Hello folks, I’m billytheskink… but you don’t care about that. You’re here for the grisly details about the award-winning (pending) suicide of one Bull Bushka. So here you are: Today’s strip in all its g(l)ory!
Here comes the state police to 10-50 PI (code for accident/personal injury) the smoldering remains of Bull’s subcompact. This’ll undoubtedly take all week, so pack some snacks. Even so, one day in and it’s better paced than Linda and the letter at least. High praise, I know.
Also, big kudos to @tauycreek on Twitter, who pointed out Bull’s TB’s inspiration for this vehicular mayhem…
It seems odd that in the 21 years since the last accident on this dangerous stretch of road, the road has gotten 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 safe. #FunkyWinkerbean #comics #comicstrips pic.twitter.com/o9E2jFSkCf
— ᗷᖇIᗩᑎ ᕼᗩᒪᒪ (@tauycreek) September 29, 2019
Yep, back in the summer of 1998, an intoxicated Wally drove himself and Becky right through a guardrail and off a ledge. Not sure why those two only lost Lefty’s arm and Bull lost his life, but that’s the Batiukverse for ya.
Son of Stuck Funky 
“I knew buying guard rails from the WHS marching band would be a big mistake.”
They’ll find the car on fire with its driver impaled on the steering-wheel shaft. This set-up will let Batiuk joke about shish-ka-Bull.
Or Bushka-bob!
I’ve haven’t seen 2 cops sharing a car in 30 years.
Batiuk must need two people for his jokes. Behold the comedy team of Sergeant Gloom and Trooper Doom.
Got pulled over by two cops sharing a car a couple years ago. (Expired tags) One of the cops was in training.
Like the crash that took Becky’s arm, this week is going to be a real nail-biter.
I’m guessing these guys are as jaded as they appear from months of working Nobottom Road, where the guardrails are made of marathon finishing tape.
Yep, “Oh well, there’s yet another guy who’s probably dying down there. Let me call it in before you go see if he’s still alive, Jake.”
It’s unintentionally hilarious.
“Looks like trouble up there at Winkerbean Curve.”
“See anything?”
“Nah, just some old junked car from the 80s, Lithuanian by the look of it.”
“Well, call it in, we gotta get that guardrail fixed again.”
“Why even bother?”
It’s been a while since he encountered the police, ain’t it? This loos less like a quarter of an inch from reality and more like a quarter inch from Adam-12.
Possible?! Man, all the signs clearly point to whoever’s down there being as dead as it gets! Who could possibly survive something like that – in Westview, I mean – and remain intact in ANY way?
Creepy Les. He’s got more lives than a cat. Or does he? Let’s throw him off a cliff, again and again, and keep count.
“We’ve got a 10-50 on Nobottoms Road. KHHHHHHK!”
“Wait, what’s that noise you made?”
“Don’t know what ya mean. KHHHHHHK!”
“THAT noise. That static noise. Stop it.”
“No can do, dispatch. It’s my radio noise. KHHHHHHHHK!”
“Fine, fine. So what’s the problem?”
“Got a 10-50. Possible PI. KHHHHHHHK!”
“Got a what?? Dammit, stop making up phony cop talk. We talk English now. What’s a 10-50??”
“I GAVE you the list. KHHHHHHHHK!”
“Look, I don’t have time for this. I’m on break. Call back later.”
“10-4 on that, good buddy. No hurry. Batty said we have all week to call this in. 10-4, 10-9, 10-16, over and under, and boopity boop dee boop! KHHHHHHHHHHHHHHK!”
Grandpa Google tells me code 10-50 is for “officer welfare check / under influence of drugs.” So does the officer think Bull is a DUI, or is he just using the first meaning of the code? Is this an important detail to the story, or just the arriving officer not knowing what’s happened yet? Way to be clear as usual, Batiuk.
Also: isn’t there a more specific code for “1-car accident”? “Possible personal injury” is a rather vague way to describe a car-sized hole in a guardrail over a cliff.
“Oh no, not again. I was on the scene when the Winkerbean kid lopped off that girl’s arm. Sigh.”
“Whoa. Whatever happened to her?”
“She’s WHS band director now.”
“No, no, that’s Harry Dinkle, everyone knows that.”
“No, she replaced him after he went deaf.”
“What? I saw him just the other day, he hears fine!”
“It went away, I guess. Let me call this in. “Headquarters, we have a possible dramatic turn here, better let the Pulitzer people know.”
Sad. The only skidmarks are in Bull’s drawers.
Thanks Billy for explaining what PI meant. I thought they were calling Bull for pass interference. His final football indignity.
What a dystopian universe the Winkerbean crowd inhabits! To think that no effort was made to realign the dangerous Nobottom Road curve in the 21 years between Wally and Becky’s crash and Bull’s. Apparently the Ohio Department of Transportation didn’t even bother to strengthen the guardrail.
I lived in Utah for twenty years, and I saw mountainside roads that had long, high, heavy concrete slabs lining the outside curves on some of those roads. They could stop a small car with ease.
“Mrs. Bushka? Yes, this is Progressive calling. Uh, it seems your policy doesn’t cover deliberately slamming into guardrails.”
“Sigh. Don’t we have the NFL supplemental coverage?”
“There is no such thing.”
I’ve driven some mountain roads with vertiginous dropoffs that one could easily Bushka oneself off of. None of those were in Ahia though.
Also, if Nobottom Road isn’t a state highway, wouldn’t it be more likely that local law enforcement would be responding first?
Okay this maybe reading too much into this but it does seem that the police (judging from the ‘hey will you look that that Earl” tone of voice they are speaking in) are blissfully unaware that Bull has taken off in his car and as there is a CTE patient DRIVING. So we are guessing Linda has not contacted the police. Which name of god would be the first thing yes? Either that or call up Bull’s best friend and have sex. (it’s the romantic in me)
Just googled for “Silver Alerts.” Ohio doesn’t have them by that name, but they do have a system in place to alert the authorities to a missing senior. Maybe Linda didn’t phone it in because Batiuk was too busy phoning this in.
My understanding is that the gang graduated high school in 1988, and then there was a 10-year time skip. That would make Bull 60 at the most. Not sure if that qualifies for “senior.”
I’ve heard of similar alerts for “at risk” people who are not necessarily seniors, but signing Bull up for one would require Linda to get off her ass and do something useful.
Hell, she barely even mentioned the car keys to the Worst Support Group.
Tom Batiuk: “Man, look at those snails racing around–it makes me dizzy just to watch them. And, hey, grass? Could you keep the growing noise down? It’s giving me a headache. Ah, the heck with it, I’m gonna go inside and watch my VHS collection — Paint Drying, volumes 1 through 10.”
A 1980s vintage Eastern Bloc car + a low-budget pot metal imported guardrail = sheer hilarity. I’d have had Bull leap from the Atomik Komix building, but that’s just me. “A tall building…that’s a GREAT way to do it!”…Moe Syslak.
Please let Les be in the car too
Tragically, we all know THAT’S not going to happen… Les is pretty much a required character now for obligatory “loss” discussion and whatnot. (UGH.)
I have to admit, the whole shredded guardrail thing is this close to becoming a SoSF meme. Bull’s Bulgarian car cut through that thing like it was Becky’s arm. The guarding part is ordinarily a guard rail’s most important feature, but apparently not in Dismal County, Ohio, where standards are lower….much, much lower. The whole idea that Bull’s golf cart of a car (didn’t he used to drive a big truck?) could attain enough speed to totally obliterate that guard rail really is pretty hilarious. I mean look at that thing, there’s a pretty fair chance that Bull catapulted himself right into Kentucky.
He aimed for Kentucky, but landed a yard short.
Add physics, mechanical engineering, and police work to the ever-growing list of things Batty doesn’t understand.
I just noticed something: the policeman in the passenger’s seat looks just like Doug Funnie. Grown-up, jaded, depressed Doug Funnie.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/halloweenspecials/images/b/be/Doug_Funnie.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/310?cb=20131013235335
Watch it be Less and he is pulled from the wreckage and saved by the Ghoust of St. Lisa. TomBat must want a fourth book in the Lisa’s Story series