Hello Snarkers! SoFsDavidO here, takin’ over for a very competent TFHackett as we get up-to-date with Westview’s senior student, Owen Muffinhead and his goat-based shenanigans in today’s strip.
Not to nickpick continuity here, which is normally just flawless, but why in the hell is Cody watching from the sidelines? Why isn’t he in his band uniform? Why does Mrs. Booberry come to a football game?
I need to queue up Yakety Sax for the rest of these strips and give up on any of this making sense.
Son of Stuck Funky 
“Hey! The goat’s open!”
This, they print in newspapers nowadays? No wonder the country’s in the mess it’s in!
I’m pretty sure putting a player on the field in a mascot costume (ie. without pads and a helmet) breaks several rules, but hey, I haven’t had a seminar from the DUI coach…
I don’t normally mock TB’s artwork too much. I mean sometimes I just don’t have a choice, but my general opinion is that it’s probably not that easy to draw 365 of these things without botching and few or getting lazy here and there. But man, Alex was NOT the best choice of characters for a goofy reaction shot there in panels two and three, I mean what a trainwreck. Her mouth is simply not anatomically possible. And neither is Cody’s chin.
And how the f*ck wouldn’t they know that’s Owen? Owen was just talking to Cody about being the mascot earlier this week! Yet they’re referring to him, one of their best friends in the world, as “the mascot”. Just baffling. And really dumb, but we all saw that coming on Monday.
And given that suing inept buffoons for maliciously inflicting damage on people and things is seen as un-American, Owen’s family will frown impotently at Bull as they go broke paying his medical bills instead of doing something crazy and selfish and wrong like ‘getting Bushka’s ass fired’ or ‘suing Westview High for negligence.’
Owen lowered his head and impaled the opposing defender with his horns.
We now have a new football hero like Jarod last year…. a walk-on who makes the rest of the team look like they’ve been smoking pot under the blechers all season.
Jeepers, they didn’t even give Owen a helmet – he apparently lined up in his goat costume and Ka-Whack! He looks like another candidate for Bull’s Improvisational Rehab Clinic.
Classic TB “tell-don’t-show” today, which is too bad, because the concept of a mascot catching a pass (and getting blasted by a headhunting safety) in a real football game is pretty amusing.
Of course, a concept with this kind of broadly humorous possibility clashes with the self-serious tone of FW in general and even this strip specifically. When such a silly idea is presented without any trace of acknowledgement that it is silly, it makes for an awkward experience at best.
It’s kinda like that most recent Scooby-Doo TV show, which mixed an overly serious continuous subplot and stiff teen melodrama with such ridiculousness as Ska zombies and Patrick Warburton’s voice.
And finally, someone get TB an American football for a photo reference. He continues to draw Canadian footballs (stripes all of the way around the ball).
Well, I guess in a world where an inflatable helmet bursting into flames while the football team is running through it is a source of amusement, anything is possible.
maybe all the other stories will be told like this:
“Oh look the writer is writing”
“Oh look the guy on the treadmill is on the tread mill”
“Oh look the cancer patient is dying”
a bit repetitive perhaps but it’s a way to save time on drawing which is the important thing I guess.
Hmm…wasn’t it last year when Chullo and Glasses built (or, more properly, put a hat on) a robot for some competition or other? I remember that one being pretty dull (like this arc) even though it was an attempt at humor (like this one).
billytheskink: Good point, I’ve frequently mentioned how weird it is when Batiuk does his old-style pre-Lisa Act I satirical zany humor nowadays. Although it’s not entirely unwelcome, it just seems out of place and strange now. I mean one week you have a character mourning his dead wife or parents anxiously awaiting news about a military helicopter crash then the next week the band is drowning or bullies are swiping student’s Metamucil tablets. It’s jarring.