SosfdavidO here, and ooh, look who’s being soooo coy in today’s strip not showing the face of the random weirdo wandering around the high school football game by himself.
Are we readers waiting for a payoff? Because unless he turns around to reveal Hannibal Lecter it’s going to be a letdown. But let’s keep padding this story out because we’ve got a whole damn week to fill
Son of Stuck Funky 
Of course those halftime shows ran long because Dinkle was Raisin the Bar.
What odds am I getting for “Mysterious figure is never identified or, indeed, ever seen again after Sunday”?
Indeed, he’s the personification of Fungy’s abandoned house.
I think you’re right. I can easily imagine Batty saying, “Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear an anonymous Big Walnut Tech alum describe what it was like to play against Westview?” To which the natural reply is “Not really.”
I swear, unless this week ends with gunplay, I’m going to utterly disappointed.
wait, big walnut tech? could this be Darrin’s biological father? The BWT football player who defiled teenage St,. Lisa?
That’s the only BWT alum any of us can think of, in which case “the big reveal” will be even more anitclimactic.
I would imagine that Frankie is sitting there in the Film Food truck, holding his camera and sadly wondering where everyone went, while an increasingly annoyed Lenny complains that his last two paychecks bounced.
I thought Frankie had male pattern baldness, so this can’t be him, right? Whatever happened to that food truck arc, anyway?
Frankie is scheming and easily angered, this guy doesn’t sound like that–in fact, he sounds just as dull as any regular. .
If it’s evil Frankie, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him muscle in on the popcorn stand, and his little schlemiel, Vinnie hawking sodie pop in the bleachers in a downpour.
It would be kinda cool if BWT Mystery Guy turns out to be Batiuk himself, walking around in the world of his creation. If that’s the case, Burchett’s drawn him with too much hair.
Now that would be potentially interesting, but why wouldn’t he be an old WHS student? There has to be a reason why he wrote him as an out-of-towner…or so you would think.
Possibly. The splash panel suggests that mystery man wears glasses.
FW is pretty bad most of the time but never more so than when it’s actively insulting your intelligence like this. He introduces a brand new mystery character out of nowhere, then has this mystery character waxing nostalgically over a high school he didn’t even attend. Who the hell looks back fondly on out-of-town high schools? If there’s a point to this character then get to it, enough with the Batiuksturbation.
This BatYack guy really is a piece of work. He spent decades veering away from those old Act I comedic premises by doing things like making the band director go deaf, giving the football star/coach brain damage and packing a hundred and fifty pounds on the band majorette, all of it leading up to today, where some guy is literally saying “hey, remember those old comedic premises from yesteryear?”. This strip is like a huge Möbius strip of total pointlessness, where the entire stated point of the strip always boringly folds back on itself into repetitive infinity. “Remember when”…yeah, actually it’s kind of tough to forget when he’s bringing it all up a few dozen times a year.
You really have to give the Scapegoats’ current band director a hand for managing to complete halftime shows within the time allowed by the high school athletic association. Yep, she’s never left her band on the field for too long, even if it means amputating the planned performance. She may not have the same strong arm for discipline as her predecessor, but she is also less prone to wear her emotions on her sleeve. Her direction has a certain quality I can’t quite pin, up among the very best in the state for sure.
She certainly manages to juggle her many duties with aplomb, always another trick up her sleeve and always prepared to wrap her arm around any problems that arise.
Yes – “Delay Start of Half”; 15 yards
A few years back I was at a high school football game in which the home team was given a delay of game penalty because the halftime show ran a little too long. I didn’t know refs could do that, but apparently they can.
Yeah, but we’ve already established that the Scapegoats always lose. So penalizing them is like piling another shovelful of dirt on an already filled grave.
If the point of this exercise in waxing nostalgic about a school he didn’t attend is meant to make us feel anything for Mystery Weirdo that isn’t pity, Batiuk’s failed again. I don’t think anyone here finds Dinkle’s egomania, having a one-track mind (and one-way brain) and short-sightedness to be especially amusing either.
Perhaps it’s Bull forgetting which school he attended
Looks a little tall and has way too much hair!
Another thought to consider which is no less crazy – Batty’s making an oblique reference to the cryptic line in Don McLean’s “American Pie”
‘Cause the players tried to take the field
The marching band refused to yield
There’s one theory that this line refers to Kent State.
I wonder if he’s abandoned telling any kind of story and has decided to just make the strip a vehicle for “Easter eggs”.
I think you’re giving him way too much credit. I’m seeing this week as just a way to re-tell tired old Act I jokes. I don’t really see any direction for this week’s arc to go other than a dead end.
@bobanero “I think you’re giving [Batiuk] way too much credit…” Something we do around here all the time.
100% true, even I almost always give him far too much credit, only to watch him fall far short of even my infinitesimally low expectations. The man is a master craftsman.
This nostalgia for high school is a part of the strip that I find utterly baffling – mostly because I utterly hated high school, loathed the entire experience. Since I graduated I have been to two reunions (mistakes both times) and that’s it. Now yeah you can get a lot of interesting stories out of something like that but nostalgia for the place is to me like having fond memories of the county lock up.
Why is he sitting on the Westview side of the field? (The press box / announcer’s booth is always on the home team side.)
Doesn’t the letter go on the front of the jacket?