Goal Diggers

Y’know, these days, many high school sports fields, even Batiuk’s alma mater, feature modern, expensive, artificial turf fields. So in today’s strip we’re witnessing two clowns causing costly damage to school property. Even a natural turf field would likely have an irrigation system below the surface. And besides that, the ground is frozen. But Batiuk’s not about to let any of these details get in the way of us “earning” whatever “ending” this is all leading up to. Why all this phony closure-seeking on behalf of a man who sadly will soon be unable to remember anything? And if the mission here is to somehow scrape up Coach Stropp’s ashes, they need to move over a little more to the left.

Shovel Off to Bull-fellow

If you are reading this and your name is not Thomas Martin Batiuk, you read Funky Winkerbean not for its  depiction of “contemporary issues affecting young adults in a thought-provoking and sensitive manner” (because all that ended with Act II). You don’t seek real-life situations, believable dialogue, likable characters, or coherent plotting. You likely were a true fan of this comic back in the days when it did have these characteristics, in abundance. Perhaps you’ve continued reading faithfully ever since, or, perhaps you picked up the funny pages after a lengthy absence, decided to check in on ol’ Funky and his pals, and wondered what the hell happened.

But if you’re reading this blog, you share a very special perspective on the Funkiverse. You keep coming back either to see how incoherent, tone deaf, and awful it can get…or…you cast aside whatever passes for narrative around here, and inject your own. In which case, today’s installment could be right out of a Coen brothers film: repressed midwestern matron Linda gleefully looking on as strapping Buck marches docile Bull out to dig his own cold, lonely grave.

El Toro Loco

And you thought Batiuk’s handling of PTSD was bad. This is appalling. Not only is the “punchline” offensive, Batiuk has to reverse-engineer the setup, which typically would be “If anyone told me blah blah blah, I’d tell him he was crazy!” You’d think that having to go to such lengths for a gag would make TB pause to think it over. Instead, he doubles down. Buck: “You’re crazy!” Bull: “And forgetful, too! Ha! Ha! Ha!“

Enfee-Bull-ment

Let us address Bull’s “CTE diagnosis:” From Wikipedia:

Currently, [Chronic traumatic encephalopathy] can only be definitively diagnosed by direct tissue examination after death…

…though according to my light research, this past fall it was reported that a diagnosis had been made in the case of a still-living, since deceased, unidentified “old baller.” Naturally, Batiuk couldn’t have known this when he wrote this strip a year ago, so we still get to call “Bull” -shit.

Gentleman Baller

“So, how’s Bull doing?” How rude to have Bull’s wife discuss his condition with Buck literally right behind his back. And how cruel of Batiuk to go through the trouble of rehabilitating bully Bull’s Act I persona, only to set him on a track to a sad, addled existence: first suggesting that Bull’s high school abuse of Les was staged (it wasn’t), and having him serve as trainer to Summer following her knee injury, and to Les as he prepared to climb Kilimanjaro. Thankfully his health is still good, so he’ll have plenty of time to sit in the basement and savor his “victory.”