The red and blue balloons (though the school colors are red and white) have been filled, and the kraft paper and tempera paint banner has been haphazardly Scotch-taped to the folded up bleachers. Everything appears ready for the coming reunion. You’d expect Reunion Committee Chairman Les to be displaying his base-running, smugly satisfied smirk. But Les implies that the reunion planning has been fraught with problems. OK, well, his committee did forget to choose a venue, though this issue was easily resolved (albeit to the detriment of Westview’s basketball-loving youth). Les has overcome his lack of a Facebook page and a suitable high school portrait, and has managed to delegate the setting up of the Lisa shrine, yet he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. And here comes Barry Balderman to drop that shoe…
Tag: Westview High School
The Biggest Prize in Sport
Link to today’s strip.
My God, look at Bull’s face in panel two. That’s the perfect Funky Winkerbean mask of weariness and resignation. Remember what I said the other day, about how Tom Batiuk has lost the ability to tell jokes? This right here is the proof. If Bull was wearing even a slight smile, his remark could be taken as a joke, about…uh…how the girl’s basketball team needs more training? Or they’re larger and stronger than the football players? Or something? Instead Bull has the expression of a man who’s about to walk that last lonley mile. “Any word from the governor?” Young Bob Dylan, tangled up in blue in the lower left, would be wise to quit glowering and listen in; he might get a great song out of this, maybe even a whole album! Maybe something like “Idiot Wind-Bag.”
Lastly, there is a bit of amusement on display as history is about to repeat itself: Les, not paying attention, is going to walk right into that purple-shirted girl who is distracted by her cell phone. KLANG! *OOF* THUD. On his trip into the past, one wonders what Les Moore would tell his younger self. One suspects it would be something like, “Buy that Starbuck Jones comic, kid.” After all, if your mind only has one track….
Formula Pun
Always looking for new ways to show his total disdain for his students, Jim Kablichnick takes a different approach in today’s strip. The resulting pun is not totally terrible, but, given the students’ reactions, appears to have had the desired effect.
So does this mean that students watch Cosmos in every class at Westview High except for Kablichnick’s science class? And how does Cody have the context to compare Kablichnick to an Australian magician and entertainer?
We need Owen & Cody like a fish needs a bicycle
In today’s strip, 27-year-old high-school juniors Owen and Cody complain about the—fish? Is that wedge-shaped thing fish? Owen says it’s fish, but—I’ve got nothing. Les Jr. Cody disgorges a Bermuda Triangle joke from the 1970s. Heigh-ho.
The good news is, this is a throwaway strip. Tomorrow, things get—oh—never mind that “good news” bit—tomorrow, things get worse, as we embark on a Les/Funky road trip.
‘s Cool, “Girl”
She’s a network TV news vet who worked her way up from Channel One to the American Broadcasting Company (and back down again); who’s spent time in war zones and who even brokered the hostage swap that freed PFC Wally Winkerbean. Time may not have diminished her looks (as it has for her ex-husband and for every other adult in this strip save Les), but Cindy is filled with trepidation as she primps for her date with Mason Jarr the Movie Star. She can’t even bring herself to apply that black lipstick she’s holding in panel one.
Son of Stuck Funky 
