Category: Son of Stuck Funky

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.

There Are No Scraps In Bull’s Scrapbook

Link to today’s strip

Look at Dick Facey in panel one, he’s not even bothering to pretend to be interested. What a jerk. Anyhow, Bull’s scrapbook is full of memories he can’t remember anymore, which is pretty depressing in that special FW way, I must admit. Good thing she bothered to assemble a scrapbook for him then, eh? She could pretty much summarize his entire life by simply saying “you sucked at everything until a few years ago”, or she could call Batom Inc. Studios and simply ask Author Guy to re-retcon everything and supply Bull with all new retconned memories, like BanTom does with his readers. It’s a win-win for Bull.

Forgeta-Bull

Link to today’s strip

OK, so now things are becoming clearer here. Bull is obviously suffering from CTE aka post-concussion syndrome. Either that or he’s just been working with Les for way, way, way too long. It’s certainly one of the more “relevant” topics FW has addressed in a while, definitely a change from the usual drivel about comic books, pizza, time pools, Lisa and etc. I could point out that Owen’s concussion was played for ha-has a few years back but hey, why even bother? I could also point out that Morton’s degenerative brain disease seems to have miraculously healed thanks to cigarettes and a trombone, which is something Bull might want to look into right about n0w.

So how will Batiuk handle this contemporary issue affecting old athletes who ran into things with their heads? With sensitivity and pathos, or with his typically heavy-handed felt-tip drollery? Or perhaps some incomprehensible combination of both? Who knows? At least it’s a bit different than the typical Act III fodder, I’ll give him that. A timely issue that he ripped straight from the headlines a few years ago when it was somehow brought to his attention in between pizzas and comic cons, which will no doubt impact tens of daily readers.