Tag: Westview HS Band

Batteredday, September 1

Today’s strip was not available for preview. I would apologize, but I’m not sure I’m sorry I did not have to see it in advance.

Is it simply more of Dinkle’s megalomania? Yeah, probably. Dinkle, of course, has always been a megalomaniac, but his megalomania has gone from cartoonish and over-the-top to appalling and monstrous. Some of that is due to the fact that this strip’s tone has become so self-serious that attempts at humor seem either discordant or simply illustratitive of terrible behavior.

As much as that, though, Dinkle has changed too. In Acts I and II, his constant appearance in full dress uniform with his eyes always hidden under the bill of his cap gave him a cartoonish appearance to match his portrayal as obsessive perfectionist for whom marching bands are the pinnacle of human existence. Since his “retirement”, however, he has taken on the appearance of post-2010 Chevy Chase, and has come to behave much like Chase is said to off-camera.

To visualize, he went from this:

To this:

Tortursday, August 30

Today’s strip was not available for preview. One can reasonably assume it will involve Lefty continuing to torture the poor folks who agreed to play in this alumni band.

Ellipsis

So, without the current strip, let’s take a quick look back at Lefty in late Act II, who had just been named Westview High’s band director. Dinkle tries to get her killed for the sake of a bad pun. He is a monster.

O2 be anywhere else…

Pavel Chekov Lefty yells as some unseen old people in today’s strip… and thus continues August, as FW’s semi-official ollllllllllllllllllllld folks month.

August was once a time when this strip would fix its gaze on the high school and its students and teachers preparing for the new school year. Well, its gaze remains fixed upon the high school this August, but TB has imported infirm, elderly seniors in lieu of high school seniors. It would be bizarre if it wasn’t so uninteresting.

Piqued in High School

I do not even want to know what Lefty and Dinkle were doing in the band office prior to today’s strip that alumni band practice so rudely interrupted. Whatever it was, it was surely negative amounts of interesting, and we are better off having missed it. If only that could have continued for three more panels…

I’m amazed that TB hasn’t hatched this alumni band thing before. It is full of his favorite FW comfort foods: Dinkle, Lefty’s pinned-up sleeve, old old old people, wistful reminiscence about high school band, petty high school grudges, more Dinkle… Just throw in cancer, comic books, and Les smirking a couple times and you’ve got the complete FW meal.

I suppose it is too much to hope for an appearance by Jon Glaser’s “Score Settler”.
ScoreSettler

Alas, there is no gold to be found here… there’s not even a creek.