I don’t have the patience to write an introduction for this, since any SABR worth his slide rule knows all about the horrible comic TUCK! sez that appears regularly on Hardball Times and also knows any moment spent thinking about it is a waste of time. Tuck’s artwork is terrible, his stories make no sense, and his jokes are so bad they actually might be anti-comedy.
The worst of it might be Tuck’s sheer laziness. Who else would post the exact same comic six times this year only changing the speech bubbles? If you don’t believe me, here’s the complete listing of what I call the “Dragon Ball Z Guy Reads the Paper While Watching TV and after the TV Says Something Stupid and Not Funny, He Shoots a Knowing, World-Weary Look to the Reader, also the Headline on the Paper Changes to an Even Worse Joke than the one the TV Made” series.
- November 14, 2007: Same as it ever was..!
- January 23, 2008: Going, going…still going…
- March 19, 2008: Whoulda thunk, indeed?
- June 11, 2008: Yeah, right…
- August 23, 2008: All part of the game, right, Lefebvre?
- August 30, 2008: Glavine-san???
- September 10, 2008: They have these new things called “maps”
- October 18, 2008: 2008 Playoffs Sketchbook, Part Five
- November 8, 2008: TUCK!’s 2008 Playoffs Sketchbook, part (last)
- November 19, 2008: File under “Duh”
- December 17, 2008: Media blitzed
- January 28, 2009: Cha-ching, 2K9
- March 5, 2009: Fascinating impersonating
- April 2, 2009: no foolin’!
- May 14, 2009: One for Calcaterra
- August 20, 2009: Play ball. Please!
- November 12, 2009: Winner gets the centaur paintings?
- January 11, 2010: How much is that per strikeout?
- March 25, 2010: Another one for Calcaterra
- April 22, 2010: That’s a lot of cabbage
- June 14, 2010: Strasburg Week, Pt 1
- August 19, 2010: There goes my BBWAA membership
- October 14, 2010: Next?
There’s almost no difference from one edition to the next. The biggest change is when Dragon Ball Z Guy’s cigar-smoking dog, Si-Si, first appears on May 14, 2009. Oh and the guy’s hat appears to say “FAN·O,” presumably because he’s a sports fan. Very clever. Anyway, that’s the only change in format between 2007 and now. This is the kind of hard-hitting research you’ll only see at Praiseball Bospectus.
Beyond the stupidity of the jokes or even the stupidity of the whole setup and payoff, is the stupidity of Tuck himself. I don’t think he ever bothered to save a template of the comic, even though he’s reused it nearly two dozen times now. He just scans in a copy of a copy of a copy each time. Comparing the older comics with the more recent, the quality and pixelization definitely has gotten worse over the years. Eventually, we’ll be reading a gray box with two speech bubbles. I don’t know if gray boxes can give withering looks, though.
In the end, this won’t change anyone’s opinion on TUCK! sez. It was total crap to begin with, so what difference does it make if he starts copying himself? Excuse me while I sulk for having spent an hour on this. Next time, though, I’ll give Tuck the Tangotiger treatment, as I investigate the “awards” he’s won.
Update: I don’t why I didn’t do this before. Enjoy this slideshow of the comics. It makes it especially easy to tell that Tuck rescans the comic each time, as the orientation and size never stays the same.
Click to view slideshow.
