Sporto Hall of Fame

Okay, so a few things about today’s strip.

  1. It’s not terrible, especially by Batiuk standards.  It’s two people happy about something, and has a little charm to it, which honestly puts it in the top 1% or so of Funky Winkerbean strips.  The problem is it’s mired in with all the rest of them, so I can’t help but think of how Batiuk portrays CTE or PTSD or how lazy and self-indulgent his writing can be, which makes it hard to enjoy on its own terms.
  2. Speaking of lazy, this exemplifies one of the biggest things that annoys me about Batiuk Sunday strips: it’s a total waste of space.  Did we really need four wordless panels to establish these two are walking?  So many of these Sunday strips just seem to obviously like they were intended to be three panels and then Batiuk added a couple of silent panels to fill it out.  In this instance I think one single, large panel with a pretty snow scene would’ve been very nice, and it would’ve been entirely possible to fit the two lines of dialogue in there.
  3. Batiuk really should not draw attention to Charlie Brown.  It’s like Stephanie Meyer referencing Shakespeare, or a Sci-Fi Original movie referencing Star Wars.  Don’t remind your audience there is far, far better material out there.  And also Batiuk is in nowhere near the same league as Charles Schulz.
  4. Wherever Holly and Funky are going, it sure isn’t to visit Bull.

Batiuk Spells Funny C-T-E

Oh yay, another in the long line of “Bull’s dumb” strips, where that’s all the joke content. In any kind of real world, Bull wouldn’t be shocked at all at someone giving an introduction for an athlete being honored, since it happens all the time. Since Bull is an athlete and likes sports he’d of course be familiar with this. Unless the “joke” really is just entirely “Bull doesn’t understand simple things anymore because he has CTE” which is about as far from humor as you can get.
It’s nice of Linda to just tell Bull Buck’s agreed to do the introduction, before even asking Bull who he’d want to introduce him, or if he even wants to attend. Given how feeble and dim he’s being portrayed I’ve got to imagine being the center of a attention of a large crowd of strangers might be something he’d want to avoid. But oh well, Linda’s there to think for him. He’s got CTE, remember?

What Kind of Hall of Fame Is it Again?

Maybe it’s just me, but “Sports Hall of Fame Induction” is starting to get right up there with “John Darling, who was murdered”.  I mean, is Batiuk afraid his readers won’t know what kind of hall of fame Bull’s being inducted into?  He’s Bull.  Don’t worry Batiuk, nobody’s going to be confused and think he’s joining the English Teachers Hall of Fame or the Cartoonist Hall of Fame.

And I’m really kind of shocked Batiuk didn’t force in some introduction/induction “worldplay”. Heck, go all out and have Dinkle pop in tomorrow saying he heard Bull needs some conduction. Oh, and you know why none of Bull’s teammates have dropped by to see him? Because sportos are greedy, selfish amoral morons who don’t care at all for their fellow humans.  Actually, this being Westview they’re probably all dead. Or they just hate Bull, because he was actually a jackass for most of this strip.

Lame Joke Round Two

It’s kind of weird that Buck apparently just came running when Linda called, without having any clue why she needed him. Linda apparently reaching over to grab his ass in the second panel really doesn’t help.
And apparently the incredibly, incredibly lame indict/induct wordplay really was the joke yesterday. And apparently Batiuk found it so hilarious he’s recycling it for the second day in a row. I can’t imagine any realistic situation where someone would hear the word “induct”, ESPECIALLY in the context of a hall of fame, and think it means “indict”. Which is par for the course for Batiuk’s writing.
So are the Linda’s horrible hate eyes in the last panel. Which apparently gets Buck going, which is another level of disturbing.

Thirtieth Ballot Hall of Famer

I really don’t know what’s even supposed to be funny here. Which makes it just like 99% of the rest of Funky Winkerbean for the last five years or so. Bull has nothing to do with what? Nominating himself? If he knows that was other guys on the team, why didn’t he say anything about being nominated, since he apparently already knew? Also, I don’t think random teammates are enough to nominate something to a hall of fame.
The funniest part of this strip is the fact that the poster so obviously says “Go Scapegoat” rather than Scapegoats which is just sad.