Tag: Buck

Riddell Me This

Happy Monday SOSFers (well, happy until you read today’s strip…), billytheskink here to take us all into February. February is typically Funky Winkerbean‘s best month, by the way, as no month sees fewer FW strips published… Much thanks to Charles, who endured the last two weeks stalking the halls of Westview High School to set our daily snark tone. Your efforts are much appreciated.

Speaking of two weeks… Two weeks back, when TFH handed the reigns over to Charles, he implored us all to wear a helmet. Alas, that wouldn’t have done us any good. Not in this universe.

HomeDumbing Charade

Link To Today’s Strip

I like the “I” on the front of Bull’s jacket, like the artist just couldn’t be bothered to draw a proper half a “W”. Nicely done there, new guy. What a totally pointless waste of time this piece of garbage was, it was pretty much the same thing as the first Buck arc except even less eventful. At least that one involved thinking and walking. I don’t get what he’s trying to “do” with Bull at all. He gave him a debilitating brain condition in order to force him into an early retirement (Bull is the same age as the rest of the Act I gang, remember) but all he’s done since then is sit around remembering things, which is kind of at odds with the whole point of it.

Earlier in Act III he did an arc about Funky having to put his Alzheimer’s-afflicted father in a nursing home, which led to all sorts of hilarious ramifications, but now Morty is a goofy peppy old coot, improbably enough. Lisa took a hundred years to finally agonizingly die from cancer, then she was hanging around in Les’ car like a month later. Now he’s doing an arc about Bull suffering from brain damage, yet his memory appears to be sharper than ever. There’s a definite pattern of sorts here, one I’d prefer not to analyze very deeply at the moment.

Pants-Load

Link To Today’s Strip

Ugh. Of course they can’t reminisce about anything remotely interesting or anything, it has to be idiotic football jokes and banal football-related muttering instead. Look at Bull, absolutely astonished to learn that he’s been putting on his pants all wrong for all these years. You know, while CTE is certainly no laughing matter, I don’t think it’s going to necessarily be a bad thing in Bull’s case.

The artwork is downright freaky today. Bull is suddenly a retired longshoreman and Buck’s head is as perfectly square as any head I’ve ever seen. Take away his lil’ button-nose and the guy’s profile is literally a straight line. Whatever the hell is going on there I don’t know, but it’s not exactly a strong endorsement for playing football, that much is certain. And as pathetic and stupid as Bull is, this Buck guy is the one who had nothing better to do with his time than to look up some guy he didn’t even really know, which doesn’t exactly say a lot about the dreary path HIS life has taken since graduation.

Into Fat Air

Link To Today’s Strip

Typical Linda, always such a meddlesome harpy. Annoyed by seeing Bull enjoying himself and remembering things, she throws Bull and his block-headed pal out into the chilly autumn night for no other reason aside from sheer bitter spite. I’ve never cared much for Linda and her humorless smirking know-it-all-ism.

Totally lost without television, Bull and Buck meander on down to the ol’ WHS gridiron to silently bask in the echoes of pigskin glory days gone by, when football was a game played by large unintelligent men who bullied their classmates because they had a tough home life, unlike today’s watered-down brand of football, where any stupid feeb with a stupid goatee in a mascot costume can become an overnight sensation. I suppose they could have wandered down to Montoni’s or a bar or something, but that would take the characters into the realm of two-dimensionality and we cannot have that. High school football memories…that’s the premise here and by God he’s sticking to it.

Victory Has A Thousand Fathers, But Defeat Is An Orphan

Link To Today’s Snore

(Zzzzzzzzz)….oh, what? Sorry, accidentally dozed off there for a minute. Bull and his new best pal Buck are still lounging around in Bull’s rec room, apparently watching some old high school football games instead of “Law And Order” or “Diagnosis: Murder” reruns like normal dementia patients do. This Buck asshole…who still wears his old high school football letterman’s jacket…is apparently a little behind the times regarding his ol’ alma mater’s recent football history, which makes no sense outside of the usual FW context. Within it, though, it makes total sense.

Anyhow, upon realizing that Bull’s old squad defeated their long-time gridiron rivals, BanTom has this Buck asshole engage in that holiest of masculine meathead jock rituals, that being the “fist bump”. They’re just two manly men reminiscing over that which they’ll soon forget, in other words a regular weekday evening in Westview.