One Letter Away From “Dull”

 

Link to today’s strip.

My memory’s not what it used to be, but I seem to recall a comic strip called “Specks” which was just that–two specks holding a conversation ending in a punchline.  (The more I try to remember this strip, the more certain I get that the author was Vera Alldid.  Probably not, though…)

Anyway, Tom Batiuk sure could have used the “Specks” artist on today’s episode.  Look at those giant toilet-clogs of verbiage.   You don’t need drawings at all, and Batiuk’s attempts to provide them aren’t helping.  Notice that in all that overflow, Dolt McMoron still hasn’t been given a name.  Other than the one I gave him yesterday, that is.

I’m sure Bull’s post-punchline bit, it’s probably supposed to make us curious…is Bull serious?  Is he being sarcastic?   Well, folks, I’m betting Bull is stupid, and since this is Westview and Funky Winkerbean, the betting is good that the simplest, dullest explanation is the actual fact.

As for that punchline, it’s scary to imagine the kind of person who would laugh at that.  It’s even scarier to imagine that that person has escaped from the asylum, and might be prowling the streets of your town right now.

 

17 thoughts on “One Letter Away From “Dull””

  1. All those words and none of them mean a thing. Bull isn’t going anywhere, Dolt is only there for the purpose of doing awful football jokes and nothing more. My guess is that TB thought “DUI” was too hilarious to not use and that’s it. It’s how he thinks.

    Coming early next year: after becoming a national laughingstock, Bull returns home to WHS. After learning that the football team won the state title in his absence, he hangs himself with the gym rope. Les writes a book about it and it gets optioned into a movie. Les quits. The end.

  2. So much wrong with this. Bull is a known dolt, he didn’t have to reveal himself at the end. Why spell out the entire cumbersome name of the school again, there is nothing clever about it. And coaching staffs usually change right after the season, not just before. He should stick to small-town cancer runs, something he is comfortable with.

  3. Come to think of it, I’m not sure if the other guy is supposed to be sarcastic or serious either. Is this a commentary on his stupidity? Bull’s stupidity? The stupidity of athletic-type people in general? The stupidity of the audience for putting up with this strip?

  4. What did Ironton do to deserve the old Funky-Winkerbean treatment? I did the least amount of research possible, and learned that Ironton is known for having once been a pig-iron powerhouse, and for having had one of the first ever professional football teams. Really not much to go on.

    Naturally, I feel compelled to repair the humor by exerting the least effort possible. Using the same, lame, unfunny “DUI” joke, we can use another Ohio town whose name starts with i—Independence.

    Independence, as it happens, is home to the Kent State University College of Podiatric Medicine. Surely a school of podiatry could field one hell of a football team for Bull to “lead.” The student-athletes would all be graduate students, so you can expect them to really toe the line. For real, you won’t find a single ankle-biter amongst them.

  6. Re: the DUI gag. It’s not just that it’s unfunny and not relevant to anything in the strip, it’s that in order to use it he went through the trouble of making up a “one-off” character and a whole unlikely scenario to explain his presence. All for that dumb DUI gag. And after all that, in typically paradoxical FW fashion, he doesn’t even bother to give the guy a name.

  8. This need to make the stupidest, dullest explanation the right one hints at something else: Batiuk is too stupid to understand that Dolt needs a name.

  10. Two things about today’s strip. First, is it customary to conduct a job interview while standing in a back alley? Second, it is generally a fatal act during an interview to ask the interviewer a question that any person who is minimally qualified for the position for which you are interviewing would know the answer to. The reaction would generally be “Thank you for your interest in the position. We’ll be in touch.” while showing you the door. Yet somehow Bull’s incompetence seems to be endearing to the DUI coach.

  11. “Bull’s incompetence seems to be endearing to the DUI coach.”

    Maybe the DUI guy has accepted a bribe from gamblers to throw every game for the upcoming season & needs a coach who can ensure that result without being in on the scheme & demanding a cut.

  12. While TB no doubt intended for Bull’s question to make him look like the dolt we all know him to be, it really isn’t that bad of a bad question. Faster offenses often require different conditioning methods, substitution patterns, formations, route trees, etc… more than simply “go faster”. Sure, Bull could/should have learned something about hurry-up offenses through the various football coaching publications, meetings, clinics, and seminars that are undoubtedly available in football tradition-rich Ohio, but its still isn’t a bad question.

    Considering this, and ignoring TB’s track record of understanding football about as well as Garo Yepremian, the panel 3 punchline comes off as two coaches trading corny sarcasm. I’d say that’s an improvement.

  13. billytheskink is right. If the DUI believes there is nothing more to the hurry-up offense than “go faster”, then he could be just as incompetent as Bull. This university could be the perfect place for Bull.

  14. But Bull couched the girls State Basket Ball Champs…. he should be recruited by Kent State…… they can’t get any worse. Besides maybe we’d see Summer & Kiesha again.

  15. @Merry Pookster: “But Bull couched the girls State Basket Ball Champs”

    A Freudian slip, I assume (hope)? Whatever his faults, Bull has never struck me as a lech who preys on teenagers.

Comments are closed.