Fear And Self-Pity In Westview

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Uh, it’s called “moral support”, Linda. It “helps” you by connecting with others in similar situations. If the other people in the support group could magically help you, they probably would have already helped themselves too, thus they wouldn’t need a support group. See how that works?

Well, if you thought the Big Moment was coming anytime soon, guess again sucker, because it looks like we’re in for a week of typing. It’s typically Batiukian how Linda’s last-ditch Hail Mary plea to the NFL represented her last glimmer of hope, as in the Funkyverse it’s always something and it’s never, ever your fault. One thing I find baffling is how the entire town just totally deserted Bull after he retired. No one wanted to organize a fund raiser or help Linda mow the lawn? Could his multi-decade tenure as head sports coach and athletic director really have made THAT little of an impact? Wait…don’t answer that.

Coming tomorrow: FW at long last answers the question that’s been plaguing FW scholars since Darin found out the identity of his birth mother, that being is watching a FW character opening and reading mail more interesting, less interesting or equally as interesting as watching them type on a laptop computer?

Strange Matter

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A strange and sudden change of pace Sunday strip featuring no one’s favorite Komix Korner employees discussing the quantum properties of comic book or something…meh. Sometimes these comic book geek gags go right over my head and I’m not really in the mood to research this crap right now. Sure beats watching someone open and read mail, though.

Mail Day Part Six…The Repeating

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In case you missed yesterday’s strip, Linda has at long last opened the mail. And, as a helpful service to his loyal readers who he obviously respects and adores very, very much, he thoughtfully repeated the last two panels of yesterday’s installment in the first panel today! You know, just in case you happen to be a total idiot who can’t remember something you just read less than twenty-four hours ago. What a novel way to pad a story and make it appear to be much more substantive than it actually is. Sigh. Ten weeks. Sigh again. It goes from annoying to comical to annoying to comical over and over again.

Coming next week: After re-re-re-reading the letter fails to make the contents of said letter change, Linda elects to put the letter down and walk to another room of her house. Tension builds. Weeks pass. Nothing happens.

Mail Day Part Five…The Readening

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And so we wait, wait and wait some more. Will Linda actually open the fateful letter? If so, will she read it too? Will there be dialog? And if so, will it be stupid, very stupid or extremely stupid? Tune in at midnight to find out!

Update: Ugh. She did successfully open the letter, however now she’s reading it line by line, as Batiuk desperately tries to stretch out the suspense…in a story arc he deliberately ruined during a puff-piece interview. Once again, nice going there, blabbermouth. The disdain he normally has for his readers is morphing into contempt now. After she finally (hopefully) gets to the meat of the matter tomorrow, BatBlab will have successfully used a full six days on opening one letter, thereby proving that our mockery of his weird mail fixation was in fact based on reality and wasn’t just mean-spirited snark.

Mail Day Part Four…The Pondering

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Nothing spells “storytelling” like using no dialog at all day after day after (sigh) day. Turns out the letter is from (peppy marching band music) the National Football League, America’s preeminent and benevolent Fun Time Sports League, the league that once gave an already-ruined and addle-brained Bull Bushka a shot at the big time, a shot he of course totally botched. Why, my guess is they’re going to give Bull a retroactive fifty million dollar “Nice Try, Local Sports Hero, Get Well Soon!” grant that he can use to beat this CTE thing once and for all! So what is she WAITING for? OPEN THE LETTER LINDA, OPEN THE LETTER!

No, because a CERTAIN SOMEONE who just happens to have a lot of extra Pulitzer space around the house decided to give away the entire outcome of his big Prestige Mega-Arc weeks ahead of time, we know the letter is actually from the non-fictional and maliciously malevolent (ominous scary music) NFL (trademark!), the heartless and amoral pro sports concern that cruelly turned Bull’s brain into putty and now laughs at his feeble prayers for help as it sacrifices billions of dollars a day to Lord Satan himself upon its blackened altar of young broken men’s ruined bodies. Otherwise she wouldn’t have brought it upstairs to her bedroom to open it, because in every cornball sitcom scenario like this one when a female character gets bad news in letter form she must have pillows handy in which to throw herself upon reading said news. Don’t lie, ladies, we all know this stereotype is 100% true, otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed to do it on TV. Anyhow, it’s a near certainty that the letter will utterly destroy Linda and turn her into a humorless wad of wryness (it’ll be tough to tell sometimes, though) and viciously mock Bull, his life and everything he ever believed in while coldly sneering at his pitiful plight. Or something similar but less dramatic.

The next installment of this thing isn’t dropping til midnight tomorrow. Not that it matters much, as we all already know what’s going to happen thanks to a CERTAIN SOMEONE who just couldn’t stop yapping and flapping his gums about it. There were a dozen ways to go about it without saying “and then the lead character kills himself” followed by actually running the climactic strip a MONTH ahead of time, but in all the excitement a CERTAIN SOMEONE couldn’t be bothered to care about shit like his dumb stupid readers or their “opinions” of him. Man, I’ll never forgive him for that blunder, it would have been the biggest day in SoSF history since that prom scenery came out as gay. I really hope that pillar eventually found someone, you know?