Tag: Starbuck Jones

Bologna, Tony

SosfDavidO here for a two week stint!

As testament to just how powerful the pull of Ohio is in Tombat’s world, it would appear all of Hollywood has decided to up and move production there based on, um, I have no idea what. Sure it’s cheaper there but I’m guessing a big-budget tentpole movie like Starbuck Jones would be really heavy on the greenscreens. Unless Cleveland has some effects production house I’m unaware of a lot of the digital heavy lifting would probably be done in New Zealand, where they can pay artists in “exposure” and bundles of wool.

In any case, Tony is back in today’s strip! Half of the readers might have trouble even remembering who he is. I just keep thinking he’s Mario from Nintendo, just twenty years older.

That said, the path to madcap zaniness has been set, though Tony might want to check with the lawyers for the Starbuck Jones movie before engaging in any promotional offers for a movie he has zero rights to.

Auctioneer-ring

Rusty
April 15, 2016 at 8:05 am
So….what’s happening with the decoder ring? Why show that yesterday?

Well, I guess it was so he could show it again today, being sold (and bought) on “Fleabay”, which, as it turns out, exists in real life and appears to be a desperately poor man’s eBay–it’s a dot net, not even dot com for cryin’ out loud. A more puzzling question is, with his rent paid for a year and any financial problems likely resolved for the rest of his days,  why must Cliff continue selling off his last few Starbuck Jones mementoes?

A Bizarre, Pointless Interlude on the Road to Nowhere

Their Conradian quest to locate Cliff Anger complete, the Starbuck Jones dream team rush back to… Montoni’s? Th’ hell? A month ago they were tasked with scripting and storyboarding a sequel, to be shot concurrently with the feature they were already working on. Did this development lead to the boys working even harder and longer? Nope: Pete proceeded to have another of his Batom flashbacks, which was followed by a road trip to Ohio, not to Cleveland to scout locations for the story’s origin scenes, but to Centerville for a screening of the obscure SJ serial. They followed this with another trip yet further east to locate the serial’s obscure leading man. Anyway, the upside here is that mopey Pete is looking and acting positively chipper!

That Old Familiar Ring

Since Batiuk went dialogue free in today’s strip (the better to further pad out this dreary story arc), I’ll be only slightly less lazy than he and just contribute a few lines of my own.

“Consarn it, here’s my joy buzzer! Wanted to use it on that actor feller!”

“Hope to God the cyanide table hidden inside will still do the job after all these years…”

“My-y-y-y-y-y-y…precious-s-s-s-s-s-s!”

“A crummy commercial? Son of a bitch!”

Brick. Mason.

beckoningchasm
April 10, 2016 at 10:49 pm
Wow, Tom Batiuk has absolutely no idea how the real world works. This is far more amazing and unbelievable than any Starbuck Jones adventure.

It’s times like these, gentle reader, when Batiuk’s “quarter inch from reality” stretches into light years, where it’s fun to imagine that the author is actually setting up a nuanced and compelling plot, instead of the usual flimsily constructed, implausible farce. Yesterday Mason was talking the producers into putting Cliff Anger in the picture and paying his (New York City!) rent for a year. Today Mason’s continues to overstep his authority, assigning Pete to write Anger into the script “as soon as we get back to Hollywood.”

What if Mason doesn’t have enough clout to recast and rewrite Starbuck Jones on the fly (c’mon, a guy whose signature role to date was in something called Dino Deer)? Perhaps Jarr’s come as unmoored from reality as the comic strip in which he’s a character, and he just thinks he’s pulling all these strings. I don’t have any better understanding of bipolar disorder than does Tom Batiuk, who labeled Mason as such merely to set up a cheap gag, but maybe he’s having one of what you call your manic episodes. In his head, anyway.