Hello, folks; BChasm back in the Box. Shout-out to Comic Book Harriet, who as always did a stellar job of entertaining and educating us…things l’Auteur Glorieux feels are now beneath him. Well done, especially with such poor material to work with.
Speaking of being back, guess who has returned? That’s right, it’s nobody’s favorite smirker, Buck Somethingorother. You remember, the guy who couldn’t resist smirking wryly to both Linda and Bull while reminding them about the latter’s impending death. And speaking of impending death, Buck is getting his! “I’m afraid that the news isn’t that good, Buck” says Doctor Flattop, “You’re a character in Funky Winkerbean.” Now, I may be stupid, and this strip may be making me more so, but I thought Buck played football. Isn’t “layup” a basketball term? Shouldn’t he say, “You always gotta throw the penalty flag, don’t you?” I guess once you’re a sporto, you’re required by cosmic law to make only sports-related metaphors, even if they aren’t your sports.
I’d really like to know what’s going on with Doctor Flattop’s head. In panel two, it looks like there’s a second head emerging from the back of his skull. Is it Voldemort? Because that could be an interesting development.
Oh, I’ve just killed it. I used the forbidden word, “interesting.”
Son of Stuck Funky 
When Bull died it turned Buck’s hair to white or gray or whatever. Surprised Doc didn’t say…”With all of your wisecracking this condition could never advance quickly enough for me.” Well…at least there’s another dead Funky character. Wonder if The(in his dreams)GreatOne has contacted the NY Times.
Ah yes. Withered old characters no one cares about wryly smirking in the face of catastrophe…that’s the FW we all know and love. I never thought we’d see ‘ol Buck Mackane again, but Batom had him in the on-deck circle, ready to step up after Bull “flew out”, so to speak. And now he’s in the box and taking some high heat right to the noggin, predictably enough. Sigh. During that Ruby/Chester arc I was commenting on all the “new” new Act III characters and I forgot all about Buck, as you surely did too.
Coming this fall: Owen is diagnosed with CTE, as his game-winning mascot catch proves to be his downfall. A devastated Cody turns to Linda for help but all she has to offer is the NFL settlement website, which ends up being no help at all.
Batiuk has a whole stable.of characters, but he keeps developing these bland oldsters that bring nothing but his own wish fulfillment.
Well it is Pulitzer nomination season so it’s not surprising that Batty needs to inject a little more misery into the strip in order to boost his chances.
Ironically if that happened Owen could sue Bull’s estate since Bull was the one who put him into the game without proper pads and equipment…
(Seriously, Bull’s ass should have been suspended and fired for that shit..)
Bull also let Linda’s daughter, Mickey, play football in a formal dress (with helmet, but still…) against BWT back in 1997. Yes, she was the placekicker, but she wound up being a ball carrier, broke at least two tackles, and was tackled scoring a touchdown… all while not wearing pads.
Deteriorating conditions? Is Dr. Flattop describing Buck’s CTE or this comic strip? Or… does this comic strip have CTE?
As the kids say these days, “Mind…blown!”
I would never trust a doctor with no forehead. The frontal lobe is crucial for decision making, memory, and analysis. All skills crucial in good doctoring and joke making.
“…and your condition is going to deteriorate. The first sign will be your mouth slowly sliding off the left side of your face.”
“Buck, what’s a lay-up? Other than evidence that your probable CTE is probably deteriorating faster than Batiuk’s improbable sense of humor?”
“Lay-up” doesn’t make sense in this context anyway. It’s a metaphor for “easy opportunity”, not “good news.” If the doctor said “you have to lose 20 pounds immediately,” then that response would make sense, because he’s being given a difficult task. This just looks like his advanced CTE kicked in on cue.
Welcome to Act IV, where years have passed like a kidney stone and Bernie Silverfish is now a doctor.
That face Buck is making in panel three is really odd. I’m not sure what emotion the artist was going for there, exactly, but it doesn’t fit the subject matter at all. It’s not wry enough and it’s way too folksy. He looks like a mild-mannered Midwestern farmer running for mayor, not a guy who just found out he’s about to get even stupider. I kind of like when the FW art clashes with the subject matter like that.
It is pretty funny how BatSpite has to twist the knife in Bull even after he’s dead by needlessly torturing his very last friend, just for the sake of doing another “evils of football” story even though he really never did totally complete the last one. I mean why revisit this? Would anyone have noticed if Buck just never appeared again? We haven’t seen Rocky or her mom in ages but no one’s clamoring for them so what, aside from his horrible degenerative brain disorder, makes him any different?
A second CTE arc? Karl Marx once said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. But he never heard of Funky Winkerbean, lucky him, where it’s too indifferent for tragedy and too lazy for farce.
I think this is the end of the original CTE arc. Batiuk told the New York Times 10 weeks, and so far we’ve gotten one installment of 5 weeks and one of 2.
It would be just like Batiuk to pitch his “prestige arc” to the media and not bother telling them it’s spread out over 6 months, with loads of Les and Dinkle wankery in between, and even during.
Five more weeks of Batiuk humiliating Bull Bushka? It’s like a Satanic groundhog saw its shadow,
That’s classic Batiuk all right, start a story, drop it, then pick it back up months later after everyone’s already forgotten all about it. That way he can kill a few weeks by endlessly re-hashing the premise over and over again.
I just had a horrible thought. Said horrible thought is that Bull is too stupid to realize that he’s dead and wonders why no one is talking to him.
“Hmmmm… hmm… HMMMMM! Mm hmmm. Hmm. Hmmmm. Hmmmmmmmm…”
“What?? What is it Doc?? What’s my prognosis?”
“Oh, I dunno. I’m trying to remember that song I heard on the way into work. It goes ’Hmmmm… hmm… HMMMMM! Mm hmmm. Hmm. Hmmmm. Hmmmmmmmm…’ Oh SHOOT! What’s it called?? AnywayZZ… Your prognosis? Don’t worry. I think you’re getting better. You had a very mild case of the CTE. You should be fine in another week or two. KIDDING! You big dumb dope. Everybody knows CTE gets worse until you become a quivering mass of… of… of a guy with really bad CTE. Everybody knows that. I just Grampa Googled it. You’re a goner. Only good news is just about everybody will be glad to be rid of you and your stupid smirk.”
“Ummm…”
“Oh, lookit the time! I have to do the morning announcements! See ya soon, big baboon.”
I can understand the basketball metaphor here. Buck Futt must do a lot of dribbling.
BWAWHAWHAWHAWHAW! It’s funny because of the basketball metaphor. You see, when Buck drives off Nobottom Road, he’ll be wearing nothing but net!
So this is the fabled CTE arc that was touted in The NY Times? I will say that it may reveal more than TomBa intended.
Consider that rather than have Bull, a ready-made original character be his plot protagonist, he apparently planned from the beginning to bring in Buck, from hated rival Big Walnut Tech to be the focus.
He has Bull commit suicide wearing a football helmet so that his brain can be tested for CTE, but the Highway Patrol covers that up by brining the helmet from the crash scene. It also appears that Linda didn’t authorize an autopsy.
Next he has the story of the funeral where Les, who know the truth from Linda, spends the entire arc whining about Bull’s bullying him in high school (a retcon of a retcon, since it was established at one point that Bull actually didn’t beat Les up but only pretended to do so). Les also conveniently forgets all of Bull’s friendship and help rehabbing Summer.. All of this really dumps on Bull.
But at the same time, he seems to have been going out of his way to make Les an ungrateful ass. Right after the funeral we have that whole arc where Les whines about a free trip to California to discuss a possible movie of Lisa’s Story. Les whines about being offered full control of the project.
Does TomBa hate Les as much as we do?
I’m guessing that Batiuk is using Les to tell the story of a brilliant and insightful writer whose artistic expressions are hampered by the dunderheads around him, and thus must express his feelings and opinions at the slightest annoyance. Batiuk, of course, is to modest and considerate to be such a douchebag, so he whines through Les’s character.
I imagine TB’s running the bases in his mind after the slam dunk of a punchline he came up with for today’s strip.
Saturday: So the final punchline after a week of lead-up was “The percussion section sucks donkey dong but I’d much rather complain and talk about squirrels than putting in some work trying to make them better because God forbid we work for our paycheck and whaddaya think I am, a teacher or something??”
Sunday: I’ve never used them before but I’m pretty sure GrubHub doesn’t work that way??
Sunday 2: Yeah yeah, I get it — Today’s youth are spoiled, entitled, lazy and don’t know how to delay gratification. Once this was said about me and now I’m saying it about the thousands of college students I see daily.
Today: HOLY SHIT! This is to my knowledge the first official undisputed evidence that Hank Hill is a real person and not a ghost or CTE-induced fantasy…
Today 2: So how the hell does bringing Hank Hill into the regular rotation work? The only Westview people he even knew were the Bushkas, and he undoubtedly has his own support system of friends/family/classmates from Big Walnut High School, right?
Today 3: Thank you Batiuk for NOT showing Hank Hill in his leather all-custom *grownup* BWT letterman’s jacket which is the alltime single douchebaggiest thing a Funkyverse character has worn since Chullo Kid wore a chullo with his tuxedo, or that comic book store weirdo rocked a tuxedo t-shirt…
Huh! Hank Hill has to raise his right eyebrow to keep the left side of his mouth from sliding off his face, tell you what!
The thought of Batiuk thinking “hey, I know what my readers would like next, more Buck” would be very, very sad to me if I thought he actually gave a single thought to what his readers want.
Damn…poor bastard already has Bells Palsy as evidenced in Panel 3.
This CTE arc is great and all, but I’m just literally doing whatever the opposite of drooling is (desiccating?) in anticipation of the super-prestige, pullet-surprise-attracting COVID-19 arc in a year’s time.