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.
“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.”
Yours truly is fighting a nasty cold, and by the time I dragged myself to the computer to update the placeholder post for today’s strip, y’all had done my work for me.
spacemanspiff85: “…I know, I can have a frame taken out of that decades old video tape someone shot from the stands of a high school football game and have it printed on a giant fake newspaper for him!”
I’ll just add my 2¢ here to point out a retcon of a retcon: the picture on the fake sports page has Bull reaching to extend the ball over the goal line; it’s debatable, whether or not his knees were down, if this counts as a TD. In panel 1, his head, shoulders, and the football are over the line as he is tackled. Hard to see how this is not a score, even if the defenders subsequently dragged him back out of the endzone.
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.
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.
Son of Stuck Funky 
