Yeah, yeah, cue the dramatic chord for panel three. Whatever.
What I’d like to point out is panel one. Les says he could “see what was coming.” He’s implying that Linda couldn’t.
But Linda should have. Like Lisa, Bull had an incurable condition that could not be paused or reversed. He was going to die, after deteriorating mentally {“a pretty short trip”–Les Moore). There was no other possible ending. That he might decide to end it all before wasting away was a definite possibility.
So why couldn’t she see what was going on? Why did she think working on the car was “therapeutic” and to be encouraged? Why did she have no idea where he was on the night he died?
I think there’s only one good answer: because she couldn’t be bothered. Many here have a visceral hatred of Linda, and it’s easy to see why–she’s basically the distaff Les Moore. Check out how I’m smirking through my woes. Oh, I am so beset by the fates, each day a stay in torment. Oh, and also my spouse has this terrible condition, which has caused me to suffer so. The entire CTE arc has been nothing but her complaining, first to Les, then to Buck, about all the problems she was going through. There may have been one or two occasions when she actually sympathized with Bull, but they were so few and far-between that I’m not sure I can say they existed.
Everyone in this strip is a terrible, terrible person.
Son of Stuck Funky 
My thoughts exactly. What is the bearded dick with ears trying to say here? Bull had a degenerative brain disorder, Linda was well aware that he was going to deteriorate and die, which was presumably the source of her self-pitying angst. Yes, his staged “accident” was sudden (and very predictable if Linda had been paying attention instead of standing around acting bewildered), so is he saying that it was unfortunate that she didn’t have more time to prepare for Bull’s death like he had when Lisa died? Who the hell sits around comparing spousal grief scenarios? Would another six months of cream cheese antics have eased Linda’s pain somehow and made it easier? Why does Lisa’s death have to be the death benchmark? What a jerk. And I hate Tilty-Headed Empathy Les more than any other Les.
He is saying: “ I know you are suffering, but what about ME. I lost Lisa. So do you now see the flaws in your thinking?”
Me, me, me…that’s all those two care about.
For Halloween, Bull should have haunted Les’ house and dressed like Lisa. They dance, Les goes to kiss and….aghhhhh it’s Bbbb. Bull!
“It wasn’t an accident. I killed him and I’m glad I did it!”
“Really, Linda? You don’t look glad.”
“That’s because the feeling doesn’t last. I need to kill again! How does that cup of hemlock taste?”
“It wasn’t an accident, Les. I want you to help me work on my alibi. If you don’t, I’ll tell everyone how you ‘accidentally’ arranged Lisa’s death.”
“Linda, what makes you say that? You don’t have a clue about what happened!”
“I read your book, Les. You should have called it Clues for the Clueless!”
“It wasn’t an accident, Les. After the police gave me Bull’s helmet the proof literally fell into my lap. Not only was it messy, but Bull had the suicide note clenched between his teeth!”
So Linda reads the New York Times too…
What can Linda say? That nobody, not even her on-line support group, warned her that CTE victims are a high-risk group for reckless and suicidal behavior? That she feels guilty because her first response to Bull’s death was relief? Maybe she invited Les over as an act of penance. Listening to him bloviate for the next month would be worse punishment than a million years in Purgatory.
Bull’s accident happened suddenly? Don’t basically all accidents happen suddenly? I mean usually if you can see an accident coming, you avoid it, and it doesn’t happen.
Also, I prefer to read this as Les having zero clue Bull had any health issues, and thinking he just died in a random car accident. He is such an asshole that he never once came to visit his “friend” Bull, so this wouldn’t shock me one bit.
I don’t like to repeat myself, but what the hell…
Keep posting it. It makes way more sense than the real story. Linda’s behavior throughout this story adds up to her passively letting Bull kill himself. Mr. Cream Cheese would be gone, and she’d get a nice death benefit of some sort. Remember, that NFL benefits letter was addressed out to Linda, and she never showed or discussed it with Bull.
1) That’s right. She couldn’t be bothered to sympathize with his interest in sports when he was alive and she couldn’t be asked to pay attention to what he was doing when he was fixing to kill himself. It was all about her suffering and she was too selfish to want to care or notce.
2) Also, it makes far too much sense that Les is too lacking in brains to foresee the possibility that someone he avoided because he thought CTE was contagious would kill himself before he deteriorated further.
3) Batiuk was too incompetent to plant any clues about Bull’s impending suicide.
4) Too much of an assclown to make the on-line support group useful.
5) Too loathsome to make Part 1 of this story into anything but a string of cheap shots at Bull.
6) Too much of a drama queen to skip “artistic” crap like a week-long letter opening.
7)Too self-absorbed to understand why he didn’t get a Pulitzer nomination.
That makes seven points, or in Batiukish, one hand and two fingers.
We’re in for an extended arc of “tell, don’t show” because TomBa spent practically zero time dealing with the actual symptoms of CTE following Bull’s diagnosis.
More gloom in the morning “funny” pages.
Bull’s suicide: so obvious even Batiuk it coming.
If some asshole hadn’t dropped a spoiler in the New York Times, panel 3 would have had more dramatic effect.
Is that supposed to be dramatic lighting in the third panel? That would really piss me off. Colorists frequently make ridiculous mistakes like painting the desert blue, or someone’s shirt a color that contradicts the word bubbles. But this POS strip gets a subtle color shift *and* a lit outline? For a drawing of Linda looking strung out on purple drank?
She’s having what Wilbur Weston was having, but it turned her into a blah hole of despair.
LMAO at Batiuk coming back to the suicide a month afterwards. Pacing, what pacing?
Also calling it now. Les “heroically” gives Linda the movie deal so Hollywood can never besmirch Cancerwife’s story with its grimy paws. Because clearly a movie about an old guy with CTE and ending his own life is Hollywood blockbuster material.
You may be on to something. That plot twist would let Mason play Bull as a tragic hero, instead being of jerky spouse Les. It would also be a way for Les to worm back into writing both the pitch and the screenplay.
It could actually be a decent arc. The question is whether TomBa could pull it off successfully.
It could actually be a decent arc.
Which is why it won’t happen that way. Batiuk is pretty blatant about which characters he likes and which he despises, and he’ll never elevate any of the latter above Unworthy Puppet.
Sadly, this is apparently true.
When Bull offed himself, Linda was peacefully making meatloaf in the blissful ignorance of her husband’s death. She casually took out her phone to call/text him that dinner was ready. Then there was her realization about the keys, and then the police. So whatever’s going to happen here besides the “grand reveal” that it was suicide, we’re likely in for some major retconning.
My newspaper prints the strip in B&W, so the last panel makes Linda look like she gained the color Cayla lost.
Here’s an idea – could this be a result of his editor telling him -‘you know you’ve talked all this big talk about the effects of CTE and Bull’s suicide but you know who hasn’t the faintest idea about anything this? The reader. That’s who. Now fix this”
Which could explain why now WEEKS after the Death of Bull Arc and after a awful let’s worship Les some more series and the idiotic Pizza monster bit we are jammed back into the land of death and despair.
Not looking forward to this at all and oh yes Linda was a self absorbed monster with her apex being bitchy about how the support group (who were one presumes people who were going through the same thing as she was) was not solving her problems.
Linda killed Bull She messed with the car’s brakes and then left the keys where he’d find them. It was a mercy killing. The NFL turned down their request for financial help. So she needs the insurance and Bull was gone in the head anyway