Miss American – Page 4 – Son of Stuck Funky

In Search of Lost Lines.

Poor Ruby looks so sad in panel 3. Like she is distraught over the memory of her lost creations, a metaphorical mother missing the beauty she had given life to.I’m calling it right now, Chester Hagglemore has some of her original stuff in his collection that Mindy will twist him into gifting back to her in return for her doing some variant Atomik Komiks covers.

She’ll be so happy to have her poor stolen progeny back in her possession once more! Except, you know, she sold those babies for money, knowing full well that the original pencils would likely be destroyed.

And yet her work remains, in every copy of her comics that still exists. Why don’t they just blow up some old panels, and put them on the wall?

At the time, comics artists and writers were workers for hire, with the understanding that the company that hired them owned what they produced. I think it’s nice, and fair, that today comics artists are returned their work, and are even allowed to duplicate some of it, so they can resell it to collectors and fans. Every TFCon and Botcon I’ve attended has had comic artists there selling posters of covers, prints, and even the original line art.

But I don’t think it was an gross injustice when the comics companies considered the art their property, and no longer the original artists, since it was bought and paid for by mutual agreement.

I know that I’ve been Wiki linking all week, and sorry to those of you who would prefer me to pick apart the art or go off on wacky tangents. Or just post a short paragraph and shut up. But, honestly, fact checking this plotline has become a compulsion for me. Because I know that Batiuk has a deep knowledge of comics history, and I also don’t trust him for an instant to not warp that truth to suit his own narrative.

Here’s the wiki article for Creator Ownership in Comics. Most notable:
“Up to the mid-1970s, most comic book publishers kept all original pages, in some cases destroying them in lieu of storing them safely… By 1975 or 1976, both DC and Marvel also began returning artist’s original pages to them.”

Speaking Truth to Powergirl.

Link to today’s strip

Sorry for the late post. The strip wasn’t available for preview so I wanted to wait for it to drop. Boy I’m sure glad I did! *eye-roll sarcasm*

As a female who enjoys comic books…I’ve pretty much heard it all too. And by heard it all, I’ve had a few scattered males ask me about my ‘unique’ viewpoint on comic books. And my ‘unique’ viewpoint is the radical idea that sometimes there’s a little too much TNA fanservice. That’s it.

It’s a male dominated medium to an extent, but not some kind of misogynistic boys club, and it hasn’t been for a long time. Gail Simone’s been writing comics since 2002! There were a couple female Transformers comic writers in the last couple years.

And Batiuk is willfully erasing female centric history by ignoring the fact that Ruby here would have been a comic writer at the height of the Teen Romance comics. Does he even remember that these exist? Or because they aren’t spandex or space monkeys he doesn’t consider them ‘true’ comics.

Let us celebrate women in comics with a little Wikipedia Copy Pasta

“Comic books, as well, have been produced by a number of female artists.

One publisher in particular, Fiction House, used many female cartoonists, both on staff and through Eisner & Iger, one of the era’s comics “packagers” that would supply comic books on demand to publishers testing the emerging medium. Action and adventure-oriented genres were popular at this time, and Fiction House’s forte was capable and beautiful female protagonists, working as pilots, detectives, or jungle adventuresses. Women working for the publisher include Lily Renée, at the Lambiek Comiclopedia Fran Hopper and future romance artists Ruth Atkinson and Ann Brewster. These stories were frequently written by a female writer, as well: Ruth Roche, later an editor. Before finding fame as a crime novelist, Patricia Highsmith wrote for Black Terror and other comic books.

In the 1950s Marie Severin, sister of artist John Severin, was a frequent EC and Atlas/Marvel colorist, later drawing her own stories as well. Her cartoon style made her a frequent contributor to Marvel’s Not Brand Echh satirical title of the late 1960s. Another prolific artist was Ramona Fradon, who drew Aquaman and was co-creator of Metamorpho.

Later artists and writers include Ann Nocenti (creator of Typhoid Mary and Longshot), Louise Simonson (Power Pack writer), June Brigman (Power Pack artist), Gail Simone (Welcome to Tranquility), Devin Grayson (Batman writer), Becky Cloonan, the first female Batman artist.,[10] Marjorie Liu (The Amazing X-Men writer), Sara Pichelli (Ultimate Spider-Man artist), G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel), Amanda Conner (Power Girl artist), and Kelly Sue DeConnick (Pretty Deadly, Bitch Planet) at Image Comics.”

Seasoned Storytelling.

Link to today’s strip

Mindy’s been so dumb the last week, I’m half surprised panel two didn’t go like this:
Mindy: “You drew this on my shirt!? You live in Sri Lanka? Because that’s where it says the shirt came from! I knew it was ‘custom’ but wow,and it only cost me 30 bucks! Does it get tiring drawing on shirts all day?”

And sure you’re seasoned. I bet you’ve got a lovely Blue Emu rub all over your arthritic hands, combined with peppermint essential oils. Embalmed is not the same as seasoned.

As many pointed out yesterday, how many famous old artists and actors does Batiuk intend to shove into the twilight years of his strip? At this point we’re up to five or six random octogenarians wandering in the strip so younger characters can show their comics cred by squeebleing all over them.

That vaguely Maoist hat, combined with a granola munching quirky appearance, makes me suspicious of this plotline though. Like we’re about to get a ‘serious’ story about how a woman was idealistic about America in the old days of institutionalized racism, sexism, and South Asian proxy wars, but now that Trump is in office she’s realized the error of her ways now supports Bolshevism.

There She Is…Miss American

Link to today’s strip

Many apologies for the late post.

An odd plot related strip for a Sunday. Batiuk seems to prefer to keep Sundays self-contained and make sure there’s a joke, in order to placate the Sunday only papers and readers. This strip must seem absolutely nonsensical to people who only read the Sunday funnies.

But we learned something today. This elderly gallery owner was also involved in comics. Because everyone everywhere in the Batiukverse was involved with producing comic book related material at some point in their life.