Scouring “Fleabay” for a decoder ring. Buying advertising space “in papers around the country” to run an encrypted invitation to fans. Booking an Art Deco palace for a reception and bringing in enough Ovaltine to float a spaceship. The lengths that a major studio will go to in promoting a movie, right? Albeit a movie that’s still in production (and hell, we never even saw them delivering the finished script). Nope! Turns out this whole shindig was staged by Pete Regenbogen just to cheer up ol’ Cliff.
Tag: Starbuck Jones
Thank You Vera Much
TheDiva
June 16, 2016 at 1:02 am
Cliff Anger gets a huge tribute in his honor, while his costar is just trotted out and expected to fawn on him the way everyone else does. Yep, sounds about right for this strip.
Eww! Old people flirting! Hard to find much else to say about today’s installment…Mason’s expression in panel one is not so much “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone” but rather more like he’s just lit a stinkbomb and is off to watch the ensuing hilarity from a safe distance. “I always wondered what…” And we’ll always wonder what Cliff was about to say before Vera cut him off mid-sentence.
Boys Go to Jupiter, to Get More Stupider
$$$WESTVIEW ONCOLOGIST$$$
June 13, 2016 at 9:09 am
It should be pointed out that much ballyhooed Marianne Winters STILL has not shown up. I’m leaning to the side that we will never see her in these strips.
“All right George, now you remember all those loveable, stupid Peorgie and Mudhead movies you were responsible for?”
“My goodness, I haven’t, uh, seen any of those in years…”
“Well, Georgie, what are you going to do when the original “Bottles”, Mudhead’s crazy, hopped up girlfriend, drops right through that celebrity trap door?”
“My…God…Oh, no, that woman’s trying to kill me!”Firesign Theater, Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers
Starbuck 2016? The movie written and storyboarded by a couple of Westview losers? Filmed on location in Cleveland, Ohio? We couldn’t care less. “Classic” Starbuck? You mean that rollicking, life-altering, black and white serial film from the thirties forties fifties early sixties? Now we’re talkin’! If locating the leading man involved following the weakest of clues to track him down and invade his ratty New York City apartment, can you imagine the lengths Team Starbuck went to in order to dig up Cliff’s leading lady, Vera…Vera Nash?
Ham Handed
The ass-lathering continues today as Kablichnick steps up to the plate. The normally dour and cranky science teacher positively gushes about how Starbuck Jones inspired him: “Follow our hearts”? “Do what we love”? “Succeed“? Teacher, please. When it comes to unbridled contempt for one’s students, Jim Kablichnick makes Les Moore look like Mr. Chips. The only thing he loves about his job is the opportunity it provides for him to spout his views on climate change, interspersed with painfully unfunny “jokes.” Cliff expresses his surprise at meeting someone gullible enough to have bought his line of hokum. And we all know about the Ovaltine, but do the Junior (hah!) Spacemen of America employ some kind of secret handshake? It looks like the ol’ Commodore greets his fans by grasping their clenched fists.
In Soviet Russia, the Buck Saves You!
Pity the readers of Funky Winkerbean whose newspapers do not also run Crankshaft (okay, go ahead and pity all FW readers, regardless). Of course beady-eyed, nitpicking hate-readers understand that the rapt little kid is the same one whose ghost we saw peering creepily back at Jeff from the attic window of his childhood home a couple weeks ago. And we know that the old geezer awkwardly shaking Cliff Anger’s hand is not Funky with glasses but is that same kid, now grown old. So Jeff finally achieves closure for his mommy issues, albeit in a different comic strip and ten or twenty (and one or two weeks) later. And if his gushing pronouncement sounds familiar, peep this 2011 Batiuk interview:
Interviewer: Some of the memorable storylines of that [first time jump] era, at least for me, were Lisa’s cancer and the comic book store obscenity trial that was mirroring the Jesus Castillo case. I still have Crazy’s witness stand testimony of how, when he was in high school, “…superheroes did what they did best… they saved me.” tacked up on my wall.
While he understands fuck-all about how modern motion pictures are made, and has long since abandoned any notion of continuity and character development, Batiuk maintains his laser focus on spreading the gospel of old comic books and movie serials.
Son of Stuck Funky 