I guess the joke, if that is the correct term, is that Thatsnought never thought being a musician would entail heavy lifting.
It’s quite possible that, in the myriad of universes parallel to our own, this joke is considered quite a knee-slapper.
In this universe…not so much.
It strikes me that there’s someone who might start to rethink a career in cartooning.
Wow, it looks like Bernie and Thatsnought are determined to make this sale! In the second panel, it appears they are physically forcing the mattress against that lady, shoving her back into her own home! “Buy this mattress or we will kill you with it!” Wow, that eleven dollars is as good as theirs!
Many folks have pointed out the idiocy of this arc–you don’t lug the damned mattresses around, the same way you don’t carry around turkeys that are becoming dangerous by the minute as they thaw and incubate. No, you show pictures to folks and take orders, then you order the stock, and then you deliver the orders. But that’s not the way things work in the Batiukverse.
Okay, fine, comic strip rules are not the same as real-world rules. But here’s my question, specifically about what we’re seeing here, with Bernie and Thatsnought shilling a mattress.
What happens if they sell it? Are they done for the day, or do they have to go back and get another mattress, come back and start again at the next house on this street? Is there a flatbed truck just out of sight that has a dozen or so more mattresses for them? Has this arc been poorly thought out?
Uh, I mean um *cough*
Well, I’m sure there are at least half a dozen people saying, “Hey, you wanted him to do more funny strips and he’s doing them! There are jokes! You people are ungrateful and should be thanking him!” Well, okay, but honestly, this strip doesn’t give me much to be thankful for. The problem is, as far as “funny,” that ship has sailed many years ago. Tom Batiuk has no idea how to be funny.
And if you’re not going to be funny, at least get the logistics right.
Greetings, all, BChasm back again for a spin on the Devil’s Tricycle. First of all, shout out to Comic Book Harriet, whose hosting last week was outstanding. Great insight and great humor–two things Tom Batiuk wishes he still had.
Today’s strip was not available for preview, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that Tom Batiuk’s ability to generate boring and uninvolving content easily beats my ability to predict what will appear. What will we get? More Lisa auction? Les on his book tour? Bull reliving his high school football career? Funky’s failing health? Why, it’s like some kind of monstrous game show, where the only prizes are terrible! IT’S A TORTURE DEVICE FOR THE MODERN AGE!
(Felt tip to Red Letter Media, from which much of the above was stolen.)
Here’s the one Westview teacher who makes Les look like Mr. Chips, getting his first spoken lines in a year. Burchett’s Jim Kablichnick still resembles Mark Twain, though he’s lost his suspenders (and he used to favor colorful dress shirts). Today’s gag, of course, is lifted from Sunday’s “Name the Canadian Provinces” strip (and from every comic strip that’s featured a kid sitting at a school desk), right down to name-checking another Golden Age Disney character. Smirk it up, Bernie: there can be no incorrect answer (“Write down what you think…”). On the other hand, Kablichnick’s enough of a douchebag to find a rationale to mark every student’s answer incorrect anyway.
Given Rick Burchett’s animation background, it’s weird how statically he’s rendered Jim here: propped up in front of the classroom, pointing his finger at the ceiling. Like Batiuk, Burchett uses some unusual “camera angles.” But unlike TB, RB
(let’s just start using that abbreviation) puts his characters in actual, defined space, and not silhouetted in a crosshatched, encroaching black void. Three of his four strips so far have been set in a classroom, the angular walls and neatly tiled ceilings of which loom claustrophobically on all sides. I recognize the books atop the cabinet in the corner of Jim’s class, but am still trying to figure out what those diagonal planes in the left foreground of yesterday’s panel one. All the crazy angles lend some sort of tension to the settings. Kind of like how in the old Batman TV series, the camera shots inside the villians’ hideouts were all tilted askew.
It is comics like today’s strip that remind me how good I have it. I’m not taking high school English from Les Moore. I never had to take high school English from Les Moore. It is as if he is intentionally trying to be the opposite of the teacher that successful people so often cite as the inspiration that got them to make something of their life. What a miserable experience in every single way this strip is.
Les’ senior students did poorly on their quiz last Monday and now his freshman students have done poorly on theirs… I see a common denominator here. I bet these students would too if Westview High had a math teacher.
Son of Stuck Funky 
