“Then there was the time” = “I have given up all pretense of being a writer”. Again, he COULD be doing these jokes as straight-up Bull football gags but because he ruined the Bull character he can’t and thus must rely on awful, awful contrivances and really cheap dialog to bring his witticisms to fruition, let’s say. Buck is still pounding away on his hapless pal, doing everything he can to ensure that Bull’s last football memories will be depressing ones. Maybe it’s just the artist but there’s a certain mean-spiritedness to this Buck asshole, he’s like Dinkle without the cutesy sardonic irony thing he does. And I certainly don’t recall anyone demanding that.
- Home
- Batiuktionary
- Act III
- Other Crap
- 2017: The Bedside Manorisms in Memphis
- Batom Comics: The Untold History
- 2007 – Senior Class Trip to Washington D.C.
- 1996: Westview Post Office Bombing Arc
- 2001: Teen Pregnancy Arc
- 2003: John Byrne Steps In for Batiuk
- 2007: Darin Seeks His Birth Mother
- 2010: Funky’s Car Crash and Time Travel
- Act II “Flash” -back
- Kent State Mural by Batiuk and Ayers
- Meet Halle Dinkle
- Meet the (Act III) Cast
- Missing FW Cast Members
- The Starbuck Jones Covers
- Act IV
Funky Links
- The Official FW Blog
- funkywinkerbean.com
- Crankshaft at arcamax.com
- crankshaftcomic.com
- The Unofficial Funky Winkerbean Fan Page
- Stuck Funky
- Funky Winkerbean Cafe Press Store
Other Links
- The Comics Curmudgeon
- Mary Worth is Lit
- This Week in Milford
- 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline 988lifeline.org or dial 988
Search SoSF
SoSF on Twitter
My TweetsArchives
-
Tags
Adeela Ann Fairgood Atomik Komix basketball Batiukmobile® Batom Comics Becky Boy Lisa bricks Buddy Bull Cayla cellphone Christmas chullo Cindy Cliff Anger Cody Cody and Owen coffee Comic-Con comic books comics Cory Crazy Harry Darin Dead Skunk Head Dinkle Falling leaves Flash Freeman football Funky Funky Winkerbean Harry Dinkle hatchet face holidays Holly Hollywood hoodie Jessica John Keisha Komix Korner Les Les' yellow shirt Linda Lisa Lisa's Story Marianne Marianne Winters Mason Mason Jarr Mason Jarre Mindy Montoni's Montoni's Mopey Pete Nate Old dying people Owen Pete Phil Holt photo album corners pizza Rachel random students Ruby Lith silhouette smirk snow sports squiggly lines Starbuck Jones Summer technology traveling green shirt unnatural hand gestures Wally Westview High School Westview HS Band
Son of Stuck Funky · The web's premiere source for Funky Winkerbean snark
Son of Stuck Funky 
You know what I think the worst part about this strip is? “Mike Majors”. I’m almost certain it’s a lame John Darling shout-out. There’s no reason at all why Buck should mention the name here. It doesn’t add anything to the strip, it’s not funny, unless you think a reporter being named “Mike” is funny, which I’m sure Batiuk does (“Get it? Like microphone?). The only thing I can is that Batiuk thinks this is some Easter egg for John Darling fans, which I’m pretty sure don’t really exist. I had to think for about ten seconds just to come up with the name John Darling, and I’m unquestionably probably in the top ten or twenty people in the world when it comes to people who have any interest in Batiuk and his work.
This baffled me too. I likewise assume this is some sort of JD reference but I can’t say for sure either. It is kind of incredible how a man suffering from a degenerative brain disease still remembers the name of the other team’s sideline reporter from a high school football game played at least thirty-five years ago, though.
Look how he’s visibly ruining Bull’s day with his nostalgic zingers. Bull just wanted to watch bowl games with his new best friend and now he’s on the receiving end of Buck’s pointed barbs, just completely out of nowhere too. He just can’t win.
Mike Majors is a John Darling should-out, though like most of the Channel One crew from Darling, he first debuted in Funky Winkerbean in the mid-1970s. Majors was Channel One’s sportscaster, a mustachioed black man whose primary shtick was reacting to ridiculous interviewees. In fact, Majors may have been the John Darling character who crossed over to Funky most frequently in the 1980s, regularly reporting at Scapegoat football games and interviewing the idiotic Coach Stropp.
Why a high school student on an opposing team would care one lick about a sports reporter in another town interviewing an opposing coach is beyond comprehension.
Batty always does crap like this. He thinks it adds depth to his strip and he giggles at how clever he is for shoehorning in another Easter egg into an already awkward dialog.
But at least Buck wasn’t forced to recite “the reporter Mike Majors, who worked with Jessica’s father, John Darling, who was murdered.” So, yay?
That’s “John Darling, who was TRAGICALLY murdered.” Gotta stick with the canon.
Though I’d rather shoot the Lord of Language from a cannon…
He assumes that his readers have followed all of his work through the years and will certainly get the reference
I find today’s dialogue incomprehensible, but that could be because I don’t really follow football. Of course, I bet if I did follow football, it would be equally incomprehensible (perhaps even moreso).
Again, I cannot imagine anyone writing this stuff, looking it over, and thinking “Yeah, that’s some great stuff right there.”
One doesn’t need to understand football to know this is lame writing.
As I mentioned yesterday, these aren’t even really football gags. It’s just dialog referencing old Act I football gags of the past, with the premise being that Bull’s old WHS teams sure did suck, which isn’t relevant to anything. Batiuk’s stroll (more like a trudge) down Memory Lane probably seemed lite n’ whimsical to him but, of course, his view is tainted by his unresolved (and deeply weird) resentment toward Bull for being a bully way back when. Actually it comes across as kind of unnecessary and sort of cruel, not to mention statistically implausible.
“And then there was the time I strung together a bunch of nonsensical claptrap that sounded like something sportos might say.”
And then there was the time the grand jury refused to indict you for killing me with your bare damned hands……..
Waiting for Bull to slug this guy and toss him out of his house.
You know, maybe Batiuk thinks friends treat each other this way, because that’s how his friends treat him. I really hope not.
“And remember that time you tried to wring sympathy for Dinkle by making him deaf, only you couldn’t bother to keep it consistent? We all called the paper demanding they pull your strip!”
What I also find awful but unsurprising is Buck’s transformation from a character who initially hunted up Bull to help him deal with his CTE to the strip’s default personality, i.e. the snarky bully.
Oh, goodness me. Here’s an insight from Batiuk’s latest Flash Friday entry.
” Maybe they can’t all be blockbusters, but they can all be proofread.”
The words. They fail.