It's hard to know whether to address your attack on Marten and the others or your attack on Jeph. But since you obviously refuse to believe it is even possible, and have even gone so far as to criticise the beliveability of developments that haven't yet occurred, then I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree.
I'm not attacking Jeph...I'm just proving a point. Marten has a much better chance of succeeding because he is the main character in a comic. If we translated Marten's situation to the real world and he was a person that you knew, the last thing you would be wondering is how his friends will take it when he's famous. As a friend you would root for him, but deep down be very skeptical that anything other than a bar gig would happen. I only challenge Jeph to make this current story arc be plausible by having Marten really work at this for an extended period of time.
You haven't proven anything here. You've stated an opinion. Those are two separate thing. As a friend to some people with serious musical aspirations, you're right, I would root for them. But, I have never been skeptical deep down. I've always been a believer of you can do anything you want as long as you put your mind to it. Maybe Marten's character wasn't as motivated before. But I'm under the impression he's getting some development. Maybe he's going to try harder to be motivated. And who's to say Jeph won't have Marten work hard over an extended period of time to reach his goals? As far as I know, none of us are psychics. We have no way of knowing what Jeph's plans are. For all we know, his plan might be to have Marten fail with music, but find his real passion along the way. Crazier things have happened.
Do I really need to prove that the main character of a fictional comic has a better chance of succeeding than a real-life person? For instance, the odds of Marten getting hit by a bus and dying tomorrow are 0%. The odds of the town getting hit by a tsunami and everyone dying are 0%. In real-life, they aren't. Extreme, I know, but Marten lives in a world where he can't completely fail because his creator won't let him, as Marten and the rest of the cast support Jephs financial well being. No, that is not a knock against Jeph, it's just how it is. There are less paths a story arc can take in certain works of fiction than in a real-life scenario.
If Marten didn't care about money then great, but he's shown no signs that he wouldn't like to be better off.
To steal your words, with the information we have, he doesn't care about money.
He does care about having a crappy job he doesn't enjoy.
If he made a million dollars a year, he'd be singing a different tune. The job is crappy because it doesn't pay well.
I've made my point, and we agree to disagree. I had hoped Marten would follow a safer path based on what I've seen from him. I guess we'll just see how it all plays out.
.... I have absolutely no words to describe how ridiculous a statement that is. If he made a million dollars a year, he'd be singing a different tune?
A crappy job is a crappy job regardless of how much you get paid. My older sister is an elementary school teacher. She doesn't get paid that much, but SHE LOVES HER JOB!
At one point in time she was a business major in college, obviously she changed her mind about wanting to be in business. But I imagine if she hadn't changed her major she'd be doing something businessy, getting paid twice if not three times as much as what she makes now, but she'd be miserable, because she didn't really enjoy it. Happiness is not synonymous with more money.
Would she do it for free? Now be honest, would she go there everyday for free? Even better, would she pay to work there? She LOVES it, and I pay for things I like to do, so would she? On the other end of the coin, would she be even happier if she made a million dollars a year? Wouldn't that make the job that much better? I know multiple teachers personally, and none of them are particularly pleased with their salary, among other things about their job(daycare service, discipline). I asked them if they made a fortune doing it, would they care as much about those issues...what do you think they said?
If I paid you a million dollars a day to literally shovel crap, would you do it? A million dollars, per day. Of course you would. While the job might literally be crappy, the pay would be so good that you would enjoy having that job. The fact is, most jobs do suck, but most people don't live to work, they work to live. They make enough that they can see the world, try new things, relax. Some of these people even enjoy their jobs too, and its because they sat down and researched a career path they wanted to pursue. They didnt plot their life out over a haircut and burger. Marten will never get to do certain things with his life because he can't afford to. If his guitar broke tomorrow could he even afford a new one? While you could argue that Marten doesn't care about things like money, the life he's leading currently hasn't made him the happiest person. Money is important, whether people want to admit it or not. It's not everything, and it can't buy happiness, but it can help.
As I've said before, if I thought Marten was truly passionate about music I'd support this more, but to me it just seemed like the quick solution. If they had a strip where Marten went over different career paths, really sat down and thought everything through, his decision wouldn't be so sketchy.