Well, Owen, considering the fact that you’ve been in “high school” for close to a decade, now, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that you were just in kindergarten only this morning. Perhaps Westview High is constructed as a series of “grades” wherein all the students go from a kindergarten class (at 8AM), through high school’s junior year (at 3:30PM), day after day, year after year, in some bizarre ritual that guarantees no knowledge of anything other than comic books. Why not? After all, what would an education gain these folks? The best they can hope for is to work in Montoni’s. No wonder the army looked like a far better goal to Cory.
Lest we forget, you really have to hate these characters (he said rhetorically). Owen gives blood–as a voluntary act, mind you, one for which he expects no payment other than a missed class–and rather than feel good about this, he complains about a cookie. Look at him, he’s so dispirited he can’t even ask Tom Petty for his autograph.
Son of Stuck Funky 
I will never stop kicking myself for coming up with a comic strip of my own back when that was still almost kind of a valid “career path”. The pay is probably pretty decent, you get book deals here and there, local newspaper “lifestyle” sections do interviews with you and you don’t even have to put a shred of effort into it at all if you don’t feel like it on any given day (or year or decade). Apparently you’ll never be cancelled or replaced regardless of how terrible your work is and no one even seems to really care if anyone actually reads it or not. As long as you hand in one for each day of the year, you’re golden. It’s one hell of a racket and quite frankly it would have suited me perfectly. Sigh.
I guess this is better, though, than having a whole week of bad school lunch jokes, a whole week of bullying and a whole week of Owen giving blood. It’s like he’s trying to take all of his awful Owen & Cody stuff and condense it for us, “Reader’s Digest” style. So, uh….thanks for that, I suppose.
Speaking from experience, having donated a few gallons over the years, I think they would insist that Owen remove his hat for sanitary reasons. Both of these kids would also have trouble getting through the screening process.
That was a great Tom Petty observation, BTW.
Note that instead of having the donors help themselves like, well, every other blood drive these days, the boys sit and mope while a woman Does Her Duty and serves them.
Nice, Tom. Teens Are Evil -and- “Gals, know your place!” in the very same strip!
Suit yourself, Owen. Don’t take the free snacks, and pass out from low blood sugar the minute you try to do anything other than gripe about your life.
…Never mind, that’s all anybody does in this strip.
Epicus, the truth is much grimmer. Strips like FW clog up the papers, taking up valuable space that could be given to new talent. They’re sort of like old trees in the forest, choking the life out of all the young ones. So obviously what we need is a newspaper forest fire to get rid of all the dead wood.
And what is Owen’s problem? Seriously, it’s like the entire thing is just to have Owen complaining.
Oh wait, this is Batiuk. Teens complaining about food, getting bullied and not liking anything that might remotely hint at immaturity is what we see here.
Gyre: See, even if the funny pages were purged of all the old dead wood strips, the ones that replaced them would be subjected to the same scrutiny everything else is these days, thus they’d be forced to maintain a certain degree of entertainment value. But if I had gotten into the business during that post-“Peanuts” and “Doonesbury” era, I’d already be “iconic” by now, thus I wouldn’t have to put any effort at all into it anymore. Because apparently at some point you just get kind of “grandfathered” in and your strip runs forever regardless of popularity or entertainment value, or so it seems. THAT is the part I envy. Money for nothing and the strips thought free. It’s a business that continues to baffle and amaze me, inexplicable as it is.
So in an alternate universe we’re snarking at a blog called sonofepicusdoomed? 🙂
To throw Batiuk a bone, it does make more sense if you think about the bullying and all a few days ago or if this is foreshadowing for some problems at home.
The problem with that is that the cafeteria events don’t have much connection to later events and Owen’s idiotic behavior means that I doubt there was anyone feeling sorry for him having to eat poor food.
Also I seriously doubt that Batiuk intends to ever let us have any knowledge of the family of any teenagers. That would require actually writing about teenagers.
Owen receives no sense of joy or of happiness at having helped fellow human being by donating blood. He whines about getting a cookie and some OJ. Blast it, Batiuk, do you have portray EVERY character in your strips as being a troll. Chris Christie should find them all bridges to live under.
And one would think, after hating his lunch, Owen would like something edible.
Well the good news is, it’s over halfway through January and 2014 is still Les-free.
DOlz: That’s the dream. And I’d post there under assumed names, defending my genius (and generating page views) and antagonizing the “haters”. But in my puff piece interviews I’d pretend like I ignore the snarking.
In the very least Epicus, you could say that golden phrase that sets you above the sum of the entire human race: “Excuse me, are -you- a NATIONALLY SYNDICATED CARTOONIST? No? Then stop judging my work, plebe!”
Epicus–you’d also have to disparage your critics as “the jobless.” That’s such a magical phrase to deflect criticism; every hurt ego should employ it.
Yes, and I will assail you beady-eyed jobless nitpickers for demanding such things as “jokes” and “continuity” and “logic” in my time-honored iconic strip.
Not much to say about the stupid message of today’s comment, but I will note how Batiuk makes Owen so shabby, ugly and disgusting. It’s one thing where Cory is grotesque because Batiuk does a bad drawing that makes his tiny head appear to be caving in on itself, but Owen is another story entirely. He’s ugly and shabby because of Batiuk’s conscious decision. He wants to have Owen looking like this.