The game is over?
Not a single panel of
Game action or rain?
Gil Thorp fans complain
Of no action, have it good
In comparison
Tom Batiuk’s art room
Where there hangs a framed quote
That says “tell, don’t show”
Trouble taking knee
Leads to Scapegoats running play
Kevin Steele happens
Tom Batiuk is the
Kevin Steele of comics page
Except Steele fired
Son of Stuck Funky 
More thrilling FW action today, as the game TB spent two weeks talking about flew right by in three panels. Let’s just hope he manages to finish this up without dragging out those final seven seconds any longer than is necessary (ha).
Okay, the gag is “the football team is bad”. But you’d think kids who like football enough to play it would also watch it and have some idea what the victory formation is or what “taking a knee” means. Sacrificing realism for humor is fine, but you’ve got to actually have humor.
Just a setup for a bad joke, or is it portending disaster tomorrow? Scintillating work.
The qb’s name is Joe Pisarcik, that’s all you need to know.
Maybe this could be leading up to the football team just plain old winning, only for Bull to have a massive heart attack as a result.
As in…Bull needs a drink?
I think I know how Battic feels – I got nothin’.
All I want to know is, what DOES Batiuk do when he (regularly) shadows the students of Midview High School in Grafton, Ohio? Clearly not getting any sort of realistic material for his strip.
Even by Batiuk standards of writing incompetence, this is a new low.
Batiuk does tend not to show the important stuff so he can focus on insane and stupid tangents. As an example, he never did show the important story of Les raising Summer so he could tell us something stupid.
WHAT
THE
HELL?
No, really, what the hell? What just happened here?! Oh my God, Batiuk, you cannot be serious with this one. Did you just skip an entire championship game? Need I remind people that this is not only a once-in-a-lifetime event for most any high school FB team, but this is the first time this has ever happened to the Scapegoats! Even if they completely blow the game, this is totally new ground and our artist just plain decided it wasn’t worth showing!
What is going through your head, Batiuk? A championship game for the Scapegoats, the team that other underdogs kick around to prove their Sports Movie bully cred, is apparently not worth showing… but Holly wants to get a comic book? SWEET CHRISTMAS THAT DEMANDS NOTHING LESS THAN TWO WEEKS OF HER SHAMBLING AROUND LIKE A LOBOTOMIZED WALRUS CROSS-COUNTRY. Just… what??
And wouldn’t Westview have taken a knee SOMETIME during the season. They’re playing for the conference championship; they must have won SOME games. THIS STRIP MAKES NO SENSE!
These usually end with someone taking a knee to the groin.
Now, now. In BattyBoy’s defense, you have to actually know something about football to depict football action. The last time he tried this, he had the mascot catch a pass and the play was allowed to stand. Yeah, exactly.
Get him outside his wheelhouse of comic books, pizza, and school band, and gay proms, and he’s lost. Honestly, this was for the best.
A week of filler and lame word play, followed by seven seconds of the actual game. Yep, that’s about right.
“Peanuts” quite a few times had Charlie Brown on the hook to win a championship game for the neighborhood baseball team, nevermind that the team never won a game to begin with. The game was rarely (if ever) shown, and would start with Charlie either on the mound or at bat and inexplicably blowing the game.
Batiuk could – COULD – be trying to imitate “Peanuts” in that way. The difference being, “Peanuts” did it for black humor purposes, and executed it perfectly. “Funky…” well, who in the hell knows what Batiuk’s intention is for the strip. Because he’s delusional if he thinks this is ‘realism.’
This isn’t the first time they’ve been in this situation…back in the early days, when the team couldn’t win a game, much less a championship, they were ahead, with the ball, and called time out – with one second left. (After a last play involving, somehow, a pig running onto the field, they still managed to win, but months later, it turned out that Bull’s GPA was “minus 2”, so he was ineligible, and they had to forfeit the win.)