Tag: Bull

More Bull In The Cards

Link To Today’s Strip

This is a bit of a surprise, as I naturally assumed we’d never see that asshole Buck again, but apparently he visits the rapidly-deteriorating Bull regularly now…and lucky FW readers reap the benefits. Bull is sitting around in his old football helmet which definitely explains his head injuries, as he’s been doing it wrong all this time. Looks like another trudge down Limited Memory Lane again for ol’ Bull, who never gets to stop re-living the past he’ll soon forget. Yes, that sounds about right.

I’m looking forward to Bull beginning to forget everything, as it’ll (probably) put an end to these interminable football glory days arcs once and for all. BatNom had a choice, he could have either left Bull the way he was and just continued doing his annual football-centric gags like he always has or he could have given Bull a debilitating brain disease, gone nowhere with it then used Bull to rehash his old football-centric gags over and over. Guess which he chose? It’s like Pa Winkerbean’s Alzheimer’s, cheap pathos fodder for a few weeks then forgotten whenever there’s a weak gag to be had.

Oh no he DIDnt

Finally, after wasting a week of everyone’s time, we finally find out in today’s strip an inkling of what Buck’s Guilt over winning games no one remembers but these two losers from over 30 years ago. Linda, in the meantime has made herself useful by bringing him some sort of unidentifiable artifact that I assume is cyanide-laced coffee.

Buck Mild

Sosfdavido here, and whaddya know, what looked like a pudgy, older white guy finally turns around to reveal a pudgy, older white guy! Now even Tombat’s most rabid fans are scratching their heads and checking the archives to see if the guy rendered fairly lifelike in today’s panel 3 was actually a character or someone pulled out of thin air.

Given the level of detail compared to most of the melting-dough faced citizens of Westview I’m betting it’s yet another character based on an actual person. Whether said person is thrilled to be depicted in such a bleak comic is a whole other matter.

Linda, in panel 2, meanwhile, looks like she just got interrupted in the middle of a 2 day nitrous oxide binge. He could have introduced himself as Mr. Ed the Talking Horse and she’d probably be just as non-plussed.

Weekend Buzzkill

There’s no preview available for Sunday’s Strip so who knows what it’ll be about. I’m putting my money on a “Les and Funky jogging” strip.

Update: Nope! The story line, which is moving at a glacier pace, has Mysterious Stranger getting up off his rump to make his way to the parking lot to find his car, which will probably eat up most of next week’s storyline.

Gless Joe Vs. Bald Bull

Our old friend the park bench returns from a long absence in today’s strip. A pity that these two are disturbing its peace. Or were disturbing its peace, rather, as Les and Durwood are STILL flipping through old photographs.

You could probably argue that they are flipping through new photographs staged to look like old photographs, as TB redraws all of these flashback panels, but then you’d be debating the semantics of Funky Winkerbean, which (speaking from experience) won’t get you invited to many parties.

Anyways, today’s flashback panels pretty accurately replicate the original strip from August 1993 (The Westview High School class of 1992 1988 had a 5 year reunion? Weird.)

TB has, of course, recapped Les punching out Bull at the five year reunion before, though not with these same panels. It was part of Les’ reminiscence of his time with then-fiancé Lisa after she was injured in the 1996 Westview post office bombing. This was less than three years after the famous punch, by the way. Again, it was a fairly faithful reproduction of the original strip except that Lisa gets a snarkier 3rd panel line in the flashback.

Oh, and if you are wondering what awful thing Bull said about Lisa to deserve being punched… Uh, I’m not sure, honestly. At the most, he was being patronizing to Les while making a mildly unwelcome but factual statement about Lisa. Anyways, Bull was remarkably cool about the whole thing, in an early example of the common Act II trope where Les’ haplessness was played to make others look bad instead of for humor.