Tag: Les’ yellow shirt

A glitch in the matrix

Someone refresh my memory but have we not already done this joke!? It was either this or a very slight variation of it.  I’m reminded with strips like these that we longtime snarkers might be recalling the one-a-day gags as being funnier than they were.

In any case, time, or what we understand to be some rudimentary construct of time, seems to be advancing in a forward, almost coherent movement for once. I couldn’t tell you for the life of me when Summer got her driver’s license (or if she even did) but a mess of students are about to graduate from high school, leaving us with Cody, Owen and a gaggle of nameless, faceless students with pencil wrists and melting faces.

Say Cheese

Taking the senior class photo has changed? Because it’s being taken with a cellphone? Wow, progress, huh? Something else that’s changed is TB’s draftsmanship, if indeed it is he who drew this. I have no idea who the old gent taking the picture is, but I guess he’s another throwaway teacher, or maybe a passerby who the class asked if he would oblige. But this whole strip looks like it took ten minutes to draw. We recognize Maddie by her hat and red hair, and Cory by his shifty demeanor. But is that supposed to be the Capitol dome in the background? Might as well be Podunk City Hall.

Flashback to the 2007 Washington trip…Chien is still a drip…

In Situ Whatever

Batiuk’s “Funky felt tip” has been especially cruel to Linda yesterday and today: she looks like Crankshaft backed the school bus over her. I especially like the shadow cast by her nose.

The strip at first focused on gags about teenagers at the imaginary Westview High School. Over the years, it explored sensitive topics such as cancer, dyslexia, teen suicide and alcoholism.

—From just about every profile written about Tom Batiuk

But hey: writing means that you can play sensitive topics for laughs when you feel like it, right? So let’s all chuckle at the thought of Jim the Science Guy, alone in his hotel room, draining tiny, overpriced bottles of liquor while his colleagues dine without him.

Flashback to the 2007 Westview Senior Trip: Chien continues to demonstrate the “esteem” she has for her culturally deprived classmates.

Wedgie-ton D.C.

Today’s strip feels like a “twofer”, as if Batiuk had an extra gag that he wanted to shoehorn into this Washington trip arc. The first panel contains some of TB’s trademark exposition. Even though Cody and Owen are no longer freshman, it appears they still are on the receiving end of daily wedgies, though hopefully the Magic Marker attacks have ceased.

Meanwhile in panel 2, I guess the sight of the White House’s many windows has triggered an OCD moment in Les.

Flashback to the 2007 Senior Trip:
Hipster Chien enjoys a snide chuckle at the expense of the “Barbie Dolls”:
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Forced Busing

Wow: not a “Hi” or “Hello” but rather a “Why is Funky here?” “Well, Summer, ever since Mr. Winkerbean singlehandedly rescued girls’ basketball, and all the high school sports programs, he feels he has carte blanche to walk into people’s houses unannounced. Get used to it, sweetie.”

So now it’s a matter of record that Summer is, in fact, in her senior year of high school. It’s a good thing that Les has been “on top of” her college application process. Right? Right?

SoSF bonus: just for the hell of it, here’s a flashback from the 2007 Westview Senior Class trip to D.C.