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: traveling green shirt
Slow Motion Story Arc Too
Wow, Mopey Pete sure can become a whirlwind of activity when something really stupid inspires him, you know? Just think, if Cliff had never sold that old decoder ring Pete never would have come up with the idea to stage an event where old SJ fans gather to talk about old decoder rings. It’s so funny how life works out that way, innit? Good thing he didn’t auction off his old SJ underpants too, or this arc could have taken an ugly, ugly turn very quickly.
I like how all this nostalgia-wallowing only serves to emphasize how Anger essentially wasted sixty years of his life living as a bitter old recluse for no reason whatsoever. But it’s all OK now as at long last he has a reason to celebrate the only noteworthy thing he ever did…sixty years ago. When you think about it like that it’s all incredibly depressing. And it’s also kind of depressing how a guy who’s been doing a daily comic strip for forty-four years could possibly create a new character this one-dimensional and shallow, although it’s certainly not surprising.
Pulling One Off
The fine art of Batiuksturbation in all its glory. See, Pete bought that ring not knowing Cliff sold it and (zzzzzzzzz), other stuff, (zzzzzzz) and here we are with “everything” coming full circle again. In a way, I mean.
It’s a celebrity Q&A session where no one’s asking or answering any questions, how very novel. Everyone’s apparently just standing around gawking at a guy who, until a few weeks ago, was utterly and completely forgotten by everyone. “So Mr. Anger, what in God’s name have you been DOING for sixty years?”…”So, Mr. Anger, why did you leave showbiz?”…”Cliff, how did you afford to live in NYC for six decades with no visible means of support?”…”Pete, isn’t it true that you whined about having to visit Cleveland and that you had no interest in even seeing that old SJ movie?”…”Mason, does the studio still pay you while you’re off doing these bizarre things?”…nothing.
But there’s plenty of time to discuss (sigh) decoder rings, as obviously they played a huge, huge role in TheAuthor’s upbringing. Perhaps someday he’ll release a FW decoder ring which FW readers could use to make sense out of his rambling incoherent “stories”. It’d have to be quite a large ring, though.
Hey You Two, Get A Room
There’s been an awful lot of very peculiar hand action going on in this strip lately, hasn’t there? Now I’m not going to speculate too much on what’s going on here. Perhaps the infamous Centerville Groper has finally been paroled. Perhaps they’re just very much in love. Or perhaps the tall guy is a new pickpocket who’s just starting out. It’s, uh…quite awkward though.
Then we have that other guy’s wildly uneven legs. Was his gym built on a steep hill? Shark bite? It’s not just strange how one’s way bigger than the other, it’s that the one on the right goes straight down with no curvature at all. And that neck on the person in front of him…gak, what the hell happened there?
So the entire mid-central Ohio area solved the stupid SJ puzzle and are now excitedly queuing up to finally get a glimpse of the guy who was sitting around doing nothing for the last sixty years. Suddenly the SJ serials of the 1950s have become more than just some forgotten old crappy movies, they’re the literal cornerstone of the nostalgic childhood memories of people who weren’t even born when they were released. Incredible.
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?
Son of Stuck Funky 