If Tuesday’s strip qualified as one of the “Comics I Don’t Understand“, then what the hell are we to make of today’s strip? Les bemoans his students’ performance on his latest quiz, implying that they have retained nothing of what he’s taught them. Does Cody’s response mean that while they may not have learned anything, they are at least less easy to deceive? Even more baffling than the presumed punchline is Cody’s crudely rendered profile in panel 3: his jawline resembles a peeled sweet potato.
22 thoughts on “How's Your Jonson?”
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Son of Stuck Funky 
THAT’S Westview High? I mean, I didn’t expect much, but man, that looks…bleak.
Les: “Geez, the more I look at these quiz answers and the more I look at you, the more repulsed I get! How come my sharing with you lousy, rotten kids how much I despise you doesn’t cause you to shape up?!? Obviously, the internet is to blame! EVIL TECHNOLOGY!”
Owen: “Um, or maybe your palpable contempt and boring, minutiae-obsessed, anal-retentive presentation of the material are the real culprit here?”
Les: “WHAT?!?”
Owen: “It also might help if you taught class more than four or five days a year. You’re usually just hanging out in other teacher’s areas to shoot the breeze, gossiping with your buddies at Montoni’s, or off on book tours. Why should we take this seriously if you don’t?”
Les: “You…YOU…”
Owen: “A ewe is a female sheep.”
Les: “….*….AAAAAUGH!”
Whoa — I thought the fuzzy top of Owen’s chullo was a withered Les hand at first. That might have actually come close to being somewhat cool.
Today’s Trick Question: Alex is a character in the Funky Winkerbean comic strip?
A. True
B. False
C. Maybe
D. Who the fuck gives a shit?
E. All of the above
F. None of the above
G. Philadelphia
I think the idea is, last year Glasses et al would have believed Les when he gave them an answer. A further year of Les’ smirking dickheadery has made them all disbelieve everything he says, figuring everything he says is just a lead-in to some douchebaggish pun.
Admittedly, it took some time to figure that out.
@Señor Tortilla – They think it’s Westview High. Y’see, Les was fired years ago for smug jackassery and refusing to teach the materials. But he couldn’t lose both Lisa and his job. Not both.
While Ghost Lisa only lived his mind, this was a delusion he could bring to life. Find an old brick hut. Find the children. Get Linda and Bull on board no matter the cost.
The children were taken there every day, first fighting, but soon willingly. As the brainwashing set in, they attended daily to hear Les assert his genius and superiority. The children, the sham of a faculty, and most of all Les himself.
It was just like high school. Les was king, and Lisa was proud.
The budget woes continue at WHS, as Perfesser Moore is forced to bore his disinterested future comic book hawkers and pie-slangers in the ol’ brick maintenance shed instead of his now-shuttered classroom. At least with all those bricks they’ll have a fighting chance come tornado season. Sure, Les may be cheating his students out of a real education by giving them a lot pf phony facts and fake names but hey, at least he’s amusing himself and that’s the important thing. Remember, this man lost his wife (cancer) that time.
Man, this gag-a-day WHS grab-bag week is just terrible beyond words, some of the worst FW jokes in recent memory. Not merely bad jokes but jokes that sometimes don’t even seem like jokes at all at first until you read them again and realize what the jokes are supposed to be. Except for that Bull one, which I still don’t get. Just an all-around sad-sack sorry display of ineptitude and lack of effort IMO.
i think joke must be that chullo hat has came to life ??
I think panel three is supposed to be a set up for next week, when we see how these dumbass “students” have learned so much under the fantastic tutelage of Dickhead Less. That, or BatHack has no understanding of how to write a comic, but that can’t be it, can it???
Well, this is obviously a setup for SOMETHING, but I’m not getting my hopes up. Check out Goatee Boy’s eyebrows in the last panel. Can’t tell if that’s the expression of someone about to get knifed, or intense smug condescension.
Other than all that, this makes no goddam sense. Is he saying he asks trivia questions and makes up the answers because they’re too ignorant to know when he’s bullshitting? And since when is making up bullshit just to see if anyone calls him on it a teaching technique?
Maybe BatLoiter should observe the teachers when he creeps around the school instead of eyeing up the teenage guys.
“Last fall”? They’ve had Les for at least 2-3 years now. Christ, is Batiuk saying they’re Freshmen?
An ode to panel 2. Apologies to The Rays.
Took a walk and passed the school, just today
Overheard the English class, to my dismay
From within, the pale light cast, a smug silhouette on the shade
Oh what an awful sight that it made
Metal roof and faded brick, from tip to toe
Who decided to move the school, to a Western Auto
And then employ the guy, who’s silhouette’s on the glass
As he leads another underperforming class
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah…
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah…
Insipid playwright trivia, warps your mind
I guess there were some children, left behind
When the questions are posed by, the silhouette on the pane
Have you ever seen, a teacher so vain
These poor teachers aren’t at fault, don’t you see
Hidebound literalists are the ones, who blocked the school levy
Embittered and quite vengeful was, the silhouette with the smirk
Humiliating kids, such a jerk
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah…
Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah…
“Yeah, we’ve wised up to the fact that your aren’t just your average douchebag. You are really perhaps the most massive gaping a-hole in the history of the goddamn planet!!
“Also could you frigging take us back to Westview High and stop teaching us in your fucking one story ranch house !!!”
Remember the scene in The Man Who Came to Dinner where Sheridan Whiteside’s nurse tells him that she’s quitting, as her time with him has effectively killed any desire she had to help and heal and she’s going to work in a munitions plant instead? Les Moore’s teaching is going to create an entire generation of library arsonists.
I like to think Not-Chullo means “Last fall we might have believed you wrote a famous play, but now we know you can’t write for shit.”
I can imagine Batboy hesitating for a split second after drawing (and I use the term VERY loosely) panel 3 – for even he must have recognized what an abomination it is- but then exclaiming: “Ahhhh- good enough! ‘Golden Girls’ is on TV right now!”
Are we to think that this is to lead anywhere? That Les will go home and lament to Cayla how his students don’t believe a word he says? I have to say I have no damn clue what the hell is going on in FW anymore.
Why can’t the president of Les Moore’s fan club show the same kind of initiative that the president of Selena’s fan club did?
Too soon?
I was trying to figure what question Les could possibly have asked that would have that as an answer, but I realized that there is no question that would fit properly. It wouldn’t be part of an English Lit test, it’d just be a trivia question, even if it somehow incorporated the themes Jonson used or quotes from what he wrote. And with how Les is responding, I can’t help but be given the impression that he believes that the knowledge and study of English Literature is nothing more than a means of elongating your intellectual cock. “I know that Ben Jonson wrote Volpone and you don’t. Nyah nyah nyah.” So he’s a failure as an English teacher. He does nothing to counter the common student belief that there’s no value in learning about Literature. And rather than trying to show its value, he confirms it with shit like this. Shakespeare and Jonson are of no value other than as answers to trivia questions.
Well done, educator.
–Why can’t the president of Les Moore’s fan club show the same kind of initiative that the president of Selena’s fan club did?—
Because he needs to save the bullet for himself.
I’m seeing a parallel between Les and TB:
Les: Nobody passes his tests.
TB: Nobody gets his “jokes”.
So who’s really at fault? My vote is for Les being a shitty teacher and TB being a shitty cartoonist.
When I see a strip like today’s, I’m instantly reminded that this is the product of a failed teacher of middle-school art.