SoSfDavidO here, with another trip to Westview with our favorite student, Owen. Let’s see what he’s doing in today’s strip!
Eating! And from the sounds of it, lunch hasn’t changed much since I was in high school. Honestly, I’m not feeling overly snarky on today’s strip. It’s fairly amusing, paged well, and we don’t have too see Les or zoom out to another county to accommodate the word balloon. Why Owen is dressed like he’s in a meat locker and Cody is in a t-shirt is puzzling, but other than that, another one-shot throw-away slightly funny trip to Westview.
Son of Stuck Funky 
As bad as the usual “arc-a-week” format is, the “grab-bag” stuff over the last few days has been even more annoying for some reason. I guess it’s probably because it’s all so laughably awful. Oh well, at least he managed to bring it all the way around to pizza somehow.
Is Owen still popular? If so, why is Cody next to him? And why haven’t any of his new cool friends advised him to lose that f*cking hat? The way Batom blew it with that “Owen become a hero” arc was just so typically inexplicable, you know?
In case anyone wonders why pizza is the only game in town.
He has 3 weeks to kill Cory. Let’s go.
Cody and Owen. Juniors in their sixth year of high school, if memory serves me right.
The chullo is what gets me every time. No one I know of wears those things. No one. What compelled Batom® to design Owen with it?
He must be trying to return to the “gag-a-day” thing. It isn’t working…
HA HA HA, this is INCREDIBLY hilarious and *bonus* there’s pizza involved! I am splitting my sides with laughter, OH NO it’s NOT laughter splitting me, the tumor is METASTASIZING. ARGH I am in DARKNESS ETERNAL.
What bothers me is that he fails to realize that he can’t age one set of characters while fixing the ages of others in place. Then again, he is the one who’s got two sets of Crankshaft characters that both live in 2014.
Eventually, an idiot with a box and a screwdriver will pass through, help out and learn that Batiuk is insane.
“He must be trying to return to the “gag-a-day” thing. It isn’t working…”
Nor arc a day.
Notice that somebody else is watching this?
Doonesbury today starts SIX new arcs at the same time in different panels.
And they actually seem interesting.
Even by the standards of “what’s the deal with cafeteria food?” jokes, this one’s pretty lame.
Say what you will, but I feel like TB put some effort into this one. Not a whole lot mind you, but more than usual.
Oops hit send too soon. Then last line should have been, “This is what is collocally known as, damning with faint phrase.”
@ Epicus Doomus: Speaking of “laughably awful,” unless I’m missing some deep, post-modernist commentary (not likely) today’s Crankie doesn’t even have a bad gag.
Not only does Crankshaft not have a bad gag, it doesn’t even have any sense of cohesion. It’s just a random set of panels drawn to meet some sort of art quota.
Someone really ought to play Five Card Nancy with the panels from this past two week’s worth of strips.
@Saturnino: Its not just Doonesbury that excels at advancing storylines and continuity creep.
Before their current storyline, Dick Tracy had toyed with FOUR different storylines – AND had a one day Barney Google crossover – in the course of three weeks.
As a bonus in addition to today’s strip being another i’m phoning it in effort – the subject – school lunches has unleashed a vast amount of right wing frothing at the mouth about Michelle Obama and school lunches in the comments segment – the lovely term food nazi has been tossed about – venture at your own risk – it’s pretty toxic.