Tag: movies

On Smolderin’ Pond

Valerie Pond’s lifeless body is discovered in today’s strip by… Super Chicken?!

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Val! Maybe set your stemware down before you go wrestling someone for a gun next tim… oh, sorry. I suppose it is too late for that. Brinkel wasn’t much for privacy either, his bedroom was open and his gun collection was accessible? Laughable negligence even if he was not guilty.

Have a happy 4th of July all you SOSFers! Don’t be like TB is with his story arcs, please be/travel/revel safe…

Ascent of a Woman

TB is a master of “tell, don’t show”, a story-telling characteristic that seems like it might be a nearly serviceable way to set up a murder-mystery, as ill-suited as it is for comic strips. In today’s strip, however, he is employing the unusual technique of “show and tell explicitly in an unengaging way”. As I said yesterday, subtlety is dead in the Batiukverse. Now we’re just playing out the week(s) to find out if these filmstrip-bordered panels are Cindy’s in-production documentary, a documentary that Cindy and Jessica are watching, or a procrastinating fever dream that even Pete and Durwood would “stand in line” for.

I must admit, though, I do like Hagar The Horrible there in panel 3 and his Petri dish stemware. Looks like it holds nearly one whole ounce!

Sneers of a Clown

Panel 1 in today’s strip is brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

A remarkable number of partygoers, including Brinkel himself, apparently failed to understand the “masque” part of masquerade… and how embarrassing, two other heavyset guys showed up not only dressed as the same character, but in the exact same costume as Brinkel. Brinkel and two other schlubs dressing as Pagliacci, the clown in an opera about a comic actor who murders an actress, to a masquerade ball costume party where a comic actor allegedly murders an actress was rumored to be more than a coincidence because subtlety’s funeral was last week and TB was a pallbearer.

Doc-whodunnit?

Hello, I’m billytheskink and you’re not. Be thankful for that, too, as I’m doing two weeks time writing blog posts about Funky Winkerbean and the endless Butter Brinkel Battle (and you’re not).

Back to the… are we watching the documentary in today’s strip? Is that what these filmstrip borders mean?

The very late Valerie Pond was about to leave the studio that employed Brinkel when she met her untimely death. Is this factoid a red herring or a critical bit of evidence in this pointlessly re-opening case?

All good questions… with answers that I do not actually care about one bit. What I do want answered, though, is how you check guests against an invite list at a masquerade ball.

More Lips in This Strip Should Be Sealed

I’m a little more shocked that Crazy apparently has all of Butter Brinkel’s films on CD/DVD stacked up in what look to be jewel cases. And he’s just handing these rare treasures to Cindy stacked haphazardly, and not in a box or anything.
It’s pretty hilarious to me that Cindy is swearing Crazy to silence. I mean, why? You would think she’d want to build hype and buzz around her documentary. Is she afraid someone else is going to steal her idea? (Ha.) Or is she afraid this is going to damage her reputation? (Again, ha.)
By far the best/dumbest part of this strip, and the storyline as a whole- these “films” were apparently burned onto a CD or DVD. Meaning somehow Crazy either made digital files of them from the original film, or maybe a VHS release himself, which seems unlikely, or downloaded them off the internet somewhere. Meaning there’s literally no reason he couldn’t just have sent the files to Cindy directly, or barring that, made copies of the discs and mailed the discs to Cindy. I thought for sure it would turn out he somehow had the original theatrical reels of the movies, that would understandably be fragile, which would explain why Cindy had to spend thousands of dollars to fly cross-country. But yet again, I was giving Batiuk too much credit.