Tag: Starbuck Jones

There’s No Buzz-ness Like Show Buzz-ness

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The old master premise-flogger is at it again. Why say something in a few panels when you can drag it out for months at a time? The SJ movie is generating all sorts of red-hot buzz, yadda yadda yadda. How many more times does this need to be established? This thing has been in production for YEARS now, is it EVER going to move past the writing stage? And the clunky dialog, where every single character needs to reiterate what’s already been said countless times already even though the character they’re talking to knows exactly what they’re talking about…come on, Tom, your readers aren’t nearly as stupid as you seem to think they are. No one is, in fact.

 

The Winters Of Cindy’s Discontent

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Uh-oh. Cindy’s always-troublesome insecurity issues are about to come racing to the fore again, as her beau Mason will be co-starring with the “cute” Marianne Winters, as opposed to whatever old tired hag was originally scheduled to play the part in the film that never, ever will be completed. Knowing how incredibly shallow she is, this will no doubt become a huge issue for her and she’ll probably have to scurry back to Montoni’s to ask Funky for advice on how to handle it. Remember, Cindy, it’s been snowing there since Thanksgiving so allow yourself a little additional travel time.

Bi-“polar”. Winters. Summers. Oh boy, Batiuk must be salivating over the pun opportunities here. By the time this plays out he’ll have completely botched every one of them, probably more than once too. We all knew this Cindy & Mason thing was too good to be true, allowing Cindy to experience happiness before she suffered her full karmic retribution is the sort of thing you just don’t see in the Funkyverse. Warm her up a chair at Channel One or the WHS AV room, as her Hollywood dreams are about to be pulverized, BanTom style.

 

Jupiter Goons

Link To Today’s Strip

And as you can see in the header, we’re off to La-La Land again. No, not Hollywood, as the Starbuck Jones movie and Boy Lisa’s struggles as an aspiring storyboarder guy with a new family to support arcs are dead in the water and circling slowly around the drain. No, I’m talking about LA-LA LAND, BanTom’s vivid little old-timey (sigh) comic book company fantasy world. Forget the insane muttering about the Starbuck Jones film, forget Boy Lisa’s Frankie-esque sneer, forget the fact that Jessica and Skylar are apparently taking the long way to California, none of that matters. It’s only a matter of time until one of these cretins says “hey, I wonder what Batom Comics was like in the olden days?” and bam, just like that it’s Cigar Guy and the two retro morons again, babbling away about imaginary comic books. All f*cking week.

Still though, this drivel is pretty funny in its own way. So Mason has been employed as the SJ male lead for a few YEARS now and they just recently signed his female co-star? Ummm, yeah, OK Tom, whatever you say. At this pace these idiots will still be laboring over this screenplay for years to come.

Damsel Under Duress

Link to today’s strip.

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.