WOW.
So we get most of a week of Les spitting weak jokes at a bunch of parents, and then we…cut to the grand finale. No scenes of boarding the bus, no hijinks along the way, nothing with the hotel, or anything having to do with Washington DC. (Yeah, sure, the White House is mentioned. Mentioned.) All we get is two panels of a miserable looking bunch of people (Owen aside) staring dead-eyed into the distance.
And…that’s it. Yes, that’s all of it. That’s the entire senior trip. This way to the egress. That’s all she wrote. Th-th-th-th-that’s all folks! Finito Binito (sic).
This is pretty unprecedented for this strip. Hell, the simplest, most mundane tasks typically require several days of strips. Wedgeman’s ring comes to mind. Here, Tom Batiuk has willingly skipped over a potential couple of weeks. Not that I’m complaining, exactly–I imagine that a fortnight trapped on a bus with Les Moore would be sheer torture. Worse than stabbing a coloring book.
No, it is a relief to be spared all this. It just begs the question. How is he going to reach the 50th anniversary by passing up material?
There’s only one plausible answer, and we all know what that is.
He had to wrap this up so he could get back to Starbuck Jones. I mean, it’s increasingly clear that Starbuck Jones is all he cares about in this strip (and it’s creeping up in Crankshaft, too). He must know by now that Les Moore as “beloved character” is never going to happen. That seems to be why he’s pushing Starbuck Jones so relentlessly, even to the point of cutting off a Les arc.
So, next week I’m guessing we’ll get more people talking about Starbuck Jones. Not really doing anything–I think the bus scene exhausted his “show” abilities–but talking about how things might happen. His “tell” abilities are always at the ready.
Next week we’ll see if I’m right.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Oh BanTom, maybe one of these days one of us will finally figure out exactly what the hell it is you’re doing over there in the great Buckeye State. Then again, maybe one of us won’t. What really irks me about this inexplicable nonsense is the way Batiuk always draws Les’ face with way more attention to detail than he ever allows anyone else. Les has all these annoying nuanced facial expressions that, at least for me, make him even more objectionable than he’d otherwise be. Everyone else is an incomprehensible lump of smirks but never Les.
Yeah, that was one hell of a memorable bus trip all right. FW: the comic strip where just assuming that stuff must have happened is half the fun. We’ll definitely let you know if anyone finds the other half.
Wow, Batty is gonna get that Pulitzer some day. He has to. He is cranking out some incredible stories.
You know, it’s not that hard to get a White House tour-you do have to file a request with your Congressperson, but in most cases that’s as easy as filling our a form on their website. Sounds like Les was too busy inventing his patent meeting patter to properly prepare for the trip, and is trying to save face.
Did Owen really bring a pair of binoculars on the trip to Washington D.C? That’s kind of weird. Also, an idiot like him wearing that chullo and casing the White House with binoculars seems like a great way to see some of those antiterrorist measures in action.
Whenever Batiuk has someone travel, like Funky or Crankshaft, he mostly just uses it as an excuse to bitch about airport security. Now he’s used the senior class senior trip as an excuse to whine about security at the White House. I see a pattern here.
Here, we have Les feeling like shmutz because Chullo Boy couldn’t let him make an arch, ill-informed comment about security measures that inconvenence Stupid White Men. On the other side, Jeff is about to whine about what a bad person he is because his dead mother kept the fact that she had bipolar disorder a secret because she was ashamed of it.
Pursuant to Homeland Security Directives, certain people are to be kept further from the seat of government that others…
Can’t take chances, you know. Cancer might be contagious after all…
Add yet one more thing to the list of stuff about which L’ Auteur Glorieux knows nothing.
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Google Street View
That computer than man’s pushing in the masthead looks like the one from Act I. This computer spent most of its time playing Star Trek. It should’ve stayed in Act I.
Don’t worry, if Batiuk thinks of some bus jokes later he can run them next week, with box in the corner explaining that this occurred “One Week Ago”.
Now… A nation yawns.
Just did a small update to the image, as I realized I had left out the most important character in the Batiukverse…