Month: August 2016

Jerome???

Link to today’s stupid installment

Jerome? Wow, you really DO learn something new every day. I’m really enjoying how this Jerome “Bull” Bushka career retrospective flies right in the face of Linda’s sudden concerns re: her husband’s wacky antics. She knew all about his endless litany of football injury-related woes for all these years and only now sees a correlation? Is she really the diabolical monster I always assumed she was or is she just that stupid?

And while I’m bandying these questions about, how about this one: is BanTom the single worst storyteller who ever lived or is there another mad genius out there who’s built an entire career from repeating a simple premise over and over again to the point where that’s all it is? I doubt it’s ever even occurred to anyone else to “write” stories like this, much less actually do it.

“Mary had a little lamb, Mary owned a small sheep, Mary’s lamb was little, lambs are sheep”…”It was the best of times, times were good, it was the worst of times, bad times, good, bad, bad good, time”…see what I mean? It shouldn’t surprise me anymore, but nevertheless, sometimes I an just incredulous that FW even exists at all. It can’t, it shouldn’t, yet here it is, each and every day.

 

You Can’t Un-Ring That Bell

Link to today’s strip

“After he hurt he knee he was never the same. He tried to compensate by running with his head, which resulted in literally many hundreds of concussions per game, not to mention neck and spine injuries galore. Of course we were all very concerned, but it was all just so damn funny. If not for the knee, the head injuries and those public intoxication and lewdness charges he probably could have made a name for himself in the USFL or maybe even the arena league.”

“Yeah, the constant idiocy, the incompetence, the bungling, the way he mis-remembered beating the crap out of me in high school…all the signs were there.”

Silent panel where they’re just staring at one another followed by the two of them laughing uproariously.

Get a load of Linda, piecing it all together after fifteen minutes of thumbing through old scrapbooks with Les. She’s practically Dr. House. It makes one wonder what the hell she was doing during the rest of her marriage, but apparently forgetting her at work was the straw that broke the dam, as TomBan might say. Even more alarmingly, no one has mentioned doctors or medical care yet, which does seem odd given that these two idiots are the guy’s wife and so-called best friend.

The Fault, Bull, Lies Not In The Cartoon Stars Swirling Around Our Heads….

Link to today’s strip

Look at Les today, thinking to himself, “ewwww, jocks and sportsball, yuck! Well, it serves him right after bullying me for all those years. Now how do I get out of here?”. What a pal. What a dick. Like I said yesterday, it’s simply not possible to draw Dick Facey in a non-objectionable way. He could draw panel after panel of nothing but Les standing there with no expression on his face at all and it’d still enrage me to no end.

So in typical BanTom fashion, he firmly establishes that Bull is dealing with the after-effects of his many football concussions, then goes backwards. Are they seriously going to thumb through Bull’s old scrapbook all week? While the diagnosis and treatment of concussions is a relatively new field and all, I’m fairly certain that perusing old photo albums isn’t yet an accepted form of treatment. The guy is tearing around town in a rage while we speak and these two are making sad faces over Bull’s utterly wasted life, which is a marked change as they’re usually making fun of him instead, but still.

Sepia Water-Colored Loss Of Memories

Link to today’s strip

Dick Facey once again steals the show with his always-annoying presence. He looks more disgusted than concerned in panel three. He is impossible to draw in any way that isn’t completely objectionable. And I totally love how Bull’s scrapbook is helpfully labeled as “Bull’s Scrap Book”, just in case he forgets which, ironically enough, he apparently has! Amazing.

This is a rather baffling arc so far. I mean it’s a certainty that he’s find some completely insane way out of this than no normal person could have ever seen coming, that’s a given. I’d be very surprised if he wrote Bull out of the strip and I’d be equally surprised if the lovable hapless gym coach Bull suddenly became the hapless insane maniac who angrily stormed around forgetting things, as intriguing as that premise does seem. Imagine it, Bull suddenly thinks it’s 1980 and viciously beats Les to a bloody pulp, now THAT is promise. So rule that out.

Is it at all possible that Bull is just all annoyed about something else entirely and is just being badly misread by his wife? Like maybe she forgot their anniversary or something, I don’t know. Based on everything I know about FW I can say with some confidence that this is guaranteed to go nowhere, but how? Maybe it’ll turn out that he’ll “be fine” followed by a Bull-led crusade against concussions, that’s the most boring resolution I can come up with right off the top of my head.