Pete – Page 68 – Son of Stuck Funky

Damsel Under Duress

Actually, Cigar McBalding’s idea sounds like a good one. While he’s obviously proposing it for prurient reasons, the Comics Code Authority would curtail anything outrageous, and really, I think it would make the Starbuck Jones comic a bit less one-dimensional.

Which makes it strange that McBalding is proposing it. I thought he was supposed to be the greedy, money-eyed villain of the Batom Comics company (despite him being, uh, the publisher). Here he is, actually trying to improve the book.

Of course, I’m thinking of a typical comic book; in the context of this strip, adding a new female character opens up the whole can-o-worms that is “female characters in the Funky Winkerbean world,” which is a place that is really depressing. Starbuck Jones already has a robot that can bring him hot chocolate and cookies while he’s reading comic books…what else can a woman do? I guess she can travel the universe, collecting comic books for him, or she can die of cancer. At all times, though, she must show herself as way inferior to her man.

Ah well, when you’ve got a 50th Anniversary as a goal, it’s a bit late to start learning new tricks. You just need to get there, pal, any way you can.

The Turning of the Tables

Link to today’s strip.

Now, this is curious. Presumably, Cigar McBalding is the guy who founded Batom Comics.

Let me just repeat that: Cigar McBalding is the guy who founded Batom Comics.

Here, his staff is all but openly insulting him, already positive that whatever idea he’s about to present is absolute garbage.

In real life, Tom Batiuk is the guy who founded Batom Comics.

And I’m going to guess that he has a staff.

I don’t want to draw too many conclusions…

Is this a cry for help?

How can a person, who only listens to himself, cry for help? That seems like an interesting philosophical conundrum, which I leave to the philosophers among you to ponder.

(Who says I have to post things that are 8000 words long? Enjoy my brevity, fellow snarkers!)

Deja Doom

Link to today’s strip.

Oh good heavens…are we all trapped in Hell, where we have to relive things over and over again, until we’re forgiven and allowed to pass into purgatory? Didn’t we just go through all this “back in the day” stuff? In fact–isn’t Pete’s dialogue in panel two an exact repetition of what he said before? (I’d look it up, myself, but I’m starting to feel a distinct aversion to going through old Funky Winkerbean strips. Life being short and all.)

How much padding does Tom Batiuk need to get to that 50th anniversary? Wait–don’t answer that!

Well, since we must, I’m guessing the answer is…a lot.

As for today’s day-old bread, again, I posit thus: that Pete here is merely a clerk-typist, tasked with putting the real screenwriter’s handwritten notes into proper script format. After all, he’s never been to a script meeting, and none of the producers have ever come by to chat about the project, even though he’s in the same building and everything.

I think he was hired because Mason wanted to do Cindy a favor, and CME thought Mason was valuable enough that he could be indulged a bit. But when they got his first draft, things went sour (“What the hell is this about sponges? And clones of sponges? And why does Starbuck Jones have so many soliloquies railing against short-sighted editors?”) and he was quietly moved out of the writer’s chair into something more attuned to his abilities.

As for Darin, I have no idea why he’s even here. Storyboards are typically done when there’s a reasonably final version of the script in place; there’s no point in paying someone to draw out sequences that may never be passed out of committee, let alone see the light of film. (Particularly for a firm that produces cable-TV movies, most of which are cancelled.)

That sort of thing is nowadays called “pre-visualization” and I think it’s beyond Darin’s abilities–after all, you have to imagine something that works, rather than assuming failure right out of the gate, and no one from Westview has that talent.

Meanwhile, In Another Circle of Hell…

Link to today’s strip

Greetings, folks, BChasm back for another round in the chair. Let’s see if we can get it to spin!

So, The New Darin and Cindy (looking very close to her “appearance-complaints” in panel one) are leaving Westview, returning to the glamour of Hollywood. Ah Hollywood, where Cindy works at a company that seems like someone’s thinly-veiled YouTube channel, and The New Darin stars in made-for-TV fare that is invariably cancelled. Can’t you just smell the stardom?

As a coda, we get Pete and The Old Darin facing the reality of every town in the Funkyverse–the fact that there is no escape from the horror that pervades every moment of life. There are always those Philistines who refuse to see genuine art for its value, and instead look to crassly commercialize it by sinking black, oozing claws into it until it starts laying deadly golden eggs. Golden eggs full of poison gas.

Kinda looks like The Old Darin has cut off his arm, there, though I’m sure that’s just an unfortunate colorist’s choice. On the other hand, the carefully crafted punchline is really stupid–“changes to the changes” are still changes to the script, “changes to the script” being something that absolutely every movie, TV-movie, and TV series goes through every single time one is made.

In fact, there are so many revisions to a given script that those new pages are printed on different colored paper so that everyone can know exactly where they should be “on the page.” It’s been this way for decades…though usually this happens either during rehearsals (to iron out difficult lines, or block stage business) or on the set (a location isn’t available, an actor quits, a character is dropped, etc). Neither of which can be the case because 1) the damned star of the movie is swooning around in Ohio, and 2) so far as we know, there is no script yet. And they’re not going to send our a crew to do second unit stuff until they’ve got something like a completed script.

Which brings me to a greater question–apparently at Cable Movie Entertainment, they hold script meetings where revisions are discussed. Why in the Hell don’t they invite the screenwriter to these meetings? Why are changes to the script a complete surprise to him? He was hired, after all, because as a comic book writer he has some expertise in the field–why wouldn’t he be at these meetings? He’s not unavailable or living in some distant city–he’s just down the hall. It makes no sense to exclude him, in fact it seems to piss him off quite a bit.

Pete should be at all these meetings. He should know about all the revisions, be able to contribute, and–more importantly–he should be able to shape those revisions, if he’s smart. Not just negatively–“Well, Starbuck Jones wouldn’t do that, he’s got a code of honor”–but also positively–“Well, if you show the approaching Zergian ship, that’s another toy you could have in shops when the movie opens–vehicles are always big sellers…my pal Darin can sketch a rough of the ship for you.” (Good one, Pete, you’ve come up with some dollar value, they’ll listen to your opinions now.)

There’s only one real answer. Pete isn’t the screenwriter on the Starbuck Jones movie. He’s just one of the typists.

Just Like The First Thanksgiving…But With Toppings!

Link To Today’s Action

A very Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, fellow snarkers! I’m thankful for a lot of things, not the least of which is knowing that I am NOT the only person who scratches their head in confusion and disgust after reading this thing every day, as for a long, long time I was sure that I was. At first I couldn’t figure out why they’d be video chatting with Funky and Holly instead of their own families, but then I realized they’re just thanking them for the pizza. Just a few weeks ago I was cracking wise about how we were due for some pizza in this strip and bam, right on cue. And what is Pete doing there? Get a paper plate or something, you idiot. He looks like he just realized he accidentally swallowed a hair or something.

If this is the best Thanksgiving of Boy Lisa’s life, things must have been even tougher than we imagined in the loveless Fairgood household. Damn that philandering, dream-squelching Fred! Such a monster. And don’t sweat it Funky, they’ll surely mention Montoni’s on the red carpet and during the acceptance speech and at the after party and on Jimmy Fallon, unless they get distracted by comic books first, that is. And don’t worry, if they stick to this all-pizza diet they’ll be plenty big soon enough.