This Strip Should Be Under Review

Well, at least there’s no more Dinkle in today’s strip. We do have seven panels of a guy watching TV, which isn’t the most engaging thing for a comic to depict. And we have a gag that could’ve been told in just one or two panels, or even in Crankshaft, for that matter. And it’s a complaint that probably gets made repeatedly on every sports radio station in the country on Mondays. But hey, no Dinkle, so things are looking up.
Speaking of looking up, we all have ComicBookHarriet’s return tomorrow to look forward to! For her sake, I hope this “no Dinkle” trend continues.

Don’t Worry, One of You Will Surely Die Soon

Dinkle’s garage door is like bricks, falling leaves, and Becky’s pinned-up sleeve-they all have to be featured as prominently and as often as possible. “This guy has a treble clef painted on his door, isn’t that wacky?”.
I find it really, really hard to believe anyone from Westview could ever receive that many awards.
This strip is just another example of how Batiuk can’t seem to decide if Dinkle is supposed to be an egotistical maniac or actually great. And I wonder if Dinkle’s name legally includes “World’s Greatest Band Director”, or if that’s the award he won (which you think someone would have mentioned it at some point). I guess all those other band directors were wrong when they referred to themselves that way. If Dinkle calling himself WGBD is supposed to be humorous, you shouldn’t have him literally receiving awards referring to himself that way.

It Was a Thrill, Just Like the Last Two Times

Three things about today’s strip:
1. Batiuk still depicts signs as being on the inside of the door, which is silly.  I’m guessing he’d think people would miss the vitally important detail that this conversation is taking place in the band room, and he can’t think of a way to arrange the layout so you can see the outside of the door.  (Also, there’s no hilariously crappy tape holding the sign up.  Maybe we’ve made a difference!)
2. Based on my ten seconds of Googling, “finale list” isn’t a thing. I’m assuming it’s a play off of “bucket list”, (“he’s a musician, he wouldn’t talk about buckets, he’d talk about finales!”), but just swapping one word for another doesn’t instantly make comedy, despite what the existence of Crankshaft would have you think.
3. But hey, Dinkle is talking about his finale, which can only mean he’s about to die soon. Here’s hoping for a Sunday sideways “Death of Superman” “homage”, which will be extra awkward when it’s Becky cradling Dinkle’s corpse in her arm.

I Sold Snacks So I Can Buy Snacks

You know you’re reading quality comedy/ground-breaking genre convention busting high Art and Literature when you’re getting an “airplane food is expensive” joke. I do think it’s a little weird that Dinkle went around raising funds from people so he could fly out to California and be honored. I also don’t really get how it’s band candy if someone not in the band is selling it, but whatever.
I do find the entire premise of today’s strip, “I told people I needed X amount of money to fly out here but kept begging people for money long after I reached X” to be pretty revealing. That seems bad, and not something that one of the heroes of your strip should be doing? And I don’t really know what he means by “let on”. Is he just saying that he lied to his wife about how much he sold, and how much money he has? Which seems pretty awful, actually. Or did he lie to the fundraising company and not report some of his sales, by like claiming a box went missing or arrived damaged or something? Setting up the extremely, extremely tired “airline food is expensive” gag that got old decades ago shouldn’t be this confusing.

Where Are the Photo Album Corners?

This is such a strange comic strip. I really have no idea what the joke here is. It seems to be “Dinkle doesn’t know how to relax”, or “Dinkle is obsessed with band”, which, we get it already. But Harriet says they never went on vacation before, not that they never had a good vacation. So is she just totally forgetting that they went to the beach?  (And I guess Batiuk has just given up on the photo album corners and sepia tone for flashbacks.)
And really, if flying halfway across the country to stand on a street corner and watch your husband do the same thing he’s been doing for decades is the closest thing you’ve had to a vacation, that is so sad.