Starbuck Jones – Page 44 – Son of Stuck Funky

Glean On Me

Mason’s been in town for a day or two and he’s already making with the wry remarks and the eyebrows like he’s Les Moore’s long-lost half-brother or something. Also note how he’s in the proper comic book reading position, on the floor like a child. And how the hell is he speaking without opening his mouth in that last panel? He’s seriously going to read four hundred SJ comics (including all bronze, silver, gold, platinum and diamond keys with corresponding ashcans) on Holly’s sofa? Good lord, this arc could take years to finish…IF he decides to finish it at all, that is. Because he might not, you know.

Today’s punchline references events presumably taking place in the pages of a fictional comic book that only fictional comic strip characters have read. Think about that for a moment. These disturbing comic book fantasies of his have progressed to the point where he’s basing jokes upon scenes that only exist in his mind. Obviously his “vision” of SJ includes lots of property damage, which makes it all very amusing to him, but what good does that do anybody else? We’re reaching a point where you have to understand the inner workings of BanTom’s comic book-addled brain in order to decipher the dialog and make sense of the jokes. We’re through the looking glass here, people.

Coming later this year: Having gained eighty pounds during his stay, Mason decides to quit showbiz in favor of staying in Westview. He moves into Les’ house and takes the longbox delivery job at Komix Korner. Then, after wrecking the Kornermobile in an accident, an MRI reveals a brain tumor. Then the story abruptly cuts to Owen complaining about the cafeteria food and Mason isn’t mentioned again until a scene where we see his tombstone in the background of an unrelated panel on Mother’s Day.

And this concludes my latest SoSF stint. Thanks to TFH, the SoSF staff and most of all, you, the snarkers who make it all possible. Stay tuned for our next guest host and a virtual font of obscure FW knowledge…billytheskink! Good luck and godspeed, billy!

A Game-Laming Arc

Link To Today’s Strip

I told ya, a big box of f*cking comic books. Any military folks out there care to tell us what would happen if you were deployed in Afghanistan and requested emergency “celebrity coming to my mom’s house to read comic books” leave? I’m guessing the answer would somehow involve push-ups, lots of potatoes and/or mops, if not an involuntary psych hold.

Then there’s the art, where Cory is twelve, Holly has Crankshaft’s schnozz and the backgrounds are blank and sort of surreal looking. What, is drawing the Winkerbean’s living room just too challenging or something? The guy draws thousands of bricks but can’t manage a lamp and a table? And Holly’s deranged comic book collecting fantasy dialog is overshadowed by the Corporal’s cruel jibe about her obesity. I thought he’d outgrown that sort of thing, although she did have it coming after all that “platinum key” bullshit she started spewing. Call it a draw there.

But the really noteworthy thing here is that Holly has apparently already given Cory the SJ collection “off-screen”, so to speak. That’s right, after a year of premise-flogging and idiotic comic book collecting fantasies, the Great Author totally blew off the big emotional climax and premise-resolving scene of his own story. It’s laughably inept “storytelling” at its worst, the intelligence-murdering work of the laziest madman ever set loose on the funny pages. There’s no need to ever “expose” him as a hack with a total disregard for his (assumed) readers, it’s all right there on the freaking page.

I was going to say that someone should tell Mason that it’s a SJ movie, not a SJ collecting movie. But (shudder) what if it IS a SJ collecting movie? You know, where Mason plays a demented SJ collector forced to navigate the seedy comic book collecting underground and so on. While I seriously doubt BanTom would go that far, I definitely wouldn’t bet against it because you just never know with FW.

Woo hoo! Les’s hair is on fire! Oh, wait.

Today’s strip, at first glance, seems to show Les, head aflame in the purifying fire of just desserts. But no, they’re just burning their Yuletide tree out in the field. That practice makes my Californian instincts turn to rage, and calls to mind Johnny Cash’s infamous “buzzards” incident.[1] Then I remembered that Ohio used to burn its rivers (for decades), and it all seemed to make more sense.[2]

The picture of the Cuyahoga River on fire that ended up in Time Magazine a month later – a truly arresting image showing flames leaping up from the water, completely engulfing a ship – was actually from a much more serious fire in November 1952. No picture of the ’69 river fire is known to exist.—Cleveland Historical

My live-in expert on all things Ohio tells me that residents of Buckeye Lake toss their trees into the water’s edge. This encourages the growth of algae, which attracts fish, which makes for easy fishing in the springtime. By the next winter, the tree will have completely decomposed. That seems awfully green for the midwest, but it’s a damn sight greener than just lighting it on fire and smirking at it.

Given how Cayla usually reacts to news from Les, I’ve corrected the dialog in panel 3.

Cayla asks, 'How much can we make Mason pay?'

To be fair to Mr. Cash’s memory, the part about roasting 49 California condors appears to be apocryphal. ↩
Speaking of uniquely Cleveland things, thanks to @Nathan Obral (yesterthread) for pointing out that the Lost reference had extra meaning for those in the Cleveland TV market. ↩

Jarrlost

In today’s yawner, Bantom awkwardly works in a cultural reference that is astoundingly timely by his standards. I’ve never seen Lost, but its last first-run episode aired on May 23, 2010. At the time Bantom put this strip to bed, that reference was only 3½ years old. That qualifies as “ripped from the headlines” for this creaky old oeuvre.

Still, gotta love the talking house in panel 2.

Mason, Ajar

Link To Today’s Strip

Yikes, by the third panel I was expecting it to start raining pizza. Starbuck Jones, the obscure and unpopular comic book with hundreds of issues that EVERYONE is talking about. Sigh. TB obviously couldn’t help himself here, much like I couldn’t help myself with today’s post title. Had to use it as it might be Mason’s last appearance…unless…no, I don’t even want to think about that possibility right now.

Why is the guy who just quit still hanging around the place he claims to despise? Likewise, why is Mason still lurking around the set? Is Batom ever going to bother to explain the “kill fee” nonsense he spent three days babbling about? Is panel three Les the single most annoying Les drawing ever or is it just me? What is going on here? Did he officially quit? Is the production cancelled? How is it possible for anyone to be this bad at telling a coherent story and furthermore, how is it possible to get paid for it?