traveling green shirt – Page 29

Ex-Sponged

Well, Darin sure looks dumbfounded by today’s revelation, but I suspect that’s his default state anyway. And across town, at Mega Comics headquarters, that one editor (who looks like Sesame Street’s Grover has shaved his face) looks equally astonished. He may be thinking, “Haven’t we gone over this road several dozen times in comics? Spider-Man was a clone for a while…comic books these days seem packed to the gills with clones…”

(That’s my hazy recollection. Unlike some I could name, I haven’t followed comics for several decades so all my info is second-hand.)

GroverShave may also be thinking something along the lines of, “Say, isn’t this a really stupid idea? Why would a hero’s arch-enemy clone that hero, rather than kill him? Is the clone programmed to let Doctor Centipede free just as he’s about to capture him? Isn’t that kind of annoying, having his schemes stopped all the time by his own creation? Should Pete go back to his old job of bringing us coffee, while simultaneously shutting up?”

And here we have the number one problem with “tell, don’t show.” Since we’ve never had a glimpse of The Amazing Mister Sponge (or TAMS for short), much less any hint of his adventures, none of this means anything to anyone. So what if TAMS is a clone? It changes nothing. Our lives, hitherto untouched by TAMS, have not had their courses altered in the slightest by this latest development. Even the characters here are just chatting–there’s certainly no hint at all of Pete bemoaning that he is being asked to change the nature of his signature character into something else. There’s no sense of loss, or dreams slipping away, or anything…it’s just another day for Pete, and like most days, it ends with your creations ground down under commercial pressures.

Or so we assume, again. Pete looks excited in the last panel, but is that because the idea appeals to him, or is he simply desperate to keep his job? Without a hint, we’re just looking at bad drawings spouting bad dialogue, with nothing to tie either to any human experience.

I hate to say it, but the scenario below has more of a connection with an audience–any audience.

Yes…above, everything revolves around Les, as Tom Batiuk clearly wants. But at least in this scenario, there’s someone we can hate. The Amazing Mister Sponge? I have no opinion about him one way or the other. I’ve been given no opportunity to form an opinion of any kind…which, given the reception Mr. Batiuk’s work usually gathers, may be by design.

The Invisible Man Gets A Makeover

Link to today’s strip.

Once again, Tom Batiuk goes with “tell, don’t show” and graces us with a wall of text about a (fictional, in-universe) character we’ve never even seen and care nothing about. In a strip well-known for having stupid character names, The Amazing Mister Sponge is really up there in the top ten. Were I a super-villain (and I’m not saying I’m not), if one of my henchmen called out, “Hey boss, the Amazing Mister Sponge is after us!” why, I’d probably collapse from laughter and be unable to launch my scheme. So maybe he does have a super-power. I imagine it loses its effectiveness the second or third time, though, and starts being annoying. “Why can’t one of the good heroes try and stop me? This is embarrassing…”

It really makes me curious about how Mr. Batiuk decides on a storyline, what factors come to play that cause him to deliver…this. Don’t you love how the episode ends on a cliff-hanger, the idea being that we’re all on pins and needles to know what Pete’s scheme is? In reality, we know it’s going to be a crashing bore, except “crashing” implies something happening. If this is Tom Batiuk’s depiction of the pressures of being a cartoonist, there’s a much better solution than wasting space: retire. Sure, you can spin your wheels until the glorious 50th, but here’s a cold hard truth. No one is going to buy The Complete Funky Winkerbean: 2010-2015. No one.

I guess one thing is that Mr. Batiuk seems to have lost any enthusiasm for drawing. That Starbuck Jones face on the wall, for example, is a terrible drawing. If that’s an example of Pete’s artwork, no wonder we’ve never seen this Sponge-Head.

As for the “real” characters depicted here, Darin is a bland smiling blank–the kind of image you’d see if TV stations still used “test patterns.” And Pete has clearly been rejected from The Muppet Show for “looking too lifeless.”

Bores!

Link to today’s strip.

Well, those of you who thought we were going to get more of Les’ genius today are in for a real treat! Because we don’t.

Instead, we have two boring characters chattering in an episode where the drawing is utterly irrelevant. The only thing of note is how Pete’s happy(esque) expression immediately morphs into a weary mask when his own work is brought up. Darin must know how much Pete hates his own stuff, as he lights up a rather predatory grin when switching subjects.

I can’t imagine why Tom Batiuk thinks we care at all about The Amazing Mister Sponge. So far as I am aware, we’ve never been allowed a single peek at the character, so we know it has to be underwhelming. Instead, we’re given a scene of two minor, dull characters talking about him. Wow, talk about action-packed.

And another week of crashing boredom gets fully under way.

Fast (schaden) Freude

The traveling green shirt lives up to its name in today’s strip, moving from a now unseen black student yesterday to Shermy and his crew cuttiest crew cut today. As an extra bonus, Cayla’s original actress cameos in the front row in panel 3.

So, 4 days into this story and the EMU reps finally get to do what they came to do, talk to students about college… and they open by insulting a good percentage of the class. No only that, they do so with an insult usually used by college grads against grads of a rival school.

Don’t forget about Saturday’s Winter Concert. You could try to, but TB isn’t going to make it easy.

And now for the recurring use of a somewhat related Emo Philips joke:

“I left for college that September.
My dad said ‘I’m going to miss you.’
I said, ‘Well now that I broke that sight off of your rifle…’
Yeah, my parents threw quite a going-away party for me, according to the letter.”
– Emo Philips

Atten-shun

Today’s strip is a triumph in forced perspective. See how the spindly tip of Owen’s chullo appears to be scratching the temple of a young Spike Jones in panel 2. Remarkable.

And don’t forget to pick up your tickets for Saturday’s 8:00 PM Winter Concert. That is a thing that is going to be happening, a stark contrast to this strip, which is the very opposite of the definition of “happening”.

Not-quite Emu quote of the day:
“I ran three miles today… finally I said, ‘Lady, keep your purse.'”
– Emo Philips