I don’t know why Chester is in such a hurry to get “the lawyers downstairs ” involved. Ruby’s going to draw Miss American and get paid by Chester for doing so; why must she own the rights as well? Will Chester then have to pay Ruby for the rights to publish her work? Readers of the FW blog know very well how Batiuk relies on his legal team, so maybe in that context, this makes sense.
I’m just so sick of that surprised expression that’s been on Chester’s face this whole week. Who the hell goes to the time and expense of buying up copyrights and setting up a “shell corporation” and then forgets all about it? And what was the point of this shell corporation, anyway? Merely to pad out this insipid arc for a couple few more days, I guess.
Epicus Doomus
February 11, 2020 at 11:58 pm
I liked Chester better when he was a weird eccentric greedy dick.
Is Chester losing it? Hagglemore was introduced as an insanely wealthy and savvy comix fanboy. He’s clearly still got money to burn–keeping these useless dopes on his payroll–but he forgets that he has a holding company? Yesterday in the comments, it was proposed that “CH Holdings” might turn out to be Crazy Harry. Now that might set up generate some intrigue, laughs, whatever. We need to give a name to this rule which states that any plot event you can conceive for Funky Winkerbean that is remotely novel or entertaining will be the complete opposite of what actually happens.
“What’s going on?” asks Chester. Certainly not productivity! Grandpa Google apparently has directed Mindy to Aunt Register of Copyrights, where she’s able to look up Miss American’s first owner. This means that the copyright wasn’t secured until 1978 or later: the U.S. Copyright Office’s public catalog only goes back that far. Works registered prior to 1978 may be found only in the Copyright Public Records Reading Room in Washington, D.C. (can’t get more American than that!) Those flashbacks to Ruby’s earlier days in the business seem to take place a couple decades earlier. But hey, don’t stop Mindy from making herself useful for once.
Banana Jr. 6000
February 10, 2020 at 7:01 am
[W]hy was Pete even included in last week’s arc? He never said anything, and, not being an artist, wasn’t in the running for Kitschy’s check…I know Pete can’t pry his eyes off anything comic book-related, and Mindy would have been another character to cram into an already crowded panel, but it’s just weird that she left and he didn’t.
Well, because we needed Pete to, once again, pull a brilliant idea out of his ass, and offhandedly express it in the most roundabout way. And we needed his fiancé, a comics professional whose last job was sucking farts out of the seats at the Valentine, to reveal her ignorance how copyright law works. Grandpa Google to the rescue!
Son of Stuck Funky 
