Well, that was certainly worth the wait. Batiuk uses his favorite tool…the rehash…to draw out the “suspense” regarding the “other woman” premise for the first of what promises to be many, many, many days. Sigh. The idea of these two idiots watching these DVDs together makes me queasy, so I hope Les at least has the decency to watch them in another room or something. The way Summer’s sitting there with them like they’re Pokeman cards or something makes me feel very, very uneasy about her future. Didn’t she used to play basketball or something?
Month: September 2015
Leeese-ter Eggs
OK, color me baffled. I have no idea what THIS is supposed to be but that last panel is definitely shudder-inducing for a whole wide variety of reasons. Lisa is back and this time, it’s with a vengeance! Seriously though, having her suddenly popping up all over the place again is definitely not a good sign. In all likelihood, this will merely be some drippy Lisa sap aimed at whatever lucky gal managed to reel in Dick Face after her very tragic drawn-out death, but then again you never know with this BanTom guy. And hopefully the “For Les” DVD features Lisa explicitly telling Les that he is under no circumstances to ever write a book about her, as THAT would be funny. Which of course means that you can safely rule it out.
Why doesn’t he just tell her what’s on the stupid tapes instead of being all weird and cryptic about it? What the hell are “practice tapes”? WHOSE “senior year tape”, Summer’s or Lisa’s? I guess it’s supposed to be for Summer, but was a separate tape for each year of college really necessary? Seems like overkill and honestly, a bit domineering too. I wonder how long they go on for? Does she cover the bases right up to retirement? When he first introduced these VHS tapes I thought oh no, he can conceivably mine these tapes for Lisa material forever and damned if it isn’t happening right now.
But all this idiocy is totally overshadowed by Batiuk’s greatest artistic achievement in quite a long time: that disembodied, lifeless Summer head with the AV cables sticking out of her neck. They really should be connected to a copy of “Lisa’s Story”, as it IS the only thing keeping her alive right now. But nonetheless, it’s a chilling image.
Running Aground
Only TomBan could do a football team arc that features a bunch of anon-o-characters talking in a boring conference room. So what the “committee” is saying here is that bullying is OK if the bully has been heavily bullied in the past? Well OK then. Perhaps next week we’ll see Les Moore stealing candy from babies and punching puppies. It’s all about the context, you see? Another “very serious” issue tackled…time for pizza and comic books!!
You Lose Some, You Lose Some
Good LORD what the HELL is going on with Coach Hunter’s schnozz? It’s like his face grew a handle or something. He could be “Crankshaft’s” stunt double. Otherwise, yawn. I guess this beats another year of having Bull standing around the practice field cracking wry with Les about how much the Scapegoats suck, but still, this is as tedious as it gets. In the last few weeks he’s done two “bullying” arcs. In the first one, no one actually gets bullied at all and in this one the bullying victims don’t even mind. Real cutting edge stuff there, Tom. During his next puff interview in the Akron Sunday paper he’ll be crowing about “addressing” the “issue” of “bullying” and oh, how we’ll laugh and laugh. Somehow he’s managed to do a “bullying” arc that features no bullying at all AND a football team arc that features no football and gags about how much WHS sucks even though they don’t anymore. Kind of remarkable, really.
Just Take A Knee Already
Is Principal Nate supposed to be “slow” or something? I mean Bull JUST EXPLAINED THE BASIS OF THE COMPLAINT, did he not? I mean having a seldom-seen character adding nothing to a story is an old FW standby and all but this is insane. Perhaps having Nate’s question appear in panel one would have been somewhat more sensible but then we might have missed out on that boffo punchline, which would have been a real tragedy, as I hate seeing such hilarity ending up on the (guffaw) cutting room floor.
Coming tomorrow: the characters talk about the premise some more, but you already knew that, didn’t you?
Son of Stuck Funky 