Tag: bricks

43-7

Merry Pookster
September 28, 2013 at 10:24 am
Sure the scoreboard says 43-0….but is there any indicator of which is the home-team?
Looks like Westview is wearing their traveling uniform.

I had my post already written in my head when I read Pookster’s comment. I’d just assumed that Westview would be on the losing end of a 43-0 score. Today’s strip does nothing to answer the question of who won. Sunday-only readers would surely take this as a win for the Scapegoats.

Jarod has awarded himself the game ball, but has given Wedgeman (the number 12 whom he denied the ball in yesterday’s strip) even more reason to despise him. The rest of the team have all showered, dressed, and left Jarod alone at his locker. Well, not completely alone: Coach Bushka’s still hanging around, waiting for his “thank you”, which he causally, smirkingly accepts.

The Business End

Today’s strip

Naturally, anything called “Merchant’s Day” would have to feature the only two functioning businesses in Westview.  What I don’t get is how cavalierly John runs his comic book shop.  Here are a couple of potential customers who, yeah, might not read comics themselves, but might know people who do and thus might buy gifts, and John can’t even be bothered to look up.  Isn’t he perpetually behind in his rent payments?  Isn’t the entire town continually strapped for cash?  Does he not want to even try to make money?  Look at the expression on his face:  it just screams “Get out of my shop.  Get out of my shop.  If I don’t look up maybe they’ll just go away.”

Besides, given the fact that John frequently proselytises everyone about the art and value of comic books, you would think in his world there wouldn’t be anyone who wasn’t a potential fan, just waiting to have him open up a whole new world for them.  Yet here he doesn’t even try.

Yes, I do know that the words “try” and “attempt” and “strive” and so forth are considered curse words in Westview, but the continual avoidance of those activities is just so.  Damned.  Wearying.

…come to think of it, this particular episode seems to sum up Funky Winkerbean in a nutshell.  “Look…here’s something.”  Lady, if you only knew how wrong you are.  “Never mind…this isn’t a store.”  You know what else it isn’t?  A joke.  The joke is right here, and it’s on us.

Culture Schlock

Link to today’s strip

Sigh. A completely played-out premise masquerading as a “beloved running gag”, featuring the usual half-assed and really bad “punchlines” that make less sense the more you ponder them. Otherwise known as “a Wednesday in August” in FW parlance. Hearing Bull whine about a “culture” of losing is like hearing Lisa complain about how sickeningly goody-goody everyone in town is, or Les bitching about someone else constantly speaking in bad puns. Part of me wants to believe that maybe the joke is at least partly that Bull is just too stupid to realize that he IS the “losing culture” at WHS but I know better. This strip doesn’t have any subtexts like that and whenever it appears that it might it’s pretty much guaranteed to be just an accident. Nope, the “gag” here is what the football gag always is: some variation on “we suck” and that’s it. Forty years in a row. Sigh.

Everyone here knows that I’m a big fan and admirer of Westview’s long tradition of making hand-lettered signs and banners and hanging them with haphazardly placed, non-symmetrical pieces of tape. I always wonder about that, as it’s one of the most consistent things about the artwork from year to year. Every time you see one of those hand-lettered signs, it’s always taped to the wall all crookedly and randomly. I think it’s because TB feels it lends an element of “down home” folksiness to it, but I like to believe it’s because all Westviewians suffer from some sort of strange tape dyslexia that prevents them from doing it right. Anyhow, nice job with that today, Batom Inc. Nice cinder block wall, too.

Heming-No-way

Tape to any punching bag.Reprint as needed.Link to today’s strip

Well, looks like we’ve abandoned the idea of “punchlines” after just a couple of tries, and we’re back to what Les does better than anyone: drink in unearned praise and be a smug ass in response.   Today’s strip is just Moore proof, if any were needed, that this is Tom Batiuk’s fantasy Comic Con panel.    Look, if you dare, upon that mug in the last panel.  He’s looking right at you, dear reader, and issuing an invitation for you to praise him.  While he waits, I’m sure you can think of another, more appropriate word that also begins with “p” that you’d like to bestow upon him.

We also learn that Les Moore, literature teacher, has actually read two works of literature:  Moby Dick (referred to many times) and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (also referred to during last year’s Kilimanjaro arc).   I’m sure his students get a blistering education by studying those two works, over and over and over again.  And it means Les never has to update his syllabus.  Win-win, amirite?

Personally, when I think of Les Moore comparing himself to Ernest (or for that matter, Mariel) Hemingway, I’m reminded of Woody Allen’s “The Lost Generation” — “Hemingway punched me in the mouth.”  I think watching anyone punch Les in the mouth would be a treat, even if it was Woody (or for that matter, Irwin) Allen so you knew it wouldn’t hurt much.

I’m sure hoping that next week will find as at a different location.  The decor of Montoni’s is damn ugly.  The bricks are okay, as is the tiled sidewalk, but the canopy and tablecloth are as tasteless as the pizza.  The place should be called Pizza Clown, or Kindergarten Pizzeria, or Paint-Store Explosion Pizza – “If you can eat here, you must be color blind!”  What’s inexplicable is how lovingly it’s rendered here.  If this strip was black-and-white, it wouldn’t hurt my eyes as much as it does now.