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5392: The Last Action Hero
The Last Action Hero |
![]() Made by: Jason Tank |
Explanation[edit | edit source]
This strip satirizes the then-current trend of entertainment companies canceling various completed projects and never releasing them. This trend was arguably started by Warner Bros. Discovery (referred to in the strip as WarnerMedia, one of its corporate predecessors), which began canceling and/or writing off several projects as a cost-cutting measure. Some of these projects were already finished or well into post-production, including Batgirl, Scoob! Holiday Haunt, and more recently, Coyote vs. Acme (though that film would eventually be rescued by Ketchup Entertainment, which had earlier done the same for The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie). Soon, other companies also started shelving projects as the so-called streaming bubble began to inevitably burst. Netflix, for example, eighty-sixed a science fiction movie titled The Mothership roughly a month before this strip ran.
The author writes:[edit | edit source]
Warner started this mess. Now Netflix is shelving completed series and movies. This must stop. Also, how did I get on this soapbox? I should step off, it's quite wobbly.
Other assets: SpongeBob SquarePants interstitial, a still frame from the Garfield and Friends TV show.
Original strips: 1993-04-04, 2001-01-10, 2009-08-31.
Transcript[edit | edit source]
Jon {to Garfield}: I could be an action hero
{SpongeBob interstitial panel that says "Several Months Later..."}
{Jon is reading a newspaper. There is a small picture of him on the front page, in the middle of what is probably a sick dance move}
Inset of newspaper article: "LOSERMAN" SHELVED. Despite being 98% completed, the superhero movie, starring an unknown cartoonist, has been shelved as a "tax writeoff", never to be shown.
{Jon is crying silently in the foreground}
Garfield {angry}: I told you not to trust Warner Media to release it.
Trivia[edit | edit source]
- Currently, this strip has the following errors:
- The 2016-04-19 strip (the "action hero" strip) is not credited.
- The still frame of Jon is not from Garfield and Friends. It is actually from the Garfield special Garfield Gets a Life.
- This error may have stemmed from how some streaming services, such as Tubi, organize the Garfield specials together labeled as the (in actuality non-existent) eighth season of Garfield and Friends.
Later references[edit | edit source]
- This strip inspired iToons #950: Robotnik Gets His Dreams Crushed, which satirizes how streaming services handle their original content.