OK, well, my query from yesterday’s post has been answered: the boys are not in the Technology Club. Rather, they are in the “Special Effects Art Class”. This sounded even more implausible than a high school comic book club, so I set to Googlin’…and found the “[o]nly school district in the nation to offer [a] high school Visual Effects Art Program“…the Berea (Ohio) City School District, about twenty miles from TB’s home in Medina.
22 thoughts on “Pimp My Robot”
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Son of Stuck Funky 
Technically speaking, yawn. FW is actually less funny when it’s trying to be goofy, especially when it’s featuring two characters no one likes.
FW features at least two characters no one likes 365 days a year. Kili and Buddy are the only possible exceptions since they can’t talk and/or smirk.
I’m almost impressed: it appears that Batom Inc. did a bit of research on a high school program that exists. Of course, real robotics competitions don’t give a crap about special effects, but whatever. As awful as this week is looking, at least it’s not an author lecture about how stupid readers are.
Time to start counting the days since the last Les and Crayola sighting. Not that I’m complaining.
How long would this strip have lasted if it started out as “Owen and Cody,” and featured these two putzes in Act I? On the other hand, they’d be hilariously fat, old, and smug now, so it might have been worth it.
actually Beanie, I miss Less. The snark is so much better when he’s around. This last week and a half has just been tedious and uninteresting, to say the least..
So we’re back to the old yawn-a-day format with Porgy & Mudhead.
Next thing they’ll be telling Principle Poop is that they are charter members of the Philatelist’s Club.
Playing with robots on a field trip with a presumably fun after school club? Everybody look as glum as possible! Glummer, Owen! Janet Reno and Weird Harold there entering the office, you guys are doing it right…
Technology Club, Special Effects Art Class… Westview has a lot of extracurricular activities for a school district that keeps failing to pass levies.
Why do I get the impression that the unstated message here is that the actual nerds in the Technology Club needed Cool Dude Artists Cody and Owen to talk to the principal about their field trip because they’re frightened, withdrawn losers who need effective people when they want something done? Why make that distinction, and then show the Butterball and the 1970s IBM worker refugee in the background, who presumably are the kids participating in the competition?
I just can’t help but think it might be that Owen and Cody aren’t The Popular Kids, but at least they aren’t Those Nerds, either.
billytheskink: Exactly. When I was in high school, the extracurricular stuff was the highlight of the day. These guys look like they’ve been asked to read War and Peace over Christmas vacation.
On another note, a high school visual effects program sounds wonderful, enlightening, and entertaining, and can only have wound up in Westview by the gravest of errors.
Janet Reno and Weird Harold there entering the office, you guys are doing it right…
That’s not old Weird Harold! Weird Harold was 6’9 and weighed 50 pounds. (We used him to get the football out of the sewer) That kid’s got the pot belly of a sedentary 55 year-old man.
Charles: I think it might be the other way around–Owen and Cody are the nerds even the other nerds won’t associate with. The ones who not only have no social skills or interest in mainstream popularity, but also no sense of humor, intelligence, or basic hygiene. The ones who use the Internet almost exclusively for porn and who you suspect of writing long, obsessive, and vaguely threatening letters to genre show actresses. Those nerds.
TheDiva: Do you think that’s Batiuk’s intention? I mean, it’s an amusing and totally not-contradicted reading, but I don’t think that was TB’s intent. He may think Cody and Owen are callow dopes, as are ALL teenagers, but I think he still likes them in spite of them not being like him. After all, they both think his favorite teenager Summer is totally the hottest chick in Westview, and shit, they even like comic books for Christ’s sake.
Epicus,
I’m not sure if I like these two or not. We haven’t been given enough backstory or character develop for me to really get any feelings towards them one way or the other. At least in Luann, the author tries to give us enough info about the characters so we can form an informed opinion.
Oh for the love of God – NOBODY should be missing Les. There is plenty to snark at without asshat showing up.
Charles: Of course that’s not Batiuk’s intention, but what does that signify? He intends for Les and Cayla to be a charming couple. He intends for his weak puns to be clever wordplay. He intends for his bloviating on Serious, Important Issues to be provoking and profound. (Well, it’s certainly provoking, though probably not in the way he intends.)
Of course that’s not Batiuk’s intention, but what does that signify?
The question I was wondering about is why Batiuk made the distinction about how Owen and Cody were related to The Technology Group. Why did he feel the need to indicate that they weren’t actually members of that group, but were in fact guys from another group of students brought in specially for this situation. There are practical, insulting assumptions we can make, (eg. That it enables him to waste a day’s strip on the explanation) but on the whole, I’m a little more generous with my assumptions. And in this case, in fact, that may make Batiuk look even worse.
And I can’t help but look at those dorky students in the background, contrasted with Owen and Cody and their, for lack of a better word, style, and think that that may have something to do with the answer to that question. Hey, we may not be the Popular Kids, but at least we’re not nerds like those guys!
That they’re also contributing something artistic rather than practical to the equation makes them more likely to be sympathetic in TB’s eyes.
First panel: Technically, technology, technicality. Is that the joke? Because there’s no attempt at humor in the second panel. At least I don’t think so.
TB is really pushing this “comics shouldn’t be funny” concept to the limit.
Nate: “I have only one more question for you two.”
Owen: “Fire away.”
Cody: “I’m all ears.”
Nate: “Why the ___ am -I- here?!? I’m the damn PRINCIPAL! I’m too busy this time of year to question two YAHOOS on their CLUB ACTIVITIES!!! Why am I here?!? WHY? TELL ME NOW!!!”
Owen: “Well, see, there are only five, maybe six people who work at this school. Someone needed to be here to set up the arc. They pulled your name out of the ol’ goldfish bowl.”
Cody: “Most of life in this town is luck of the draw, really. At least if you’re not named “Moore”.”
Nate: “…*…I feel so empty now. So worthless.”
Owen: “Someone needs a HUG!”
Cody: “We’re here for you, big guy!”
Nate: “AAAAUGH, your hands feel like moist Krispy Kreme donuts!”
Nate looks like he’s impatiently waiting for these two jackoffs to shut up so he can go grab Crayola for their usual afternoon boiler room booty call.
Oh, and why no Goatee Boy and Crayola for several weeks? Well, the marriage didn’t exactly get off on the right foot when on their wedding night, Les tried to make Crayola wear Lisa’s wig.
Ya Beanie… he made the comment about how that’s not the way Lisa did it….
More likely, Les was bewigged with Lisa’s cancer coif, a hideous self-applied make-up job and, dear God should I say it? Lisa’s drawers beckoning Cayla with his come-hither smirk and Lisa’s post-remarriage video in an aging, creaky VHS machine…*shudder*….