bobanero
March 19, 2012 at 11:40 am
It’s remarkable how any player on a team that’s NEVER WON A SINGLE GAME can attract the attention of any college recruiter.
After 40 years of FW, Batiuk feels entitled to cast off any remnants of plausibility or continuity, and if the readers don’t like it they can suck it. Case in point: back when he was fake-beating Les, Bull was depicted with a rather flattering moptop. In his latest reincarnation, Bull’s teenage self sports a baffling split-level buzzcut that suggests a pineapple. As the only standout on Westview’s hapless football squad, Bull is allowed to have his own last name, not the school’s, across the back of his varsity jacket.
Son of Stuck Funky 
For anyone who’s ever wondered if TB becomes enamored with some bit of idiotic wordplay and then builds some sort of half-assed arc around it, I present this week, which exists solely for the sake of doing a gag based on EMU. I wonder what Eastern Midwest University’s mascot is? Too bad that Bull wasn’t recruited by Saint Henry’s Institute of Technology, eh?
The hair and the special “Bushka” jacket are bad, but the really odd thing about this one is how Bull is referring to “his coach”, as if Les a) hasn’t heard this story ten million times before, and b) doesn’t remember the feared and hated Coach Stropp from back when he was in high school…at the same time Bull was. Perhaps that explains his creepy obnoxious smirk/grin there in panel one. But it’s Les, so it’s tough to tell.
Bull: “My coach was pretty excited when he found out I was secretly incubating and selling off black market emus at the school.”
Les: “….*….what.”
Bull: “Well cripes, Les, how do you suppose we kept the sports program afloat all those years?”
Les: “Raffles?”
Bull: “Poor fool. Les, I’d better not tell you about the illegal capybara wrestling either.”
Les: “W-wait…WAIT, are you telling me th-”
Bull: “By the way, Les, our insistence on using dead tree mail instead of email like every other teacher in the school? Well, let’s just say I’m gonna have to sell more emus in order to prevent us getting canned.”
Les: “AAAAARGH!”
For the second day in a row, Les presents his lipless smirk. For no apparent reason. (Unless my mom was right: If you keep making that face, it will freeze that way!)
Elsewhere, I fear band flashbacks. Like, lots of them. Think there will be torrential rainstorms involved in the wacky hijinx to follow?
i never seen the old strips but why is Bull & dead coach look same age ?
While we’re talking about Batiuk’s lack of anything closer to continuity with Bushka Redux, let’s not forget his face never looked anything like panel 3. He usually had more a snarl combined with that “smacked-in-the-forehead-with-a-2X4” look…
And please tell me you all got that EMU thing!
I think Emu stand for eastern Michigan university and their mascot is Scoop the eagle.
You can never win with FW. On one hand, it’s great not to have any Summer or basketball this week, but on the other hand it’s still about sports and Les is there. Reading this comic strip every day is like flipping a two-headed coin and choosing “tails” every time.
I know I keep harping on the similarities between BatCrap and Lynn Johnston, but this is one more example. She turned her whole strip into one giant flashback, and started completely over. In the process, she rewrote part of it, making her now-ex husband look like a bigger jerk, changing the race of one of her characters (Lawrence), etc. Now BatDick is doing the same thing, but in quick flashbacks.
So why not go whole hog, Tommeh? After Slumber’s graduation, don’t jump ahead to the next act — Go back to the beginning, but rewrite it to fit the schmuck YOU have become. Show Bull and Les as pals. Show the band director as kindly and fatherly, not the faux military guy he used to be. Show Granny Annie as the winning coach of the Lady Women Girl Female Scapegoats. Maybe make more people die of cancer. Call Lynn, Tommeh. You have her on speed dial, right? Retcon away!
It’s called old age…. TB is slipping the natural way into senility as an old person just does. Remembering the past through a Norm Rockwell picture (didn’t he die of cancer?)
The non-$45 authority on Act I FW, the Unofficial Funky Winkerbean Fan Page, describes Act I Bull as the “star football player with sideburns and neck-length hair”. So, it looks like TB got his appearance right during the earlier flashback retcon.
Also, Having your own last name on the back of a letter jacket is fairly common nowadays. Heck, when I was in high school, the letter jacket earners (buyers) would gripe about how we were the only school in the area that put the school’s name on the back instead of theirs. This changed the year after I graduated. Not common during the era Bull was in high school, though, I believe, but TB often thinks in the present when drawing in the past.
Yep. They are a Mid-American Conference Opponent of TB and Les’ Kent State Golden Flashes and Cayla’s Akron Zips. The EMU in this strip is probably a placeholder for them or any other MAC school that isn’t Kent State or Akron plus… flightless bird joke!
I also immediately thought “Eastern Michigan” when reading EMU. The mascot would have been the Hurons in the 1970s.
The Kent State Golden Flashes (nee Silver Foxes) or Akron Zips invite many more pun options than EMU. Even Western Union wouldn’t deliver this telegraph.
Back when Eastern Michigan changed their nickname to something non-Native American, I didn’t understand why they didn’t go with the Emus.
You’d have thought they would’ve wanted something more unique than the Eagles.
Truly, this is a history that must be told.
So, is this going…anywhere? Seems like random BS to me. Saying the strip is pointless would be a little redundant, but this is just freestyle tedium.
See I told you guys the style was off!!! The time continuum is collapsing on itself!!!