First “Bullying Played for Laffs” strip of the new year! How miserable is life for Cody and Owen, within and without the walls of Westview High School? It’s so bad that the mere approach of three dudes in WHS varsity jackets instantly induces panic in the (Senior!) boys. In panel 2 it’s revealed that the three are not bully jocks but baritones, who, unlike Cody and Owen, are secure enough in their manliness to proudly display their affiliation to the WHS music program.
17 thoughts on “Fear of Music”
Comments are closed.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Such imposing figures, and yet, they practice in the “La La Land.”
So it’s a garbage dump grab-bag week, eh? I can see that. I’ve seen worse FW gags but still, what is he trying to say here? That “songbirds” are some kind of “sissies” or something? The “Brady Bunch” addressed this very topic like forty years ago, which means that it’ll be right in Batom’s cultural wheelhouse around twenty years from now.
I’m mostly shocked that Cody and Owen are out somewhere other than the Komix Korner. I wonder if John is out of town “on business” like Funky was.
And what happened in between the strips, that made Cody “whew”? Did the two of them just freeze in place in the open, hoping that the evil, evil singers would pass them by? Instead of moving or something?
Awful. As always, awful.
Cody and Owen are the first sixth year (or seventh year?) juniors that are intimidated by members of the school choir.
The problem is, both of them are so thoroughly unlikable. If Batom® was trying to elicit some sympathy-laden humor at their expense, he failed miserably.
Because you can be singers or jocks, but not both–and if you’re a singer, than obviously you’re a big weenie, right? Yeesh.
Go to the official FW site and scroll all the way down to the bottom. You’ll see the copyright information on the left. Note how it’s credited to “Bantom, Inc”, not “Batom”. I’m not sure why but I found that extremely amusing.
“Bantom, Inc” … heh. I guess King Features doesn’t have proofreaders in their website division.
Given that the gays at the prom arc turned into a celebration of what a great guy Nate is, how soon do you think it’ll be before a young adult becomes the axis about which the plot rotates?
“Did the two of them just freeze in place in the open, hoping that the evil, evil singers would pass them by?”
This is the perfect place to start an arc where Owen and Cody get beaten up by these three (bassos) while the rest of entire choir (off to the side) sings the Dies Irae from Mozart’s Requiem.
So, we’re constantly told that Westview High is so strapped for cash (thanks to those evil, stupid voters) that classes are cut right and left…but they can spend money so the choir members can have team jackets. Not uniforms, mind you, which might possibly make a small amount of sense, but team jackets.
Yeah, it’s a comic strip (supposedly) but a little tiny bit of consistency would be nice.
It was probably those snooty, hulking choir kids who threatened him back in 2009 (he was in high school in 2009!) for singing Rodgers and Hammerstein in the hallway, so Cody’s out of the woods unless he starts crooning about being a girl who cain’t say no…
Anyways, what are Cody and Owen doing in South Mali?
@beckoningchasm, don’t all “lettermen” have to pay for their own jackets – even the athletes?
Speaking of which, the next panel probably would have had the singers beaten to a pulp by football players – “Westview isn’t Lima – choir singers are still in the lower tier around here!”
Or beat them up in slow motion, to the haunting strains of the Lacrimosa.
I guess the message here is if you’re an obnoxious little dweeb in a smelly wool hat, you can expect to be assaulted at any time in any public place by athletes. I think that’s actually quite reasonable, and should be legal.
I take great comfort in not knowing anyone who wore a chullo 24/7 while in high school, LCCC or Cleveland State. Good grief.
If I’m not mistaken, Alex, Cody and Owen were a year or two younger than Summer, Keisha and Maddie. Either they are so inept that they have been held back an incomprehensible five years in a row (which is unrealistic even by Ohio standards), or Batom® is uninterested with creating any new characters that would make the concept of “real time” in the strip functional. Think about it. Everyone else not in the Batom® Witless Protection Program is aging horribly and rapidly, yet those three are seemingly stuck at being 17 years old.
All Batom® needs to do (besides retire and hand off the strip to a competent writer/artist) is invoke the MST3K mantra as the description on Comics Kingdom. ‘It’s only just a comic strip, so just relax.’
@don – I suppose that’s true, but even then the jackets are designed and made available. I’ve never seen varsity jackets for the choir–do such things exist?