Tag: photo album corners

Clifford the Big Red

spacemanspiff85
November 28, 2016 at 10:55 pm
Does Batiuk think that any of his readers actually care about Cliff? Because there’s not even at attempt at humor here. Just sticking it to a senator who’s been dead for sixty years, which is weird and bizarre and totally par for the course for Batiuk.

What’s even more annoying and boring than Cliff Anger “trifling with” Sen. McCarthy by cracking wise? It’s Cliff, for the second day in a row, responding to another direct question by sanctimoniously spouting his views. Voting “several times for candidates of various political parties“? Hoo boy! What a rebel. And I’m pretty sure that definition makes most of us Communists. This arc is the comic strip equivalent of “eat your brussel sprouts.” Colorless, musty, verbose brussel sprouts.

Doppelg-Anger

The good news? Batiuk is opting for once to “show, not tell” how Cliff wound up in front of Sen. Joesph McCarthy’s committee. The bad news is that rather giving us a straight-up flashback, TB’s presenting  Mason Jarre starring in The Cliff Anger Story. No way could the guy in today’s panel 3 be the same one we saw in yesterday’s: not with that cheese-cutter nose and maddening, dangling anglerfish-like forelock.

Gerard Plourde
November 26, 2016 at 1:31 am
The “Red Scare” and blacklist of the late 1940’s and 1950’s is a very complex subject and an understanding of that history is not helped by confusing and conflating events…

Many of you in our very erudite audience have rightly taken Batiuk to task for his fuzzy depiction of this chapter in our nation’s history. If TB can’t be bothered to do research, neither can I, though a little Googling turned up an article mentioning Dashiell Hammett, who was in fact called before Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations but refused to cooperate. The article fails to mention if Hammett “sassed” Sen. McCarthy in the manner of Cliff Anger; but though he was blacklisted, effectively hastening his demise, he was not put behind bars.

McCliffyism

Hiya, snarkers and snarkettes. Here’s hoping everyone had a delightful, long Thanksgiving weekend. And isn’t it just my luck to have my turn in the SoSF host rotation come up in the midst of the dullest FW story arc of the year. So far in the course of this interview, Cindy’s gotten in one question (“You went to prison?”), and for her lack of basic interview prep is forced to feign attentiveness as ol’ Cliff recounts how it went down in the days of the Red Scare. Cindy’s “two hour documentary” threatens to turn into Gilligan’s “three hour tour” without the laughs.

bayoustu
November 21, 2016 at 12:02 am
Well, BuddyBlog is certainly moving up in the world- they’re now using an actual camera instead of an iPhone!

True enough! And pretty soon, who knows, at some point they might spring for a tripod. I’d actually forgotten that Jessica had moved out to Hollywood last January. Naturally, like the rest of the Westview transplants she’s found employment as another cog in the StarBuddyBlog complex.

Fail Punner Tom

Link to today’s strip

Cliff Anger is a defiant and bitter commie. Jessica is back behind the camera after the unfortunate “Barbie” debacle. (I somehow totally missed that development this week, which says plenty about the Jessica character in general). TomBat was once the ringleader of some shoplifting-endorsing comic book liberation movement. It’s like the whole Funkyverse is all topsy-turvy, nothing makes SENSE anymore!!!

Fortunately though, at least one aspect of FW remains constant, the rock-solid pillar and foundation the entire Funkyverse is based upon. Of course I’m referring to abysmal, stupid, sub-moronic wordplay…what else? Apparently Cliff’s career wasn’t quite as important to him as the opportunity to make a really dumb and inane joke was and Cliff seized that opportunity, Tailgunner Joe and his own nascent movie career be damned. It’s a profile in courage all right. Life, liberty and the pursuit of idiotic gags that would make a third-grader roll his or her eyes… it’s in the Constitution. Give me punnery or give me death!

What a debacle. And on that note I’m passing the SoSF baton to the one, the only…TF Hackett, who’s all set to tackle the next two weeks of wry banter, painfully bad wordplay, adorable ninety-year old coots and sinister bio-dads, along with whatever other weird curveballs Batiuk yanks out of his musty little bag of contrivances. Why, it might be a retconned sixty year old congressional hearing or a broken pizzeria bandbox or a brain-damaged man comically spilling human remains all over himself…you just never really know until Monday rolls around and even then it’s sometimes unclear.

To Greet The Man, You’ve Got To Meet The Man

Link to today’s strip

turkey1turkey2turkey3

Happy Thanksgiving From Your Pals at SoSF!!!

Dashiell Hammett makes his first actual appearance today and it’s everything you imagined it’d be, even minus the band turkeys. Yep, nothing leaps off the funny page like a drawing of a man while he writes…but as a regular FW reader YOU ALREADY KNEW THAT!!! This Hammett guy was a political activist during the “Red Scare” era which is without a doubt where BanTom is going with this, although I can tell you with 100% certainty he’ll dance around the particulars and the details and keep things as vague as he possibly can to ensure there’s absolutely no possibility of offending anyone whatsoever, like he always does. Yep, 1950s commie paranoia…issues, today’s youth and so forth. Sigh.

“Starbuck Jones”…an obscure, short-lived comic book title that eventually grew to span decades and captured the very imagination of a nation. The old SJ movie serials of the fifties…low-budget and mostly forgotten matinee fare that was actually the brilliant work of a group of idealistic young Hollywood subversives. Cliff Anger…not really a weird old recluse but an American hero forced into seclusion by Cold War paranoia. Montoni’s…lousy indifferently-made food that Westviewians would kill for. Nothing is ever what it appears to be in the Funkyverse, like how it’s always on the page titled “Comics” for some reason.