Yadnus Pirts

Link to today’s strip.

As is customary, Sunday’s strip was not available for preview.  They’re always a surprise, but rarely a good surprise, something you’d actually enjoy reading.  Here are some possibilities I’ve come up with; feel free to add your own guesses in the comments.

First, we might continue with Skyler and his g’rents, though that seems to be pretty played out.  Now, never underestimate this cartoonist for stretching something past its sell-by date, but I can’t really see where he could go with this to “make a greater point,” so we’ve probably seen the last of Dullard & Co for the nonce.

Second possibility is we might re-visit the premise from a week or so ago, and pick up how Chester, the wealthy comics collector wants to get in touch with the comic book writer Peeved Radish.

Third, Funky and Les jogging.  I mean, we haven’t seen that in pretty much forever!  Not that I miss it or anything, but the cosmos feels misaligned.

Fourth, we might find out what happened to Becky’s mom.  –ha ha, just kidding.  That boat’s been scuttled for, what, five years now?  No, the real fourth would be some sideways kids’ book that Ann found in her Dullard shrine, something that would inspire some wry remark about how things were better Back Then.

The fifth and final guess I’m going to add is that we’ll get something completely untied to anything from the last six months.

Anyway, we’ll all find out in a little less than a couple of hours.  Wow!–it’s just like Christmas Eve, right?  Only this is an eve where one measures not the delights that may come once morning breaks, but the various disappointments one is certain to encounter when one reaches the bottom of the stairs, beholds the menacing tree, and hopes that the bigger boxes are not addressed to oneself.

But, well, despite the paragraph above (sorry, folks, I’ve been a guest host for quite a long time, and it does leave a mark), there is one thing certain:  no matter the subject, the characters, the dialogue or the story–it will be dull beyond bearing.

Bang for the Buck

From the FW blog:
Rick [Burchett]…lays-out and pencils the Sunday sequence. When that’s finished, it’s my turn to jump back in and ink it into a Funky Sunday. The lettering is then done on the computer after which it goes off to colorist Rob Ro who proceeds, as he always does, to turn it into a totally beautiful Funky Sunday.

Colorist Rob can even turn a clump of gridiron turf into a flaming mini-volcano! Well done, Rob! So today we get the big payoff in the Buck Bedlow saga. We wondered why Buck showed up out of nowhere and went to such lengths to overturn Bull’s non-touchdown in the Big Game. What Buck was really doing was getting a preview of his own impending decline. But if he got his “CTE diagnosis” (grrrrrrrrrr!) “last month,” why did he show up back in September?

Well it’s been a pleasure stoking the snark fires these first two weeks of the new year. Tomorrow, guest author Charles takes over the reins. Wear a helmet, folks! –TFH

Smirk ‘n’ Turf

spacemanspiff85
January 12, 2018 at 2:14 am
I have a strong feeling they’re either:
A. Digging away the snow so Bull can recreate his “winning” play.
or B. Digging up the dirt where Bull “made” his “winning” play so Bull can take it home and preserve it.

And the correct answer is “B”, if by “preserve it” you mean plop it on a shelf where it will wither faster than Bull’s mind. I guess we can remove the quotation marks around “winning” now, as Buck ‘n’ Bull have, by sheer force of will, turned that long-ago loss into a win. And again with the “crazy” talk, though at least Linda means it figuratively. While thematically this week’s arc was nothing to write home about, what interests me (barely) about  today’s strip is Bull’s profile in panel 2. Not because his hair, which three months ago was brown, is now pure white. It’s that as he gazes at the relic of what is now seen as his life’s greatest achievement, he morphs into a bald version of his Act I self.

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.