months before the story progressed that far. Then again, you know he’s just chomping at the bit to get back to those comic book fantasies again. After all, it’s been like a week and a half since comic books were front and center. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and predict that we’ll see a big box of comic books by the end of the week. Call it a hunch.
Son of Stuck Funky 