Tag: ceiling tiles

School’s Out Completely

Batiuk’s spent the last few weeks burning off a lot of one-shot gags. You’ve gotta admit, though, that even when they fall flat, you’ll take a half-dozen joke strips over say, a week of Funky exploring an abandoned house. Today’s comic continues in the gag-a-day vein, but Burchett continues to add welcome and pleasing visual details. Especially in that first panel: Cayla is positively coquettish, smiling to herself as she casually lets slip to Nate that hubby Les is going to be…preoccupied. And she’s totally getting through to Nate, too. Cut to a nice shot of the talking school building featuring non-hand lettering on the WHS message board, some nice shade from some leaves, and of course there be bricks.

That slow jam playing we could hear in the background abruptly switches to Yakety Sax! Here comes Les, haulin’ ass, knocking hapless students aside with his valise in his frenzy to get the hell away from there. Unless Les and his wife drive separate cars to work, poor Cayla’s going to need a ride home…

Don’t Try and Con ‘er

170601I don’t know about you, but man, RB’s art is still giving me the heebie jeebies. Today it’s that second panel, where Linda is looking right at us with her beady eyes, beady eyebrows, and weird bottom teeth. Her shoulders and elbows are all weird, undulating contours…don’t her arms appear bony? And there’s a ominous, diagonal black shadow behind her: why? And when did she start wearing her ID badge so prominently? Detective Lopez of the Westview PD.

Pluto-idiocracy

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.

Think, Tank

Day Two on the job and Rick Burchett is tasked with introducing a new character, and Batiuk even gives this one a name! “Tank” resembles bully emeritus Wedgeman, with his imposing physique, blue-black hair, and freckles/blemishes. Les, acting like a real teacher for once, unhesitatingly  offers Tank an opportunity to redeem his poor grade, but once again is stingingly slapped back to his senses, hard enough this time to make him affect a Jack Benny pose.

Cana-duh

Oh look, someone let Les put the message on the school sign in today’s strip. Or maybe Kablichnick put that up. Or Linda. Among the Westview High faculty, the possibilities are endless…

So, I’ve been assuming this is Logan Church, who was introduced in early 2016 as a white girl with an ABC News-endorsed business blog, and I stand by it. A change in ethnicity? That’s an established common occurrence in the Batiukverse. A successful business blogger who suddenly dresses like an extra from the opening scene of Austin Powers and jokes about not knowing basic high school geography? Wouldn’t be the first time.

And with that, I hand the keys back over to the governor himself: TFHackett. After this week’s clip show, one can only assume we will back to regularly scheduled programming. Good luck… you’re gonna need it.